MOLLY TELLS THE STORY
The Black Eagle Building is part-way downtown—not one of the skyscrapers
that crowd together on the tip of the Island’s tongue and not one of the
advance guard squeezing in among the mansions of the rich, darkening
their windows and spoiling their chimney draughts—poor, suffering dears!
As I came up the subway stairs I could see it bulking up above the
roofs, a long narrow shape, with its windows shining in the sun. It
stood on a corner presenting a great slab of wall to the side street and
its front to Broadway. There were two entrances, the main one—with an
eagle in a niche over the door—on Broadway, and a smaller one on the
side street. There is only one other very high building near there—the
Massasoit—facing on Fifth Avenue, its back soaring above the small
houses that look like a line of children’s toys.
My way was along the side street, chilled by the shadow of the building,
and as I passed the small entrance I stopped and looked up. The wall
rose like a rampart, story over story, the windows as similar and even
as cells in a honeycomb. Way up, the cornice cut the blue with its dark
line. It was from that height the suicide had jumped. I thought of him
there, standing on the window ledge, making ready to leap. Ugh! it was
too horrible! I shuddered and walked on, pressing my chin into my fur
and putting the picture out of my mind.
When I turned the corner into Broadway it was brighter. The sun was
shining on the outspread wings of the eagle in his niche and turning the
icicles that hung from the window ledges into golden fringes. Near the
entrance a man in a checked jumper and peaked cap was breaking away the
bits of ice that stuck to the sidewalk with a long-handled thing like a
spade. And all about were people, queer, mangy-looking men and some
women, standing staring at the pavement and then craning their necks and
squinting up through the sunlight at the top of the building.
I sized up the man in the jumper as a janitor, and for all he seemed so
busy, you could see he was really hanging round for an excuse to talk.
He’d pick at a tiny piece of ice and skate it over careful into the
gutter when in ordinary times he’d have let it lie there, a menace to
the public’s bones. Every now and then one of the people standing round
would ask him a question and he’d stop in his scraping and try to look
weary while he was just bursting to go all over it again.
"Where did he fall?" asked a chap in a reach-me-down overcoat, fringy at
the cuffs, "there?" and pointed into the middle of the street. The
janitor gave him a scornful glance, let go his hoe and spat on his hand.
He spoke with a brogue:
"No, not there. Nor there neither," he pointed some distance down
Broadway. "But there," and that time he struck on the edge of the curb
with his hoe.
A girl who was passing slowed up, her face all puckered with horror:
"Did he come down with a crash?"
The janitor drew himself up, raised his eyebrows and looked at her from
under his eyelids like she was a worm:
"Is fallin’ from the top of the buildin’ like steppin’ from a limousine
on to a feather bed?" He turned wearily to his hoe and spoke to it as if
it was the only thing in sight that had any sense. "Crash! What’ll they
be after askin’ next?" Then he suddenly got quite excited, raised his
voice and stuck out his chin at the girl. "Why, the glasses off his nose
was nearly to the next corner. Didn’t I meself find the mounts of them
six feet from his body? And not a bit of glass left. There’s where I got
them—in the mud," he pointed out into the street and everyone looked
fixedly at the place. "Crash—and the pore corpse no more than a sack of
bones."
An old man with a white beard who’d been standing on the curb examining
the street as if he expected to find a treasure there said:
"Struck on his head, eh?"
"He did," said the janitor in a loud voice. "An’ if you’d listen to me
you’d have known it without me tellin’ yer."
The girl, who was sort of peeved at the way he answered her, spoke up:
"You never told it at all! You only spoke about the glasses."
The janitor gave her a look sort of enduring and patient as if, she
being a woman, he’d got to treat her gentle even if she _was_ a fool.
"Say, young lady," says he, "I’m not goin’ to bandy words with you. Have
it any way you like. _I_ was here, _I_ seen it, I seen the corpse lyin’
all bunched up, I seen the crowd, I seen the amberlanch, and I seen Mr.
Harland’s clerk come down and identify the body—but maybe I don’t know.
Take it or leave it—any way you choose."
The people snickered and looked at the girl, who got red and walked off
muttering. The janitor went back to picking at a piece of ice as big as
a half dollar, watching out for the next one to come along.
I hadn’t phoned to Iola this time and it being an unusual occasion I
decided to go up. There were men in the entrance hall talking together
in groups and from every group I could hear the name of Harland coming
in low tones. In the elevator when the other passengers had got out, the
boy looked at me and said:
"Tough what happened here last night, ain’t it?"
I agreed with him and as we shot up with the floors flashing between the
iron grills, _he_ had _his_ little say about it. One of the things that
seemed to trouble him most was that he hadn’t been there, as the express
elevator which he ran was broken early in the afternoon and he’d gone
home before the event.
The corridor of the seventeenth floor was a bare, clean place, all
shining stone, not a bit of wood about it but the doors. At one end was
a window looking out on the Broadway side and near it the stairs went
down, concrete with a metal balustrade. I’d asked for Miss Whitehall’s
office and as I got out of the car the boy had said, "First door to your
left, Azalea Woods Estates." There were two doors on each side, the
upper halves ground glass with gold lettering. Those to the right had
"The Hudson Electrical Company" on them and those to the left "Azalea
Woods Estates" with under that "Anthony Ford, Manager."
As I walked toward the first of these I could see out of the window the
great back of the Massasoit Building, tan color against the bright blue
of the sky. Pausing before I rang the bell, I leaned against the window
ledge and spied down. The street looked like a small, narrow gully,
dotted with tiny black figures, and the houses that fronted on it,
extending back to the Massasoit, no bigger than match boxes.
I pressed the bell and as I waited turned and looked down the corridor,
stretching away in its shiny scoured cleanness between the shut doors of
offices. Just beyond the elevator shafts there was a branch hall and
along the polished floor I could see the white, glassy reflection of
another window. That was on the side street, one of those I had looked
up at, and as I was thinking that, the door opened slowly and Iola
peered out, with her eyes big and scared and a sandwich in her hand.
"Good gracious, Molly!" she cried. "I’m so glad to see you. Come in."
I hesitated, almost whispering:
"Will Miss Whitehall mind?"
"She’s not here. I had a phone this morning to say she was sick and
wouldn’t be down, and Mr. Ford’s gone out to lunch." She took me by the
hand and pulled me in, shutting the door. "Jerusalem, but it’s good to
see you. I’m that lonesome sitting here I’m ready to cry."
She didn’t look very chipper. Usually she’s a pretty girl, the slim,
baby-eyed, delicate kind, with a dash of powder on the nose and a touch
of red on the lips to help out. But today she looked sort of peaked and
shriveled up, the way those frail little wisps of girls do at the least
jar.
"Isn’t it awful?" she said as soon as she’d got me in—"Just the floor
above us!"
I didn’t want her to talk about it, but she was like the janitor—only a
gag would stop her. So I let her run on while I looked round and took in
the place.
It was a fine, large room, two windows in the front and two more on the
sides. The furniture was massive and rich-looking and the rugs on the
floor as soft to your foot as the turf in the Park. On the walls were
blue and white maps, criss-crossed with lines, and pictures of houses,
in different styles. But the thing that got me was a little model of a
cottage on a table by the window. It was the cutest thing you ever
saw—all complete even to the blinds in the windows and the awning over
the piazza. I was looking at it when Iola, having got away with the
sandwich, said:
"Come on in to Mr. Ford’s office while I finish my lunch. I got to get
through with it before he comes back."
I followed her into the next room, nearly as large as the one we’d been
in, with a wide window and in the center a big roll-top desk. On the
edge of this stood a pasteboard box, with some crumpled wax paper in it
and an orange. Iola sat down in the swivel chair and picking up the
orange began to peel it.
"I hardly ever do this," she explained, "but I thought Miss Whitehall
wouldn’t mind today as I felt so mean I couldn’t face going out to
lunch. And then it was all right as she won’t be down and I’ll have it
all cleared off before Mr. Ford comes back."
"Would he be mad?"
You ought to have seen the look she gave me.
"Mad—Tony Ford? It’s easy seen you don’t know him. She wouldn’t say
anything either. She’s awful considerate. But she’s so sort of grand and
dignified you don’t like to ask favors off her."
"Was she here when it happened last night?"
"I don’t know, but I guess not. She generally leaves a little before
six. Thanks be to goodness, she told me I could go home early yesterday.
I was out of the building by half-past five." She broke the orange apart
and held out a piece. "Have a quarter?" I shook my head and she went on.
"We’re all out of here soon after six. Tony Ford generally stays last
and shuts up. Did you see all the papers this morning?"
"Most of them. Why?"
"I was wondering if any of them knew that Mr. Harland and Mr. Barker
were both in here yesterday afternoon."
"It wasn’t in any of the papers I saw."
"Well, they were—the two of them. And I didn’t know but what the
reporters, nosing round for anything the way they do, mightn’t have
heard it. Not that there was anything out of the ordinary about it. She
knew them both. Mr. Harland’s been in here a few times and Mr. Barker
often."
"Why did _he_ come?" I said, surprised, for Iola had never told me
they’d the magnate for a customer.
"Business," she looked at me over the orange that she was sucking, her
eyes sort of intent and curious. "Didn’t I tell you that? He was going
to buy a piece of land in the Azalea Woods Estates and build a house for
his niece."
"Seems to me," I said, "that the press’ll be interested to know about
those two visits."
"Well, if any reporters come snooping round here Tony Ford told me to
refer them to him or Miss Whitehall, and that’s what I’m going to do."
"What time was Mr. Harland here?"
"A little after four. He and Miss Whitehall went into the private office
and had a talk. And I’ll bet a new hat that he hadn’t no more idea of
suicide then than you have now, sitting there before me. When he came
out he was all smiles, just as natural and happy as if he was going home
to a chicken dinner and a show afterward."
"All the papers think it was what Mr. Barker said that drove him to it."
"And they’re right for a change—not that I’m saying anything against the
press with your husband in it. But it does make more mistakes than any
printed matter _I_ ever read, except the cooking receipts on the outside
of patent foods. It was Barker that put the crimp in _him_."
"Then Barker came in afterward?"
"Yes, just before I left. And he and she went into the private office."
I turned in my chair and looked through the open doorway into the third
room of the suite.
"Is that the private office?" I asked.
"Yes," says Iola with a giggle, "that’s its society name, but Mr. Ford
calls it the Surgery."
Before I could ask her why Mr. Ford called it that, the bell rang and
she jumped up, squashing the orange peel and bits of paper back in the
box.
"Here, you go and answer it," I said, "I’ll hide this." She went into
the front office and as I pushed the box out of sight on a shelf I could
hear her talking to a man at the door. The conversation made me stand
still listening.
The man’s voice asked for Miss Whitehall, Iola answering that she wasn’t
there.
"Where is she?" said the man, gruff and abrupt it seemed to me.
"In her own home—she hasn’t come down today at all."
"Is she coming later?"
"No, she’s sick in bed."
There was a slight pause and then he said:
"Well, I got to see her. I’ve notes here that are overdue and the
endorsee’s dead."
"Endorsee?" came Iola’s little pipe, full of troubled surprise, "who’s
he?"
"Hollings Harland who killed himself last night. What’s her address?"
I could hear Iola giving it and the man muttering it over. Then there
was a gruff "Good morning" and the door snapped shut.
Iola came back, her eyes big, her expression wondering.
"What do you suppose that means?" she said.
I didn’t know exactly myself but—notes, endorsee dead!—it had a bad
sound. As Iola reached down her lunch box and tied it up, talking
uneasily about the man and what he’d wanted, I remembered the gossip in
New Jersey when Miss Whitehall started her land scheme. There’d been
rumors then that maybe she was backed, and if Hollings Harland had been
behind it—My goodness! you couldn’t tell what might happen. But I wasn’t
going to say anything discouraging to Iola, so to change the subject I
moved to the door of the private office and looked in.
"Why does Mr. Ford call this the surgery?"
At the mention of the managing clerk Iola brightened up and said with a
smirk:
"Because it’s where Miss Whitehall chloroforms her clients with her
beauty and performs the operation of separating them from their money.
He’s always saying cute things like that."
We stood in the doorway and looked in. It was a smaller room than the
others, but furnished just as richly, with a mahogany center table, big
leather-covered armchairs and photographs of foreign views on the walls.
In one corner was an elegant, gold-embossed screen, that, when I spied
behind it, I saw hid a washstand. It was the last room of the suite and
had only one door that led into the office we’d been sitting in. In the
outside wall was a window from which you could see way over the city—a
wonderful view.
I walked to it and looked out. Over the roofs and chimneys I caught a
glimpse of the Hudson, a silvery gleam, and the Hoboken hills beyond.
Pressing my forehead against the glass I glimpsed down the sheer drop of
the walls to the roof of a church—a flat, black oblong with a squatty
dome at one end—squeezed as close as it could get against the lower
stories. Back of that were old houses, dwellings that would soon be
swept away, the yards behind them narrow strips with the separating
fences as small as lines made by a pencil.
I was so interested that for a moment I forgot Iola, but she brought me
back with a jerk.
"It was in the room above this that Mr. Harland was sitting with Mr.
Barker, before it happened."
"You don’t say," I answered. "Is it like this?"
"Exactly the same. I’ve seen it—one day when the boss was away and I
went up with Della Franks. They were in there just as we are in here and
then he went out this way—"
The door had been partly pushed to and she started to illustrate how he
had left the room, brushing round its edge. Something caught her, there
was a sound of ripping and she stopped, clapping her hand on her back:
"There go my pleats—Ding it!" she craned round over her shoulder trying
to see the back of her skirt. "What’s got me? Oh, the key. Well what do
you make of that—caught me like a hook."
She drew her dress off the key, which fell out of the lock on to the
floor.
"It’s only ripped," I said consolingly. "I can pin it for you."
"Well, there’s always something to be thankful for," she said, as I
pinned her up. "But it’s an unlucky day, I can feel _that_. That key’s
never before been on the inside of the door." She bent and picked it up.
"I’d like to know what smart Aleck changed it."
"Probably the scrubwoman."
"I guess so," she grumbled, "put it on the wrong side where it waited
patiently and then got its revenge on me. Such is life among the lowly."
That night Babbitts was late for dinner. I expected it but Isabella, who
says she never lived out except in families where the husband comes home
at six like a Christian, was getting restive about the chops, when he
finally showed up, tired as a dog.
"My Lord!" he said, as I helped him off with his coat. "What a day!"
"Because of the suicide?"
"Outcome of the suicide and all the rest of it. The wildest panic on the
Street. The Copper Pool’s gone smash. Let’s have something to eat. I’ve
had no lunch and I’m famished."
When we were at table and the edge off his hunger he told me more:
"It began this morning, and this afternoon when there was still no trace
of Barker—Gee whizz! it was an avalanche."
"You mean he’s _gone_? Disappeared?"
"That’s the way it looks. They had their suspicions when they couldn’t
find him last night. And today—nobody knows a thing about him at his
house or his office, can’t account for it, don’t understand. Then we
turned up something that looked like a clincher. One of his motors, a
limousine, and his chauffeur, fellow called Heney, have disappeared
too."
"What do they say about that at the house?"
"Same thing—know nothing. Nobody was in the garage from six to half-past
eight. When the other men who sleep there came back Heney and the
limousine were gone."
"Did anyone see Barker at the Black Eagle Building?"
"No—that’s the strongest proof that he’s decamped. You’d suppose with
such a scene as that going on he’d have shown up. But not a soul’s been
found who saw him there. If he wanted to slip out quietly he could
easily have done it. Jerome and the Franks girl say they were so
paralyzed they never gave him another thought and he could have passed
behind them, as they stood in the corridor, and gone down by the side
stairs. There’s another flight round the corner on the branch hall. The
street on that side was deserted—the boys say every human being in the
neighborhood was round on the Broadway front."
"But, but," I stammered, for I couldn’t understand it all, "what’s he
done? What’s the reason for his going?"
"Reason!" said Babbitts with a snort. "Believe me, there’s reason
enough. Somebody’s welched on the Copper Pool and they think it’s he and
that he’s disappeared with twenty million."
"Twenty million! How could he?"
"By selling out on the rest of the crowd. They think he’s been selling
copper to the Pool itself of which he was the head."
"Was that what he and Mr. Harland were supposed to be quarreling about
yesterday afternoon?"
"Yes. The idea now is that Harland, who was one of the Copper crowd,
suspected and accused him, that there was a fierce interview in the
course of which the lawyer realized he was beaten and ruined."
"Good gracious!" I said. "What are they going to do with him?"
"If he doesn’t show up, go after him. A group of ruined financiers
doesn’t kneel down and pray for their money to come back. And they’ve
got a man looking after their interests who’s a lightning striker. A
friend of yours. Guess who?"
"Wilbur Whitney!" I crowed.
"The same," said Babbitts.
"Then," I cried, "they’ll have him and the twenty millions served up on
a salver before the week’s out."
If you don’t know the story of the Hesketh Mystery you don’t know who
Wilbur Whitney is, so I’ll tell you here. He’s one of the biggest
lawyers in New York and one of the biggest men anywhere. You’d as soon
suspect that an insignificant atom like me would know a man like him as
that the palace ashman would know the Czar of Russia, but I do, well—I
guess I’m not stretching things if I say we’re friends. The Babbitts and
the Whitneys don’t exchange calls, but they think a lot of each other
just the same. And it’s my doing, little Molly’s—yes, sir, the
ex-telephone girl. In the Hesketh case I did a job for Mr. Whitney that
brought us together, and ever since it’s been kindnesses from the big
house off Fifth Avenue, to the little flat on Ninety-fifth Street. He
doesn’t forget—the real eighteen-carat people never do—and he’ll send me
tickets for the opera one night and tip off Soapy to a bit of news so
he’ll get a scoop the week after. Oh, he’s just _grand_!
And right in his office—Mr. Whitney’s assistant this year—is one of our
realest, truest, dearest pals, Jack Reddy. If this is your first
acquaintance with me you don’t know much about him and I’ll have to give
you a little sketch of him for he’s got a lot to do with this story.
To look at he’s just all right, brown with light-colored hair and gray
eyes, over six feet and not an ounce of fat on him. It’s not because
he’s my friend that I’m saying all this, everybody agrees on it. He’s
thirty years old now and not married. That’s because of a tragedy in his
life: the girl he loved was killed nearly three years ago. It’s a long
story—I can’t stop to tell it to you—but it broke him up something
dreadful, though I and Babbitts and all of us know it was better that he
shouldn’t have married her. Ever since I’ve been hoping he’d meet up
with his real affinity, someone who’d be the right woman for him. But he
hasn’t so far. Babbitts says the girl isn’t born I’d think good
enough—but I don’t know. I guess in the ninety millions of people we’ve
got scattered round this vast republic there’s a lady that’ll fill the
bill.
Once I had a crush on him—Babbitts teases me about it now—but it all
faded away when Himself came along with his curly blond hair and his
dear, rosy, innocent face. But Jack Reddy’s still a sort of hero to me.
He showed up so fine in those old dark days and he’s showed up fine ever
since—don’t drop off his pedestal and have to be boosted back. I’ve put
several people on pedestals and seen them so unsteady it made me
nervous, but he’s riveted on.
He’s got a country place out in New Jersey—Firehill—where he used to
live. But since he’s been with Mr. Whitney he stays in town, only going
out there in summer. His apartment’s down near Gramercy Park—an elegant
place—where his two old servants, David and Joanna Gilsey, keep house
for him and treat him like he was their only son. Babbitts and I go
there often, and Gee, we do have some eats!
"Well," I said, wagging my head proud and confident at Babbitts, "if
Wilbur Whitney and Jack Reddy are out to find that Barker man, they’ll
do it if he burrows through to China."