DUTCH VON HOLZEMAN, SPECIAL AGENT.
Jimmie Grant, sitting on the cool veranda of Captain Johnston's ranch
house, grinned at the young man sitting opposite, from whom he had
received a telephone message the night before asking for a meeting
place.
"What happened to you, Dutch?" Jimmie asked with a grin. "I thought you
were planted on board until the finish?"
"It came," said the young man who had, up to the day before, been
an ordinary seaman on the yacht Carmen, "as far as I was concerned,
Jimmie, old kid. Boy, howdy, I heard Monckton tell Clark to drown
me that night, just as he would tell him to drown a sick kitten or
something. Hot damn--I'd just as soon be in a den of rattlers. I
could sleep sounder. They think as much of a human life as I do of a
cigarette."
"Which is a hell of a lot sometimes, when you've only got one, and I
want it," said Jimmie. "You big piece of Limburger cheese!"
"Yeah?" grinned Dutch von Holzeman, one hundred per cent American in
spite of his name, and a crack special agent for Uncle. "If you'd buy
you some cigarettes once in awhile I wouldn't feel like that, you
grifter."
"So's your grandma," said Jimmie. "Tell me about it."
Dutch told him about the fight on board the Carmen and the killing of
Langdon, also about Wang Li and the Chang Kwang Tong.
"Hot damn," said Jimmie; "that's the stuff I want. Boy, as a special
agent you're a fine shoemaker. How'd you come to get out of the boat,
though?"
"I'd heard plenty, and I knew the boson was due any minute huntin' for
me. He'd stop way back and ask permission to come aft. He'd be looking
for me with blood in his eye and bawl out the fact that I'd been
missing for a couple of hours. So I thought I better take a chance and
show. I figured I could alibi myself in some way."
"Except to explain how come they didn't see you coming to the boat,
dumb-bell," grinned Jimmie.
"Easy. I'd stick it that I walked along the rail, and that they were
taking a drink and didn't notice me. Well, what to do now, Jimmie?"
"Well, now we know that what Uncle suspected before is plenty true.
Monckton is top cutter of the outfit; Carewe, the one that engineered
the jewel robbery, is eliminated; Monckton has the stuff planted
somewhere. Langdon, who helped Carewe grab off the stones, is out also.
That leaves Monckton.
"We can't touch him on what we got--unless we could pull him on a
charge of killing Langdon: rotten--he didn't, Clark did the killing;
you say you saw him crack down. Besides, he would alibi with every man
on the boat that he was below. Let's dope it out, Dutch; we darn near
got him."
"He's wounded pretty badly; maybe-so he's dead by now. I didn't wait to
inquire, but when they brought him down deck he looked all in."
"No chance," said Jimmie positively. "You can't kill those birds like
Monckton; you got to hang 'em or put 'em on the hot chair. I wish
to heck I knew where the junk was that they copped in England. That
Scotland Yard man is foaming at the mouth."
"Yeah? Where is he, Jimmie?"
"In San Francisco, holed up at the Palace. I told him I'd break this
case for him right away and then he'd have a better chance to get a
line. He gently insinuated the last time I saw him that he was muchly
disappointed at the Americano much-touted speed."
* * * * *
"I know where the junk is--it's on board the yacht," said Dutch,
lighting a cigarette.
"What?" yelled Jimmie Grant, so loud that Captain Johnston stuck his
head out of one of the feed barn doors. "You know that! Well, you poor
nit-wit! By gosh, Dutch, if you had forty-nine per cent more brains
you'd be half human. Why the heck didn't you say so, fish?"
"Aw, I haven't seen 'em. One--"
"There you go! What good does all that 'I heard,' 'he said,' 'they
acted like' stuff do? We got to catch 'em red-handed, boy."
"You're teachin' your grandma how to fry eggs," answered Dutch. "Well,
anyway, one night I was where I oughtn't to be, as usual, and I heard
Monckton raising hell and high water with that sweetie of his about
putting on a lot of stuff, and she comes back with the fact that she
wanted to see how she'd look wearing some of the crown jewels or
what-not, and that she had as much of an interest in them as he did.
"He said she had an interest that would put her away for the rest of
her life if she didn't show any more sense than to be parading 'em.
Just then some nosey bird came along and I had to play dead."
"Boy, you done noble," said Jimmie admiringly. "You're better than nine
regiments of marines. We might try to get a United States Commissioner
to give us a search warrant."
"First, find one that would, on that dope," answered Dutch pityingly.
"This bird Monckton stands too darn high at the moment for them to take
any chances. If we got one, we might search the darn hooker from stem
to stern and not find a thing. Then what, Jeems?"
"You and I would get ze one grand bawling out," admitted Jimmie.
"Well--here we are: Monckton is the lad, all right; Carewe is dead;
Langdon, who killed Carewe, also is very much dead, unless Clark missed
him?"
"He didn't," said Dutch positively. "I saw it."
"We know where Clark is. We can take him on a murder charge any time on
your say-so. But we don't want him now, unless he could be made to talk
on a promise of an easy one--Langdon being a crook anyway."
"He wouldn't," asserted Dutch. "That bird is probably wanted for a few
killings himself. Boy, he's got a cold eye like a fish."
"Never mind studying natural history; Uncle sent us down here to get
Monckton, not to talk about eyes. Remember you're drawing pay, feller."
"Man, you get on that old bum-boat for awhile, and you'd be earning
yours, for a change. Let me be top cutter for awhile, and you get in
and do some work. And say, Jimmie, that lady of Monckton's has got the
same kind of an eye, only worse."
"What did I just tell you?" chided Jimmie severely. "Well, we now have
Monckton, the fish-eyed lady, Kentuck, and the jewels, with Clark as a
side issue. Does he know about things in general, Dutch?"
"Who--Clark?" asked Dutch, who had been watching a young colt in one of
the corrals.
"No, President Nicholas Murray Butler! Pay attention! Here I am working
my massive brain overtime and you moon around looking at colts. I asked
if Clark is in the know, all around?"
"He seems to be; but he's more of a top sergeant, Jimmie."
"Well, we got to rib up something to get Monckton and his boat in a
place where we can give it the once-over, that's all. How about your
going back and--"
"What?" yelled Dutch almost as loud as Jimmie had. "Me? Go back on
that? Dilly, dilly, come and be killed. You're crazy, boy. I couldn't
get back any more than--"
"I mean to San Francisco, fool," interrupted Jimmie. "You go back there
and see if you can't horn in. Say, have they got licker on board?"
"Yeah, plenty of it, and fine stuff, boy."
"How do you know?" demanded Jimmie enviously.
"Me and one of the stewards were just like that," smiled Dutch, holding
up two fingers close together.
* * * * *
"Fine! The next time she comes into port we'll get the Prohibition
outfit to jump her. You can swear out the information; that lot isn't
fussy about evidence. She flies the American flag, I suppose?"
"Sure," Dutch chuckled, "and also she keeps out of American waters,
old slute. Any old time Monckton or any of them go ashore they land in
Mexico; so there goes your old ball game, Chames."
"All wet," admitted Jimmie. "How's this, Dutch: you go to San
Francisco, get to this bird Wang Li, tell him you've got the dope that
Monckton himself had the Kid put on the spot because the Kid had found
out that Monckton was double crossing the Chang Kwang, and--"
"How was he double crossing?"
"How the heck do I know? Make up some of it yourself. He was sending in
a poor brand of chandoo--no, that won't do; they'd know it as soon as
he did it. Here--how's this? Monckton has been hired by the Mock Duck
Tong to kill off as many of the Chang Kwang crowd as he can, claiming
that they got knocked off by the John Laws. That ought to get their
goat."
"Boy, that's some dope," said Dutch admiringly. "No wonder they pay you
a couple of dollars a day. I got me a friend in the Mock Ducks that'll
fix me up papers to prove it, and I got dates and everything about
landings. Take two chairs, feller."
"When Wang Li hears that, being naturally suspicious of all
foreign devils," Jimmie smiled angelically, "he'll sharpen his
best little hatchet and go out and scrag Mr. Monckton on general
principles, and investigate later. Man, that'll start a Tong war from
who-laid-the-chunk."
"Over which I will no doubt shed a lot of tears," said Dutch, "coming
from California as I do, and loving Chinks with all my heart. Well,
when I get Wang Li all het up I'll restrain him from using the said
hatchet and propose a more subtle way of revenge. We will frame on Mr.
Monckton to get him and his boat in 'Melican waters with some yellow
gents on board. I'll have Wang Li insist that Monckton himself be
present in person, himself and no other, with his boat and all, to show
good faith. Savvy?"
"Now you _are_ teaching your grandma," admitted Jimmie. "It may work.
We'll try it anyway. Then when we take the hooker the gal is mine."
"You can have 'er!" answered Dutch, with deep feeling. "I prefer
something a little farther south than Greenland's well-known icy
mountains."
"Maybe your peculiar style of beauty didn't register, Dutch," grinned
Jimmie. "Well, go and frame up with your Chink friend. We got the yacht
covered outside. Frank McGee and old Doc Cook are on the job in San
Diego and Yuma. I'll attend to Kentuck at this end. There won't be much
doing for a week or so, until Monckton gets better. We put an awful
crimp into them, or rather Langdon and Kentuck did, for us. We might
pick up Kentuck and tell him that Mike and the Kid both said he was the
big noise before they kicked off, and then see what happens. Get going,
boy."
"Hey, listen! I swam ashore from that floating hearse expecting any
second to hear that same Winchester go _pow!_ and get it in the back
of my head--"
"You'd get it first and hear it afterward. Be more careful in your
language," Jimmie smiled sweetly.
"Yeah? Well, anyway, I swam ashore, walked twenty miles, rode a blamed
old mule for forty more without a saddle before I could get to a
telephone, with nothing to eat but some cold beans I collected _en
route_. Then the minute I get here you give me the bum's rush. _Du hast
mein Herz gebrochen_, James."
"I'll break more than your heart if you don't snap into it," answered
Jimmie with a stern air. "We got to get this thing ribbed up before
Monckton comes to. On your way, feller. Want any jack?"
"All you got," answered Dutch. "When I left the Carmen flat, all I
had on me was my working whites. Bet four dollars that the Bureau of
Accounts won't allow me a nickel for my clothes or anything."
"You win," said Jimmie, grinning. "All you'll get is: 'Disallowed;
agent should have taken clothes and belongings with him.'"
"I'll try 'em out, anyway. Come through with all the jack you got,
Jimmie. I'll need a bundle in Frisco."
"I'll go in with you as far as Phoenix and draw some."