CLIFFORD WAITS ON GUARD
For a minute or more, after he had seen Loveman go up the high stoop
of Le Bain’s dark-windowed house, Clifford had stood with Uncle George
in the shadow across the deserted street and had thought rapidly. He
knew the character of that silent, respectable-fronted residence; he
had heard rumors, vague, to be sure, of certain happenings that had
taken place within; and he had heard rumors--again only rumors--of
happenings in which unwitnessed and unrestrained pleasure was not the
dominant purpose of the organizer of the party. He was certain that
some vital phase of Loveman’s shrewd scheming was being, or was to be,
enacted within: Le Bain’s reticent and expensive house was not taken
for ordinary pleasures or commonplace enterprises.
He had to get inside, somehow; he had to know what was happening there.
Without making the test, he knew Le Bain would have upon those two
front doors, stoop and basement, locks of a character that it would be
wasted time to try to pick or force quietly. Of course he might get
police aid, and, ignoring such a mere detail as law, might break down
a door--but that would give the alarm to whoever might be within and
would spoil everything. And then he might ring the bell, and before the
person who answered could slam the door upon him, he could drive his
way through--but this again would give alarm and would ruin everything.
The very essence of the plan forming in his mind was to try to keep
himself in the unseen background, to discover just what Loveman and his
associates had under way, to let them carry their plan through to its
completion, and then, when he had the goods on them, to act swiftly.
That is, if he could. There was no other way.
With Uncle George he reëntered the waiting taxi-cab and hurried
toward Le Minuit. On Broadway he met two of Lieutenant Jimmie Kelly’s
plain-clothes men who were willingly impressed into his service.
At the blazing entrance to Le Minuit Uncle George halted. “I guess I’ll
not go up with you, son,” he said. “I’ll do more good if I don’t openly
mess in police affairs. But I’ll hang about.”
Clifford nodded. With the two plain-clothes men he mounted the wide
bright stairway that led to the Midnight Café.
“Tell Le Bain I want to see him in his office,” he said to the
door-man, and moved quickly among the tables and passed through a
gray-and-gilt door. In less than a minute Le Bain entered.
“Joe,” Clifford began brusquely, without prelude. “I want the key to
that private house of yours, and I want it damned quick.”
Le Bain tried to look blank. “What private house? Why, Bob, I don’t
know--”
“Cut out the stalling!” interrupted Clifford. “It won’t do you any
good--and I’ve no time to listen to it. I know all about that house.
And you needn’t say the people who have it to-night have the only
keys--I know you have a lot of duplicates for the convenience of
members of a party that prefer not to go there in a group. So come
across!”
“But, Bob, honest to God--”
“No time for your lies, Joe! Now, you listen to this if you care
for your own health. The people there won’t know I got in with your
consent, and you’ll not get in bad with them. That is, unless they
are pulling something raw there--in which case I can testify that you
assisted me. On the other hand, if you don’t come across I’ll have
the Commissioner of Licenses revoke your license for Le Minuit within
twenty-four hours, and you’ll find you’ll never be able to do business
again in this town. Quick, now,--let’s have that key!”
Monsieur Le Bain, immigrant from somewhere in that part of France which
lies below Fourteenth Street, slowly turned about and fumbled in a
drawer of his desk. He was a long time about it, but when he finally
turned there was a key in his long yellowish-white hands. Clifford took
the key, but as he did so he caught the fading remnant of a crafty look
in Le Bain’s shifty eyes.
“Boys,” he said sharply, “you stick right here and entertain this
gentleman for two hours. He can do anything he likes except talk to
people--or talk into that telephone.”
Clifford caught the twitch in Le Bain’s face, and he knew he had
forestalled the other’s intent to telephone warning to the brief
tenants of the house.
Clifford was down in the street two minutes after he had entered Le
Minuit. Here he found Uncle George, waiting.
“Hate to use you as a messenger boy, Uncle George,” he said
rapidly--“but you’re the best possible man for the job. Mind
skirmishing around Broadway until you find Jimmie Kelly and some more
of his men?”
“I’m hired,” the old man replied promptly.
“Tell Jimmie to hang around the Knickerbocker on the chance that I may
telephone him. And you might hang around the ’phone yourself.”
“I’ll never leave it!” said Uncle George.
Clifford hurried from Le Minuit, and five minutes later he was
unlocking the heavy outside door, and then the door within that, of
the dark-faced house in the upper Forties. He crept down the dim hall,
muted with Persian rugs, and soon he was gazing through cautiously
parted curtains into the oak-paneled dining-room, and at the six
celebrants of Jack Morton’s third birthday party of that week.
Clifford watched and listened, every sense alert. The last of that
little scene between Jack and Nina Cordova over the checks was being
enacted: he saw Jack, laughing at the business ignorance of the “pre’
li’l’ fool,” sign the checks and hand them over--and he saw Nina’s
scribbling pen fill them in (before Jack’s eyes)--and he heard her
slowly repeat: “Payable to--Cash--Five--Hundred--Dollars.”
Clifford drew a quick breath. He understood it all now--or thought he
did. So that was what Loveman was up to! Well, it was worth Loveman’s
while to pay almost any price for the guaranteed privacy of Le Bain’s
house!
The next moment Loveman was coming straight toward him. But Clifford
had already made a swift survey of the resources of his situation; and
before Loveman was in the hallway, he was behind a pair of tapestries
at the forward end of the hall. The space behind him was unlighted,
but he sensed that he was in the drawing-room. Peering out, he saw the
brief scene between Nina and Loveman. That little scene convinced him
that he had been correct in his conclusion of a few minutes before as
to the significance of this affair in this house that told no secrets.
For a minute Clifford thought he had solved the mystery--that he had
his case complete, all except arranging for his arrests. Then Loveman
entered the telephone booth beneath the stairway. That was a new
element. What could Loveman be about? Clifford leaned out and strove
to listen, but not one word of Loveman’s filtered through the closet’s
sound-proof door.
Loveman left the booth and rejoined the company. Clifford had noted a
slit of light at one side of the darkened drawing-room, and toward this
he now noiselessly made his way. The slit proved to be a parting in
the heavy curtains between the drawing-and dining-rooms. Motionlessly
Clifford watched the group of six--and all the while he wondered what
Loveman’s telephoning could be about. There was drinking, and banter,
and reassertions of Jack’s determination to prove himself a free
spirit, and two stumbling attempts by Jack to dance with Nina to the
music of his own singing--and thus half an hour passed.
Presently there was a ring. At a word from Loveman, the evilly handsome
young man--“Slim” Harrison, Clifford knew him to be, a crack driver of
racing-cars, and a proficient in all the evils of Broadway--rose and
left the drawing-room and passed forward through the hallway. Clifford
heard him open the front door, and remark courteously: “Come right
in--Mr. Clifford is waiting for you.”
Footsteps--two pairs of them--returned down the hallway, and then
Clifford saw Slim Harrison swing apart the other pair of tapestries,
saying, “They’re waiting for you in here.” And then stepping into the
brilliant light of the great dining-room he saw Mary Regan.
Two paces within the doorway she suddenly halted. “Where’s Mr. Clifford
and Lieutenant Kelly?” she exclaimed. Clifford saw her stiffen and
sharply eye the group at the table. Then her gaze fixed upon Jack, and
she said quietly enough: “Jack--I’ve come to take you home.”
Jack swayed uncertainly to his feet, his face sagging with amazement.
“Why--why--Mary--”
But Clifford heard nothing of the next few sentences. That instant he
understood it all--or thought he did. He knew now the substance of
Loveman’s telephone message. He saw now the magnitude of this present
situation just before him. Loveman’s great scheme--the whole of it--had
been planned and drawn together, and timed to take place within that
hour. Clifford did not yet prevision the exact character of the further
developments--but what better place for it than Le Bain’s house, from
which no sound issued, which kept secret all it saw and heard?
Swiftly, silently, Clifford slipped out into the hallway, into
the telephone closet, and closed the sound-proof door. He got the
Knickerbocker Hotel on the wire, and a few minutes later he was
snapping out sentences to Uncle George.
“What, Jimmie hasn’t showed up yet!... For God’s sake, get hold of
him somehow--tell him to come right over to Le Bain’s house--you know
the number--with three or four of his men. Something big is going to
break!--big!--you get me? And tell him to round up Mr. Morton on the
way and see that he comes here after his son. I’ll put the key under
the doormat, so he can get in without disturbing any one. I want the
thing to come to a head before we act.”
Noiselessly Clifford crept out and hid the key. Then noiselessly he
slipped back to his post at the curtains in the drawing-room.