THE EMPTY HOUSE
"Don't spare them now. Get the truth at all costs."
With the last instructions of his chief ringing in his ears, the
following morning Guy Morrow set out for Brooklyn, to interview his
erstwhile friends, the Pennolds, in his true colors.
Mame Pennold, who was cleaning the dingy front room, heard the click
of the gate, and peered with habitual caution from behind the frayed
curtains of the window. The unexpected reappearance of their young
banking acquaintance sent her scurrying as fast as her palsied legs
could carry her back to the kitchen, where her husband sat luxuriously
smoking and toasting his feet at the roaring little stove.
"Wally, who d'you think's comin' up the walk? That young feller,
Alfred Hicks, who skipped from the Brooklyn and Queens Bank!"
"Good Lord!" Walter Pennold took his pipe from his lips and stared at
her. "What d'you s'pose brought him back? Think he's broke, an' wants
a touch?"
"No-o," his wife responded, somewhat doubtfully. "He looked
prosperous, all right, by the flash I got at him, an' he's walkin'
real brisk and businesslike. Maybe he's back on the job."
"'Tain't likely, not after the way he left his boarding place, if that
Lindsay woman didn't lie." Pennold laid aside his pipe and frowned
thoughtfully, as steps echoed from the rickety porch and a knock
sounded upon the door. "He's a lightweight, every way you take
him--he'd never stick anywhere."
"Maybe he's come to try an' get you into somethin'," Mame suggested.
"Don't you go takin' up with a bad penny at your time o' life, Wally.
He might know somethin' an' try blackmail, if he's real up against
it."
"Well, go ahead an' open the door!" ordered Walter impatiently. "We're
straight with the bank. If he's workin' there again we ain't got
nothin' to worry about, an' if he ain't, we got nothin' against him.
Let him in."
With obvious reluctance, Mame shuffled through the hall and obeyed.
"Hello, Mrs. Pennold!" Guy greeted her heartily, but without offering
his hand. He brushed past her half-defensive figure with scant
ceremony, and entered the kitchen. "Hello, Pennold. Thought I might
find you home this cold morning. How goes it?"
"Same as usual." Pennold rose slowly and looked at his visitor with
swiftly narrowed eyes. There was a new note in the young man's voice
which the other vaguely recognized; it was as if a lantern had
suddenly flashed into his face from the darkness, or an authoritative
hand been laid upon his shoulder. He motioned mechanically toward a
chair on the other side of the stove, and added slowly: "S'prised to
see you, Al. Didn't expect you'd be around here again after your
get-away. Workin' once more?"
"Oh, I'm right on the job!" responded Guy briskly. He drew the chair
close to the square deal table, so close that he could have reached
out, had he pleased, and touched his host's sleeve. Pennold seated
himself again in his old position, significantly half-turned, so that
when he glanced slyly at his visitor it was over his shoulder, in the
furtive fashion of one on guard.
"Ain't back with the Brooklyn and Queens, are you?" he asked.
"No. It got too slow for me there. I found something bigger to do."
Mame Pennold, who had been hovering in the background, came forward
now and faced him across the table, her shrewd eyes fastened upon
him.
"Must have easy hours, when you can get off in the morning like this?"
she observed. "Didn't forget your old friends, did you?"
"No, of course not. I hadn't anything more important to do this
morning, so I thought I'd drop in and see you both."
His hand traveled to his breast pocket, and at the gesture, Mame's
gaunt body stiffened suddenly.
"Didn't come to inquire about our health, did you?" she shot at him,
acrimoniously.
"I came to see you about another matter--"
"Not on the trail of old Jimmy Brunell still, on that business of the
bonds found at the bank?" Walter's voice was suddenly shrill with
simulated mirth. "Nothin' in that for you, Al; not a nickel, if that's
what you're here for."
"I'm not on Brunell's trail. I've found him," Morrow returned quietly;
and in the tense pause which ensued he added dryly: "You led me to
him."
"So that's what it was, a plant!" Walter started from his chair, but
Mame laid a trembling, sinewy hand upon his shoulder and forced him
back.
"What d'you mean, young man?" she demanded. "What do we know about old
Brunell?"
"You wrote him a letter--you knew where to find him."
"I only wish we did!" she ejaculated. "We didn't write him! You must
be crazy!"
"'Big money coming to you from old score left unpaid. What is my share
for collecting for you?'" quoted Morrow, adding: "I have a friend who
is very much interested in ciphers, and he wanted me to ask you about
the one you use, Pennold. His name is Blaine. Ever hear of him?"
"Blaine!" Mame's voice shrank to a mere whisper, and her sallow face
whitened.
"Blaine! Henry Blaine? The guy they call the Master Mind?" Pennold's
shaking voice rose to a breaking cry, but again his wife silenced
him.
"Suppose we did write such a letter--an' we ain't admittin' we did,
for a minute--what's Blaine got on us?" demanded Mame, coolly. "It's
no crime, as I ever heard, to write a letter any way you want to. Who
are you, young man? You're no bank clerk!"
"He's a 'tec, of course! Shut up your fool mouth, Mame. An' as for
you, d--n you, get out of this house, an' get out quick, or I'll call
the police myself! We've been leadin' straight, clean, respectable
lives for years, Mame an' me, an' nobody's got nothin' on us! I ain't
goin' to have no private 'tecs snoopin' in an' tryin' to put me
through the third degree. Beat it, now!"
He rose blusteringly and advanced toward Morrow with upraised fist,
but the other, with the table between them, drew from his pocket a
folded paper.
"Not so fast, Pennold. I have a warrant here for your arrest!"
"Don't you believe him, Wally!" shrilled Mame. "It's a fake! Don't you
talk to him! Put him out."
"The warrant was issued this morning, and I am empowered to arrest
you. You can look at it for yourselves; you've both seen them before."
He opened the paper and spread it out for them to read. "Walter
Pennold, alias William Perry, alias Wally the Scribbler, number 09203
in the Rogues' Gallery. First term at Joliet, for forgery; second at
Sing Sing for shoving the queer. This warrant only holds you as a
suspicious character, Pennold, but we can dig up plenty of other
things, if it's necessary; there's a forger named Griswold in the
Tombs now awaiting trial, who will snitch about that Rochester check,
for one thing."
"Don't let him bluff you, Wally." Mame faced Morrow from her husband's
side. "They can't rake up a thing that ain't outlawed by time. You've
lived clean more'n seven years, an' you're free from the bulls. They
can't hold you."
"I haven't any warrant yet for you, Mrs. Pennold," observed Morrow,
imperturbably. "I admit that it's more than seven years since every
department-store detective was on the look-out for Left-handed Mame. I
believe you specialized in furs and laces, didn't you?"
"What's it to you? You can't lay a finger on me now!" the woman
stormed, defiantly.
"Not for shop-lifting or forgery--but how about receiving stolen
goods?"
The shot found an instant target. Walter Pennold slumped and crumpled
down into his chair, his arms outspread upon the table. He laid his
head upon them, and a single dry, shuddering sob tore its way from his
throat. The woman backed slowly away, and for the first time a shadow
as of approaching terror crossed her hard, challenging face.
"Stolen goods!" she repeated. "What are you tryin' to put over? Do
you think we're so green at the game that you can plant the goods here
an' get us put away on the strength of a past record? You're a--"
"Nothing like it!" Morrow leaned forward impressively. "We don't have
to do any planting, Mame. It's a good deal less than seven years since
the Mortimer Chase's silver plate lay in your cellar."
"Silver plate--in our cellar!" echoed Mame in genuine amazement.
She stepped forward again, her shrewish chin out-thrust, but Walter
Pennold raised his face, and at sight of it she stopped as if turned
to stone.
"It's no use!" he cried, brokenly. "They've got me, Mame!"
"Got you? They'll never get you!" her startled scream rang out.
"Wally, d'you know what the next term means? It's a lifer, on any
count! I don't know what he means about any silver plate, but it's a
bluff! Don't let him get your nerve!"
"Is it a bluff, Pennold?" asked Morrow, with dominant insistence.
The broken figure huddled in the chair shuddered uncontrollably.
"No, it ain't," he muttered. "I--I held out on you, Mame! I knew you
wouldn't risk it, so I didn't say nothin' to you about it, but the
money was too easy to let get by. The old gang offered me five hundred
bucks just to keep it ten days, and pass it on to Jennings. He came
here with a rag-picker's cart, you remember? You wondered what I was
givin' him, an' I told you it was some rolls of old carpet I got from
that place I was night watchman at, in Vandewater Street. I hid the
stuff under the coal--"
"Shut up!" cried Mame, fiercely. "You don't know what you're sayin'.
Wally, hold your tongue for God's sake! Where's your spirit? Are you
goin' to break down now like a reformatory brat, you that had 'em all
guessin' for twenty years!"
The gaunt woman had recovered from the sudden shock of her husband's
unexpected revelation and now towered protectingly over his collapsed
form, her palsied hands for once steady and firm upon his shoulders,
while her keen eyes glittered shrewdly at the young operative
confronting them.
"Look here!" she said, shortly. "If you wanted us for receiving stolen
goods, you wouldn't come around here with a warrant for Wally's arrest
as a suspicious character, an' you wouldn't have worked that Brunell
plant. What's your lay?"
"Information," responded Morrow, frankly. "The police don't know where
the plate was, for those ten days, and there's no immediate need
that they should. Blaine cleaned up that case eventually, you
know--recovered the plate and caught the butler in Southampton, under
the noses of the Scotland Yard men. I want to know what you can
tell me about Brunell--and about your nephew, Charley Pennold."
Walter opened his lips, but closed them without speech, and his wife
replied for him.
"We're no snitchers," she said coldly. "There's nothin' we can tell.
Jimmy Brunell's run straight for near twenty years, so far as we
know."
"And Charley?" persisted Morrow.
"It's no use, Mame," Walter Pennold repeated, dully. "If I go up
again, it means the end for me. Charley's got to take his chance, same
as the rest of us. God knows I tried to do the right thing by the boy,
same as Jimmy did by his daughter, but Charley's got the blood in
him. It's hell to peach on your own, but it's worse to hear that iron
door clank behind you, and to know it's for the last time! After all,
there ain't nothin' in what we can tell about Charley that a lot of
other people wouldn't spill, an' nothin' that could land him behind
the bars. I ain't the man I was, or I'd take my medicine without
squealin', but I can't face it again, Mame, I can't! I'm an old man
now, old before my time, perhaps, but it's been so long since I
smelled the prison taint, so long since I had a number instead of a
name, that I'd die now, quick, before I'd rot in a cell!"
The terrible, droning monotone ceased, and for a moment there was
silence in the squalid little room. The woman's face was as impassive
as Morrow's, as she waited. Only the tightening of her hands upon her
husband's shoulders, until her bony knuckles showed white through the
drawn skin, betrayed the storm of emotion which swept over her, at the
memories evoked by the broken words.
"I'm not asking you to snitch, Pennold," Morrow said, not unkindly.
"We know all we want to about Brunell's life at present--his home in
the Bronx, and his little map-making shop--and we're not trying to
rake up anything from the past to hold over him now; it is only some
general information I want. As to your nephew, you've got to tell me
all you know about him, or it's all up with you. Blaine won't give you
away, if you'll answer my questions frankly and make a clean breast of
it, and this is your only chance."
Pennold licked his dry lips.
"What do you want to know?" he asked, at last.
"When did Jimmy Brunell turn his last trick?"
"Years ago; I've forgotten how many. It's no harm speakin' of it now,
for he did his seven years up the river for it--his first and only
conviction. That was the time old Cowperthwaite's name was forged to
five checks amounting to thirty thousand, all told, and Jimmy was
caught on the last."
"Where was his plant?"
"In a basement on Dye Street. The bulls never found it. He was running
a little printer's shop in front, as a blind--oh, he was clever, old
Jimmy, the sharpest in his line!"
"What became of his outfit, when he was sent up?"
"Dunno. It just disappeared. Some of his old pals cribbed it, I guess,
or Jimmy may have fixed it with them to remove it. He was always
close-mouthed, and he never would tell me. I knew where his plant was,
of course, and I went there myself, after he was sent up and the coast
was clear, to get the outfit, to--to take care of it for him until he
came out. Oh, I ain't afraid to tell now; it's so long ago! I could
take you to the place to-day, but the outfit's gone."
"And when he had served his term, what happened?"
"He came out to find that his wife was dead, and Emily, the little
girl that was born just after he went up, was none too well treated by
the people her mother'd had to leave her with. He'd learned in the
pen' to make maps, an' he opened a little shop an' made up his mind to
live straight, an'--an' so far as I know, he has." Pennold faltered,
as if from weakness, and for a moment his voice ceased. Then he went
on: "I ain't seen him for a long time, but we kept track of each
other, an' when you come with that cock-an'-bull story about the
bonds, and the bank backed you up in it, why I--I went to see him."
"You wrote him first. Why did you send a cipher letter?"
"Because I suspicioned the whole thing was a plant, just like it
turned out to be, an' I didn't want to get an old pal into no trouble.
The cipher's an old one we used years ago, in the gang, an' I know he
wouldn't forget it. I never thought he'd squeal on me to Blaine!"
"He didn't. The letter--er--came into Blaine's possession, and he read
it for himself."
"He did?" Pennold looked up quickly, with a flash of interest on his
sullen face. "He's a wonder, that Blaine! If he'd only got started the
other way, the way we did, what a crook he would have made! As it is,
I guess we ain't afraid of all the organized police on earth combined,
as much as we are of him. It's a queer thing he ain't been shot up or
blown into eternity long ago, an' yet they say he's never guarded. He
must be a cool one! Anyhow, I'm glad Jimmy didn't squeal on me; I'd
hate to think it of him. When I went to see him about the bonds, he
wouldn't have nothin' to do with them. Swore they was a plant, he did,
an' warned me off. He seemed real excited, considerin' he had nothin'
to worry about, but I took his word for it, an' beat it. That's the
last I seen of him."
"Did you send your nephew to him?"
"Me?" Pennold's tones quickened in surprise. "I ain't seen him in a
long while, an' I don't believe he even remembers old Jimmy; he was
only a kid when Jimmy went up the river. What would I send Charley
for, when I'd gone myself an' it hadn't worked?"
It was evident to Morrow that the man he was interrogating was
ignorant of Brunell's connection with the Lawton case, and he changed
his tactics.
"Tell me about Charley. You say you tried to do right by him."
"Of course I did! Wasn't he my brother's boy?" Pennold hunched over
the table, and continued eagerly: "Mame kept him clean an' fed, an' we
sent him to public school, just like any other kid. But it wasn't no
use. He had it in him to go wrong, without the wit to get away with
it. He was caught pinchin' lead piping when he was sixteen, an' sent
to Elmira for three years. Them three years was his finish. When he
came out he'd had what you'd call a graduate course in every form of
crookedness under the sun, from fellers harder an' cleverer than he'd
ever thought of bein', an' he was bitter besides, an' desperate. There
wasn't no chance for him then, an' he just drifted on down the line. I
never heard of him turnin' a real trick himself, an' he never got
caught at nothin' again, but he chummed in with the gang, an' he
always seemed to have coin enough. I ain't seen him in more'n a year.
The last I heard of him, he was workin' as a stool-pigeon an' snitcher
for the worst scoundrel of the lot."
"Who was that?" asked Morrow.
Pennold hesitated and then replied with dogged reluctance.
"I dunno what that's got to do with it, but the feller's name is
Paddington, an' he's the worst kind of a crook--a 'tec gone wrong. At
least, that's what they say about him, but I ain't got nothin' on him;
I don't believe I ever seen the man, that I know of. He's worked on a
lot of shady cases; I know that much, an' he's clever. More'n a dozen
crooks are floatin' around town that would be up the river if he told
what he knew about 'em; so naturally, he owns 'em, body an' soul. Not
that Charley's one that'd go up--he's only in it for the coin--but I'd
rather see him get pinched an' do time for pullin' off somethin' on
his own account, than runnin' around doin' dirty work for a man who
ain't in his father's class, or mine. He's a disgrace; that's what
Charley is--a plain disgrace."
Pennold's voice rang out in highly virtuous indignation. Morrow
forbore to smile at the oblique moral viewpoint of the old crook.
"What does he look like?" he asked. "Short and slim, isn't he, with a
small dark mustache?"
"That's him!" ejaculated Pennold disgustedly. "Dresses like a dude,
an' chases after a bunch of skirts! Spreads himself like a ward
politician when he gets a chance! He's my nephew, all right, but as
long as he won't run straight, same as I'm doin' now, I'd rather he'd
crack a crib than play errand boy for a man I wouldn't trust on
look-out!"
"Where does Charley live?" asked Morrow.
"How should I know? He hangs out at Lafferty's saloon, down on Sand
Street, when he ain't off on some steer or other--leastways he used
to."
Morrow folded the warrant slowly, in the pause which ensued, and
returned it to his pocket while the couple watched him tensely.
"All right, Pennold," he said, at last. "I guess I won't have to use
this now. If you've been square, an' told me all you know, you won't
be bothered about that matter of the Mortimer Chase silver plate. If
you've kept anything back, Blaine will find it out, and then it's
good-night to you."
"I ain't!" returned Pennold, with tremendous eagerness. "I've told you
everything you asked, an' I don't savvy what you're gettin' at,
anyway. If you're tryin' to mix Jimmy Brunell up in any new case
you're dead wrong; he's out of the game for good. As for Charley, he
wouldn't know enough to pick up a pocket-book if he saw one lyin' on
the sidewalk, unless he was told to!"
"Well, I may as well warn both of you that you're watched, and if you
try to make a get-away, you'll be taken up--and it won't be on
suspicion, either. Play fair with Blaine, and he'll be square with
you, but don't try to put anything over on him, or it'll be the worse
for you. It can't be done."
Morrow closed the door behind him, leaving the couple as they had been
almost throughout the interview--the woman erect and stony of face,
the man miserable and shaken, crouched dejectedly over the table. But
scarcely had he descended the steps of the ramshackle little porch
when the voice of Mame Pennold reached him, pitched in a shrill key of
emotional exultation.
"Oh, Wally, Wally! Thank God you ain't a snitcher! Thank God you
didn't tell!"
The voice ceased suddenly, as if a hand had been laid across her lips,
and after a moment's hesitation, Morrow swung off down the path,
conscious of at least one pair of eyes watching him from behind the
soiled curtains of the front room.
What had the woman meant? Pennold obviously had kept something back,
but was it of sufficient importance to warrant his returning and
forcing a confession? Whether it concerned Brunell or their nephew
Charley mattered little, at the moment. He had achieved the object of
his visit; he knew that Pennold himself had no connection with the
Lawton forgeries, nor knowledge of them, and at the same time he had
learned of Charley's affiliation with Paddington. The couple back
there in the little house could tell him scarcely more which would aid
him in his investigation, but the dapper, viciously weak young
stool-pigeon, if he could be located at once, might be made to
disclose enough to place Paddington definitely within the grasp of the
law.
Guy Morrow boarded a Sand Street car, and behind the sporting page of
a newspaper he kept a sharp look-out for Lafferty's saloon. He came to
it at last--a dingy, down-at-heel resort, with much faded gilt-work
over the door, and fly-specked posters of the latest social function
of the district's political club showing dimly behind its unwashed
windows.
He rode a block beyond--then, alighting, turned back and entered the
bar. It was deserted at that hour of the morning, save for a
disconsolate-looking individual who leaned upon one ragged elbow,
gazing mournfully into his empty whisky glass at the end of the
narrow, varnished counter. The bartender emerged from a door leading
into the back room, with a tall, empty glass in his hand, and Morrow
asked for a beer. As he stood sipping it, he watched the bartender
replenish the empty unwashed glass he had carried with a generous
drink of doubtful looking absinthe and a squirt from a syphon.
"Bum drink on a cold morning," he observed tentatively. "Have a whisky
straight, on me?"
"I will that!" the bartender returned heartily. "This green-eyed fairy
stuff ain't for me; it's for a dame in the back room--one of the
regulars. She's been hittin' it up all the morning, but it don't seem
to affect her--funny, too, for she ain't a boozer, as a general thing.
Her guy's gone back on her, an' she's sore. I'll be with you in a
minute."
He vanished into the back room with the glass, and before he returned,
the disconsolate individual had slunk out, leaving Morrow in sole
possession. If this place was indeed the rendezvous of the gang of
minor criminals with which Charley Pennold had allied himself, he had
obviously come at the wrong time to obtain any information concerning
him, unless the voluble bartender could be made to talk, and that
would be a difficult matter.
"Look here!" Morrow decided on a bold move, as the bartender
reappeared and placed a bottle of whisky between them. He leaned
forward, after a quick, furtive glance about him, and spoke rapidly,
with a disarming air of confidential frankness. "I'm in an awful hole.
I'm new at this game, and I've got to find a fellow I never saw, and
find him quick. He hangs out here, and the big guy sent me for him."
"What big guy?" The cordiality faded from the bartender's ruddy
countenance and he stepped back significantly.
"You know--Pad!" Morrow shot back on a desperate bluff. "The fellow's
name's Charley Pennold, and Pad wants him right away. He didn't tell
me to ask you about him, but he made it pretty plain to me that he'd
got to get him."
"Say!" The bartender approached cautiously. He rested one hand upon
the counter, keeping the other well below it, but Morrow did not
flinch. "What's your lay?"
"Anything there's coin in," returned the operative, with a knowing
leer. "Anything from planting divorce evidence to shoving the queer.
I've been working for a pal of Pad's in St. Louis for three or four
years--that's why I'm strange around here. Pad's up in the air about
something, and wants this Charley-boy right away, and he tells me to
look here for him and not come back without him, see? This is on the
level. If you know where he is, be a good fellow and come across, will
you?"
The bartender felt under the counter for the shelf, and then raised
his hand, empty, toward the bottle.
"I guess you're all right," he remarked. "Anyway, I'll take a chance.
What's your moniker?"
"Guy the Blinker," returned Morrow promptly. "Guess you've heard of
me, all right. I pulled off--but I haven't got time to chin now. I got
to find this boy if I want to keep in with Pad, and there's coin in
it."
"Sure there is," the bartender affirmed. "But he's a queer one--the
big guy, as you call him. What's his game? Why, only this morning, he
tipped Charley off to beat it, and Charley did. Maybe he thinks the
kid's double-crossed him."
Morrow's heart leaped in sudden excitement at this astounding news,
but he controlled himself, and replied nonchalantly:
"Search me. He told me I'd find this Charley-boy here; that's all I
know. He isn't talking for publication--not Pad."
"You bet not!" The bartender nodded. Then he jerked a grimy thumb in
the direction of the back room. "Why, the dame in there, cryin' into
her absinthe, is Charley's girl. She's a queen--straight as they make
'em, if she does work the shops now and then--and Charley was fixin'
to hook up with her next month, preacher-fashion, and settle down. Now
he gets the office and skips without a word to her, and she's all
broke up over it!"
The door at the rear opened suddenly, and a girl stood upon the
threshold. She was tall and slender, and her face showed traces of
positive beauty, although it was bloated and distorted with weeping
and dissipation, and her big black eyes glittered feverishly.
"What's that you're sayin' about Charley?" she demanded half-hysterically.
"He's gone! He's left me! I don't believe Pad gave him the office, and
if he did, Charley's a fool to beat it! They've got nothin' on him--it's
Pad who's got to save his own skin!"
"Shut up, Annie!" advised the bartender, not unkindly. "Pad's sent
this here feller for him, now!"
"Then it was a lie--a lie! Pad didn't tell him to beat it--he's gone
on his own account, gone for good! But I'll find him; I'll--"
The girl suddenly burst into a storm of sobs, and, turning, reeled
back into the inner room.
"You see!" the bartender observed, confidentially, as the door swung
shut behind her. "She thinks he's gone off with another skirt; that's
the way with women! I knew Pad had given him the office, though. I got
it straight. You're right about Pad bein' up in the air. He must have
bitten off more than he can chew, this time. I heard Reddy Thursby
talkin' to Gil Hennessey about it, right where you're standin', not
two hours ago. They're both Pad's men--met 'em yet?"
Morrow shook his head, not trusting himself to speak, and the
loquacious bartender went on.
"It was Reddy brought the word for Charley to skip, and he dropped
somethin' about a raid on some plant up in the Bronx. Know anything
about it?"
For a moment the rows of bottles on their shelves seemed to reel
before Morrow's eyes, and his heart stood still, but he forced himself
to reply:
"Oh, that? I know all about it, of course. Wasn't I in on the ground
floor? But that's only a fake steer; this Charley-boy hasn't got
anything to do with it, that I know of. Maybe the big guy thought he
hadn't got out of the way, and sent me to find out. No use my hanging
round here any longer, anyhow. I'll amble back and tell Pad he's gone.
Swell dame, that Annie--some queen, eh? Let's have one more drink and
I'll blow!"
With assurances of an early return, Morrow contrived to beat a retreat
without arousing the suspicions of the bartender, but he went out into
the pale, wintry, sunlight with his brain awhirl. To his apprehensive
mind a raid on a plant in the Bronx could mean only one place--the
little map-making shop of Jimmy Brunell. Something had happened in his
absence; some one had betrayed the old forger. And Emily--what of
her?
Morrow sped as fast as elevated and subway could carry him to the
Bronx. Anxious as he was about the girl he loved, he did not go
directly to the house on Meadow Lane, but made a detour to the little
shop a few blocks away.
Morrow's instinct had not misled him. Before he had approached within
a hundred feet of the shop he knew that his fears had been justified.
The door swung idly open on its hinges, and the single window gave
forth a vacant stare. Within everything was in the wildest disorder.
The table which served as a counter, the racks of maps, the high
stool, the printing apparatus, all were overturned. The trap door
leading into the cellar was open, and Morrow flung himself wildly down
the sanded steps. The forger's outfit had disappeared.
What had become of Jimmy Brunell? His purpose served, had Paddington
betrayed him to the police, or had some warning reached him to flee
before it was too late?
With mingled emotions of fear and dread, Morrow emerged from the
little dismantled shop and made the best of his way to Meadow Lane.
The Brunell cottage appeared much as usual as he neared it, and for
an instant hope surged up within him. Emily would be at the club, of
course. If her father had been arrested, or had succeeded in getting
away safely alone, she would not know of it until she came back in the
evening. He would wait for her, intercept her, and tell her the whole
truth.
Instead of entering his own lodgings, he crossed the road, and paused
at the Brunells' gate. Something forlorn and desolate in the
atmosphere of the little home seemed to clutch at his heart, and on a
swift impulse he strode up the path, ascended the steps of the porch
and peered in the window of the living-room. Everything in the usually
orderly room was topsy-turvy, and everywhere there was evidence of
hurried flight. From where he stood the desk--her desk--was plainly
visible, its ransacked drawers pulled open, the floor before it strewn
with torn and scattered papers. Its top was bare, amid the surrounding
litter, and even his photograph which he had recently given her, and
which usually stood there in the little frame she had made for it with
her own hands, was gone.
A chill settled about his heart. Had Brunell been captured, and police
detectives searched the house, his picture could hold no interest for
them. Had the old forger fled alone, he would not have taken so
insignificant an object from among all his household goods and
chattels. Emily alone would have paused to save the photograph of the
man she loved from the wreckage of her home; Emily, too, had gone!
Scarcely knowing what he was doing, and caring less, Morrow rushed
across the street, and descended upon Mrs. Quinlan, his landlady, at
her post in the kitchen.
"What's happened to the Brunells?" he demanded breathlessly.
"Land's sakes, but you scared me, Mr. Morrow!" Mrs. Quinlan turned
from the stove with a hurried start, and wiped her plump, steaming
face on her apron. "I should like to know what's happened myself. All
I do know is that they've gone bag and baggage--or as much of it as
they could carry with them--and never; a word to a soul except what
Emily ran across to say to me."
"What was it?" he fairly shouted at her. But there were few interests
in Mrs. Quinlan's humdrum existence, and seldom did she have an
exciting incident to relate and an eager audience to hang upon her
words. She sat down ponderously and prepared to make the most of the
present occasion.
"I thought it was funny to see a man goin' into their yard at five
o'clock this mornin', but my tooth was so bad I forgot all about him
and it never come into my mind again until I seen them goin' away. I
sleep in the room just over yours, you know, Mr. Morrow, an' my tooth
ached so bad I couldn't sleep. It was five by my clock when I got up
to come down here an' get some hot vinegar, an' I don't know what made
me look out my winder, but I did. I seen a man come running down the
lane, keepin' well in the shaders, an' looking back as if he was
afraid he was bein' chased, for all the world like a thief. While I
looked, he turned in the Brunells' yard an' instead of knocking on the
door, he began throwin' pebbles up at the old man's bedroom winder.
Pretty soon it opened and Mr. Brunell looked out. Then he come down
quick an' met the man at the front door. They talked a minute, an' the
feller handed over somethin' that showed white in the light of the
street lamp, like a piece of paper. Mr. Brunell shut the door an' the
man ran off the way he had come. I come down an' got my hot vinegar
an' when I got back to my room I seen there were lights in Mr.
Brunell's room an' Emily's, an' one in the livin'-room, too, but my
tooth was jumpin' so I went straight to bed. About half an hour after
you'd left for business I was shakin' a rug out of the front
sittin'-room winder, when Emily come runnin' across the street.
"'Oh, Mrs. Quinlan!' she calls to me, an' I see she'd been cryin'.
'Mrs. Quinlan, we're goin' away!'
"'For good?' I asked.
"'Forever!' she says. 'Will you give a message to Mr. Morrow for me,
please? Tell him I'm sorry I was mistaken. I'm sorry to have found him
out!'
"She burst out cryin' again an' ran back as her father called her from
the porch. He was bringin' out a pile of suit-cases and roll-ups, and
pretty soon a taxicab drove up with a man inside. I couldn't see his
face--only his coat-sleeve. They got in an' went off kitin' an' that's
every last thing I know. What d'you s'pose she meant about findin' you
out, Mr. Morrow?"
He turned away without reply, and went to his room, where he sat for
long sunk in a stupor of misery. She had found out the truth, before
he could tell her. She knew him for what he was, knew his despicable
errand in ingratiating himself into her friendship and that of her
father. She believed that the real love he had professed for her had
been all a mere part of the game he was playing, and now she had gone
away forever! He would never see her again!
"By God, no!" he cried aloud to himself, in the bitterness of his
sorrow. "I will find her again, if I search the ends of the earth. She
shall know the truth!"