TWO PLEASANT GENTLEMEN
When Clifford saw Loveman leave the apartment house and cross rapidly
to his cab, he waited to see no more. His next move, as he had planned
it, was based upon conjecture, and it had to be executed without a
lost moment. He ran back to his waiting taxi-cab, gave the chauffeur
Loveman’s address, and thrust a ten-dollar bill into the man’s hands.
“Keep the change, and forget the speed laws,” Clifford exclaimed as he
sprang in.
Five minutes later the rocking machine turned into Loveman’s street.
Save for his own car, the street was empty. Not waiting for the machine
to slow down, Clifford called “Beat it!” to the chauffeur, leaped to
the curb and walked rapidly into Loveman’s apartment house. At the
end of the corridor a negro youth lay loosely a-sprawl and snoring
on the telephone switchboard, and the elevator door stood open. The
sight reassured Clifford on one point: he had beaten Loveman to his
home--that is, if Loveman’s purpose had been to come home.
Noiselessly, Clifford crossed to the stairway beside the elevator and
ran up flight after flight, until he came breathlessly to the twelfth
floor, the floor above Loveman’s studio apartment. He let himself
through a door with a latch-key, and the next moment, sitting in the
darkness, he had on the headpiece of a dictagraph whose wires ran down
into the lofty studio which Loveman used as his library. Two or three
minutes passed--then he heard some one enter below--then he heard a
deep, gruff, unmistakable voice:--
“God, Loveman--thought you were never going to show up.”
His conjecture had been correct. There had been planned a prompt
conference to follow that night’s all-important undertaking.
“Been held up, Bradley,--everything’s gone wrong!” Loveman’s usual
smooth voice was now more like a snarl.
“Gone wrong!” exclaimed Bradley.
“Yes, the whole dam’ works!”
“But how the hell, Loveman--”
“I can’t explain here,” Loveman snappily interrupted. “It’s not safe.
Clifford’s got a dictagraph planted somewhere in this room.”
“The hell you say! But how do you know?”
“He quoted something to-night which you and I had said--something which
we said when alone in this room.”
“Damn him!” growled Bradley. “Why didn’t I go ahead, instead of minding
you, and have him bumped off when I wanted to!” And then: “Let’s look
around and rip out his damned machine.”
“There’s no telling where his wires run. Besides, there’s not time.
There’s a chance that he may be trailing me here--”
“Come on, then,” snapped the brusque voice of Bradley. “If he comes up,
let’s croak him. Leave your door open and we can pull him in here and
do the job. Then you can say he got into your flat and you shot him in
self-defense, thinking he was a burglar.”
Voices ceased; footsteps crossed the room below. Removing the
annunciator, Clifford slipped out into the hallway and cautiously
peered down the well of the stairway. On Loveman’s landing he saw two
shadowy, crouching figures, and in the hand of the lawyer he saw a
dim something which he knew to be a pistol. Instinctively he drew his
automatic and waited.
Five minutes passed--ten minutes. The figures below still maintained
their moveless ambuscade. Every moment Clifford expected them to turn
their suspicion and their search upwards; in that event, with that pair
in their present mood, it would mean bullets to the finish. Clifford
did not wish such a turn to the situation, even were he to come out the
victor; he wanted to carry this case much further, to have much more
direct evidence of the practices of the pair, before the end should
come. But he held himself tensely ready.
But his foresight and quick action had saved him an encounter: the pair
thought only of the possibility that Clifford might have followed
Loveman, and never that he might have preceded Loveman here. Presently,
a low voice ascended to him--Bradley’s.
“Guess he’s not trailed you, Loveman. Come on, I want the dope on what
happened to-night. Clifford can’t have your whole joint wired; let’s go
into your bathroom--he can’t have touched that.”
They withdrew and a moment later Clifford heard a door close. He
slipped down, waited a space at Loveman’s door, and then, after a few
moments’ manipulation with a skeleton key, he noiselessly opened it and
softly stepped inside. The hallway was dark, but at one end was an open
door from which light streamed. Toward this he slipped with a cat’s
tread, and peeped in. He saw the bathroom, as large as an ordinary New
York bedroom, finished in marble and white-tile, and in it sat little
Loveman and the big-chested Bradley.
In a low voice Loveman briefly outlined the fiasco of their careful
scheme at Le Minuit. Bradley swore--and Clifford was the chief object
of his guttural fury.
“What we goin’ to do next?”
“I’ve done one thing already. I beat it straight to Mary Regan.”
“What for?”
“She’s too good a thing to lose if we can hold her; so I tried to con
her into believing I’d framed her for her own good. But that’s not the
real reason--the big reason.” Loveman’s usually smooth voice was now
nervous and tense. “Don’t you see the fix she’s got me in? She knows
enough about me to get me disbarred, if she cared to talk--and perhaps
get me a prison sentence on top of it--and perhaps get you sent away,
too. So I simply had to have her on our side, if I could get her.”
“Well, what did she say?”
“She turned me down cold--said she was through with me.”
Again Bradley swore. “Well, if you’re afraid of her, why don’t you beat
her to that big stiff Morton--tell him who she is and what she’s done?
You can get away with it.”
“Telling Morton has got to be my last move. It’s too dangerous--I might
implicate myself.”
“Well, what you going to do?”
“My chief business has got to be Mary Regan,” Loveman answered
grimly--“fixing her so she can’t hurt me, and doing it quick.”
“You mean croaking her?”
“That raw stuff don’t go with me, Bradley. I’m not so tired that I’m
willing to run the risk of sitting in the electric chair up at Sing
Sing.”
“There’s a lot of things besides being croaked that can happen to a
woman in this town,” said Bradley. “The way that Mrs. Dormer case
was worked ain’t so bad; it’s always good for a repeat. Mysterious
disappearance until the danger is over. You can always handle a woman
so she’ll have nothing much to say about the time she was missing.”
“Too risky.”
“How about smearing her? That would help some, if it was done proper.”
“I don’t know what it’s going to be yet--but it’s going to be something
mighty soon.” He spoke with nervous incisiveness. “With you and Hilton
and Nan Burdette and Nina Cordova, there’ll be plenty of people. Your
first job will be to keep Mary Regan covered night and day, so we can
act the minute we’re ready. I’ll have something doped out by morning,
and I’ll let you know. Come on, let’s see if there isn’t a cold bottle
in the ice-chest.”
Clifford stole swiftly and noiselessly out. Fifteen minutes later
he was calling his name through Mary Regan’s door; and after a ten
minutes’ wait he was in her presence. During those minutes he had done
much thinking.
“Do you still control the lease to the apartment you had in the
Mordona?” he asked quietly.
She was bewildered. “Yes. Jack and I took it until the first of
October. Why?”
“Then you still have a key to the apartment?”
“Yes.”
“How much baggage do you have here? Not much, I hope.”
“A steamer trunk, and a bag.”
“Pack them. In half an hour you move back to the Mordona.”
“Back to the Mordona!” she exclaimed. “What for?”
He told her something of the formless danger in which she stood. “To
be safe for the present, you’ve got to be where no one will find you.
And the Mordona is about the last place any one will look for you. I’ll
get a car from Headquarters to move you, and you’ll leave no trail from
here.”
There was rapid packing--a silent carrying-down of baggage--a
ride through the night in a car that could be traced from no taxi
station--and Mary Regan was once more in the apartment in the Mordona,
where, months before, her glowing dream had changed to a sober,
patient, cautious struggle to re-make Jack Morton into a man.