THE PANAMA GOLD CHESTS
It is one of life's little ironies, I suppose, that man's surest escape
from misery should be through the contemplation of people more
miserable than himself. Such, however, happens to be the case. And
prompted by this genial cross between a stoic and a cynic philosophy, I
had formed the habit of periodically submerging myself in a bath of
cleansing depravity.
The hopelessness of my fellow-beings, I found, seemed to give me
something to live for. Collision with lives so putrescently abominable
that my own by contrast seemed enviable, had a tendency to make me
forget my troubles. And this developed me into a sort of calamity
chaser. It still carried me, on those nights when sleep seemed beyond
my reach, to many devious and astounding corners of the city, to
unsavory cellars where lemon-steerers and slough-beaters foregathered,
to ill-lit rooms where anarchists nightly ate the fire of their own
ineffectual oratory, to heavy-fumed drinking-places where
pocket-slashers and till-tappers and dummy-chuckers and dips forgot
their more arduous hours.
But more and more often I found my steps unconsciously directed toward
that particular den of subterranean iniquities known as _The Cafe of
Failures_. For it was in this new-world _Cabaret du Neant_ that I had
first heard of that engaging butler known to his confederates as "Sir
Henry." And I still had hopes of recovering my stolen great-coat.
Night by night I went back to that dimly lit den of life's discards,
the same as a bewildered beagle goes back to its last trace of aniseed.
I grew inured to its bad air, unobservant of its scorbutic waiters,
undisturbed by its ominous-looking warren of private rooms, and
apathetic before its meretricious blondes.
Yet at no time was I one of the circle about me. At no time was I
anything more than a spectator of their ever-shifting and
ever-mystifying dramas. And this not unnatural secretiveness on their
part, combined with a not unnatural curiosity of my own, finally
compelled me to a method of espionage in which I grew to take some
little pride.
This method, for all its ingenuity, was simple enough to any one of
even ordinary scientific attainments. When I found, for example, that
the more select of those underworld conferences invariably took place
in one of that tier of wood-partitioned drinking-rooms which lined the
cafe's east side, I perceived that if I could not invade those rooms in
body I might at least be there in another form. So with the help of my
friend Durkin, the reformed wire-tapper, I acquired a piece of
machinery for the projection of the spirit into unwelcome corners.
This instrument, in fact, was little more than an enlargement of the
ordinary telephone transmitter. It was made by attaching to an oblong
of glass, constituting of course, an insulated base, two carbon
supports, with cavities, and four cross-pieces, also of carbon, with
pointed ends, fitting loosely into the cavities placed along the side
of the two supports. The result was, this carbon being what
electricians call "a high resistance" and the loose contact-points
where the laterals rested making resistance still higher, that all
vibration, however minute, jarred the points against their supports and
varied resistance in proportion to the vibration itself. This, of
course, produced a changing current in the "primary" of the induction
coil, and was in turn reproduced, greatly magnified, in the "secondary"
where with the help of a small watch-case receiver it could be easily
heard.
In other words, I acquired a mechanical sound-magnifier, a microphone,
an instrument, of late called the dictaphone, which translates the
lightest tap of a pencil-end into something which reached the ear with
the force of a hammer-blow. And the whole thing, battery, coil,
insulated wire, carbon bars and glass base, could be carried in its
leather case or thrust under my coat as easily as a folded opera hat.
It was equally easy, I found, to let it hang flat against the side wall
of that rancid little _chambre particuliere_ which stood next to the
room where most of those star-chamber conspiracies seemed to take
place. My method of adjusting the microphone was quite simple.
From the painted wooden partition I lifted down the gilt-framed picture
of a bacchanalian lady whose semi-nudity disseminated the virtues of a
champagne which I knew to be made from the refuse of the humble
apple-evaporator. At the top-most edge of the square of dust where
this picture had stood, I carefully screwed two L-hooks and on these
hooks hung my microphone-base. Then I rehung the picture, leaving it
there to screen my apparatus. My cloth-covered wires, which ran from
this picture to the back of the worn leather couch against the wall, I
very nicely concealed by pinning close under a stretch of gas pipe and
poking in under the edge of the tattered brown linoleum.
Yet it was only on the third evening of my mildly exhilarating
occupation in that stuffy little _camera obscura_ that certain things
occurred to rob my espionage of its impersonal and half-hearted
excitement. I had ordered a bottle of _Chianti_ and gone into that
room to all intents and purposes a diffident and maundering
_bon-vivant_ looking for nothing more than a quiet corner wherein to
doze.
Yet for one long hour I had sat in that secret auditorium, with my
watch-case receiver at my ear, while a garrulous quartette of
strike-breakers enlarged on the beatitude of beating up a "cop" who had
ill-used one of their number.
It must have been a full half hour after they had gone before I again
lifted the phone to my ear. What I heard this time was another man's
voice, alert, eager, a little high-pitched with excitement.
"I tell you, Chuck," this thin eager voice was declaring, "the thing's
a pipe! I got it worked out like a game o' checkers. But Redney 'nd
me can't do a thing unless you stake us to a boat and a batch o' tools!"
"What kind o' tools?" asked a deep and cavernous bass voice. In that
voice I could feel caution and stolidity, even an overtone of
autocratic indifference.
"Ten bones'd get the whole outfit," was the other's answer.
"But what kind o' tools?" insisted the unperturbed bass voice.
There was a second or two of silence.
"That's spielin' the whole song," demurred the other.
"Well, the whole song's what I want to know," was the calm and
cavernous answer. "You'll recall that three weeks ago I staked you
boys for that expresswagon job--and I ain't seen nothing from it yet!"
"Aw, that was a frame-up," protested the first speaker. "Some squealer
was layin' for us!"
It was a new voice that spoke next, a husky and quavering voice, as
though it came from an alkaline throat not infrequently irrigated with
fusel-oil whisky.
"Tony, we got to let Chuck in on this. We got to!"
"Why've we got to?"
"Two men can't work it alone," complained the latest speaker. "You
know that. We can't take chances--and Gawd knows there's enough for
three in this haul!"
Again there was a brief silence.
"You make me sick!" suddenly exploded the treble-voiced youth who had
first spoken. "You'd think it was _me_ who's been singin' about
keepin' this thing so quiet!"
"What're you boys beefin' about, anyway?" interposed the placid bass
voice.
"I ain't beefin' about you. I ain't kickin' against lettin' you in.
But what I want to know is how're we goin' to split when you _are_ in?
Who follied this thing up from the first? Who did the dirty work on
it? Who nosed round that pier and measured her off, and got a bead on
the whole lay-out?"
"Then what'd you take _me_ in for?" demanded the worthy called Redney.
"Why didn't you go ahead and hog the whole thing, without havin' me
trailin' round?"
"Cut that out. You know I've got to have help," was the treble-noted
retort. "You know it's too big for one guy to handle."
"And it's so big you've got to have a boat and outfit," suggested the
bass-voiced man. "And I'll bet you and Redney can't raise two bits
between you."
"But _you_ get me a tub with a kicker in, and two or three tools, and
then you've got the nerve to hold me up for a third rakeoff!"
"I don't see as I'm holdin' anybody up," retorted the deep-voiced man.
"You came to me, and I told you I was ready to talk business. You said
you wanted help. Well, if you want help you've got to pay for it, same
as I pay for those cigars."
"I'm willin' to pay for it," answered the high-voiced youth, with a
quietness not altogether divorced from sulkiness.
"Then what're we wastin' good time over?" inquired the man known as
Redney. "This ain't a case o' milkin' coffee-bags from a slip-lighter.
This haul's big enough for three."
"Well, what _is_ your haul?" demanded the bass voice.
Again there was a silence of several seconds.
"Cough it up," prompted Redney. The silence that ensued seemed to
imply that the younger man was slowly and reluctantly arriving at a
change of front. There was a sound of a chair being pushed back, of a
match being struck, of a glass being put down on a table-top.
"Chuck," said the treble-voiced youth, with a slow and impressive
solemnity that was strangely in contrast to his earlier speech, "Chuck,
we're up against the biggest stunt that was ever pulled off in this
burg of two-bone pikers!"
"So you've been insinuatin'," was the answer that came out of the
silence. "But I've been sittin' here half an hour waitin' to get a
line on what you're chewin' about."
"Chuck," said the treble voice, "you read the papers, don't you?"
"Now and then," acknowledged the diffident bass voice.
"Well, did you see yesterday morning where the steamer _Finance_ was
rammed by the White Star _Georgic_? Where she went down in the Lower
Bay before she got started on her way south?"
"I sure did."
"Well, did you read about her carryin' six hundred and ten thousand
dollars in gold--in gold taken from the Sub-Treasury here and done up
in wooden boxes and consigned for that Panama Construction Comp'ny."
"I sure did."
"And did your eye fall on the item that all day yesterday the divers
from the wreckin' comp'ny were workin' on that steamer, workin' like
niggers gettin' that gold out of her strong room?"
"Sure!"
"And do you happen to know where that gold is now?" was the oratorical
challenge flung at the other man.
"Just wait a minute," remarked that other man in his heavy guttural.
"Is _that_ your coup?"
"That's my coup!" was the confident retort.
"Well, you've picked a lemon," the big man calmly announced. "There's
nothin' doin', kiddo, nothin' doin'!"
"Not on your life," was the tense retort. "I know what I'm talkin'
about. And Redney knows."
"And _I_ know that gold went south on the steamer _Advance_,"
proclaimed the bass voice. "I happen to know they re-shipped the whole
bunch o' metal on their second steamer."
"Where'd you find that out?" demanded the scoffing treble voice.
"Not bein' in the Sub-Treasury this season, I had to fall back on the
papers for the news."
"And that's where you and the papers is in dead wrong! That's how
they're foolin' you and ev'ry other guy not in the know. I'll tell you
where that gold is. I'll tell you where it lies, to the foot, at this
minute!"
"Well?"
"She's lyin' in the store-room in a pile o' wooden boxes, on that
Panama Comp'ny's pier down at the foot o' Twenty-eight' Street!"
"You're dreamin', Tony, dreamin'. No sane folks leave gold lyin' round
loose that way. No, sir; that's what they've got a nice stone
Sub-Treasury for."
"Look a' here, Chuck," went on the tense treble voice. "Jus' figure
out what day this is. And find out when them wreckers got that gold
out o' the _Finance's_ strong room. And what d'you get? They
lightered them boxes up the North River at one o'clock Saturday
afternoon. They swung in next to the _Advance_ and put a half-a-dozen
cases o' lead paint aboard. Then they tarpaulined them boxes o' gold
and swung into the Panama Comp'ny's slip and unloaded that cargo _at
two o'clock Saturday afternoon_!"
"Well, s'pose they did?"
"Don't you tumble? Saturday afternoon there's no Sub-Treasury open.
And to-day's Sunday, ain't it? And they won't get into that
Sub-Treasury until to-morrow morning. And as sure as I know I'm
sittin' in this chair I know that gold's lyin' out there on that
Twenty-eight' Street pier!"
No one in that little room seemed to stir. They seemed to be sitting
in silent tableau. Then I could hear the man with the bass voice
slowly and meditatively intone his low-life expletive.
"Well, I'll be damned!"
The youngest of the trio spoke again, in a lowered but none the less
tense voice.
"In gold, Chuck, pure gold! In fine yellow gold lyin' there waitin' to
be rolled over and looked after! Talk about treasure-huntin'! Talk
about Spanish Mains and pirate ships! My Gawd, Chuck, we don't need to
travel down to no Mosquito Coast to dig up our doubloons! We got 'em
right here at our back door!"
Some one struck a match.
"But how're we goin' to pick 'em?" placidly inquired the man called
Chuck. It was as apparent that he already counted himself one of the
party as it was that their intention had not quite carried him off his
feet.
"Look here," broke in the more fiery-minded youth known as Tony, and
from the sound and the short interludes of silence he seemed to be
drawing a map on a slip of paper. "Here's your pier. And here's your
store-room. And here's where your gold lies. And here's the first
door. And here's the second. We don't need to count on the doors.
They've got a watchman somewhere about here. And they've put two of
their special guards here at the land end of the pier. The store-room
itself is empty. They've got it double-locked, and a closed-circuit
alarm system to cinch the thing. But what t'ell use is all that when
we can eat right straight up into the bowels o' that room without
touchin' a lock or a burglar alarm, without makin' a sound!"
"How?" inquired the bass voice.
"Here's your pier bottom. Here's the river slip. We row into that
slip without showin' a light, and with the kicker shut off, naturally.
We slide in under without makin' a sound. Then we get our
measurements. Then we make fast to this pile, and throw out a line to
this one, and a second to this one, to hold us steady against the tide
and the ferry wash. Then we find our right plank. We can do that by
pokin' a flashlight up against 'em where it'll never be seen. Then we
take a brace and bit and run a row of holes across that plank, the two
rows about thirty inches apart, each hole touchin' the other. Don't
you see, with a good sharp extension bit we can cut out that square in
half an hour or so, without makin' any more noise than you'd make
scratchin' a match on your pants leg!"
"And when you get your square?"
"Then Redney and me climbs through. Redney'll be the stall. He
watches the door from the inside. You stay in the boat, with an eye
peeled below. I pass you the gold. We cut loose and slip off with the
tide. When we're out o' hearin' we throw on the kicker and go kitin'
down to that Bath Beach joint o' yours where we'll have that six
hundred and ten thousand in gold melted down and weighed out before
they get that store-room door unlocked in the morning!"
"Not so loud, Tony; not so loud!" cautioned the conspirator called
Redney. There was a moment of silence.
In that silence, and without the aid of my microphone, I heard the
sound of steps as they approached my door and came to a stop.
"Listen!" suddenly whispered one of the men in the other room.
As I sat there, listening as intently as my neighbors, the knob of my
door turned. Then the door itself was impatiently shaken.
That sound brought me to my feet with a start of alarm. Accident had
enmeshed me in a movement that was too gigantic to be overlooked. The
one thing I could not afford, at such a time, was discovery.
Three silent steps took me across the room to my microphone. One
movement lifted that telltale instrument from its hooks, and a second
movement jerked free the wires pinned in close along the gas pipe.
Another movement or two saw my apparatus slipped into its case and the
case dropped down behind the worn leather-couch back. Then I sank into
the chair beside the table, knowing there was nothing to betray me.
Yet as I lounged there over my bottle of _Chianti_ I could feel the
excitement of the moment accelerate my pulse. I made an effort to get
my feelings under control as second by second slipped away and nothing
of importance took place. It was, I decided, my wall-eyed waiter
friend, doubtlessly bearing a message that more lucrative patrons were
desiring my fetid-aired cubby-hole.
Then, of a sudden, I became aware of the fact that voices were
whispering close outside my door. The next moment I heard the crunch
of wood subjected to pressure, and before I could move or realize the
full meaning of that sound, the door had been forced open and three men
were staring in at me.
I looked up at them with a start--with a start, however, which I had
the inspired foresight to translate into a hiccough. That hiccough, in
turn, reminded me that I had a role to sustain, a role of care-free and
irresponsible intoxication.
So, opprobrious as the whole farce seemed to me, I pushed my hat back
on my head and blinkingly stared at the three intruders as they
sauntered nonchalantly into the room. Yet as I winked up at them, with
all the sleepy unconcern at my command, I could plainly enough see that
each one of that trio was very much on the alert. It was the youngest
of the three who turned to me.
"Kiddo," he said, and he spoke with an oily suavity not at all to my
liking, "I kind o' thought I smelt gas leakin' in here."
He had the effrontery to turn and stare about at the four walls of the
room. Then he moved easily across the floor to where the champagne
picture hung. What he saw, or did not see there, I had no means of
determining. For to turn and look after him would be to betray my part.
"That leak ain't in this room," admitted the second of the trio, a
swarthy and loose-lipped land pirate with a sweep of carroty bang which
covered his left eyebrow. I knew, even before he spoke, that he was
the man called Redney, just as I knew the first speaker was the youth
they had addressed as Tony. About the third man, who towered above the
other two in his giant-like stature, there was a sense of calm and
solidity that seemed almost pachydermatous. Yet this same solidity in
some way warned me that he might be the most dangerous of them all.
"'Sssh all righ'!" I loosely condoned, with a sleepy lurch of the body.
How much my acting was convincing to them was a matter of vast concern
to me. The man named Tony, who had continued to study the wooden
partition against which my microphone had hung, turned back to the
table and calmly seated himself beside me. My heart went down like an
elevator with a broken cable when I noticed the nervous sweat which had
come out on his forehead.
"Say, Sister, this puts the drinks on us," he declared, with an
airiness which I felt to be as unreal as my own inebriacy. I saw him
motion for the other two to seat themselves.
They did so, a little mystified, each man keeping his eyes fixed on the
youth called Tony. The latter laughed, for no reason that I could
understand, and over his shoulder bawled out the one word, "Shimmey!"
Shimmey, I remembered, was my friend the wall-eyed waiter. And this
waiter it was who stepped trailingly into the room.
"Shimmey," said the voluble youth at my side. "We introoded on this
gen'lmun. And we got to square ourselves. So what's it goin' to be?"
"Nothin'!" I protested, with a repugnant wave of the hand.
"You mean we ain't good enough for you to drink with?" demanded the
youth called Tony. I could see what he wanted. I could feel what was
coming. He was looking for some reason, however tenuous, to start
trouble. Without fail he would find it in time. But my one desire was
to defer that outcome as long as possible. So I grinned back at him,
rather idiotically, I'm afraid.
"All righ'," I weakly agreed, blinking about at my tormentors. "Bring
me a bran'y an' soda."
The other three men looked at the waiter. The waiter, in turn, looked
at them. Then he studied my face. There was something decidedly
unpleasant in his coldly speculative eyes.
"Shimmey, d'you understand? This gen'lmun wants a brandy and soda."
The waiter, still studying me, said "Sure!" Then he turned on his heel
and walked out of the room.
I knew, in my prophetic bones, that there was some form of trouble
brewing in that odoriferous little room. But I was determined to
side-step it, to avoid it, to the last extremity. And I was still
nodding amiably about when the waiter returned with his tray of glasses.
"Well, here's how," said the youth, and we all lifted our glasses.
That brandy and soda, I knew, would not be the best of its kind. I
also clearly saw that it would be unwise to decline it. So I swallowed
the stuff as a child swallows medicine.
I downed it in a gulp or two, and put the glass back on the table.
Then I proceeded to wipe my mouth with the back of my hand, after the
approved fashion of my environment.
It was fortunate, at that moment, that my hand was well up in front of
my face. For as the truth of the whole thing came home to me, as sharp
and quick as an electric spark, there must have been a second or two
when my role slipped away from me.
I had, it is true, inwardly fortified myself against a draught that
would prove highly unpalatable. But the taste which I now detected,
the acrid, unmistakable, over-familiar taste, was too much for my
startled nerves. I hid my sudden body-movement only by means of a
simulated hiccough. The thing I had unmistakably tasted was chloral
hydrate. They had given me knock-out drops.
The idea, of a sudden, struck me as being so ludicrous that I laughed.
The mere thought of any such maneuver was too much for me--the foolish
hope that a homeopathic little pill of chloral would put me under the
table, like any shopgirl lured from a dance-hall! They were trying to
drug me. Drug _me_, who had taken double and triple doses night after
night as I fought for sleep!
They were trying to drug me, me who on my bad nights had even known the
narcotic to be forcibly wrested from my clutch by those who stood
appalled at the quantities that my too-immured system demanded, and
knew only too well that in time it meant madness!
But I remembered, as I saw the three men staring at me, that I still
had a role to sustain. I knew it would be unwise to let those sweet
worthies know just how the land lay. I enjoyed an advantage much too
exceptional and much too valuable to be lightly surrendered.
So to all outward signs and appearances I let the drug do its work. I
carefully acted out my pretended lapse into somnolent indifference. I
lost the power to coordinate; my speech grew inarticulate; my shoulders
drooped forward across the table edge. I wilted down like a cut
dock-weed, until my face lay flat against the beer-stained wood.
"He's off," murmured the man called Chuck. He rose to his feet as he
spoke.
"Then we got to beat it," declared the youth named Tony, already on his
feet. I could hear him take a deep breath as he stood there. "And the
next long nose who gives me heart disease like this is goin' to get
five inches o' cold steel!"
He knelt before me as he spoke, pulled back my feet, and ran a knife
edge along the shoe laces. Then he promptly pulled the shoes from my
feet. These shoes, apparently, he kept in his hand. "That'll help
anchor 'im, I guess," I heard him remark.
"Let's get on the job," suggested the big man, obviously impatient at
the delay. "If there's nothin' but five inches o' plank between us and
that gold, let's get busy!"
I sat there, with my head on that table top so redolent of the soured
beverages of other days, and listened to them as they moved across the
room. I listened as they passed out and swung the door shut behind
them. I waited there for another minute or two, without moving,
knowing only too well what a second discovery would entail.
My head was still bent over that unclean table top when I heard the
broken-latched door once more pushed slowly open, and steps slowly
cross the floor to where I sat.
Some one, I knew, was staring down at me. I felt four distended
finger-tips push inquisitively at my head, rolling it a little to one
side. Then the figure bending above me shifted its position. A hand
felt cautiously about my body. It strayed lower, until it reached my
watch pocket.
I could see nothing of my enemy's face, and nothing of his figure. All
I got a glimpse of was a patch of extremely soiled linen. But that
glimpse was sufficient. It was my friend, the wall-eyed waiter,
resolutely deciding to make hay while the sun shone. And that decided
me.
With one movement I rose from the chair and wheeled about so as to face
him. That quick body-twist spun his own figure half-way around.
My fist caught him on the foreward side of the relaxed jawbone. He
struck the worn leather couch as he fell, and then rolled completely
over, as inert as a sack of bran.
I looked down at him for a moment or two as he lay face upward on the
floor. Then I dropped on one knee beside him, unlaced his well-worn
and square-toed shoes, and calmly but quietly adjusted them to my own
feet.
Once out in the street I quickened my steps and rounded the first
corner. Then I hurried on, turning still another, and still another,
making doubly sure I was leaving no chance to be trailed. Then I swung
aboard a cross-town car, alighting again at a corner flashing with the
vulgar brilliance of an all-night drug store.
I went straight to the telephone booth of that drug store, and there I
promptly called up police headquarters. I felt, as I asked for
Lieutenant Belton, a person of some importance. Then I waited while
the precious moments flew by.
Lieutenant Belton, I was finally informed, was at his room in the Hotel
York, on Seventh Avenue. So I rang up the Hotel York, only to be
informed that the lieutenant was not in.
I slammed the receiver down on its hook and ended that foolish
colloquy. I first thought of Patrolman McCooey. Then I thought of
Doyle, and then of Creegan, my old detective friend. Then with a
jaw-grip of determination I caught that receiver up again, ordered a
taxicab, paid for my calls, consulted my watch, and paced up and down
like a caged hyena, waiting for my cab.
Another precious ten minutes slipped away before I got to Creegan's
door in Forty-third Street. Then I punched the bell-button above the
mail-box, and stood there with my finger on it for exactly a minute and
a half.
I suddenly remembered that the clicking door latch beside me implied
that my entrance was being automatically solicited. I stepped into the
dimly lighted hall and made my way determinedly up the narrow carpeted
stairs, knowing I would get face to face with Creegan if I had to crawl
through a fanlight and pound in his bedroom door.
But it was Creegan himself who confronted me as I swung about the
banister turn of that shadowy second landing.
"You wake those kids up," he solemnly informed me, "and I'll kill you!"
"Creegan," I cried, and it seemed foolish that I should have to
inveigle and coax him into a crusade which meant infinitely more to him
than to me, "I'm going to make you famous!"
"How soon?" he diffidently inquired.
"Inside of two hours' time," was my answer.
"Don't _wake_ those _kids_!" he commanded, looking back over his
shoulder.
I caught him by the sleeve, and held him there, for some vague
premonition of a sudden withdrawal and a bolted door made me desperate.
And time, I knew, was getting short.
"For heaven's sake, listen to me," I said as I held him. And as he
stood there under the singing gas-jet, with his hurriedly lit and
skeptically tilted stogie in one corner of his mouth, I told him in as
few words as I could what had happened that night.
"Come in while I get me boots on," he quietly remarked, leading me into
an unlighted hallway and from that into a bedroom about the size of a
ship's cabin. "And speak low," he said, with a nod toward the rear end
of the hall. Then as he sat on the edge of the bed pulling on his
shoes he made me recount everything for the second time, stopping me
with an occasional question, fixing me occasionally with a cogitative
eye.
"But we haven't a minute to lose," I warned him, for the second time,
as he slipped away into a remoter cubby-hole of a room to see, as he
put it, "if the kids were keeping covered."
He rejoined me at the stairhead, with the softest of Irish smiles still
on his face. By the time we had reached the street and stepped into
the waiting taxi, that smile had disappeared. He merely smoked another
stogie as we made our way toward the end of Twenty-eighth Street.
At Tenth Avenue, he suddenly decided it was better for us to go on
foot. So he threw away his stogie end, a little ruefully, and led me
down a street as narrow and empty as a river bed. He led me into a
part of New York that I had never before known. It was a district of
bald brick walls, of rough flag and cobble-stone underfoot, of lonely
street lamps, of shipping platforms and unbroken warehouse sides, of
storage yards and milk depots, with railway tracks bisecting streets as
empty as though they were the streets of a dead city. No one appeared
before us. Nothing gave signs of being alive in that area of desolate
ugliness which seemed like the back yard of all the world concentrated
in a few huddled squares.
We were almost on West Street itself before I was conscious of the
periodic sound of boat whistles complaining through the night. The
air, I noticed, took on a fresher and cleaner smell. Creegan, without
speaking, drew me in close to a wall-end, at the corner, and together
we stood staring out toward the Hudson.
Directly in front of us, beyond a forest of barrels which stippled the
asphalt, a veritable city of barrels that looked like the stumpage of a
burned-over Douglas-pine woodland, stood the facade of the Panama
Company's pier structure. It looked substantial and solemn enough,
under its sober sheeting of corrugated iron. And two equally solemn
figures, somber and silent in their dark overcoats, stood impassively
on guard before its closed doors.
"Come on," Creegan finally whispered, walking quickly south to the end
of Twenty-seventh Street. He suddenly stopped and caught at my arm to
arrest my own steps. We stood there, listening. Out of the silence,
apparently from mid-river, sounded the quick staccato coughing of a
gasoline motor. It sounded for a moment or two, and then it grew
silent.
We stood there without moving. Then the figure at my side seemed stung
into sudden madness. Without a word of warning or explanation, my
companion clucked down and went dodging in and out between the huddled
clumps of barrels, threading a circuitous path toward the slip edge. I
saw him drop down on all fours and peer over the string-piece. Then I
saw him draw back, rise to his feet, and run northward toward the pier
door where the two watchmen stood.
What he said to those watchmen I had no means of knowing. One of them,
however, swung about and tattooed on the door with a night-stick before
Creegan could catch at his arm and stop him. Before I could join them,
some one from within had thrown open the door. I saw Creegan and the
first man dive into the chill-aired, high-vaulted building, with its
exotic odors of spice and coffee and mysterious tropical bales. I
heard somebody call out to turn on the lights, and then Creegan's
disgustedly warning voice call back for him to shut up. Then somewhere
in the gloom inside a further colloquy took place, a tangle of voices,
a call for quietness, followed by a sibilant hiss of caution.
Creegan appeared in the doorway again. I could see that he was
motioning for me.
"Come on," he whispered. And I tiptoed in after him, under that
echoing vaulted roof where the outline of a wheeled gangway looked
oddly like the skeleton of some great dinosaur, and the pungent spicy
odors took me at one breath two thousand miles southward into the
Tropics.
"Take off those shoes," quietly commanded Creegan. And I dropped
beside him on the bare pier planks and slipped my feet out of Shimmey's
ungainly toed shoes.
A man moved aside from a door as we stepped silently up to it. Creegan
turned to whisper a word or two in his ear. Then he opened the door
and led me by the sleeve into the utter darkness within, closing and
locking the door after him.
I was startled by the sudden contact of Creegan's groping fingers. I
realized that he was thrusting a short cylindrical object up against my
body.
"Take this," he whispered.
"What is it?" I demanded in an answering whisper.
"It's a flashlight. Press here--see! And throw it on when I say so!"
I took the flashlight, pressed as he told me, and saw a feeble glow of
light from its glass-globed end. About this end he had swathed a
cotton pocket handkerchief. More actual illumination would have come
from a tallow candle. But it seemed sufficient for Creegan's purpose.
I could see him peer about, step across to a pile of stout wooden
boxes, count them, test one as to its weight, squint once more
searchingly about the room, and then drop full length on the plank
flooring and press his ear to the wood.
He writhed and crawled about there, from one quarter of the room to
another, every minute or so pressing an ear against the boards under
him, for all the world like a physician sounding a patient's lungs. He
kept returning, I noticed, to one area in the center of the room, not
more than a yard away from the pile of wooden boxes. Then he leaned
forward on his knees, his hands supporting his body in a grotesque
bear-like posture. He continued to kneel there, intently watching the
oak plank directly in front of him.
I saw one hand suddenly move forward and feel along an inch or two of
this plank, come to a stop, and then suddenly raise and wave in the
air. I did not realize, at that moment, that the signal was for me.
"Put her out," he whispered. And as I lifted my thumb from the contact
point the room was again plunged into utter darkness. Yet through that
darkness I could hear a distinct sound, a minute yet unmistakable noise
of splintering wood, followed by an even louder sound, as though an
auger were being withdrawn from a hole in the planking at my feet.
Then up from the floor on which Creegan knelt a thin ray of light
flickered and wavered and disappeared. A rumble of guarded voices
crept to my ears, and again I could detect that faint yet pregnant
gnawing sound as the busy auger once more ate into the oak planking on
which we stood.
I suddenly felt Creegan's hand grope against my knee. He rose to his
feet beside me.
"It's all right," he whispered, with a calmness which left me a little
ashamed of my own excitement. "You stay here until I come back."
I stood there listening to the slight noise of the door as he opened it
and closed it after him. I stood there as I once more heard the
telltale splintering of wood, indicating that the auger had completed
its second hole through the planking. Then came the sound of its
withdrawal, and again the wavering pencil of light as the men under the
pier examined their work and adjusted their auger-end for its next
perforation.
A new anxiety began to weigh on me. I began to wonder what could be
keeping Creegan so long. I grew terrified at the thought that he might
be too late. Vague contingencies on which I had failed to reckon began
to present themselves to me. I realized that those three desperate
men, once they saw I was again coming between them and their ends,
would be satisfied with no half measure.
Then occurred a movement which nearly brought a cry from my startled
lips. A hand, reaching slowly out through the darkness, came in
contact with my knee, and clutched it. That contact, coming as it did
without warning, without reason, sent a horripilating chill through all
my body. The wonder was that I did not kick out, like a frightened
colt, or start to flail about me with my flashlight. All I did,
however, was to twist and swing away. Yet before I could get to my
feet, the hand had clutched the side of my coat. And as those
clutching fingers held there, I heard a voice whisper out of the
darkness:
"Here, take this," and the moment I heard it I was able to breathe
again, for I knew it was Creegan. "You may need it."
He was holding what I took to be a policeman's night-stick up in front
of me. I took it from him, marveling how he could have re-entered that
room without my hearing him.
"There's a light-switch against the wall there, they say," was his next
whispered message to me. "Find it. Keep back there and throw it on if
I give the word."
I felt and pawed and padded about the wall for an uncertain moment or
two. "Got it?" came Creegan's whispering voice across the darkness.
"Yes," I whispered back.
He did not speak again, for a newer sound fell on both his ears and
mine. It was a sound of prodding and prying, as though the men below
were jimmying at their loosened square of planking.
I leaned forward, listening, for I could hear the squeak and grate of
the shifting timber block. I did not hear it actually fall away. But
I was suddenly conscious of a breath of cooler air in the room where I
stood and the persistent ripple of water against pile-sides.
Then I heard a treble voice say, "A little higher."
The speaker seemed so close that I felt I could have stooped down and
touched his body. I knew, even before I saw the spurt of flame where
he struck a match along the floor, that the man was already half-way up
through the hole. I could see the dirt-covered, claw-like hand as it
held the match, nursing the tiny flame, patiently waiting for it to
grow. It was not until this hand held the flaring match up before his
very face that Creegan moved.
That movement was as simple as it was unexpected. I had no distinct
vision of it, but I knew what it meant. I knew, the moment I heard the
dull and sickening impact of seasoned wood against a human skull-bone.
There was just one blow. But it was so well placed that a second
seemed unnecessary. Then, as far as I could judge, Creegan took hold
of the stunned man and drew him bodily up through the hole in the floor.
A moment later a voice was saying, "Here, pull!" And I knew that the
second man was on his way up into the room.
What prevented Creegan from repeating his maneuver with the night-stick
I could not tell. But I knew the second attack was not the clean-cut
job of the first, for even as Creegan seized the body half-way up
through the opening, the struggle must have begun.
The consciousness that that struggle was not to be promptly decided,
that a third factor might at any moment appear in the fight, stung me
into the necessity of some sort of blind action on my own part. I
remembered the first man, and that he would surely be armed. I ran out
toward the center of the room, stumbled over the boxes of gold, and
fell sprawling along the floor. Without so much as getting on my feet
again I groped about until I found the prostrate body. It took me only
a moment to feel about that limp mass, discover the revolver, and draw
it from its pocket. I was still on my knees when I heard Creegan call
out through the darkness.
"The light!" he gasped. "Turn on the light!"
I swung recklessly about at the note of alarm in his voice and tried to
grope my way toward him. Only some last extremity could have wrung
that call from him. It was only too plain that his position was now a
perilous one. But what that peril was I could not decipher.
"Where are you?" I gasped, feeling that wherever he lay he needed help,
that the quickest service I could render him would be to reach his side.
"The light, you fool!" he cried out. "The light!"
I dodged and groped back to the wall where I felt the light-switch to
be. I had my fingers actually on the switch when an arm like the arm
of a derrick itself swung about through the darkness, and at one stroke
knocked the breath out of my body and flattened me against the wall.
Before I could recover my breath, a second movement spun me half around
and lifted me clear off my feet. By this time the great arm was close
about me, pinning my hands down to my side.
Before I could cry out or make an effort to escape, the great hulk
holding me had shifted his grip, bringing me about directly in front of
him and holding me there with such a powerful grasp that it made
breathing a thing of torture. And as he held me there, he reached out
and turned on the light with his own hand. I knew, even before I
actually saw him, that it was the third man.
I also knew, even before that light came on, what his purpose was. He
was holding me there as a shield in front of him. This much I realized
even before I saw the revolver with which he was menacing the enemy in
front of him. What held my blinking and bewildered eyes was the fact
that Creegan himself, on the far side of the room, was holding the
struggling and twisting body of the man called Redney in precisely the
same position.
But what disheartened me was the discovery that Creegan held nothing
but a night-stick in his left hand. All the strength of his right
hand, I could see, was needed to hold his man. And his revolver was
still in his pocket.
I had the presence of mind to remember my own revolver. And my
predicament made me desperate. That gang had sown their dragon teeth,
I decided, and now they could reap their harvest.
I made a pretense of struggling away from my captor's clutch, but all
the while I was working one elbow back, farther and farther back, so
that a hand could be thrust into my coat pocket. I reached the pocket
without being noticed. My fingers closed about the butt of the
revolver. And still my purpose had not been discovered.
As I lifted that firearm from my pocket I was no longer a reasoning
human being. At the same time I felt this red flash of rage through my
body, I also felt the clutch about my waist relax. The big man behind
me was ejaculating a single word. It was "_Creegan!_"
Why that one shout should have the debilitating effect on Creegan which
it did, I had no means of knowing. But I saw the sweat-stained and
blood-marked face of my colleague suddenly change. His eyes stared
stupidly, his jaw fell, and he stood there, panting and open-mouthed,
as though the last drop of courage had been driven out of his body.
I felt that he was giving up, that he was surrendering, even before I
saw him let the man he had been holding fall away from him. But I
remembered the revolver in my hand and the ignominies I had suffered.
And again I felt that wave of something stronger than my own will, and
I knew that my moment had come.
I had the revolver at half-arm, with its muzzle in against the body
crushing mine, when Creegan's voice, sharp and short as a bark,
arrested that impending finger-twitch.
"Stop!" he cried, and the horror of his voice puzzled me.
"Why?" I demanded in a new and terrible calm. But I did not lower my
revolver.
"Stop that!" he shouted, and his newer note, more of anger than fear,
bewildered me a bit.
"Why?"
But Creegan, as he caught at the coat collar of the man called Redney,
did not answer my repeated question. Instead, he stared at the man
beside me.
"Well, I'll be damned!" he finally murmured.
"What t' hell are _you_ doin' here?" cut in the big man as he pushed my
revolver-end away and dropped his own gun into his pocket. "I've been
trailin' these guys for five weeks--and I want to know why you're
queerin' my job!"
Creegan, who had been feeling his front teeth between an investigatory
thumb and forefinger, blinked up at the big man. Then he turned
angrily on me.
"Put down that gun!" he howled. He took a deep breath. Then he
laughed, mirthlessly, disgustedly. "You can't shoot _him_!"
"Why can't I?"
"He's a stool pigeon! A singed cat!"
"And what's a stool pigeon?" I demanded. "And what's a singed cat?"
Creegan laughed for the second time as he wiped his mouth with the back
of his hand.
"He's a Headquarters gink who stays on the fence, and tries to hunt
with the hounds the same time he's runnin' with the hares--and gener'ly
goes round queerin' an honest officer's work. And I guess he's queered
ours. So about the only thing for us to do, 's far as I can see, is
for us to crawl off home and go to bed!"