him, but she was, in fact, no longer his. Something more was on
to-night than that rapiered and daggered Raleigh expected. I danced
with Cleopatra, watching them dance, and also I looked now for the
reappearance of the other Raleigh, who was Jerry.
The number ended; now clapping; now encore. My arms circled Cleopatra;
I clasped her. Keeban clasped Christina.
As I watched his arm go around her, so exactly as Jerry’s clasped his
partner in the dance, I got another jerk. Maybe he was Jerry! Maybe
what was to happen between Jerry and his “friend”, his brother, had
happened outside. I sent that thought out of my head and watched them.
What a pair they made, she young, lithe, full of life, perfect in her
soft proportions. I thought of how I had seen her singing that night
before the shooting and how she received me--like Récamier, on her
couch--afterwards. But here she was dancing another theme. And he,
dancing with her, was quick, graceful, courtly. Clearly they had done
this dance often together. Some one cried out a request and they went
into a fancy figure.
The rest of us cleared a circle in the center of the hall; we danced
slowly about the perimeter while they in the middle twined arms,
turned, confronted each other, flung each other away and circled back
to clasp again, dancing.
They had become so professional now, that, watching their steps, I
forgot for the moment that he was the murderer of old Win and she had
been old Win’s wife, in the plot for the Scofield money. Jerry had told
me that, when the plot turned to murder of her husband, she had tried
to stop it. Had they fallen out? Well, I should see. This was a time
not to think, but to watch.
Some one switched the lights off. It proved the signal for those who
had lights in their hair and on their dresses to gather inside the
circle and give their soft, colored glows to Christina and Harry,
dancing together.
He seized her, tossed her away, caught her again and, before again he
tossed her, she altered the figure. As he caught at her, she eluded
him and, laughing, she snatched at the sheath on his belt. She had his
dagger; and the lights--blood-red, green and amber--glinted on the
flashing blade as she bared it, drew back and thrust at him.
He caught her wrist, as girls about me gasped; he held and twisted at
her hand but she broke his hold and darted away from him. He stood a
moment, staring; then he grinned at her who, off at the edge of the
circle, again was dancing as if that thrust at him, his snatch just in
time, his twist and her breakaway all were part of the figure. But they
weren’t. He knew; I knew; many others knew. There, in that flash of
shining steel, she had stabbed at him to kill him.
Why? Jerry’s words to me gave at least a clue. He was her man, who had
been a “gun” but who had become a “gorilla”; he had shot Win Scofield
in her sight, slaughtered him before her. She had tried to stop that
killing; and his murder of the old man in his house had been Harry
Vine’s answer. Also he had served notice for her to come back to him;
so she had done so,--to kill him.
This was what Jerry meant I should see; this was the vengeance of
Shirley. Not vengeance alone; also an attempt at self-protection. She
knew, going back to a “gorilla”, that sooner or later he would kill
her. Perhaps she expected death from him only a little later that
night. So she had struck there before them all and, failing, made her
life surely forfeit. Now, without doubt, Keeban--Harry Vine--would kill
her.
Not there, surrounded by that circle, as she would have slain him, had
her thrust gone home. A girl kills a man that way; but not a man his
woman. This rapiered Raleigh knew that. He made no motion to attack
her; he merely watched her, and he grinned while she danced and tried
to play it was all pretense.
Now her partner started toward her; and everybody watched him, and
watched her, and nobody interfered. Nobody thought that, when he caught
her, immediately and there he would kill her. I, at least, did not even
imagine that. He was moving to capture her now and to carry her away;
and, to these maskers in the circle, that was all his own affair as, to
them, her stroke at him had been her business. I realized that had she
sent the dagger home, no one would have touched her as no one, after
she had failed and was doomed, would raise a hand to help her now.
She knew it also; and she looked to no one for aid. She merely danced
away, his dagger in her hand, smiling and still playing at pretense.
Fingers circled my wrist; they were Cleopatra’s. Small, strong, intense
fingers they were, half holding, half warning me.
I had not been aware that I betrayed, through my mask and cowl, the
impulse which heated me. Of course I wanted to help that girl who had
struck and failed; I wanted to seize him who grinned and stole upon
her, and of course I knew I could not; and those slim fingers circling
my wrist doubly warned me. Here was business between two persons--girl
and man--which was their own. She still had chance to strike again and
kill him, if she could; he had his right to capture.
She circled away and he followed about the edge of the ring, not
gaining upon her. Suddenly he snatched a cape from the shoulders of a
watcher; he wound it about his left arm and, with that arm forward to
take her stab, he darted on her.
He did it so quickly, so surely, that it seemed prearranged. For the
moment, it seemed that the motion must have been practiced and it was
all play. Then he was on her; she made a stab and he caught it on that
bundled cape. With his other hand, he had her wrist; he had her. No
acting in that; no possible pretense.
It was not play; he had her! The circle knew it was not play; some of
them would surely save her. I must have jerked again; for Cleopatra’s
fingers pressed tighter on my wrist.
“Where’s Jerry?” I thought. “What’s he doing?”
The light was lessening. A girl switched off the glows which burned
upon her head and dress; another did the same; another. “Lights!”
somebody called; but before the room lights could go on, other dancers
had darkened the colored bulbs they wore.
The dagger rang on the floor; and, as she dropped it, Christina
surprised her partner out of his hold on her. She darted back. The
circle behind her opened and closed. She was through and the circle
was all dark. Then some one screamed.
At that instant, I was sure it was Christina; I was sure he had
her again. Then, I did not know. There was a whistle outside. “The
bulls--bulls--bulls.”
Cleopatra’s fingers freed my wrist. I groped for her but she was
gone. “Bulls--the bulls” men and girls said. No one cried again for
lights; no one turned them on. In the dark, I felt streams of escape in
opposite directions. Outside somebody was shooting; came shouts; now
the clanging of patrol cars. Surprise was gone.
I felt myself sucked into an eddy of escape repulsed from one side and
cast upon the other. We reached air and iron stairs. Pistols flashed
before us; our van cleared the way. I came down to the alley pavement
and stumbled over a man shot or fallen. I crossed the alley and reached
a passage. A girl’s hand led me through and, a block down, we found
refuge.
I didn’t know the girl. I never saw her face. It was dark and she left
the shed before me. I dropped my robe there; and when I walked out, the
circle of capture had closed and was still contracting, not expanding.
The police took, altogether, thirty-six persons,--twenty girls,
sixteen men.
The “bulls” booked them all but proved able to hold nobody. They showed
prison records against seven but nothing then “out” against any one.
The pick-up, as shown on the picture pages, included a Tudor queen, two
of the lighting plants, a pirate, a Turk, a Cæsar but not Cleopatra;
not even Magellan. Not the Elizabethan Christina, not Raleigh, either
Jerry or Keeban.
The raid was made to get Jerry and Christina; for some one had tipped
it that they’d be at the Flamingo Feather. The tip told even the time.
I kept wondering about that tip and who gave it. Not Jerry, I thought;
but where, during the end of that evening, was Jerry? And I considered
that it was only after he had gone that Keeban had come in,--or the
man in mask whom I’d called Keeban, and who did that dagger dance with
Christina.
She’d told me, at that time when she lay on her bed like Madame
Récamier, that Jerry had killed old Win; she showed no knowledge at all
of Keeban.
You’ll understand I kept my thoughts to myself; and I kept to myself
that I’d danced at the Flamingo Feather that night of “the thieves’
ball,” which was raided. The newspapers, always keen for the colorful,
played up the pictures they took of those twenty girls and sixteen
“crooks” in costume; but the papers did not even know of that dagger
dance. Much less could they give news of the final consequence of it.
In my mind, when I thought of it, Keeban had caught Christina. In my
mind, he had her somewhere wholly in his power; at his own time, in his
own manner, he would punish her. Imagining this, I would get up and
walk about; I felt I had to do something. But where were they? Where
was Jerry? If he were not the Raleigh who had returned; if he were not
the man who had danced, where had he gone? What had happened to him?
I learned, during those days, the completer truth of what Jerry had
told me of the underworld. It wasn’t a place; not at all. For the
places, they all remained. There was the Flamingo Feather, dull and
drab by daylight with its door beyond the bakery, the pawnshop, the
soft-drink parlor; its light was out; its iron basket rusted and
filled with wet, melting snow. At night “The Apollo Club”--giggling
clerks--consorted there; and then “The Brothers of Byzas,” who, if he
was like his kin, was a teamster, apparently.
Gone, gone from the Flamingo Feather were my friends of the masque,
vanished as wholly as yesterday’s snow from the basket over the door.
Nor could Klangenberg’s help me. There was the door within which stood
shelves heaped with delicatessen; but a strange child pondered over the
keys of the cash register which invited “come again.” He knew nothing
of Klangenberg who had “gone away.” Not even the “dyke-keeper” remained.
Exploring the alley alone, I penetrated to the hooded stairs atop which
Jerry had greeted me. Now an old wigged woman, crippled and fluent of
Yiddish, kept vigil there.
I sought Leventhal, the lessor of my Erasmus garb cast off in that shed
and never recovered. I came offering cash to pay for the robe. He took
the money, shaking his head; he would remember neither the robe nor me.
There was no tracing, through him, of others who wore his clothes that
night. They were vanished like Villon’s lovers:
Alas for lovers! Pair by pair
The wind has blown them all away;
The young and yare, the fond and fair,
Where are the Snows of Yesterday?
Young and yare; that was Cleopatra! Where was she? Who was she? More
than who, whose might she be? Well, what good for me to wonder and
worry? What good to feel, by remembrance, the softness of her hand in
mine when we danced; and then the iron warning of her fingers on my
wrist! What good to see in mind the beauty of her shoulder and the
smallness of her foot. They were gone, all gone; and, if I looked at
the whole business sensibly, I would see that somehow, in ways not
yet entirely clear, I had been of service in the game of getting for
Christina and her man insurance of five hundred thousand with which
they had got away; or he had, after taking it from her.
XII
I DISCOVER “THE QUEER.”
Then Tom Downs was getting married and he asked me to usher, so there I
was in Caldon’s, picking out an after-dinner coffee set to be sent to
the bride; and a lot I knew about breeds and varieties of Hepplewhite
and Colonial and Queen Anne. Now if setter dogs could only be wedding
presents, or beans, I’d be right on the spot; or a bag of Rio coffee
would be all right; but the coffee container never meant anything to
me. So I was about to judge by the good old way, which has proved such
a help to the high cost of living, and order the most expensive when I
heard a voice that I knew and turned about.
She wasn’t speaking to me but to the clerk at the watch-repair counter,
which was just opposite the coffee sets:
“Bad?” she was saying. “Oh, you must mean counterfeit. Did I really
have one? How interesting; please let me see.” And she put a small
gloved hand across the counter for the bank note which he held.
A new twenty, I noticed it was, and then I looked again at her. Without
any doubt, I knew her voice; I was absolutely certain I’d talked to
her; but her face was a complete surprise to me. A pleasant surprise,
right enough; she was rather a little thing, slender but with rounded
neck and arms, in actually beautiful proportions; about twenty-two in
age, I guessed. She had nice, clear white-and-pink skin; good, bold
little mouth and a sort of I-dare-you-chin. Her nose turned up the
barest trifle, darned attractively, and though I couldn’t from the side
get a view of her eyes, it was pretty plain they weren’t easy ones to
meet. Anyway, that clerk wobbled before her as he apologized that the
government that week had just warned the banks and all big business
houses in Chicago that new and unusually dangerous counterfeits of
twenty-dollar Federal Reserve Notes were in circulation.
“Dangerous?” said my friend. “You mean the ink’s poisonous or something
like that?” She seemed glad she had her gloves on.
The clerk laughed. “Oh, it’s quite safe that way, Miss Wellington. They
mean, it’s an unusually good job of counterfeiting; very hard indeed
to detect. In fact, they say in this case the printing and coloring is
actually perfect, to all practical purposes. It is only the paper which
is enough off so that an expert, like our cashier, suspected it.”
Miss Wellington opened her hand bag. “How interesting! But would you
ask your clever cashier to look over these bills for me to make sure
they’re all right? Why, what a frightful place Chicago is; I got in
just this morning from Denver and bought a few things at Field’s and
along Michigan Avenue, breaking a hundred-dollar bill somewhere, I
can’t remember exactly where, and getting change----”
I heard, of course, but didn’t actually pay any attention to the rest
she was saying. Miss Wellington of Denver! Now I didn’t know any Miss
Wellington of Denver or any other place; but I did know that girl;
her voice, anyway. She certainly had talked to me; and also, I was
sure, I knew her hands and her figure, if I didn’t know her face. She
had one glove off now, feeling the texture of the counterfeit bill in
comparison with the others in her hand bag, which proved to be quite
all right. Yes; I knew that pretty, slender, strong little hand.
She was going out now, after having given to the cashier--who had come
up--the information that she _thought_ she had broken her hundred
dollars at Field’s and got her change there and supplying him with her
Chicago address as the Blackstone Hotel.
“Beg pardon, sir,” said the coffee-set salesman, “did you make a
choice?”
“Oh, shoot along the Queen Anne,” I said; and with the word “queen”
something caught me.
“What name, sir?” said the salesman.
“Cleopatra,” I said, for I had it; and I got under way without worry
over the impression I was leaving behind me. For now I had placed Miss
Wellington of Denver, and I knew why I was familiar with her voice,
with her hands, with her figure, and also why her face was a surprise
to me. For she was Cleopatra, my ci-devant partner of the dances at the
Flamingo Feather where I was ostensibly “Beets”, the safe blower in a
hired Erasmus get-up, and she was mate to a lightly built Magellanic
gent, who sopped up rather too much that evening and yet had proved
nimble as any on the getaway.
I was absolutely sure of her; but she didn’t suspect me. I had been all
swaddled in robes and cowls that night, you remember. Of course she’d
heard my voice then, but she couldn’t have recognized it from anything
I’d muttered at Caldon’s. I’m one of those mute buyers. So here I was,
trailing her down Michigan Boulevard and wondering what in salvation to
do.
From a Puritanical point of view, I had one plain duty; for I couldn’t
feel the slightest doubt that Cleopatra there a few steps in front
of me--present alias Miss Wellington of Denver--had never obtained
that dangerous twenty in change. If she had just participated in any
financial transaction at Field’s, I felt that Marshall III might just
as well mark himself down twenty dollars or forty (or some higher
multiple of twenty) on the total loss page of the day’s doings.
Unquestionably I should, by all rules of citizenship, hand her over to
the traffic officer at the approaching corner and ask him to blow his
whistle to call the wagon.
On the other hand, my acquaintance with Cleopatra which now put me in
position to suspect her (of course suspect doesn’t half say it) had
been gained under circumstances which any one would call privileged.
The whole fact of my presence at that dance was under a sort of
sporting condition; and I couldn’t forget how this girl, herself, had
held on to my wrist, warning me and keeping me out of trouble.
I actually owed something to her; but that wasn’t what I was thinking
of, as I followed her. I was watching what a wallop she was as she
went down the boulevard; much the neatest one in sight. She was rather
small, I’ve said; and trim; wonderfully turned, she was, and dressed in
plain, tailored things which always look the best, I think. I almost
collided with a couple of my friends--girls--from up the Drive and
around on Astor. We nearly crashed because they were looking, too.
Everybody was gazing, at least a bit, at Miss Wellington; yet she
wasn’t endeavoring at all to attract attention. Quite the opposite. She
simply couldn’t help it.
She had me heeling her, therefore, without the least actual idea of
handing her over to any one; but also without any intention of letting
her go. For here I’d found her, after all that world of Jerry’s and of
the Flamingo Feather had vanished into air.
I began to understand that of course they hadn’t really vanished.
They’d been about--those queens and ladies, those sailors, pirates and
lighting plants--but I simply had not known it when I saw them.
Think of the time it took me to identify Cleopatra, whom I’d made my
chief companion that night.
Now she meant to me, besides what she was herself, a chance for getting
into touch again with all that world. I got to thinking particularly of
her friend, Magellan, and looking for him in the offing. But if he were
about, I didn’t recognize him; she spoke to nobody and seemed not to
be expecting any one. She just kept on down the boulevard, minding her
own business and glancing, as any girl would, into show windows. Then
suddenly she stopped, entered a store and, during the six seconds she
was in ahead of me, she did an expert disappearing piece. She was gone;
absolutely!
I stood and waited; I wandered about but drew a total blank. I taxied
down to the Blackstone where she said she was staying. I thought
I shouldn’t have believed that; yet it was true. There she was
registered--at least somebody was registered, “Doris Wellington and
maid, Denver.”
By a little casual questioning, I made sure it was she; and by my
soul I couldn’t help liking her the better for it. Not only was she
stopping at our best, the Blackstone, but she had her own maid. “Doris
Wellington and maid!”
She’d come in that morning from Denver; at least that was what she’d
told the hotel. She was checking out to leave for New York by the
Century that noon.
The hotel people, knowing me, naturally supposed me her friend. If she
heard of my inquiry, I didn’t know what she’d suppose, so I asked them
not to mention it; and I beat it over to my bank to make ready for
contingencies in case it proved true that she was on her way to New
York by the Century.
Also I wanted to work up a little knowledge on the counterfeiting game;
and I knew just the man to help me. Almost every big bank has its money
crank. Old Wally Bailey holds the post at mine. His father founded
the place and he has so much stock that, if the others won’t make him
vice-president, he’ll have himself elected chief; so they all vote him
vice, unanimously, at every election and put in half their thought
between times at keeping him so busy at other ideas that he can’t gum
up the banking game by having any time for business.
They thank God over there whenever a well-raised check drifts in;
they rush it right around to Wally for it’ll make him forget to insult
customers for a whole day at a time. A good forgery sometimes saves
the other officers from practically all argument with Wally for a
week; while if they can just get a good counterfeiting job to occupy
him,--well, they hardly dare pray for good luck like that.
Everything was humming so and borrowers were looking so relieved when
I wandered in that I knew Wally was happily engaged; and soon somebody
told me the good news. Fresh and unusually deceptive counterfeit bank
notes were in circulation. Wally wasn’t at his desk; he was in the
Directors’ Room which he had to himself, and all that the others had to
do to keep him harmless was to send him the new Federal Reserve notes
as they were pushed into the tellers’ windows.
I found him with a catch of seven bad ones already this morning, and
the banking day yet was young; five twenties, he had on the table
before him, and two fifties. He greeted me with a happy glint in his
eyes and shoved the secret service circular at me.
“Read that first”; so I read.
“Twenty-dollar Federal Reserve Note on the Federal Reserve Bank of
New York; check letter ‘A’ plate No. 121; Carter Glass, Secretary of
the Treasury; John Burke, Treasurer of the United States; portrait of
Cleveland.
“This counterfeit is a steel-plate production, with the exception of
numbering, and is a particularly close and excellent piece of work;
even the scrollwork of the borders is uniform and good. The numbering
is clean and clear, and appears to have been done serially, as no two
notes yet received bear the same number. It is printed on special paper
which when flat closely resembles the genuine, but is too brittle when
creased.
“The face of the bill is unusually deceptive, the seal and numbering
being particularly good; the faults in the portrait are actually
microscopic, consisting in a slight broadening of portrait of
Cleveland; the texture of the paper, however, together with the
frequent bunching of the silk fiber inserted, should detect this
counterfeit.”
Wally ecstatically brandished one of his twenties beside one of the
fifties before me.
“They haven’t got out the circular on the fifty yet; they just ’phoned
round about it this morning; and I’ve these two already. Made by the
same gang, you see. Same good seal and numbering; printed on the
same paper; and also a steel-plate job. One of the old masters did
that, Steve; spent weeks and weeks engraving that plate to make that
reproduction. He’s none of your modern, lazy, loafing photo-engravers
running off notes on a hand press. That’s a Janvier job, I know. A
Chicago job, or a western job, anyway. I told Cantrell yesterday.
But he still thinks it’s a New York piece of work because the notes
appeared down there first. The photo-engraved jobs are done down there;
but not pure art like this, I told him. Broadway can’t produce it; look
here.” And he picked up a couple of fifty-dollar Federal Reserve notes
and went on with his talk.
Up to that moment, money had just been money to me; of course I’d
noticed, especially since the Federal Reserve notes began coming out,
we’d been developing different varieties; and I was aware that each
style had figures of its own and that some one--usually a particularly
rotten penman--took it upon himself to sign each issue; also I had
observed, as a matter of course, that our money ran to pictures of
presidents, each labelled so you’d know him, and on the other side they
printed unlabelled but occasionally exciting little scenes in green
like the landing of Columbus or the wreck of the _Hesperus_. But the
fine points of the art work had escaped me.