SEVEN LOST DAYS
Instead of driving up to San Francisco with Worth and Barbara, the next
morning, I was headed south at a high rate of speed. Sitting in the
Pullman smoker, going over what had happened and what I had made of it,
vainly studying a small, blue blotter with some senseless hieroglyphics
reversed upon it, I wasn't at all sure that this move of mine was
anywhere near the right one. But the thing hit me so quick, had to be
decided in a flash, and my snap judgment never was good.
We were all at breakfast there at the Gilbert house when I got the phone
that those boobs down in Los Angeles had let Skeels slip through their
fingers. I could see no way but to go myself. When I went out to
retrieve my hand bag from the roadster, there was Barbara already in the
seat. I delayed a minute to explain to her. She was full of eager
interest; it seemed to her that Skeels ducking the detectives that way
was more than clever--almost worthy of a wonder man.
"Slickest thing I ever knew," I grumbled. "You can gamble I wouldn't be
going south after him if Skeels hadn't shown himself too many for the
Hicks agency--and they're one of the best in the business."
Worth came out and settled himself at the wheel; he and Edwards
exchanged a last, low-toned word; and they were ready to be off.
Barbara leaned towards me with shining eyes.
"Perhaps," she said, "Skeels might even be Clayte!" then the roadster
whisked her away.
The bulk of Worth Gilbert's fortune was practically tied up in this
affair. Even as the Pullman carried me Los Angeles-ward, that boy was
getting in to San Francisco, going to the bank, and turning over to them
capital that represented not only his wealth but his honor. If we failed
to trace this money, he was a discredited fool. Yes, I had done right to
come.
So far on that side. Then apprehension began to mutter within me about
the situation at Santa Ysobel. How long would that coroner's verdict of
suicide satisfy the public? How soon would some seepage of fact indicate
that the death was murder and set the whole town to looking for a
murderer? The minute this happened, the real criminal would take alarm
and destroy evidence I might have gathered if I had stayed by the case.
I promised myself that it should be simply "there and back" with me in
the Skeels matter.
This is the way it looked to me in the Pullman; then--once in Los
Angeles--I allowed myself to get hot telling the Hicks people what I
thought of them, explaining how I'd have run the chase, and wound up by
giving seven days to it--seven precious, irreclaimable days--while
everything lay wide open there in the north, and I couldn't get any
satisfactory word from the office, and none of any sort from Worth.
That Skeels trail kept me to it, with my tongue hanging out; again and
again I seemed to have him; every time I missed him by an hour or so;
and that convinced me that he was straining every nerve, and that he
probably had the whole of the loot still with him. At last, I seemed to
have him in a perfect trap--Ensenada, on the Peninsula. You get into and
out of Ensenada by steamboat only, except back to the mines on foot or
donkey. The two days I had to wait over in San Diego for the boat which
would follow the one Skeels had taken were a mighty uneasy time. If I'd
imagined for a moment that he wasn't on the dodge--that he was there
openly--I'd have wired the Mexican authorities, and had him waiting for
me in jail. But the Mexican officials are a rotten lot; it seemed to me
best to go it alone.
What I found in Ensenada was that Skeels had been there, quite publicly,
under his own name; he had come alone and departed with a companion,
Hinch Dial, a drill operator from the mines, a transient, a pick-up
laborer, seemingly as close-mouthed as Silent Steve himself. Steve had
come on one steamer and the two had left on the next. That north-bound
boat we passed two hours off Point Loma was carrying Skeels and his pal
back to San Diego!
Again two days lost, waiting for the steamer back. And when I got to San
Diego, the trail was stone cold. I had sent Worth almost daily reports
in care of my office, not wanting them to lie around at Santa Ysobel
during the confusion of the funeral and all; but even before I went to
Ensenada, telegrams from Roberts had informed me that these reports
could not be delivered as Worth had not been at the office, and
telephone messages to Santa Ysobel and the Palace Hotel had failed to
locate him. When I believed I had Skeels firmly clasped in the jaws of
the Ensenada trap, I had sent a complete report of my doings up to that
time, and the optimistic outlook then, to Barbara with instructions for
her to get it to Worth. She would know where he was.
But she hadn't. Her reply, waiting at San Diego for me, a delicious
little note that somehow lightened the bitterness of my disappointment
over Skeels, told me that she had seen Worth at the funeral, almost a
week ago now, but only for a minute; that she had supposed he had joined
me on the Skeels chase; and she would now try to hunt him up and deliver
my report. Roberts, too, had a line in one of his reports that Worth had
called for the suitcase on the Monday I left and had neither returned it
nor been in the office since.
I worried not at all over Worth; if he wanted to play hide and seek with
Dykeman's spotters, he was thoroughly capable of looking after himself;
but in the Skeels matter, I did then what I should have done in the
first place, of course; turned the work over to subordinates and headed
straight home.
I reached San Francisco pretty well used up. It was nearly the middle of
the forenoon next day when I got to my desk and found it piled high with
mail that had accumulated in my absence. Roberts had looked after what
he could, and sorted the rest, ready for me. Everything concerning the
Clayte case was in one basket. As Roberts handed it to me, he explained.
"The Van Ness bank attorney--Cummings--has been keeping tabs on you
tight, Mr. Boyne. Here every day--sometimes twice. Wants to know the
minute you're back."
I grunted and dived into the letters. Nothing interesting. Responses
acknowledging receipts of my early inquiries. Roberts lingered.
"Well?" I shot at him. He moved uneasily as he asked.
"Did you wire him when you were coming back?"
"Cummings? No. Why?"
"He telephoned in just before you came saying that he'd be right up to
see you. I told him you hadn't returned. He laughed and hung up."
"All right, Roberts. Send him in when he comes." I dismissed the
secretary. Cummings was keeping tabs on me with a vengeance. What was on
his chest?
I didn't need to wait long to find out. In another minute he was at my
door greeting me in an off-hand, "Hello, Boyne. Ready to jump into your
car and go around with me to see Dykeman?"
"Just got down to the office, Cummings," I watched him, trying to figure
out where I stood and where he stood after this week's absence. "Haven't
seen Worth Gilbert yet. What's the rush with Dykeman?"
"You'll find out when you get there."
Not very friendly, seeing that Cummings had been Worth's lawyer in the
matter, and aside from that queer scene in my office, there'd been no
actual break. He stood now, not really grinning at me, but with an
amused look under that bristly mustache, and suggested,
"So you haven't seen young Gilbert?"
The tone was so significant that I gave him a quick glance of inquiry as
I said,
"No. What about him?"
"Put on your coat and come along. We can talk on the way," he replied,
and I went with him to the street, dug little Pete out of the bootblack
stand and herded him into the roadster to drive us. Cummings gave the
order for North Beach, and as we squirmed through and around congested
down-town traffic, headed for the Stockton Street tunnel, I waited for
the lawyer to begin. When it came, it was another startling question,
"Didn't find Skeels in the south, eh?"
I hadn't thought they'd carry their watching and trailing of us so far.
I answered that question with another,
"When did you see or hear from Worth Gilbert last?"
"Not since the funeral," he said promptly, "the day before the
funeral--a week ago to-day, to be exact. I ran down to make my inventory
then; as administrator, you know."
He looked at me so significantly that I echoed,
"Yes, I know."
"Do you? How much?" His voice was hard and dry; it didn't sound good to
me.
"See here," I put it to him, as my clever little driver dodged in and
out through the narrow lanes between Pagoda-like shops of Chinatown,
avoiding the steep hill streets by a diagonal through the Italian
quarter on Columbus Avenue. "If there's anything you think I ought to be
told, put me wise. I suppose you raised that money for Worth--the
seventy-two thousand that was lacking, I mean?"
"I did not."
I turned the situation over and over in my mind, and at last asked
cautiously,
"Worth did get the money to make up the full amount, didn't he?"
We had swerved again to the north, where the Powell car-line curves into
Bay Street, and were headed direct for the wharves. Cummings watched me
out of the corners of his eyes, a look that bored in most unpleasantly,
while he cross-examined,
"So you don't know where he raised that money--or how--or when? You
don't even know that he did raise it? Is that the idea?"
I gave him look for look, but no answer. An indecisive slackening of the
machine, and Little Pete asked,
"Where now, sir?"
"You can see it," Cummings pointed. "The tall building. Hit the
Embarcadero, then turn to your right; a block to Mason Street."
So close to the dock that ships lay broadside before its doors, moored
to the piles by steel cables, the Western Cereal Company plant scattered
its mills and warehouses over two city blocks. Freight trains ran
through arcades into the buildings to fetch and carry its products;
great trucks, some gas driven, some with four- and six-horse teams,
loaded sacks or containers that shot in endless streams through well
worn chutes, or emptied raw materials that would shortly be breakfast
foods into iron conveyors that sucked it up and whined for more. It was
a place of aggressive activity among placid surroundings, this plant of
Dykeman's, for its setting was the Italian fisherman's home district;
little frame shacks, before which they mended their long, brown nets, or
stretched them on the sidewalks to dry; Fisherman's Wharf and its lateen
rigged, gayly painted hulls, was under the factory windows.
We pulled up before the door of a building separate from any of the
mills or warehouses, and I followed Cummings through a corridor, past
many doors of private offices, to the large general office. Here a young
man at a desk against the rail lent Cummings respectful attention; the
lawyer asked something in a low tone, and was answered,
"Yes, sir. Waiting for you. Go right through."
Down the long room with its rattling typewriters, its buzz of clerks and
salesmen we went. Cummings was a little ahead of me, when he checked a
moment to bow to some one over at a desk. I followed his glance. The
girl he had spoken to turned her back almost instantly after she had
returned his greeting; but I couldn't be mistaken. There might be more
than one figure with that slim, half girlish grace about it, and other
hair as lustrously blue-black, but none could be wound around a small
head quite so shapely, carried with so blossomlike a toss. It was
Barbara Wallace.
So this was where her job was. Strange I had not known this fact of
grave importance. I went on past her unconscious back, left her working
at her loose-leaf ledgers, beside her adding machine, my mind a whirl of
ugly conjecture. Dykeman's employee; that would instantly and very
painfully clear up a score of perplexing questions. Dykeman would need
no detectives on my trail to tell him of my lack of success in the
Skeels chase. Lord! I had sent her as concise a report as I could
make--to her, for Worth. I walked on stupidly. In front of the last door
in the big room, Cummings halted and spoke low.
"Boyne, you and I are both in the employ of the Van Ness Avenue Bank.
We're somewhat similarly situated in another quarter; I'm representing
the Gilbert estate, and you've been retained by Worth Gilbert."
I grunted some sort of assent.
"I brought you here to listen to what the bank crowd has to say, but
when they get done, I've something to tell you about that young employer
of yours. You listen to them--then you listen to me--and you'll know
where you stand."
"I'll talk with you as soon as I get through here, Cummings."
"Be sure you do that little thing," significantly, and we went in.