CLIFFORD HAS A NEW PURPOSE
Half an hour later Clifford entered the octagonal reception room at
Police Headquarters and sent his name in to Commissioner Thorne. Word
came back that Thorne was engaged and would be so for half an hour; but
in the meantime wouldn’t Clifford visit about the building.
Clifford descended to the great corridor on the main floor. Here he
met captains and lieutenants and first-grade detectives--old friends,
with whom, until the events that had sent him out of the Department,
he had worked for close upon a decade. They treated him with a respect
that, coming after his scene with Mary Regan, was soothing to his
rasped spirit. The very surroundings, too, affected him--begot in him a
formless longing; in a way it was like coming back to one’s home town.
Here, too, he ran into little Jimmie Kelly. With Jimmie he descended to
the pistol range in the subcellar, and for half an hour they practiced
with the regulation police revolvers, which recoil like ancient
shotguns--their targets those little posters seen everywhere, headed
“Wanted for Murder,” over the heart of the pictured fugitive an inch
circle of white paper to serve as bull’s-eye. And then they practiced
with Jimmie’s pistol, a .25 automatic so tiny that it could lie in a
closed hand and not be seen.
“Wish you were back here with us, Bob,” remarked Jimmie when Clifford
announced that he was due up in the Chief’s office. “It would be great
stuff--working with you again!”
There was hearty sincerity in Jimmie’s voice; and the vague longing
begot by it was still upon Clifford when at length he was seated beside
Commissioner Thorne’s desk.
“Clifford,” said the Commissioner briskly, his lean, Scotch-Irish face
alive with purpose, “I’m going to lay all my cards, face up, on the
table. I asked you to meet me down here, instead of uptown, for the
sake of the effect on you. That’s why I made you wait, and asked you to
visit about. I wanted you to feel the old tug of Headquarters.”
“I guess I’ve felt it all right, Chief.”
“That’s good. Clifford, six months ago I asked you to become Second
Deputy Commissioner. For your own reasons you refused. I hope you’ve
changed your mind, for I’m now again asking you to take the place.”
To be Second Deputy Chief of New York’s Detective Bureau!--Clifford
felt a leaping thrill--a swift reaction from the heaviness and
bitterness which had been upon him since his scene with Mary Regan.
He considered for a moment. The controlling reason for his previous
declination, his knowledge that Mary Regan would refuse him if he
continued official police work because she believed she would interfere
with his career--this reason Mary Regan herself had just wiped out. He
had lost enough because of her. Here was big work to do. Here was a big
career.
Clifford looked up. “I accept, Chief,” he said with an energy almost
fierce. “And I’m glad and proud to accept. And I’ll give the job the
best that’s in me.”
“Bully for you!” cried Thorne, seizing his hand.
There was a minute’s further exchange of thanks and congratulations.
Then Thorne continued:
“There’s a particular situation I want you to take care of. I believe
in the need of pleasure as much as any man. But the providing of
pleasure in this city has become a vast business. I’m not referring
to the theaters; I’m thinking of the restaurants, roof-gardens,
dancing places, things like that--high and low. And I’m thinking
especially of the swellest places, and of some of the presumably most
respectable places. These establishments have bred a new variety of
specialists, astute men, astute women, who entangle and victimize the
pleasure-seekers. Especially since women began to go about so freely to
the dancing places, and it became so easy to make acquaintances, there
have developed such opportunities--God, if the public only guessed a
tenth of what is dribbling in to us!--and even we never get rumors of
a tenth of what actually happens. But you know this situation better
than I do.”
“I’ve had to learn something about it,” said Clifford.
“I want the facts. I want the situation cleaned out. You’ve got a free
hand--use as many men as you like--follow your own plans.”
“I’ll be on the job at once,” said Clifford.
“Good stuff!” cried Thome enthusiastically. “And if you succeed--and I
know you will--it will be a big thing for the Department, a big thing
for me, and we’ll try to make it a big thing for you!”
This new interest so promptly and exactly fitted the sudden emptiness
in Clifford’s life that almost without thinking he was impelled to ask,
“Has anything happened, Chief, to cause you to make me this offer just
now?”
Thorne regarded Clifford with a curious, thoughtful air. “I wonder
if I should tell you,” he said slowly; and then: “Well, the fact is,
Clifford, I have been holding a little something back from you.”
“Something about what, Chief?”
“About you--and a woman.”
“Yes--go on!”
“Six months ago a young woman called on me at my hotel, and asked me if
I had offered you the position of Chief of the Detective Bureau. I said
that I had, and that you had declined. She then asked me if I still
wanted you. I said yes, if I could get you. That was all that passed
between us. She thanked me and went away.”
“She was Mary Regan,” said Clifford.
“She was.”
“And is that all that has happened?”
“To-day I had a note from her, without date or address, advising me to
offer you the position again, and to keep on offering it to you until
you accepted.”
Something was happening within Clifford, though he did not know what it
was--something that set brain whirling and heart beating at a swifter
tempo. “I just left her,” he said with mechanical calm. “She’s going to
marry a man named Jack Morton.”
“So I have just learned.”
“How?”
“Some of my men have been covering Bradley and Loveman. Loveman’s house
telephone is tapped, and a few threads have been picked up. Miss Regan
believes she is doing what she is doing because she wants to, and from
her own motives. But Bradley and Loveman are behind it.”
“In what way?” cried Clifford.
“Bradley, as you know, is a sort of private watchman over young Morton.
Loveman has handled a lot of delicate matters for the father. The elder
Morton is a ruthless egoist, an able man of big affairs, but remarkable
for neither business nor personal morality. The son you are acquainted
with. You can see the opportunities here for such a combination as
Bradley and Loveman.”
“Yes. But where does Mary Regan come in?”
“Bradley and Loveman are using her now, and expect to use her in the
future.”
“Does she know she is being used?”
“I’m certain she does not even guess it.”
“Then how did they ever get her into it this far?”
“I do not know.”
“But surely,” cried Clifford, “You must have some idea of what their
plan is?”
“Only that I surmise that it is one individual case of the general
situation concerning which I just spoke to you--about how very clever
persons have made a subtle business out of the manner in which the
city’s Big Pleasure reacts upon human ambitions and human frailties.
Any information more definite than this it will be part of your job to
get.”
Abruptly Clifford stood up and strode to a window and stood gazing
vacantly at a huge candy factory across Broome Street--his whole being
now wildly athrob, his brain working swiftly though incoherently. What
might it not mean, Mary Regan’s showing this concern to see that he
accepted the position he had once refused because of her?... And how
much did she really care for Morton?... And might there not be motives,
deeper and other than he had guessed, that had caused her to treat him
so cavalierly?... And the menace of Loveman and of Bradley--
Abruptly Clifford turned about on Thorne. “Chief, I’m sorry to take
back my word--but I cannot accept that job as Chief of Detectives.”
“Why not?” cried the astounded Thorne.
“That I can’t explain just now. But though I can’t take the job, I’ll
do all I can in a personal way to help handle that condition you were
speaking about. You’ll excuse me, Chief, but I’ve got to do a lot of
quick thinking.”
Leaving Thorne fairly gasping at this swift transition, Clifford strode
out of the office and out of Police Headquarters. Two minutes later he
was in a telephone booth in a saloon across the way and was asking the
Grantham Hotel, in which he had left Mary Regan an hour before, for
“Mrs. Gardner.” Soon Mary’s cool, even voice sounded over the wire.
“This is Robert Clifford,” he said. “May I see you again--for just a
few minutes?”
There was a long silence; then the cool voice queried: “Alone?”
“If you please.”
Another silence. He was beginning to fear that she had hung up, when
the cool voice spoke again.
“Very well”--and this time he heard the receiver click upon its hook.
He hurried for the Subway. He was athrill with a grim elation. He
felt that all that had thus far passed between him and Mary Regan was
no more than a prelude--a long prelude, to be sure--and that the big
action of their drama lay still before them. He would fight on, still,
for Mary Regan--to save her from herself, to protect her from others!
But in this, his high moment, he had no prevision of the vagaries of a
woman’s nature he was to encounter--of a willful, many-elemented woman
who had not yet found herself, and who had a long road yet to travel
before she reached that self-knowledge; and he had no prevision of the
strange places behind the scenes of pleasure that his new purpose was
to cause him to penetrate, and no prevision of the strange motives, the
strange mixtures of human nature, that he was to meet.