THE GOLD NUGGET
The neighbor to the south of the St. Dunstan was the Gold Nugget Hotel,
a five story brick building and not at all pretentious as a hostelry. I
knew the place mildly, and my police training, even better than such
acquaintance as I had with this particular dump, told me what it was.
Through the windows we could see guests, Sunday papers littered about
them, half smoked cigars in their faces, and hats which had a general
tendency to tilt over the right eye. And here suddenly I realized the
difference between Miss Barbara Wallace, a scientist's daughter, and
some feminine sleuth we might have had with us.
"Take her back to the St. Dunstan, Worth," I suggested. Then, as I saw
they were both going to resist, "She can't go in here. I'll wait for you
if you like."
"Don't know why we shouldn't let Bobs in on the fun, same as you and me,
Jerry." That was the way Worth put it. I took a side glance at his
attitude in this affair--that he'd bought and was enjoying an eight
hundred thousand dollar frolic, offering to share it with a friend; and
saying no more, I wheeled and swung open the door for them. The man at
the desk looked at me, calling a quick,
"Hello, Jerry--what's up?"
"Hello, Kite. How'd you come here?"
The Kite as a hotelman was a new one on me. Last I knew of him, he was
in the business of making book at the Emeryville track; and I
supposed--if I ever thought of him--that he'd followed the ponies south
across the border. As I stepped close to the counter, he spoke low, his
look one of puzzled and somewhat anxious inquiry.
"Running straight, Jerry. You may ask the Chief. What can I do for you?"
Rather glad of the luck that gave me an old acquaintance to deal with, I
told him, described Clayte, Worth and Miss Wallace standing by
listening; then asked if Kite had seen him pass through the hotel going
out the previous day at some time around one o'clock, carrying a brown,
sole leather suitcase.
The readers of the Sunday papers who had been lured from their known
standards of good manners into the sending of sundry interested glances
in the direction of our sparkling girl, took the cue from the Kite's
scowl to bury themselves for good in the voluminous sheets they held,
each attending strictly to his own business, as is the etiquette of
places like the Gold Nugget.
"About one o'clock, you say?" Kite muttered, frowning, twisted his head
around and called down a back passage, "Louie--Oh, Louie!" and when an
overalled porter, rather messy, shuffled to the desk, put the low toned
query, "D'you see any stranger guy gripping a sole leather shirt-box
snoop by out yestiddy, after one, thereabouts?" And I added the
information,
"Medium height and weight, blue eyes, light brown hair, smooth face."
Louie looked at me dubiously.
"How big a guy?" he asked.
"Five feet seven or eight; weighs about hundred and forty."
"Blue eyes you say?"
"Light blue--gray blue."
"How was he tucked up?"
"Blue serge suit, black shoes, black derby. Neat, quiet dresser."
Louie's eyes wandered over the guests in the office questioningly. I
began to feel impatient. If there was any place in the city where my
description of Clayte would differentiate him, make him noticeable by
comparison, it was here. Neat, quiet dressers were not dotting this
lobby.
"Might be Tim Foley?" he appealed to the Kite, who nodded gravely and
chewed his short mustache. "Would he have a big scar on his left cheek?"
"He would not," I said shortly. "He wasn't a guest here, and you don't
know him. Get this straight now: a stranger, going through here, out;
about one o'clock; carried a suitcase."
"Bulls after him?" Louie asked, and I turned away from him wearily.
"Kite," I said, "let me up to your roof."
"Sure, Jerry." Released, the porter went on to gather up a pile of
discarded papers.
"Could he--the man I've described--come through here--through this
office and neither you nor Louie see him?" I asked. The Kite brought a
box of cigars from under the counter with,
"My treat, gentlemen. Naw, Jerry; sure not--not that kind of a guy.
Louie'd 'a' spotted him. Most observing cuss I ever seen."
Miss Wallace, taking all this in, seemed amused. As I turned to lead to
the elevator I found that again she wanted a question of her own
answered.
"Mr. Kite," she began and I grinned; Kite wasn't the Kite's surname or
any part of his name; "Who is the guest here with the upstairs room--on
the top floor--has had the same room right along--for five or six
years--but doesn't--"
"Go easy, ma'am, please!" Kite's little eyes were popping; he dragged
out a handkerchief and fumbled it around his forehead. "I've not been
here for any five or six years--no, nor half that time. Since I've been
here most of our custom is transient. Nobody don't keep no room five or
six years in the Gold Nugget."
"Back up," I smiled at his excitement. "To my certain knowledge Steve
Skeels has had a room here longer than that. Hasn't he been with you
ever since the place was rebuilt after the earthquake?"
"Steve?" the Kite repeated. "I forgot him. Yeah--he keeps a little room
up under the roof."
"Has he had it for as long as four years?" the young lady asked.
"Search me," the Kite shook his head.
But Louie the overalled, piloting us the first stage of our journey in a
racketty old elevator that he seemed to pull up by a cable, so slow it
was, grumbled an assent to the same question when it was put to him, and
confirmed my belief that Skeels came into the hotel as soon as it was
rebuilt, and had kept the same room ever since.
Miss Wallace seemed interested in this; but all the time we were making
the last lap, by an iron stairway, to that roof-house we had seen from
the top of the St. Dunstan; all the time Louie was unlocking the door
there to let us out, instructing us to be sure to relock it and bring
him the key, and to yell for him down the elevator shaft because the
bell was busted, the quiet smile of Miss Barbara Wallace disturbed me.
She followed where I led, but I had the irritating impression that she
looked on at my movements, and Worth's as well, with the indulgent eye
of a grown-up observing children at play.
On the roof of the Gold Nugget we picked up the possible trail easily;
Clayte hadn't needed to go through the building, or have a confederate
staked out in a room here, to make a downward getaway. For here the fire
escape came all the way up, curving over the coping to anchor into the
wall, and it was a good iron stairway, with landings at each floor, and
a handrail the entire length, its lower end in the alley between Powell
and Mason Streets. Looking at it I didn't doubt that it was used by the
guests of the Gold Nugget at least half as much as the easier but more
conspicuous front entrance. Therefore a man seen on it would be no more
likely to attract attention than he would in the elevator. I explained
this to the others, but Worth had attacked a rack of old truck piled in
the corner of the roof-house, and paid little attention to me, while
Miss Wallace nodded with her provoking smile and said,
"Once--yes; no doubt you are exactly right. I wasn't looking for a way
that a man might take once, under pressure of great necessity."
"Why not?" I countered. "If Clayte got away by this means
yesterday--that'll do me."
"It might," she nodded, "if you could see it as a fact, without seeing a
lot more. Such a man as Clayte was--a really wonderful man, you know--"
the dimples were deep in the pink of her cheeks as she flashed a
laughing look at me with this clawful--"a really wonderful man like
Clayte," she repeated, "wouldn't have trusted to a route he hadn't known
and proved for a long time."
"That's theory," I smiled. "I take my hat off to you, Miss Wallace, when
it comes to observing and deducing, but I'm afraid your theorizing is
weak."
"I never theorize," she reminded me. "All I deal with is facts."
She had perched herself on an overturned box, and was watching Worth
sort junk. I leaned against the roof-house, pushed Kite's donated cigar
unlighted into a corner of my mouth and stared at her.
"Miss Wallace," I said sharply, "what's this Steve Skeels stuff? What's
this reroofing stuff? What's the dope you think you have, and you think
I haven't? Tell us, and we'll not waste time. Tell us, and we'll get
ahead on this case. Worth, let that rubbish alone. Nothing there for us.
Come here and listen."
For all answer he straightened up, looked at us without a word--and went
to it again. I turned to the girl.
"Worth doesn't need to listen to me, Mr. Boyne," she said serenely. "He
already has full faith in me and my methods."
"Methods be--be blowed!" I exploded. "It's results that count, and
you've produced. I'm willing to hand it to you. All we know now, we got
from you. Beside you I'm a thick-headed blunderer. Let me in on how you
get things and I won't be so hard to convince."
"Indeed, you aren't a blunderer," she said warmly. "You do a lot better
than most people at observing." (High praise that, for a detective more
than twenty years in the business; but she meant to be complimentary.)
"I'm glad to tell you my processes. How much time do you want to give to
it?"
"Not a minute longer than will get what you know." And she began with a
rush.
"Those dents in the coping at the St. Dunstan, above Clayte's window--I
asked the clerk there how long since the building had been reroofed,
because there were nicks made by that hook and half filled with tar that
had been slushed up against the coping and into the lowest dents. You
see what that means?"
"That Clayte--or some accomplice of his--had been using the route more
than four years ago. Yes."
"And the other scars were made at varying times, showing me that coming
over here from there was quite a regular thing."
"At that rate he would have nicked the coping until it would have looked
like a huck towel," I objected.
"A huck towel," she gravely adopted my word. "But he was a man that did
everything he did several different ways. That was his habit--a sort of
disguise. That's why he was shadowy and hard to describe. Sometimes he
came up to the St. Dunstan roof just as we did; and once, a good while
ago, there were cleats on that wall there so he could climb down here
without the rope. They have been taken away some time, and the places
where they were are weathered over so you would hardly notice them."
"Right you are," I said feelingly. "I'd hardly notice them. If I could
notice things as you do--fame and fortune for me!" I thought the matter
over for a minute. "That lodger on the top floor, Steve Skeels," I
debated. "A poor bet. Yet--after all, he might have been a member of the
gang, though somehow I don't get the hunch--"
"What sort of looking person was this man Skeels?" she asked.
"Quiet fellow. Dressed like a church deacon. 'Silent Steve' they call
him. I'll send for him down stairs and let you give him the once-over if
you like."
"Oh, that's not the kind of man I'm looking for." She shook her head.
"My man would be more like those down there in the easy chairs--so he
wasn't noticed in the elevator or when he passed out through the
office."
"Wasn't it cute of him?" I grinned. "But you see we've just heard that
he didn't take the elevator and go through the office--Saturday anyhow,
which is the only time that really counts for us, the time when he
carried that suitcase with a fortune in it."
"But he did," she persisted. "He went that way. He walked out the front
door and carried away the suitcase--"
"_He didn't!_" Worth shouted, and began throwing things behind him like
a terrier in a wood-rat's burrow.
Derelict stuff of all sorts; empty boxes, pasteboard cartons, part of an
old trunk, he hurtled them into a heap, and dragged out a square
something in a gunny sack. As he jerked to clear it from the sacking, I
glanced at little Miss Wallace. She wasn't getting any pleasureable kick
out of the situation. Her eyes seemed to go wider open with a sort of
horror, her face paled as she drooped in on herself, sitting there on
the box. Then Worth held up his find in triumph, assuming a famous
attitude.
"The world is mine!" he cried.
"Maybe 'tis, maybe 'tisn't," I said as I ran across to look at the thing
close. Sure enough, he'd dug up a respectable brown, sole leather
suitcase with brass trimmings such as a bank clerk might have carried,
suspiciously much too good to have been thrown out here. Could it be
that the thieves had indeed met in one of the Gold Nugget's rooms or in
the roof-house up here, made their divvy, split the swag, and thus
clumsily disposed of the container? At the moment, Worth tore buckles
and latches free, yanked the thing open, reversed it in air--and out
fell a coiled rope that curved itself like a snake--a three-headed
snake; the triple grappling iron at its end standing up as though to
hiss.
We all stood staring; I was too stunned to be triumphant. What a pat
confirmation of Miss Wallace's deductions! I turned to congratulate her
and at the same instant Worth cried,
"What's the matter, Bobs?" for the girl was sitting, staring dejectedly,
her chin cupped in her palms, her lips quivering. Nonplussed, I stooped
over the suitcase and rope, coiling up the one, putting it in the
other--this first bit of tangible, palpable evidence we'd lighted on.
"Let's get out of this," I said quickly. "We've done all we can
here--and good and plenty it is, too."
Worth took the suitcase out of my hands and carried it, so that I had to
help Miss Wallace down the ladder. She still looked as though she'd lost
her last friend. I couldn't make her out. Never a word from her while we
were getting down, or while they waited and I shouted for Louie. It was
in the elevator, with the porter looking at everything on earth but this
suitcase we hadn't brought in and we were taking out, that she said,
hardly above her breath,
"Shall you ask at the desk if this ever belonged to any one in the
house?"
"Find out here--right now," and I turned to the man in overalls with,
"How about it?"
"Not that your answer will make any difference," Worth cut in joyously.
"Nobody need get the idea that they can take this suitcase away from
me--'cause they can't. It's mine. I paid eight hundred thousand dollars
for this box; and I've got a use for it." He chuckled. Louie regarded
him with uncomprehending toleration--queer doings were the order of the
day at the Gold Nugget--and allowed negligently.
"You'll get to keep it. It don't belong here." Then, as a coin changed
hands, "Thank _you_."
"But didn't it ever belong here?" our girl persisted forlornly, and when
Louie failed her, jingling Worth's tip in his calloused palm, she wanted
the women asked, and we had a frowsy chambermaid called who denied any
acquaintance with our sole leather discovery, insisting, upon definite
inquiry, that she had never seen it in Skeels' room, or any other room
of her domain. Little Miss Wallace sighed and dropped the subject.
As we stepped out of the elevator, I behind the others, Kite caught my
attention with a low whistle, and in response to a furtive, beckoning,
backward jerk of his head, I moved over to the desk. The reading
gentlemen in the easy chairs, most consciously unconscious of us, sent
blue smoke circles above their papers. Kite leaned far over to get his
mustache closer to my ear.
"You ast me about Steve," he whispered.
"Yeah," I agreed, and looked around for Barbara, to tell her here was
her chance to meet the gentleman she had so cleverly deduced. But she
and Worth were already getting through the door, he still clinging to
the suitcase, she trailing along with that expression of defeat. "I'm
sort of looking up Steve. And you don't want to tip him off--see?"
"Couldn't if I wanted to, Jerry," the Kite came down on his heels, but
continued to whisper hoarsely. "Steve's bolted."
"What?"
"Bolted," the Kite repeated. "Hopped the twig. Jumped the town."
"You mean he's not in his room?" I reached for a match in the metal
holder, scratched it, and lit my cigar.
"I mean he's jumped the town," Kite repeated. "You got me nervous asking
for him that way. While you was on the roof, I took a squint around and
found he was gone--with his hand baggage. That means he's gone outa
town."
"Not if the suitcase you squinted for was a brown sole leather--" I was
beginning, but the Kite cut in on me.
"I seen that one you had. That wasn't it. His was a brand new one, black
and shiny."
Suddenly I couldn't taste my cigar at all.
"Know what time to-day he left here?" I asked.
"It wasn't to-day. 'Twas yestiddy. About one o'clock."
As I plunged for the door I was conscious of his hoarse whisper
following me,
"What's Steve done, Jerry? What d'ye want him for?"
I catapulted across the sidewalk and into the machine.
"Get me to my office as fast as you can, Worth," I exclaimed. "Hit Bush
Street--and rush it."