fellow, if he really feels as he writes, what a world he lives in! I
imagine him riding through lovely country like this with shades drawn
or else emitting low, melancholy moans as each habitation heaves
in sight. Now I like to think of Willa Cather’s people when we’re
whistling through tank towns.”
“So do I,” I said, agreeing again. “They’re there; they’re hearing the
whistle. You meet ’em. You ever been in a tank town?”
“When I was a child, I lived in one,” she told me; “when father was
serving his second term in the ‘long house’ at Leavenworth.”
She might have said his second term in the House of Congress, from
the way she spoke. No shame in it at all. Yet it brought me back to
business. For a minute she had been just a girl, mighty pretty and
bright and pleasant and with tastes and distastes, both, which I liked.
She’d known about Erasmus and Holbein when we talked at the ball, you
remember; now she knew about the same books I’d been reading. Likely
she’d dipped into “This Freedom” too, in order to help herself decide
whether, after marriage, she should drop business for the sake of the
children or should keep right on to help husband.
Probably, in Chicago, she’d seen “Lightnin’” and “The Hairy Ape” and
heard Galli-Curci and Chaliapin. Of course she had. A crook can’t be
crooking all the time; she’s at the normal round most of it. But I’d
never realized that till I took a little leisure to think it over. Now
when you say a person’s a counterfeiter, for instance, naturally you
think of him or her, or both of them, crouching somewhere covertly
together, printing off their money and then slipping out, with many
glances around, to convert it into groceries and some of our ordinary
authorized currency. But actually, very little of their time may be
spent so. Most of it goes into just living,--maybe looking at movies,
at dance halls or driving around; or at the Art Institute, a good
play or two, the opera, and maybe a lecture also, according to taste.
I’ve heard of a gerver, lately, who even made it a habit to attend
Sunday-evening club talks; and he was crazy over Burton Holmes.
So here was a girl like any other I knew, only quite some little
quicker and pleasanter and better looking, with nothing really strange
about her except her proclivity for passing out the bank notes father
gave her. She knew it was wrong, of course, so very wrong that, for
it, she ought to be shut in the “long house” at Leavenworth herself,
serving her own long term.
But I had not the smallest impulse to put her there; quite on the
contrary. In fact, I imagined, at that moment, that I heard somebody
trying to listen at the door; and, thinking it was old “Iron Age,” I
felt myself going definitely to her side. Nobody was going to shut this
girl up in prison for ten years. I was going to do something about her;
but not that. I had no idea of shifting responsibility. Not at all; I
was going to see to this business myself.
I got up and opened the door, while she watched me. Nobody was there
and I sat down again.
“I’ve called on you by orders, I think you ought to know,” I told her.
“Government orders?” she said.
“That’s it.”
She feigned a shudder, prettily. “My soul!” she said. “What I’ve told
you! Now you’ll arrest us all, I suppose!”
I laughed, for I felt mighty good. There was no denying it; I felt as
happy as ever I had in my life; happier on some counts; on others, of
course, there was my knowledge of her character and the chances she was
running. But the chances only made it more exciting for me to like her.
Obviously, I’d let her see she’d hooked me; she could feel me on the
line. Yet she hadn’t me in the net--not quite.
“I’d gladly arrest George,” I said. “And lock him up for life.”
“Why?”
“Because you care about him.”
“Oh, do I?”
And then, for no more reason than that--but you’d have understood it,
had you heard her voice--I felt better yet. I switched the subject
back to business.
“I’ve accumulated some hand baggage,” I mentioned.
“Yes. Don’t you want it?”
“That part’s all right,” I said. “But what to do with it? It’s not a
gift, I take it.”
“No.”
“I see. You expect a search. Meanwhile I’m to have the bag and then
give it back to you.”
She nodded; and there she proved she knew I was not in the net; for
instead of asking anything final, one way or the other, she merely
suggested, “Think it over a while, won’t you?”
I promised and got up; for she’d put in that a hint of dismissal. Then
I remembered Dibley. After being in her compartment all this time, I
had to bring to him something more tellable than our talk so far.
“George is in on this game with you?” I asked.
“Why do you want to know?”
“I want to,” I said; and she told me, “No; we’re just going on
together.”
“He has a lay of his own, then?”
She avoided direct answer to that. “Well, he’s still a young man,” she
said. “He hasn’t retired; so naturally you’d suppose so, wouldn’t you?”
“All right. Now as well as I can guess, old “Iron Age”--you know who I
mean?”
She nodded.
I went on. “He’s aboard because George is. He knows him; but he doesn’t
know you. I’m here to find out about you. What shall I tell him?”
“That we’re getting off at Cleveland, please.”
“What?” I said. “Are you?”
“Yes.”
“And you want me to tell him that?”
“If you’ll be so good.”
I waited with my hand on the knob. “I’ll see you again.”
“Oh, please do!” she invited; and, feeling flushed and mighty good, I
stepped into the corridor and drifted to the rear.
My new baggage was still under my seat in my Pullman but George was
lost to sight. I wouldn’t have put it past Dibley to have locked him
up somewhere but that didn’t seem to be the case when I encountered
old “Iron Age” in the door of the smoking room of one of the last
Pullmans. Rather, he encountered me, reaching out and dragging me in
behind the curtains.
“Now what have you found out?” he went after me with his delightful
tact.
“She’s a charming girl,” I assured him. “I called at her compartment,
as you suggested, and pretended we had mutual acquaintances and got
away with it.”
“You probably did not,” said Dibley, to take me down from the hang-over
of satisfaction which he detected on me.
“She let you in because you look easy. What did she tell you?”
“She’s a low opinion of Sin Lewis.”
“Who?” said Dibley.
“But she’s keen on Miss Cather.”
“Who?”
Sin Lewis, so put to him, seemed to suggest somebody, possibly one of
similar name who was on Dib’s list for rum-running or using the mails
to defraud; but Cather wasn’t on his cards at all.
“They write books,” I explained. “We started talking about books.” I
thought it just as well to use the truth as long as possible.
“Books!” he jeered me.
I remained polite. “How would you have started?” I asked courteously.
“Something like this? ‘Good afternoon, Miss Wellington or whatever your
real name is. I suspect you’re a crook but for the moment don’t place
you. Now if you’ll just tell me----’”
“Drop it,” said Dib, not agreeably.
I obliged.
“Now forget the start,” he told me. “What did you get to?”
“Oh,” I said. “I found one thing out you want to know. They’re getting
off at Cleveland.”
“What makes you think so?”
“She told me so.”
Old “Iron Age” gazed fixedly out of the window with the thought in
his head (if his expression meant anything) of pulling the cord to
stop the train if we happened to be passing an institution for the
feeble-minded; but all was farm scenery, so I was safe.
“Thank you so much,” he said to me feelingly. “It was always possible
that they would try to escape at Cleveland; so it is of some advantage
to know they’re going on.”
He released me after a few more words and I went to my section. I had
his permission to continue my acquaintance with Miss Wellington; but
it was plain that he wasn’t depending much on me. He was taking to
telegrams, scratching off any number of yellow sheets to go from the
next stop.
It reminded me that, in my preoccupation at keeping Doris in sight
after I found she was leaving the city, I hadn’t ’phoned my office. I
had thought I’d wire; but now I decided not to.
I didn’t want Dibley to have any chance to oversee the fact that this
trip was a last inspiration of mine. I immersed myself, ostensibly, in
cost estimates of our new can and bottling plant which I happened to
have in my pocket, while I felt myself sinking deeper and deeper into
this game I’d entered with Cleopatra Doris Janvier.
XV
IN WHICH I ASSIST A GET-AWAY.
She came into my car, blithe and smiling; at least she smiled at me.
Every one looked up and every one, seeing that smile for me, put me
down as lucky, I know. When she was past and out of the car, I could
feel them gazing at me and wondering what I’d done to deserve such a
smile.
She was a gay, delightful maid. Suppose that, not having had the
advantage of acquaintance at the Flamingo Feather, I had met her in an
ordinary way. I’d have been mad over that girl. Heaven salvage my soul,
I was anyway.
She had a trick of playing up to me, which probably she used with
everybody, but I never really saw it except with me. Anyway, she did
it with me; and nobody else ever did. It was her trick of looking
up quickly, when I was about to say something, and smiling in that
pleasant way of hers (pleasant doesn’t half do it; but it has to go at
that) as if she was always sure of something good every time I talked
and as if she liked my line and me. When you’re decidedly slow and
ordinary, that makes quite a hit.
I sat figuring out her life. Put her down as twenty-two; then she was
born during the year Janvier was out after his first term in the “long
house” and while he was busy engraving the plates which sent him in
again. Some one--she hadn’t said who--took her into the country for ten
years. Maybe she had a mother then; maybe not; her mother had dropped
out somewhere. She was about twelve, then, when her father got out
again and began his famous “living Cleveland” series of engravings.
Twelve, they say, is the child’s most impressionable age; the parent or
guardian molds the future then.
Now I knew nothing about the guardian, when the parent was in the “long
house,” but I had considerable information about father; and I could
imagine him emerging from the pen all filled with eagerness to be back
at his game of showing up the government engravers and of getting away
with what he’d tried twice.
Wally Bailey had given me a graphic glimpse of Janvier and his aim
which, from one point of view, was actually a pursuit of perfection.
What Wally suggested was that Janvier wanted, more than anything else,
the satisfaction of doing the thing which had stumped him. That was
what he wanted his sight back for,--to have a go at it again. And here
he had it.
His daughter was helping him, naturally. She’d been born and bred to
his business and surely had caught something of the spirit of her
father who wouldn’t give in, in spite of three terms, till he’d shown
up the government.
I thought of what Jerry had told me of the Socratic genius of gervers
and housemen; undoubtedly counterfeiters had their talent for
dialectics too.
It might go something like this: the printing of a little extra money
would not directly injure any individual. In fact, there was quite an
argument whether it damaged people in general at all.
Many highly approved people were openly in favor of a freer issue of
currency without bothering whether a gold or silver dollar was behind
every bank note. Mr. Ford and Mr. Edison themselves had spoken for a
scheme which, while not similar to Janvier’s system, yet had sent the
good bankers into frightful attacks of financial hydrophobia.
Mightn’t Janvier show plenty of authority to suggest that he wasn’t in
a bad business at all?
And suppose he compared it with other businesses; mine, for choice.
What was the harm in shoving out a little informal currency compared
with the damage in passing out drugged and adulterated food, which many
a first family has done?
Then compare it with the coal brokerage business, from which many of
my firmest friends are fat. What did they do for their profits, during
a late, lamented shortage, but hold a few carloads of coal back from
the market and away from people freezing for it so they could whoop the
price a little more? Wouldn’t everybody be a bit ahead if these people,
who haven’t the slightest fear of any “long house,” had stayed out of
the coal business and simply printed their own money for their profits
and shoved it into circulation without harming anybody?
You see, as I thought it over, it didn’t seem strange to me that
Doris Wellington could smile and smile at me and not feel herself a
villainess at all.
I wondered, from time to time, exactly what was in that nice, new
suit case under my feet. A few hundred thousand in neat, new bills, I
thought; or possibly plates. Maybe both.
That suit case kept bothering my bean-business conscience. It was
decidedly one matter to like Doris Wellington and wish her to stay
out of the clutches of old “Iron Age”; but it was something quite up
another street to take charge of that handbag full of cash and plates
and deliver them at destination for her. Obviously, this was what she
meant me to do.
The day was waning; and all lights were on as we drew into Toledo,
where old “Iron Age” sent his sheaf of telegrams over to Western Union.
He received a couple of yellow envelopes too. I saw him strolling on
the platform, reading enclosures and watching the doors of the train.
He was developing a more menacing look.
Neither Doris nor George got off; Felice did, flirting expertly with
one of the clothing merchants. “All aboard.” We were going again.
Cleveland, the next stop.
In the observation car, I found “Iron Age” ponderously on duty beside
Doris who was reading _Harper’s_. A good touch that, I thought;
there’s something so disarming about _Harper’s_. But it wasn’t
_Harper’s_ alone which made the effect. There was George a couple of
seats away and he was reading the _Atlantic Monthly_, with Galsworthy’s
“Forsythe Saga” ready beside him for good measure, yet he didn’t appear
half so innocuous.
This was probably because he wasn’t. The more I looked at George, the
more I questioned his general character; but the more I gazed at Doris,
the surer I was that--in all but one of the essential senses--she was a
“good” girl. Looseness of living simply wasn’t in her make-up.
You couldn’t associate her with anything personally depraved or
disagreeable. She’d no more steal a diamond ring, left in the ladies’
wash room, than my mother, I felt certain. No; I was confident that her
dereliction was highly specialized to the subject represented in that
suit case of hers under my seat.
I wanted to talk to her about that and about other topics; but old
“Iron Age” was asserting a priority claim just now.
He looked up at me and cut me dead, signifying of course that just now
he and I weren’t to know each other. Doris nodded to me and I to her
and I found a chair opposite.
Watching Dibley, I perceived that he was in the throes of opening a
casual conversation. Of course Doris perceived it, too, and about a
minute after I sat down, she dropped her _Harper’s_.
Old “Iron Age” dove for it and restored it to her, pompously. She
thanked him.
He said, “You’re entirely welcome. You’re going to New York?”
“Oh, no,” Doris told him. “We’re off at Cleveland.”
“Iron Age” gave a glance at me, which eloquently said, “You see, you
believed that. Now watch me.”
I watched them both and George, too.
Evidently she’d told Dibley what she wished and she was at her
_Harper’s_ again, as though she enjoyed it. George was at his
_Atlantic_ but he was poised; oh, decidedly poised.
“Iron Age” had two options, either to stay silent or start something
crude like an arrest. But I doubted whether, in spite of his telegrams,
he had enough evidence yet. So that was as far as he got in the light
talk; and he’d jeered at me!
A waiter from the dining car appeared with the usual word for six
o’clock; and Doris got up.
“We’re going in early,” she volunteered to me, “since we’re off at
Cleveland.”
This gave Dib another cue to rehearse his superior glance at me.
George followed her out of the car and Dibley beckoned me over to him.
“Get her talking again,” he told me. “Leave him to me.”
When I found her seated alone at a table for two in the dining car, I
interpreted Dib’s orders liberally. She smiled at me and, when I asked,
“How about my sitting here?” she said, “Oh, I’d like it!” So there I
was across the table from her, ordering her supper and mine together.
There’s something about that--the breaking of bread together, you
know--which rather does more than you’d ever suspect unless you’ve
tried it under conditions like mine. We not only broke bread; we broke
a full portion of broiled white fish between us, another of cauliflower
au gratin. I served those while she poured our two cups of orange pekoe
from the same little pot and, for both of us, she mixed salad dressing
of her own in a bowl. The best dressing, by the way, I’d ever tasted.
She’d the prettiest hands I’d ever seen; and to have them doing things
for me!
Occasionally, but with rapidly lessening frequency, I wondered about
George,--why he didn’t show up for supper and to what I’d left him with
Dib. I ventured to ask Doris about him.
“Oh, he’s not hungry,” she assured me.
As I remembered him, he hadn’t looked it; he’d only looked worried,
whereas she didn’t at all. She had true nerve, you see.
That dinner was so delightful that I longed to forget that she was
playing for her liberty for the next ten years. I didn’t want any other
element in this but just her and me.
It ended with the check which she let me pay without silly argument;
then we had to get up, and never more reluctant feet than mine moved
from a dining car.
She went through the Pullmans in front of me; at each door, I came
beside her, opened it; for a moment we were close. I hoped we were
going to her compartment; but she surprised me in the vestibule of the
third car rear from the diner.
No one was following just then; the doors on both sides were tightly
shut.
She turned and looked up at me. “Which is it?” she asked, straight.
I knew what she meant; and at that second I suddenly decided. “I keep
your suit case,” I said.
“And you’ll give it back to me?”
“Where will you want it?”
“New York. I’m off at Cleveland, as I said, but I’ll come to New York
later.”
“I’ll take it there for you,” I said, and it was in the manner of an
agreement, “if I possibly can; and I will give it to you under one
condition.” I waited.
“Nobody’s listening,” she urged me.
I told her. “It’s this. I bring it to you, alone. I’ll be alone; you
must be. You must give me a chance then to talk to you.”
“What about?”
“Can’t you imagine?”
She gazed into my eyes without wavering. “I reckon! You’ll give it back
and ask me to give it back again to you--to destroy! All right! That’s
a go! I’ll run that chance with you!”
She held out her hand and I grasped it and she grasped mine, firmly
and well. Somebody came through; just an ordinary passenger; but of
course we dropped hands. When the doors were closed again, she went
into her bag.
“Here’s the key to the suit case,” she offered it to me. “Sorry you
won’t find more for you to use inside; but there’s a new toothbrush,
anyway. Please have it!”
“You’ve another?” We were suddenly particular about little things with
each other.
“There’re more in Cleveland,” she replied. “Where do you stop in New
York?”
“The Belmont.”
“I’ll wire you my address.”
“Where we’ll meet?”
“That’s it. Can you remember this?” she asked. “Don’t put it down.
Take five from the first number, three from the second; one from the
third. That much for numbers. For words read from Webster’s Collegiate
Dictionary--they’re everywhere--first five up, second three down, third
one up, and so on. A street named after a number will be spelled in
syllables, taking the first in a word. You can find any syllable in the
dictionary. Now tell me that.”
I told it to her; and still we had an instant there alone.
“What do you know about happenings after the scatter from the Feather?”
I said to her. “Did Vine get Christina?”
“No; she got away.”
“He’s in Chicago?”
“No; New York.”
“What else do you know about him?”
She shook her head and opened the door toward her car. “Don’t stay
about now,” she asked me; and she went into her compartment.
I should have known that she wouldn’t talk over others’ affairs. She’d
said a good deal, all things considered. So Christina had escaped
Keeban and he was back in New York, whence he had come. Probably,
therefore, Jerry was in New York, too.
I asked myself what Doris’s move to the east might have to do with
them; how might she be mixed in?
Likely she was not mixed with them at all except when, more or less
by chance, her group encountered one of their group in business. I
could not possibly connect her with any scheme for murder. Christina,
herself, had refused such a scheme; how much more surely would Doris
have kept free from anything like that!
With her key in my hand, I stood in the vestibule of the next car,
daydreaming about her. The train was bounding along too beautifully,
rushing us right into Cleveland. I wanted to see Doris again but she’d
dismissed me; I could only endanger her now by hanging around.
When we stopped at Cleveland, at eight-thirty, old “Iron Age” again was
on the platform; and this time I tumbled off with him. I didn’t plan
anything quite so subtle as the succeeding event; really, I wasn’t up
to that at all. You see, what happened was this.
I’d reported to him, on parting from Doris after dinner, that I was
sure they were leaving the train at Cleveland because she’d mentioned
the matter, quite definitely, again. Of course Dibley only regarded me
more in sorrow than otherwise; he was certain they were only playing
me. So when I was on the platform with him, for my benefit he was a
bit over-ostentatious in acting out his conviction that they were
staying on the train. He had a new sheaf of messages to clutter up the
telegraph office and Western Union had a boy burdened down with replies
for him; so Doris and George, with Felice, were off and started away
almost before “Iron Age” guessed it.
They were all without baggage, of course. After he saw them, Dibley got
into action quickly. He yelled for guards to close in; he had out his
gun. But they were down the stairs and I didn’t need to grab that gun;
so I didn’t. Shots sounded below, however. I couldn’t tell who fired
them. I went down the stairs with Dibley and the rest of the drift from
the platform; but my three friends had doubled, dodged and were away.
I waited as long as I dared; then I climbed and caught the train.
Dibley didn’t; but his orders overtook us. At Ashtabula, an hour or so
east, they stopped us and officers came aboard to take off all baggage
from compartment E, car No. 424, and also to capture George’s large,
piggy portmanteau. A special engine was about to start with all that
for Cleveland.
During the stop, I rather expected a word or two might be said to me;
but it became plain that Dibley’s opinion of me continued true to form.
Nobody bothered me; the train went on; my berth was made and I took
that new suit case of Doris Janvier’s behind the curtains.
XVI
I WALK INTO A PARLOR.
Naturally I debated about opening the bag. She’d given me the key;
she had told me to use it, “please!” to find her new toothbrush. But
I didn’t open it for that. She had meant, I thought, that I should
see what I was carrying. So at last I unlocked it and in the light of
the little berth lamp I came upon her own intimate attire--a kimono,
slippers and silk pajamas, ridiculous little lovely things; stockings,
some more gossamer silk which probably was what Field’s advertise as
an “envelope”, a mirror, a brush, a manicure set. There was the new
toothbrush and “This Freedom”, and below the book, tied together, a
pair of steel plates. After looking so far, I felt no harm in gazing
further, especially at these.
One was engraved to print ten-dollar National Bank Notes; the other
was good--or bad--for the denomination of a hundred. I’m no judge of
engraving on steel but they looked like excellent plates to me.
I rewrapped them and brigaded them with “This Freedom” and shoved them
back in the suit case, which I locked. I went to use the toothbrush and
also to think about those plates. “Well, wasn’t that what you expected
when you gave her your word?” I said to myself. The answer was that
then I hadn’t the plates in my hand and I was talking to Doris.