Mathison accepted the blow quietly. He had the air of a spent athlete,
but that was all. He was a good loser. To have rushed about, sending out
alarms, advising the Secret Service, all would have been a waste of
time. The damage was complete, irremediable. Beaten--that was the word;
he knew it.
Havoc! The bedding was strewn across the floor, mattress and bolster;
the pillows had been shaken from their cases. All the drawers in the
bureau and commode had been pulled out and their paper linings tossed
about. The two kit-bags had been slashed completely across and their
entire contents scattered. Even the pockets of the coats and trousers
had been turned inside out. Nothing had escaped.
Beaten! Until to-night he had had a perfect defense. He tried to reach
back to analyze the cause which had emboldened him to leave the
security of the car, but it wasn't reachable. The want of sleep? The
craving for exercise? Mere bewilderment? He couldn't solve it; just one
of those moves which continue to render human beings fallible. Why
hadn't he left the envelope in the safe? What idiocy had inveigled him
to carry it to his room? A lone hand. He had tried the superhuman. One
trained mind against three or four trained minds, and the odds had been
too great. He had left the realm of absolute mathematics for the
impositive, chance, with this tragic result.
With infinite care he had contrived a web; so had they. They had broken
through his, and now he found himself in theirs. Flight. They would be
gone like the winds. They had done something more than beaten him at the
game; they had shattered his self-confidence. Doubt; all his future
moves would be under the shadow of doubt. Should he do this, or should
he do that, or should he ask advice? The commander of a destroyer should
have supreme confidence in himself; and at present it did not look as if
John Mathison would go abroad with that. He might re-establish this
quality, but only by passing successfully through some vital conflict.
Hallowell! Old Bob Hallowell! It was as if he had broken faith with his
friend.
"Mat!... Malachi!"
Thunderstruck, Mathison jumped to his feet, while Murphy, the detective,
looked wildly about for the third man. Mathison seized him by the arm.
"For God's sake, hush! Be still! It's that little green bird."
"Mat!... Malachi!" It was the same wailing accent of that dreadful night
in Manila. It was Hallowell himself speaking!
Malachi, tremendously agitated, was climbing up to his swing and down to
his perch. The incredible had happened. Suggestion. Once before the bird
had witnessed a confusion in the making, something like this.
"Mat!... Malachi!" he wailed.
Then came a jumble of phrases in polyglot, sailors' oaths, scraps of
Hindustani and Spanish. But after a few minutes he began to mutter in
parrakeetese. That peculiar cell in Malachi's head had closed up again.
Mathison urged and coaxed in vain. Malachi rolled his yellow eyes and
continued to mutter. The irony of it lay in the fact that his fear had
subsided. Wasn't this his master?
"Well, I--be--damn!" exploded Murphy. "A talking parrot!
Say"--wrathfully--"why did you give me that bunk about being Ellison?"
"Quickest way I could get back to this room. All this was accomplished
while they were holding me down-stairs."
"A frame-up! I knew the moment you held out your hands that you weren't
Ellison. The forefinger of his right hand is missing. Look at those
grips! Bo, what did you have?"
"They got it."
"All right. Come on. I'll send out a general alarm. We'll run a comb
over the town. Off your train, too, I'll gamble. Get a move on!"
"Thanks, Mr. Murphy; but it wouldn't do a bit of good. The damage is
done. And ten to one they've already boarded a freight."
"Going to let 'em put it over without a kick?"
"The thing they took was valuable only so long as it remained in my
possession. The Chinese have a saying--you can't pour water into a
shattered jar."
"Are you trying to get my goat?"
"No. I'm stating bald facts."
"You're a queer kind of a guy. What was it, a diamond toothpick?" Murphy
began to wander around the room. "A frame-up, and a bully one. The only
way they could get you out of this room for a while until your identity
was established. Why didn't you set up a holler?"
Mathison shook his head and sat down. "Am I your prisoner?"
"Prisoner my eye! Only, I'm naturally a curious cuss. Crook stuff?"
"Not in the sense you mean."
"Would it do any good to arrest them?"
"You couldn't arrest them."
"The hell I couldn't! What are they, pro-Germans from that dear
Chicago?"
"No."
"Well, I'll nose about."
"It won't do you any good."
"You don't know this Roland woman?"
"Never saw her before in my life."
"Then you saw her?" quickly.
"Go ahead and see what you can find," said Mathison, curtly.
The infernal beauty of her! It would haunt him as long as he lived. The
strength of those beautiful hands! This havoc all inside of an hour!
Mathison lighted his pipe.
Murphy did not touch anything. He seemed to be thinking rather than
observing. By and by he went to the window, opened it, and stepped
outside. He was absent perhaps ten minutes. He came back, stamped the
snow from his shoes, and put away the pocket-lamp.
"Find anything?"
"You're not much on the gab-fest, are you?" said Murphy, amiably. "Two
women! One of 'em wore arctics and the other sandals; and the one with
the sandals wrecked the place! Bo, was it love-letters--divorce stuff?
Good-lookers?"
"There was only one woman," wearily.
"Two. My job is noticing things. When I say that two women went up and
down that fire-escape I know what I'm talking about."
Mathison shrugged. It wasn't worth while arguing.
"The woman with the arctics came first, then the woman with the sandals.
While the latter was in the room tidying up things the other was hiding
behind the fire-escape stairs. Easy on a night like this with the snow
high on the steps. All in the tracks as plain as the nose on your face.
Arctics came from the room below; sandals got out of the parlor."
Mathison listened politely. "Very interesting; all in the tracks." He
had determined not to dissent. The man had a right to his theories; but
it happened that John Mathison knew all the facts.
"Bo, this is queer business," said the detective. "What you've lost
don't seem to curl your hair any. Love-letters! The fool woman is always
writing them and then bawling to heaven to get them back.... For the
love o' Mike, what's this? Is this coat yours?"
"Yes."
"You are an officer in the United States navy?"
"I am."
"Well, well! Now there's some reason to all these fireworks. War stuff!"
"You might call it that."
"Need any help?"
"You might tell them in the office to send up two pairs of shoe-strings
and a leather-punch. I'll have to patch up those bags."
Murphy pushed back his hat. "Well, I'll be tinker-dammed!" Then he
laughed. "I'd like to play poker with you. Two pairs of shoe-strings!
That'll kill 'em cold in the office. They'll think I've forgotten my
handcuffs. War stuff! No use asking you what it was the woman took."
"No."
"Well, it's your funeral."
"Exactly. And when you order the shoe-strings you might send out for an
oak wreath with a purple ribbon."
"Glad you struck the town. There wasn't even a movie to-night. Bo, I'll
give you all the help I can without asking questions. I know a
fighting-man when I see him. A fighting-sailor with a talking parrot!
Well, I'll shoot that order for the shoe-strings. And when the bird
began to talk I thought there was some one else in the room!"
"There was," said Mathison, in an odd voice.
"Huh? Spirits? You don't look like a man who would waste any time with
the ouija-board. Well, here's for the shoe-strings and the punch."
When the clerk received the order he made the sender repeat it.
"Shoe-strings!" he yelled.
"What now?" demanded the house detective, surlily.
"Murphy wants two pairs of shoe-strings and a leather-punch! I tell you,
the whole house has gone bug. You run up. Murphy's been hypnotized or he
has had a punch of dope. Here, boy; run down to the Macedonian shoeblack
and get two pairs of shoe-strings and a punch. Hustle!"
"Shoe-strings!" Michaels the house detective ran for the elevator. But
when he reached room 320 he was told emphatically--through the door--to
take his bonehead down-stairs again. "Cahoots!" he murmured. And all the
rest of his life he was going to hold to the belief that Ellison and
Murphy had divided up the loot.
At eleven o'clock Mathison and Detective Murphy came down into the
lobby. Murphy carried the parrot-cage. There was a grin on his face as
he left the elevator, but it vanished as he neared the desk.
"My bill," said Mathison. He had decided to return to the train.
"What?" The poor clerk stared at Murphy for the key to this riddle.
"The bill, the bill! Give the gentleman his bill, you dub!"
In turning, the clerk knocked over the desk-telephone. As he stooped to
recover it he bumped his head against the corner of the cashier's cage.
When he finally presented the bill he was a total wreck.
"Was it ...?" he faltered.
"No, it wasn't," snapped Murphy. "We've all been flimflammed."
"But those names!"
"Can't you recognize Jack Barrymore when you see him? He's traveling
incog."
"But he _said_ he was the other fellow!"
"Well, Jack likes his joke."
"I wanted to get back to my room," interposed Mathison, taking pity on
the clerk's bewilderment. "There's been a misunderstanding all round.
Keep the change and buy yourself some cigars with it."
As Mathison and the detective disappeared through the revolving doors
the clerk turned to the cashier. "Keep your eye on things for a while.
I'm going out and root up a drink. I might understand something of this
if I was full of hootch."
When Mathison and the detective entered the car George the porter was
moving about sleepily. "What's de mattah wid dat hotel?" he demanded,
reproachfully.
"Too much excelsior, George, and not enough feathers."
"Well, I had de bed made up, case yo' did come back.... Lan' sakes,
what's happened t' dem satchels?"
"The chef ran amuck with the cleaver," explained Murphy, owlishly. He
turned to Mathison. "Here's that cannon of yours. Take care of yourself.
Gee! if you were a crook and I was chasing you, what a lot of fun we'd
have!"
"Thanks for the compliment. Truthfully, I had expected to spend the
night in jail."
The porter's ears twitched.
The two men shook hands, and Mathison vanished behind the door of his
compartment. George eyed the door speculatively. Jail. He tiptoed to No.
2 and knocked.
"What is it?" came through the crack.
"He's come back!" George whispered.