do with Doris and Jerry and Keeban, Christina, and with me. I did some
practical speculating, too; I wondered whether old “Iron Age”, when he
rendezvoused Doris’s luggage returned from Ashtabula, was going to note
the omission of kimono, slippers, silk pajamas, envelope, mirror, brush
and “This Freedom” from the normal equipment of a young lady of the
day; I wondered if, missing them, he might feel strange suspicions of
me, which even the memory of my cheese quotations would not allay. But
evidently he did not.
I got to sleep; when I awoke, Doris’s suit case and those plates
remained as they were. Nobody had disturbed them or me.
Breakfasting beside the Hudson, I propped before me the _New York
Times_. It was innocent of knowledge of minor doings in the west,
such as a sudden getaway with shooting near the Lake Shore station at
Cleveland, but it played a special from Chicago on the front page.
Janvier, the counterfeiter, had been taken with two of his new plates.
The _Times_ correspondent was feeling decidedly high up because of
it. Trust New York to respond to word that the financial structure
is just a bit more safe. Old Wally Bailey was gloriously bucked over
the business too; he had himself interviewed in two places; first he
certified that the plates, which had been captured, were the source
of the highly deceptive and dangerous twenty and fifty-dollar false
Federal Reserve notes recently put in circulation in great quantities;
second he sounded the alarm that Janvier had completed, also, a couple
of other plates, one for printing ten-dollar bills and one for striking
off notes of one-hundred dollar denomination. The police had evidence
that these plates existed but they had failed to find them.
For the best of reasons! I had them tied up with “This Freedom”
underneath Doris’s lingerie.
I carried her suit case myself across to the Belmont where I took it to
my room and then, after locking myself in, I gathered Janvier’s plates
from it and carried them, in my pocket, up to our bank where I had a
safe deposit box and I put them away there. Much happier in my head,
I wired Fanneal and Company, Chicago, not to expect me at the desk
that morning and dropped into our New York branch and pretended that
business had brought me on.
Beans and butter never struck me so dull as upon this morning; and the
only thrill I could squeeze from Philadelphia double daisies and Fond
du Lac twins was the second-hand memory of yesterday. I kept ’phoning
the Belmont inquiring for telegrams; but nothing came in for me.
What was happening in Cleveland? I wondered. Was Doris going back to
Chicago, now that her father was taken; or would she stick to her plan
to come on?
Vine--Keeban--was here, she said; Christina was here. So, if Jerry was
anywhere, probably he also was here; and, if any of his old habits
clung to him, he’d know I’d arrived, too. There is a column printed
every day, you know, giving the news of arrivals of out-of-town buyers
in every line of trade. My name, with New York address, was in the
papers that afternoon. Jerry used to glance over the arrivals in our
line.
I felt lonely as Crusoe that day, particularly when dinner time
approached. I imagined I’d make myself better by drifting over to dine
with some friends I’d met on Fifth. There was a daughter, there, about
Doris’s age and size; a popular girl,--a deb of a couple of years’
standing. Sitting and smoking, I mean, rather.
I bored the poor dear. I always had, so why not now? She never flicked
a stir in me. Not that she tried; she didn’t. That was it. “Well, old
Steve, we’ll struggle through with the meal somehow!” Such was the
sensation underlying the ennui; so, naturally, she made it mutual with
me.
Thank God, she didn’t try to mix salad dressing at the table; so I kept
my memory clear.
That night, when I returned to the hotel, I had a wire filed at
Buffalo; three words, no signature: “Seediness yonder thus.”
You may suppose I had my Webster handy, and, counting my words up and
down, made out “See you Thursday.”
That was to-morrow; so I had to figure out, during the night, what I
was to say. You see, I had to bring her those plates and give them to
her; but she had to give me a chance to argue her out of using them.
Lying in bed, many a good way of putting my point of view came to me.
I got up several times and jotted them down; some I just talked over
with myself. I made rather a night of it; never was more earnest over
anything in my life. I looked to my talk with that girl as a sort of
turning point in her life, and for me, if I could simply make her see
matters straight. I was crazy over her; you’ve gathered that; and
trusted her, too, or would trust her with anything but a counterfeit
steel plate which her father had engraved. I figured I could make it so
I could trust her with that, too.
About mid-morning, I got another wire; from Jersey City this: “Seven
three chess omnivorus noose.”
No signature again; but the system, which Doris taught me in that
vestibule, gave me the place and the time. Up five from seven made
twelve; down three from three, zero. Up five from chess, first syllable
“cher” down three from omnivorous, “on”; up one from noose, “noon.”
The telegram: “120 Cheron (Street) Noon.”
Cheron proved to be one of those streets, turned at several angles,
down by Brooklyn Bridge.
I rehearsed all my talk, went to the vault and withdrew that pair of
plates. I decided to make this meeting on foot, not in taxi, so I
took the subway from Grand Central to the Bridge and emerged in that
intriguing maze which radiates under the ramp of that old roadway
suspended above East River.
Cheron Street showed itself on a corner full fifteen minutes before
noon. It was a sunny bit of city that clear, winter day; it was one
of those houses-and-stores streets with red-brick fronts, tall narrow
windows and iron stairs and railings. Children romped about; hucksters
were making sales to sets of the wisest buyers I ever saw. Price
quotations floated to me and I wondered how they could work so close to
cost.
I was trying to make the time pass more swiftly by turning attention to
such trifles while I waited. For I would not call at No. 120 till noon.
Of course I’d located the number and looked it over several times. It
was on one of the regular red brick fronts which owned windows cleaner
than most of its neighbors. Nice, old-fashioned curtains, stiffly
starched, showed their white patterns. It seemed a precise and prim
abode, not over-populated.
During the minutes I watched, men, women and children went in and
out of the doors on each side,--practical looking men, who might be
mechanics engaged in car repairs at a garage around the corner; in ways
which I’ve mentioned, the women proved they were frugal housewives; the
play of the children added to the decent domesticity of the street.
There was absolutely nothing sinister in sight and nothing and nobody
menacing like the dyke-keeper in Klangenberg’s delicatessen.
No one went in or out of Number 120; and I imagined it the abode of
some aging, female relative of Doris; an aunt possibly, who might have
been her guardian in some country town during Doris’s childhood and
who now had moved to the city and who probably took support from the
proceeds of Janvier’s plates but had nothing more to do with them.
When noon came, and Doris had not appeared, I realized that she must be
waiting me within; and I went up and rang the bell.
An old woman admitted me, a nice-appearing, wrinkled and gray-haired
thing.
“Come in,” she said to me immediately, before I could ask for anyone.
Plainly I had been expected; and she motioned me into the prim,
red-plush parlor with an ancient piano and crayon enlargements on the
wall; and also faded, plush hangings in the door.
These were particularly important furnishings; for it was when I was
stepping between them that I was hit on the head; and not by that old
woman nor by any infirm or failing person. The hit was wholly vigorous
and expert; and right at the base of the back of my head.
Of course, I realized all this afterwards; at the time, I knew nothing.
I was walking into that prim, red-plush parlor quite strong and happy;
I passed the portières and instantaneously I was “out.” I was also down
but didn’t know it; I went “out” while still on my feet; but naturally,
when I found myself again, I was on the floor.
XVII
CHIEFLY DEVOTED TO A GAS CALLED KX.
A good many persons of both sexes have put into writing the mental
confusion usually concomitant to the process of “coming to.” The
descriptions which I’ve happened to read were done by good writers,
certainly; but the writers don’t impress me now as people who’d been
personally hit on the head. At least, they lacked treatment under
the hand of a pluperfect, postgraduate performer upon the _medulla
oblongata_.
The trouble with those descriptions is that they are too advanced and
intricate. The subject generally is seized with some figurative image,
which is quite all right from my experience; but whereas others seem to
have come to consciousness through flights of fancy similar to stanzas
in “Spoon River Anthology” or Carl Sandberg’s best, I woke up repeating
to myself the simplest of verse. In fact:
“Will you walk into my parlor?
Said the spider to the fly;
It’s the prettiest little parlor,
That ever you did spy.”
The psycho-analyst says that the subconscious, which is always with us,
working, never is actually foolish; it is interpretive, if you have the
insight to understand it. Well, this was my subconscious expression. It
was interpretive, true enough.
Now the spider, in my complex, was not that old woman; Doris was doing
the spider in my dream.
Upon becoming aware that, though I lay on the edge of a red-plush
parlor, I was not physically a fly, I felt over myself to find what was
missing.
There should be something hard and heavy and extremely important under
my coat in my right inside pocket. That region was soft and pliable
now. Plates were lacking; that was it,--nice, new, counterfeit plates
which I’d procured from under Doris Janvier’s lingerie in that Pullman
on the Century and which I’d put in my pocket to return to her here at
Number 120 Cheron Street with an idea of evangelizing her out of using
them.
Phrases and periods from that talk I’d prepared for her came into
my mind and mixed into the parade of other ideas which followed the
spider-and-fly act. They gave me a laugh, anyway.
I lay, looked and listened. After a few minutes, I sat up. Apparently
I had the house to myself. Also I had my watch and other personal
possessions, everything except those plates.
I took a chance on rising; and still nobody disturbed me. Possibly
I might have poked all over that house but I felt no overmastering
impulse. The door and that street, on the other side of the pane with
these nice, prim, old-fashioned curtains, looked very good to me. I got
out and shut the door behind me. Over by the bridge I found a patrolman
and asked him to take me to the nearest police station.
That was the place where I sketched to interested ears the essentials
of what I’d done since leaving Chicago. I gave them all,--how I’d
suspected her before she took the train, how I helped her get away
at Cleveland; how I’d carried on the plates and went to return them,
trusting to the patent leather platitudes I’d prepared to turn her to
the paths of rectitude.
I gave them, with that last particularly, the laugh of their lives.
They wanted to know if I actually expected she would meet me alone in a
parlor to talk ethics with me.
They might have at least arrested me; but they didn’t even do that.
They did detail an officer to accompany me; but he felt himself
distinctly as one charged to keep me from further harm. They rushed
a squad over to Number 120 Cheron Street, of course, and surrounded
the house properly before closing in. But nobody, not even the old
woman, was there. The house was empty and so eminently proper to all
appearances that, for a while, a theory prevailed that I had invented
my whole story.
Then they began hearing from Dibley and confirmed the first part; about
two days later, there was plenty of proof of the rest. The prints from
those missing Janvier plates began making their début at the banks all
over New York; Philadelphia reported a few; soon Boston was heard from.
They were so good that some of the experts at the banks wired
Washington for a check on serial numbers before throwing Janvier’s work
out. Naturally, all this made me popular.
I didn’t care about returning home; I didn’t drop into our New York
office. I stayed in my room, mostly, where old “Iron Age” Dibley,
among others, visited me.
He informed me that Doris and George and Felice all completed their
get-away at Cleveland; and he didn’t feel himself in the least to blame
for that. No; he’d shifted any chagrin, which he might have felt, right
on to me. Doris undoubtedly had come on afterwards, counting upon my
chronic fatuity to respond to feeding by her telegrams; undoubtedly--to
Dibley’s mind--she personally arranged the _medulla oblongata_
performance for me.
Of course, I’d felt that; but when old “Iron Age” got gloating over it,
he cheered me into a question or two. Had she? Was I sure?
Well, I’d certainly indicated to the police that I was; and no one
developed any further ideas upon the subject. Number 120 Cheron Street
was deserted of Doris and her crowd as the Flamingo Feather after the
ball. The issue of those new Janvier tens and hundreds seemed to shift
to the south; Atlanta reported rather more than its share; Nashville
and Memphis broke into the column of complaints and New Orleans was not
overlooked.
I was about convinced that my friends of the Flamingo and Cheron Street
had shifted base again when I received, through the mails at the
hotel, a note in Jerry’s handwriting.
“Steve: Here’s your chance,” I read. “Get to T. M. Teverson
at once and talk to him; or Sencort. Prevent any meeting in
Sencort Directors’ room. Make this absolutely sure. Examine pipe,
particularly. J.”
Jerry’s writing and his manner with me, beyond doubt. He was still
alive then and, if that postmark meant anything, he was in New York
City at ten o’clock last night.
Of course, I’d never seen Keeban’s writing. It might be identical with
Jerry’s; Keeban might try this with me for some scheme of his own.
But I didn’t think it. In the first place, this started with such an
understanding of me.
“Steve: Here’s your chance!”
Now Jerry, alive and looking on at me from somewhere in New York,
naturally would start with that thought for me. He’d be feeling, from
the first moment I’d stuck with him after he was accused and when I
continued to stick through that affair of the Scofields’, how I’d had
a steady run of results against me. He’d have heard how, out of that
Flamingo Feather ball, I’d gone deeper into disrepute; and he’d been
thinking just that for me: “Here’s your chance, Steve.” He meant, of
course, my chance to rehabilitate my reputation somewhat.
“Get to T. M. Teverson at once!” That meant to get to the big man of
the moment in New York. Officially, he was first vice-president of the
Sencort Trust; but unofficially he was a sort of financial vice-regent
of Europe for the time being. You see, that was the instant of the
particular crisis in international affairs when the Sencort Trust took
the load, and “carried” two of the major powers, along with seven or
eight of the minors, for the sake of the peace of the world and to
postpone, for a while anyway, the rush of the Fourth Horseman of the
Apocalypse over the rest of Europe.
Teverson personally was packing tremendous responsibilities; and
naturally every one, whose impulse in difficulty is to slip out from
under and loot and destroy, was keen to take a pot shot at him.
Jerry’s note must mean that he’d run on the trail of an especially
capable plot which involved the employment of pipes running into the
directors’ room at the Sencort Trust. Suggestive, that mention of
pipes; and he had emphasized the need to see Teverson at once.
I had the note just after breakfast; and the _Times_ this morning told
that Lord Strathon, for England, and F. L. Géroud, for France, were
arriving on the _Majestic_ for immediate conference with the Sencort
committee about loans and reparations. That meeting, this morning,
undoubtedly was booked for the directors’ room at the Sencort Trust,--a
big bag, sure enough, for whoever was going gunning through the pipes
this morning.
I’d no time to lose, so I rushed to Wall Street and up in the old Trust
Building to Teverson’s office. He was down meeting the _Majestic_,
which was just docking; so I sent in my card to Sencort.
Now I knew the old man slightly; he had, among a thousand other flyers,
his venture in beans, netting himself something too. Also, Fanneal and
Company had supplied on some foreign-food contracts he’d financed; so I
was sure he’d know my name.
He did; he sent out word he couldn’t see me and told the girl to
explain that he was expecting Lord Strathon and M. Géroud momentarily.
“Tell him that’s why I have to see him now,” I urged the girl.
She brought out word that the Sencort Trust would not let the
contracts on the supplies to be bought with proceeds of the new loans;
and, if they did, I’d have to see him later.
I said to that girl, “You read the papers?”
Of course she did; and, when I asked, she granted that she’d seen
considerable mention of me, recently.
“That’s good,” I said. “Will you ask Mr. Sencort if he has, too? And,
if he has, assure him I’ve called on nothing connected with my usual
business, but something else of direct importance to him.”
“Rising out of your--” she hesitated and then said--“your
counterfeiter’s connection, Mr. Fanneal?”
“Rising from it,” I told her, “but not stopping there. Now I leave it
to you to get me in to see Mr. Sencort.”
I saw, by this time, she was curious, if not a little impressed. It’s
queer how a short and conspicuously unsuccessful connection with crime
produces an effect which a lifetime in a creditable business can not
do,--at least not the bean business. That girl disappeared and when she
was back again, it was to ask me into Mr. Sencort’s office.
The old man was at his desk and alone, and I saw at once that the girl
had gone the distance for me with him; I had much to make good, so I
went to it immediately.
“I’ve come to ask you not to have any meetings in your directors’ room
to-day.”
Of course he asked why; and I told him, “I’ve word, which I feel sure
is reliable, that there is a plot against your meeting.”
“Hmm!” said Sencort, evidently disappointed. “Much obliged for your
trouble.”
Plainly, he wasn’t interested.
I said, “You’ll not meet in that room this morning?”
He was looking at papers on his desk. “Why not? I’ve had it examined.
I’ve been warned before, Fanneal; so we’ve already taken precautions.
These threats never amount to anything. Much obliged to you, however.”
“You’ve examined the pipes in that room?” I asked.
“Pipes?” he repeated. There’s always something about definiteness which
claims the attention. He pressed a button on his desk.
The girl, who had got me in, reappeared. “Ask Reed and Weston whether
they’ve particularly examined the pipes in the directors’ room,” he
said; and when the girl was gone, he nodded to me. “Sit down, Fanneal.”
Some one rang him on the ’phone, just then; and when he was through
talking, the girl gave word: “Not particularly, Mr. Sencort. They’re
going over them now.”
Again she left us alone.
“Rather rotten situation in Europe,” I commented conversationally.
“Hmm,” Sencort grunted, chewing his cigar, with as little interest in
my reactions on the European trouble as in my warning to him. He gave
me the impression that, having read about my performance with those
counterfeit plates, he was willing to refresh his memory upon the sort
of citizen who did that sort of thing.
His girl reentered and reported, “Mr. Teverson is here with Lord
Strathon and M. Géroud, sir.”
Sencort nodded. “Heard from Reed?”
“He’s outside, sir.”
“Send him in.”
Reed proved to be a tall, keen-looking chap, evidently alert and
undoubtedly dependable. He was one of the bank detectives, not in
uniform.
“We’ve gone over the whole room again, sir; and also the rooms
adjoining. Everything is in order,” he reported.
“Particularly the pipes?” Sencort asked.
“There’s nothing wrong with the pipes, sir.”
“Very well,” Sencort dismissed him; and then he looked at me. “Much
obliged, Fanneal,” he thanked me again.
Of course, he was dismissing me, but I held my ground. “The warning
which reached me, Mr. Sencort, did not advise mere examination of
the room,” I insisted. “It said to prevent its use. I must urge you,
whatever you think, not to meet in that room.”
“Fanneal, if I governed my movements according to cautions of
well-meaning friends, I’d have put myself and family and friends in a
steel safe thirty years ago. Reed says that room is clear; it is on the
fifth floor, so attack from the street is impossible. Here’s Teverson
now.”
Another hint for me, but I stuck, and just then Teverson came in to see
what was so absorbing in here, and old Sencort, in explaining why he
was preferring a chat with me to a conference with M. Géroud and Lord
Strathon at that hour, of course dragged in the mad idea I’d brought
along. But Teverson wasn’t amused by it at all.
“Reed and Weston have both examined the room,” Sencort repeated, “and
found all in order.”
“All was in order over at Ed Costrelman’s the other night, not only
before but after the--the occurrence,” Teverson mentioned in a
thoughtful sort of brooding manner which sparked up old Sencort.
“What occurrence?” he came back loudly; of course Teverson had the door
shut after him.
“Good Lord,” said Teverson, “didn’t you know that Ed Costrelman’s dead?”
“Certainly,” said Sencort. “I also know that his butler is dead and
most of his party was sick but have recovered; from something wrong in
the wine or vermuth. What has that to do with us? We’re not serving
liqueur at directors’ meeting.”
“It wasn’t in the wine or vermuth,” Teverson came back calmly. “It
wasn’t in the food either; everything they’d drunk or tasted has been
analyzed. Everything, I tell you, was in order.”
“What was it, then?” Sencort went at him, still with more impatience
than interest. “Simultaneous, group indigestion?”
“A poison, a definite, lethal agent, reached Costrelman and the
butler--Swan--in fatal amount and the rest in less quantity. The
post-mortem on Ed and Swan was completed this morning; there was
definite, characteristic destruction of motor nerve centers.”
“Characteristic of what?” This was old Sencort--yielding, pliable
nature, he had, you see--at Teverson again.
“A cheerful little chemical composition which the infernal-machine and
poison squad of the secret service call KX.”
“What?”
“In your school days, how did you designate algebraically an unknown
quantity?” Teverson asked old Sencort, evidently knowing that the way
to handle the old boy was by going to the good old Socratic.
“By the later letters of the alphabet,” Sencort grunted.
“That is the X in the name of this; it means they haven’t an iota of
information on one ingredient, except by its effect; by K, they mean
they can halfway guess at the other; it seems to be the masterpiece
of an Austrian chemist known as Stenewisc who hides himself most
successfully somewhere on the East Side here. If he’d been born in the
Borgias’ time, he’d have been Lucretia’s favorite; for his stuff killed
Costrelman and Swan and almost killed half a dozen more without giving
the slightest warning till the physical seizure came, and without
leaving an external trace.”
“Poison to kill has to get into one,” Sencort came back, not giving up
yet. “If it wasn’t in the food or in the drink, where was it?”
“What,” returned Teverson, sticking to the Socratic, “goes into one’s
body beside food and drink?”
“Air’s all I can think of.”
“All I can,” Teverson admitted. “And, with that in mind, I believe I’ll
have a look around our directors’ room myself, if you’ll hold, up our
meeting for a few minutes.”
“Damn foolishness,” acceded Sencort graciously.
“Pipes were what I was particularly warned against,” I said to Teverson.