A TANGLE OF SCHEMES
Doddridge Knapp was seated calmly in my office when I opened the door.
There was a grim smile about the firm jaws, and a satisfied glitter in
the keen eyes. The Wolf had found his prey, and the dismay of the sheep
at the sight of his fangs gave him satisfaction instead of distress.
The King of the Street honored me with a royal nod.
“There seems to have been a little surprise for somebody on the Board
this morning,” he suggested.
“I heard something about it on the street,” I admitted.
“It was a good plan and worked well. Let me see your memoranda of
purchases.”
I gave him my slips.
He looked over them with growing perplexity in his face.
“Here's twelve thousand five hundred shares of Omega.”
“Yes.”
“You paid too much for that first lot.” He was still poring over the
list.
“It's easier to see that now than then,” I suggested dryly.
“Humph! yes. But there's something wrong here.” He was comparing my list
with another in his hand.
“There!” I thought; “my confounded ignorance has made a mess of it.”
But I spoke with all the confidence I could assume: “What's the matter,
now?”
“Eleven thousand and twelve thousand five hundred make twenty-three
thousand five hundred; and here are sales of Omega this morning of
thirty-three thousand eight hundred and thirty.” He seemed to be talking
more to himself than to me, and to be far from pleased.
“How's that? I don't understand.” I was all in the dark over his
musings.
“I picked up eleven thousand shares in the other Boards this morning,
and twelve thousand five hundred through you, but somebody has taken in
the other ten thousand.” The King of the Street seemed puzzled and, I
thought, a little worried.
“Well, you got over twenty-three thousand shares,” I suggested
consolingly. “That's a pretty good morning's work.”
The King of the Street gave me a contemptuous glance.
“Don't be a fool, Wilton. I sold ten thousand of those shares to
myself.”
A new light broke upon me. I was getting lessons of one of the many ways
in which the market was manipulated.
“Then you think that somebody else--”
The King of the Street broke in with a grim smile.
“Never mind what I think. I've got the contract for doing the thinking
for this job, and I reckon I can 'tend to it.”
The great speculator was silent for a few moments.
“I might as well be frank with you,” he said at last. “You'll have to
know something, to work intelligently. I must get control of the Omega
Company, and to do it I've got to have more stock. I've been afraid of a
combination against me, and I guess I've struck it. I can't be sure yet,
but when those ten thousand shares were gobbled up on a panicky market,
I'll bet there's something up.”
“Who is in it?” I asked politely.
“They've kept themselves covered,” said the King of the Street, “but
I'll have them out in the open before the end. And then, my boy, you'll
see the fur fly.”
As these words were uttered I could see the yellow-gray goatee rise like
bristles, and the fangs of the Wolf shine white under the yellow-gray
mustache.
“I've got a few men staked out,” he continued slowly, “and I reckon I'll
know something about it by this time to-morrow.” There was the growl of
the Wolf in his voice.
“Now for this afternoon,” he continued. “There's got to be some sharp
work done. I reckon the falling movement is over. We've got to pay for
what we get from now on. I've got a man looking after the between-Board
trading. With the scare that's on in the chipper crowd out there, I look
to pick up a thousand shares or so at about forty.”
“Well, what's the program?” I asked cheerfully.
“Buy,” he said briefly. “Take everything that's offered this side of
seventy-five.”
“Um--there's a half-million wanted already to settle for what I bought
this morning.”
The bushy brows drew down, but the King of the Street answered lightly:
“Your check is good for a million, my boy, as long as it goes to settle
for what you're ordered to buy.” Then he added grimly: “I don't think
you'd find it worth much for anything else.”
There was a knock at the door beyond, and he hastily rose.
“Be here after the two-thirty session,” he said. And the Wolf, huge and
masterful, disappeared with a stealthy tread, and the door closed softly
behind him.
A million dollars! My check honored for unlimited amounts! Doddridge
Knapp trusting me with a great fortune! I was overwhelmed, intoxicated,
with the consciousness of power.
Yet this was the man who had brought death to Henry Wilton, and
had twice sought my life in the effort to wrest from me a packet of
information I did not have. This was the man whose face had gleamed
fierce and hateful in the lantern's flash in the alley. This was the man
I had sworn to bring to the gallows for a brutal crime. And now I was
his trusted agent, with control, however limited, of millions.
It was a puzzle too deep for me. I was near coming to Mother Borton's
view that there was something uncanny about Doddridge Knapp. Did two
spirits animate that body? What was the thread that should join all
parts of the mystery into one harmonious whole?
I wondered idly who Doddridge Knapp's visitor might be, but as I could
see no way of finding out, and felt no special concern over his identity
or purposes, I rose and left the office. As I stepped into the hall
I discovered that somebody had a deeper curiosity than I. A man was
stooping to the keyhole of Doddridge Knapp's room in the endeavor to
see or hear. As he heard the sound of my opening door he started up,
and with a bound, was around the turn of the hall and pattering down the
stairs.
In another bound I was after him. I had seen his form for but a second,
and his face not at all. But in that second I knew him for Tim Terrill
of the snake-eyes and the murderous purpose.
When I reached the head of the stairs he was nowhere to be seen, but
I heard the patter of his feet below and plunged down three steps at
a time and into Clay street, nearly upsetting a stout gentleman in my
haste. The street was busy with people, but no sign of the snake-eyed
man greeted me.
Much disturbed in mind at this apparition of my enemy, I sought in vain
for some explanation of his presence. Was he spying on Doddridge Knapp?
Did he not stand on a better footing with his employer than this? He
was, I must suppose, trusted with the most secret and evil purposes of
that strange man, and should be able to speak with him on even terms.
Yet here he was, doing the work of the merest spy. What wickedness was
he planning? What treachery was he shaping in his designs on the man
whose bread he was eating and whose plans of crime he was the chief
agent to assist or execute?
I must have stood gaping in the street like a countryman at a fair as I
revolved these questions in my mind without getting an answer to them,
for I was roused by a man bumping into me roughly.
I suspected that he had done it on purpose, but I begged his pardon and
felt for my watch. I could find none of my personal property missing,
but I noticed the fellow reeling back toward me, and doubled my fist
with something of an intention to commit a breach of the peace if he
repeated his trick. I thought better of it, and started by him briskly,
when he spoke in a low tone:
“You'd better go to your room, Mr. Wilton.” He said something more that
I did not catch, and, reeling on, disappeared in the crowd before I
could turn to mark or question him.
I thought at first that he meant the room I had just left. Then it
occurred to me that it was the room Henry had occupied--the room in
which I had spent my first dreadful night in San Francisco, and had not
revisited in the thirty hours since I had left it.
The advice suited my inclination, and in a few minutes I was entering
the dingy building and climbing the worn and creaking stairs. The place
lost its air of mystery in the broad sunshine and penetrating daylight,
and though its interior was as gloomy as ever, it lacked the haunting
suggestions it had borrowed from darkness and the night.
Slipped under the door I found two notes. One was from Detective Coogan,
and read:
“Inquest this afternoon. Don't want you. Have another story. Do you want
the body?”
The other was in a woman's hand, and the faint perfume of the first note
I had received rose from the sheet. It read:
“I do not understand your silence. The money is ready. What is the
matter?”
The officer's note was easy enough to answer. I found paper, and,
assuring Detective Coogan of my gratitude at escaping the inquest, I
asked him to turn the body over to the undertaker to be buried at my
order.
The other note was more perplexing. I could make nothing of it. It was
evidently from my unknown employer, and her anxiety was plain to see.
But I was no nearer to finding her than before, and if I knew how to
reach her I knew not what to say. As I was contemplating this state of
affairs with some dejection, and sealing my melancholy note to Detective
Coogan, there was a quick step in the hall and a rap at the panel. It
was a single person, so I had no hesitation in opening the door, but
it gave me a passing satisfaction to have my hand on the revolver in my
pocket as I turned the knob.
It was a boy, who thrust a letter into my hand.
“Yer name Wilton?” he inquired, still holding on to the envelope.
“Yes.”
“That's yourn, then.” And he was prepared to make a bolt.
“Hold on,” I said. “Maybe there's an answer.”
“No, there ain't. The bloke as gave it to me said there weren't.”
“Well, here's something I want you to deliver,” said I, taking up my
note to Detective Coogan. “Do you know where the City Hall is?”
“Does I know--what are yer givin' us?” said the boy with infinite scorn
in his voice.
“A quarter,” I returned with a laugh, tossing him the coin. “Wait a
minute.”
“Yer ain't bad stuff,” said the boy with a grin. I tore open the
envelope and read on the sheet that came from it:
“Sell everything you bought--never mind the price. Other orders off. D.
K.”
I gasped with amazement. Had Doddridge Knapp gone mad? To sell twelve
thousand five hundred shares of Omega was sure to smash the market,
and the half-million dollars that had been put into them would probably
shrink by two hundred thousand or more if the order was carried out.
I read the note again.
Then a suspicion large enough to overshadow the universe grew up in my
brain. I recalled that Doddridge Knapp had given me a cipher with which
he would communicate with me, and I believed, moreover, that he had no
idea where I might be at the present moment.
“It's all right, sonny,” I said. “Trot along.”
“Where's yer letter?” asked the boy, loyally anxious to earn his
quarter.
“It won't have to go now,” I said coolly. I believed that the boy meant
no harm to me, but I was not taking any risks.
The boy sauntered down the hall, singing _My Name Is Hildebrandt
Montrose_, and I was left gazing at the letter with a melancholy smile.
“Well, I must look like a sucker if they think I can be taken in by a
trick like that,” was my mental comment. I charged the scheme up to my
snake-eyed friend and had a poorer opinion of his intelligence than I
had hitherto entertained. Yet I was astonished that he should, even with
the most hearty wish to bring about my downfall, contrive a plan
that would inflict a heavy loss on his employer and possibly ruin him
altogether. There was more beneath than I could fathom. My brain
refused to work in the maze of contradictions and mysteries, plots and
counterplots, in which I was involved.
I took my way at last toward the market, and, hailing a boy to whom I
intrusted my letter to Detective Coogan, walked briskly to Pine Street.