WHAT JIM SAW
The next morning Crowder sent a letter to Fong advising him of Mark's
departure. Should Jim get back from Sacramento within the next few days
he was to communicate with Crowder at the _Despatch_ office. The young
man had no expectation of early news, but he was going to run no risks
with what promised to be a sensation. His journalist's instincts were
aroused, and he was resolved to keep for his own paper and his own
_kudos_ the most picturesque story that had ever come his way. He went
about his work, restless and impatient, seeing the story on the
_Despatch's_ front page and himself made the star reporter of the staff.
He had not long to wait. On Monday morning he was called from the city
room to the telephone. Through the transmitter came the soft and even
voice of Jim; he had returned from Sacramento the night before, and if it
was convenient for Mr. Crowder could see him that afternoon at two in
Portsmouth Square. Mr. Crowder would make it convenient, and Jim's
good-by hummed gently along the wire.
The small plaza--a bit of the multicolored East embedded in the new, drab
West--was a place where Orient and Occident touched hands. There Chinese
mothers sat on the benches watching their children playing at their feet,
and Chinese fathers carried babies, little bunched-up, fat things with
round faces and glistening onyx eyes. Sons of the Orient, bent on
business, passed along the paths, exchanging greetings in a sing-song of
nasal voices, cues braided with rose-colored silk swinging to their
knees. Above the vivid green of the grass and the dark flat branches of
cypress trees, the back of Chinatown rose, alien and exotic: railings
touched with gold and red, lanterns, round and crimson or oblong with
pale, skin-like coverings, on the window ledges blue and white bowls
upholding sheaves of lilies, the rich emblazonry of signs, the thick
gilded arabesques of a restaurant's screened balconies.
Crowder found his man standing by the pedestal on which the good ship
_Bonaventure_ spreads its shining sails before the winds of romance. A
quiet hail and they were strolling side by side to a bench sheltered by a
growth of laurel.
Mayer had appeared at the Whatcheer House the day before at noon. Jim,
crossing the back of the office, had seen him enter, and loitering heard
him tell the clerk that he would give up his room that afternoon as his
base had shifted to Oregon. Then he had gone upstairs, and Jim had
followed him and seen him go into No. 19, the last door at the end of the
hall on the left-hand side.
The hall was empty and very quiet. It was the lunch hour, a time at which
the place was deserted. Arming himself with a duster Jim had stolen down
the passage to No. 19. Standing by the door he could hear Mayer walking
about inside, and then a sound as if he was moving the furniture. With
the duster held ready for use Jim had looked through the keyhole and seen
Mayer with a chisel in his hand, the bed behind him drawn out from the
wall to the middle of the room.
Emboldened by the hall's silence, Jim had continued to watch. He saw
Mayer go to the corner where the bed had stood, lift the carpet and the
boards below it and take from beneath them two canvas sacks. From these
he shook a stream of gold coins--more than a thousand dollars, maybe two.
He let them lie there while he put back the sacks, replaced the boards
and carpet and pushed the bed into its corner. Then he gathered up the
money, rolling some of it in a piece of linen, which he packed in his
suitcase, and putting the rest in a money belt about his waist. After
that he took up his hat and Jim slipped away to a broom closet at the
upper end of the hall.
From here the Chinaman saw his quarry come out of the room and go down
the stairs. At the desk Mayer stopped, told the clerk he had vacated
No. 19, but would wait in the office for a while as his train was not
due to leave till the afternoon. From the stairhead Jim watched him
take a seat by the window, and, the suitcase at his feet, pick up a
paper and begin to read.
It was a rule of the Whatcheer House that a vacated room was subjected to
a "thorough cleaning." Translated this meant a run over the floor with a
carpet sweeper and a change of sheets. The door of No. 19 had been left
unlocked, and while Mayer sat in the office conning the paper, Jim with
the necessary rags and brooms was putting No. 19 in shape for the next
tenant. An inside bolt on the door made him secure against interruption,
and the bed drawn to the middle of the floor was part of the traditional
rite. Carpet and boards came up easily; his cache empty Mayer had not
troubled to renail them. In the space between the rafters and the
flooring Jim had found no more money, only a bunch of canvas sacks, and a
dirty newspaper. With the Chinaman's meticulous carefulness he had
brought these back to his employers; in proof of which he laid a small,
neatly tied package on Crowder's knee. For the rest his work was done.
He had paid the Whatcheer room boy and seen him reinstated, had followed
Mayer to the depot, viewed his transformation there, and ridden with him
on the night train back to San Francisco.
To Crowder's commending words he murmured a smiling deprecation. What
concerned him most was his "prize money," which was promised on Mark's
return. Then, nodding sagely to the young man's cautioning of secrecy, he
rose, and uninterested, imperturbably enigmatic and bland, passed out of
sight around the laurels.
Crowder, on the bench, slipped down to a comfortable angle and thought.
There was no doubt now--but what the devil did it mean? A concealed
hoard hidden under the floor of a men's lodging house--that could only
be stolen money. Where had he stolen it from? Was he some kind of
gentleman burglar, such as plays and novels had been built around? It
was a plausible explanation. He looked the part so well; lots of
swagger and side, and the whole thing a trifle overdone. _What_ a
story! Crowder licked his lips over it, seeing it splashed across the
front page. At that moment the parcel Jim had given him slipped off his
knee to the ground.
He had forgotten it, and a little shamefaced--for your true detective
studies the details before formulating his theory--picked it up and
opened it. Inside a newspaper, its outer sheets mud-stained and torn,
were six small bags of white canvas, marked with a stenciled "W. F. &
Co." Crowder sat erect and brushed back his pendent lock of hair. He knew
what the stenciled letters stood for as well as he knew his own initials.
Then he spread out the paper. It was the _Sacramento Courier_ of August
25. From the top of a column the heading of his own San Francisco letter
faced him, the bottom part torn away. But that did not interest him. It
was the date that held his eye--August 25--that was last summer--August
25, Wells Fargo--he muttered it over, staring at the paper, his glance
glassily fixed in the intensity of his mental endeavor.
Round date and name his memory circled, drawing toward a focus, curving
closer and closer, coming nearer in decreasing spirals, finally falling
on it. With the pounce a broken sentence fell from his lips: "The tules!
Knapp and Garland!"
For the first moment of startled realization he was so surprised that he
could not see how Mayer was implicated. Then his mind leaped the gap from
the holdup in August to that picturesque narrative still fresh in the
public mind--Knapp's story of the robbed cache. The recollection came
with an impact that held him breathless; incidents, details, dates,
marshaling themselves in a corroborating sequence. When he saw it clear,
unrolled before his mental vision in a series of events, neatly fitting,
accurately dovetailed, he sat up looking stupidly about him like a person
emerging from sleep.
He had work to do at the office, but on the way there stopped at the
Express Company for a word with Robinson, one of the clerks, whom he
knew. He wanted information of any losses by theft or accident sustained
by the company since the middle of the preceding August. Robinson
promised to look up the subject and let him know before the closing hour.
At six Crowder was summoned to one of the telephone booths in the city
room. Robinson had inquired: during the time specified Wells Fargo and
Company had suffered but one loss. This was on the twenty-sixth of
August, when Knapp and Garland had held up the Rocky Bar stage and taken
thousand dollars in coin consigned to the Greenhide Mine at Antelope.
It was Crowder's habit to dine at Philip's Rotisserie at half past six.
They liked him at Philip's. Madame at her desk, fat and gray-haired, with
a bunch of pink roses at one elbow and a sleeping cat at the other,
always had time for a chat with "Monsieur Crowdare." Even Philip himself,
in his chef's cap and apron, would emerge from the kitchen and confer
with the favored guest. But tonight "Monsieur Crowdare" had no words for
anyone. He did no more than nod to Madame, and Gaston, the waiter,
afterward told her he had hardly looked at the menu--just said bring
anything, he didn't care what. Madame was quite worried over it, hoped
"_le cher garcon_" wasn't sick, and comforted herself by thinking he
might be in love.
Never before in his cheery existence had Crowder been so excited. Over
his unsavored dinner he studied the situation, planning his course. He
was resolved on one point--to keep the rights of discovery for the
_Despatch_. He could manage this, making it a condition when he laid his
knowledge before the Express Company people. That would be his next move,
and he ought to do it soon; Mayer's withdrawal of the money might
indicate an intention of disappearing. He would go to Wells Fargo and
tell them what he had found out, asking in return that the results of
their investigation should be given to him for first publication in the
_Despatch_.
It was a pity Mark wasn't there--he didn't like acting without Mark. But
matters were moving too quickly now to take any chances. There was no
telephone at the ranch, or he could have called up long-distance, and a
telegram, to be intelligible, would have to be too explicit. He would
write to Mark tomorrow, or perhaps the next day--after he had seen the
Express people.
To be secret as the grave was the charge Crowder laid upon himself, but
he longed to let loose some of the ferment that seethed within him, and
in his longing remembered the one person to whom he dared go--Pancha.
Hers were the legitimate ears to receive the racy tale. She was not only
to be trusted--a pal as reliable as a man--but it would cure her of her
infatuation, effectually crush out the passion that had devastated her.