yeggman's hotel - were seated about the stove discussing something
in a language that was English, to be sure, but of a variation
that only a yegg could understand. I noted the once handsome white
marble mantel, now stained by age, standing above the unused grate.
Double folding-doors led to what, I imagine, was once a library.
Dirt and grime indescribable were everywhere. There was the smell
of old clothes and old cooking, the race odours of every nationality
known to the metropolis. I recalled a night I once spent in a
Bowery lodging-house for "local colour." Only this was infinitely
worse. No law regulated this house. There was an atmosphere of
cheerlessness that a half-thickened Welsbach mantle turned into
positive ghastliness.
Our guide introduced us. There was a dead silence as eight eyes
were craftily fixed on us, sizing us up. What should I say? Craig
came to the rescue. To him the adventure was a lark. It was novel,
and that was merit enough.
"Ask about the slang," he suggested. "That makes a picturesque
story."
It seemed to me innocuous enough, so I engaged in conversation with
a man whom the Gay Cat had introduced as the proprietor. Much of
the slang I already knew by hearsay, such as "bulls" for policemen,
a "mouthpiece" for a lawyer to defend one when he is "ditched" or
arrested; in fact, as I busily scribbled away I must have collected
a lexicon of a hundred words or so for future reference.
"And names?" I queried. "You have some queer nicknames."
"Oh, yes," replied the man. "Now here's the Gay Cat - that's what
we call a fellow who is the finder, who enters a town ahead of the
gang. Then there's Chi Fat - that means he's from Chicago and fat.
And Pitts Slim - he's from Pittsburgh and - "
"Aw, cut it," broke in one of the others. "Pitts Slim'll be here
to-night. He'll give you the devil if he hears you talking to
reporters about him."
The proprietor began to talk of less dangerous subjects. Craig
succeeded in drawing out from him the yegg recipe for making "soup."
"It's here in this cipher," said the man, drawing out a dirty piece
of paper. "It's well known, and you can have this. Here's the key.
It was written by 'Deafy' Smith, and the police pinched it."
Craig busily translated the curious document:
Take ten or a dozen sticks of dynamite, crumble it up fine,
and put it in a pan or washbowl, then pour over it enough
alcohol, wood or pure, to cover it well. Stir it up well with
your hands, being careful to break all the lumps. Leave it
set for a few minutes. Then get a few yards of cheesecloth
and tear it up in pieces and strain the mixture through the
cloth into another Vessel. Wring the sawdust dry and throw
it away. The remains will be the soup and alcohol mixed.
Next take the same amount of water as you used of alcohol
and pour it in. Leave the whole set for a few minutes.
"Very interesting," commented Craig. "Safe-blowing in one lesson
by correspondence school. The rest of this tells how to attack
various makes, doesn't it?"
Just then a thin man in a huge, worn ulster came stamping upstairs
from the basement, his collar up and his hat down over his eyes.
There was something indefinably familiar about him, but as his face
and figure were so well concealed, I could not tell just why I
thought so.
Catching a glimpse of us, he beat a retreat across the opposite end
of the room, beckoning to the proprietor, who joined him outside the
door. I thought I heard him ask: "Who are those men? Who let them
in?" but I could not catch the reply.
One by one the other occupants of the room rose and sidled out,
leaving us alone with the Gay Cat. Kennedy reached over to get a
cigarette from my case and light it from one that I was smoking.
"That's=20our man, I think," he whispered - "Pitts Slim."
I said nothing, but I would have been willing to part with a large
section of my bank-account to be up on the Chatham Square station
of the Elevated just then.
There was a rush from the half-open door behind us. Suddenly
everything turned black before me; my eyes swam; I felt a stinging
sensation on my head and a weak feeling about the stomach; I sank
half-conscious to the floor. All was blank, but, dimly, I seemed
to be dragged and dropped down hard.
How long I lay there I don't know. Kennedy says it was not over
five minutes. It may have been so, but to me it seemed an age.
When I opened my eyes I was lying on my back on a very dirty sofa
in another room. Kennedy was bending over me with blood streaming
from a long deep gash on his head. Another figure was groaning in
the semi-darkness opposite; it was the Gay Cat.
"They blackjacked us," whispered Kennedy to me as I staggered to my
feet. "Then they dragged us through a secret passage into another
house. How do you feel?"
"All right," I answered, bracing myself against a chair, for I was
weak from the loss of blood, and dizzy. I was sore in every joint
and muscle. I looked about, only half comprehending. Then my
recollection flooded back with a rush. We had been locked in another
room after the attack, and left to be dealt with later. I felt in
my pocket. I had left my watch at the laboratory, but even the
dollar watch I had taken and the small sum of money in my pocketbook
were gone.
Kennedy still had his camera slung over his shoulder, where he had
fastened it securely.
Here we were, imprisoned, while Pitts Slim, the man we had come
after, whoever he was, was making his escape. Somewhere across the
street was O'Connor, waiting in a room as we had agreed. There was
only one window in our room, and it opened on a miserable little
dumbwaiter air-shaft. It would be hours yet before his suspicions
would be aroused and he would discover which of the houses we were
held in. Meanwhile what might not happen to us?
Kennedy calmly set up his tripod. One leg had been broken in the
rough-house, but he tied it together with his handkerchief, now wet
with blood. I wondered how he could think of taking a picture. His
very deliberation set me fretting and fuming, and I swore at him
under my breath. Still, he worked calmly ahead. I saw him take the
black box and set it on the tripod. It was indistinct in the
darkness. It looked like a camera, and yet it had some attachment
at the side that was queer, including a little lamp. Craig bent and
attached some wires about the box.
At last he seemed ready. "Walter," he whispered, "roll that sofa
quietly over against the door. There, now the table and that bureau,
and wedge the chairs in. Keep that door shut at any cost. It's now
or never - here goes."
He stopped a moment and tinkered with the box on the tripod. "Hello!
Hello! Hello! Is that you, O'Connor?" he shouted.
I watched him in amazement. Was the man crazy? Had the blow
affected his brain? Here he was, trying to talk into a camera. A
little signalling-bell in the box commenced to ring, as if by spirit
hands.
"Shut up in that room," growled a voice from outside the door. "By
God, they've barricaded the door. Come on, pals, we'll kill the
spies."
A smile of triumph lighted up Kennedy's pale face. "It works, it
works," he cried as the little bell continued to buzz. " This is
a wireless telephone you perhaps have seen announced recently -=20
good for several hundred feet - through walls and everything. The
inventor placed it in a box easily carried by a man, including a
battery, and mounted on an ordinary camera tripod so that the user
might well be taken for a travelling photographer. It is good in
one direction only, but I have a signalling-bell here that can be
rung from the other end by Hertzian waves. Thank Heaven, it's
compact and simple.
"O'Connor," he went on, "it is as I told you. It was Pitts Slim.
He left here ten or fifteen minutes ago - I don't know by what exit,
but I heard them say they would meet at the Central freightyards at
midnight. Start your plain-clothes men out and send some one here,
quick, to release us. We are locked in a room in the fourth or fifth
house from the corner. There's a secret passage to the yegg-house.
The Gay Cat is still unconscious, Jameson is groggy, and I have a
bad scalp wound. They are trying to beat in our barricade. Hurry."
I think I shall never get straight in my mind the fearful five
minutes that followed, the battering at the door, the oaths, the
scuffle outside, the crash as the sofa, bureau, table, and chairs
all yielded at once - and my relief when I saw the square-set,
honest face of O'Connor and half a dozen plain-clothes men holding
the yeggs who would certainly have murdered us this time to protect
their pal in his getaway. The fact is I didn't think straight until
we were halfway uptown, speeding toward the railroad freight-yards
in O'Connor's car. The fresh air at last revived me, and I began
to forget my cuts and bruises in the renewed excitement.
We entered the yards carefully, accompanied by several of the
railroad's detectives, who met us with a couple of police dogs.
Skulking in the shadow under the high embankment that separated the
yards with their interminable lines of full and empty cars on one
side and the San Juan Hill district of New York up on the bluff on
the other side, we came upon a party of three men who were waiting
to catch the midnight" side-door Pullman " - the fast freight out
of New York.
The fight was brief, for we outnumbered them more than three to one.
O'Connor himself snapped a pair of steel bracelets on the thin man,
who seemed to be leader of the party.
"It's all up, Pitts Slim," he ground out from his set teeth.
One of our men flashed his bull's-eye on the three prisoners. I
caught myself as in a dream.
Pitts Slim was Maloney, the detective.
An hour later, at headquarters, after the pedigrees had been taken,
the "mugging" done, and the jewels found on the three yeggs checked
off from the list of the Branford pearls, leaving a few thousand
dollars' worth unaccounted for, O'Connor led the way into his private
office. There were Mrs. Branford and Blake, waiting.
Maloney sullenly refused to look at his former employer, as Blake
rushed over and grasped Kennedy's hand, asking eagerly: "How did you
do it, Kennedy? This is the last thing I expected."
Craig said nothing, but slowly opened a now crumpled envelope, which
contained an untoned print of a photograph. He laid it on the desk.
"There is your yeggman - at work," he said.
We bent over to look. It was a photograph of Maloney in the act of
putting something in the little wall safe in Mrs. Branford's room.
In a flash it dawned on me - the quick-shutter camera, the wire
connected with the wall safe, Craig's hint to Maloney that if some
of the jewels were found hidden in a likely place in the house, it
would furnish the last link in the chain against her, Maloney's
eager acceptance of the suggestion, and his visit to Montclair
during which Craig had had hard work to avoid him.
"Pitts Slim, alias Maloney," added Kennedy, turning to Blake, "your
shrewdest private detective, was posing in two characters at once
very successfully. He was your trusted agent in possession of the
most valuable secrets of your clients, at the same time engineering
all the robberies that you thought were fakes, and then working up
the evidence incriminating the victims themselves. He got into
the Branford house with a skeleton key, and killed the maid. The
picture shows him putting this shield-shaped brooch in the safe this
afternoon - here's the brooch. And all this time he was the leader
of the most dangerous band of yeggmen in the country."
"Mrs. Branford," exclaimed Blake, advancing and bowing most
profoundly, "I trust that you understand my awkward position? My
apologies cannot be too humble. It will give me great pleasure to
hand you a certified check for the missing gems the first thing in
the morning."
Mrs. Branford bit her lip nervously. The return of the pearls did
not seem to interest her in the least.
"And I, too, must apologise for the false suspicion I had of you
and - and - depend on me, it is already forgotten," said Kennedy,
emphasising the "false" and looking her straight in the eyes.
She read his meaning and a look of relief crossed her face. "Thank
you," she murmured simply, then dropping her eyes she added in a
lower tone which no one heard except Craig: "Mr. Kennedy, how can I
ever thank you? Another night, and it would have been too late to
save me from myself."
III
THE GERM OF DEATH
By this time I was becoming used to Kennedy's strange visitors and,
in fact, had begun to enjoy keenly the uncertainty of not knowing
just what to expect from them next. Still, I was hardly prepared
one evening to see a tall, nervous foreigner stalk noiselessly and
unannounced into our apartment and hand his card to Kennedy without
saying a word.
"Dr. Nicholas Kharkoff - hum - er, Jameson, you must have forgotten
to latch the door. Well, Dr. Kharkoff, what can I do for you? It
is evident something has upset you."
The tall Russian put his forefinger to his lips and, taking one of
our good chairs, placed it by the door. Then he stood on it and
peered cautiously through the transom into the hallway. "I think I
eluded him this time," he exclaimed, as he nervously took a seat.
"Professor Kennedy, I am being followed. Every step that I take
somebody shadows me, from the moment I leave my office until I
return. It is enough to drive me mad. But that is only one reason
why I have come here to-night. I believe that I can trust you as
a friend of justice - a friend of Russian freedom?"
He had included me in his earnest but somewhat vague query, so that
I did not withdraw. Somehow, apparently, he had heard of Kennedy's
rather liberal political views.
"It is about Vassili Saratovsky, the father of the Russian
revolution, as we call him, that I have come to consult you," he
continued quickly. "Just two weeks ago he was taken ill. It came
on suddenly, a violent fever which continued for a week. Then
he seemed to grow better, after the crisis had passed, and even
attended a meeting of our central committee the other night. But
in the meantime Olga Samarova, the little Russian dancer, whom you
have perhaps seen, fell ill in the same way. Samarova is an ardent
revolutionist, you know. This morning the servant at my own home
on East Broadway was also stricken, and - who knows? - perhaps it
will be my turn next. For to-night Saratovsky had an even more
violent return of the fever, with intense shivering, excruciating
pains in the limbs, and delirious headache. It is not like anything
I ever saw before. Can you look into the case before it grows any
worse, Professor?"
Again the Russian got on the chair and looked over the transom to
be sure that he was not being overheard.
"I shall be only too glad to help you in any way I can," returned
Kennedy, his manner expressing the genuine interest that he never
feigned over a particularly knotty problem in science and crime.
"I had the pleasure of meeting Saratovsky once in London. I shall
try to see him the first thing in the morning."
Dr. Kharkoff's face fell. "I had hoped you would see him to-night.
If anything should happen -"
"Is it as urgent as that?"
"I believe it is," whispered Kharkoff, leaning forward earnestly.
"We can call a taxicab - it will not take long, sir. Consider,
there are many lives possibly at stake," he pleaded.
"Very well, I will go," consented Kennedy.
At the street door Kharkoff stopped short and drew Kennedy back.
"Look - across the street in the shadow. There is the man. If I
start toward him he will disappear; he is very clever. He followed
me from Saratovsky's here, and has been waiting for me to come out."
"There are two taxicabs waiting at the stand," suggested Kennedy.
"Doctor, you jump in the first, and Jameson and I will take the
second. Then he can't follow us."
It was done in a moment, and we were whisked away, to the chagrin
of the figure, which glided impotently out of the shadow in vain
pursuit, too late even to catch the number of the cab.
"A promising adventure," commented Kennedy, as we bumped along over
New York's uneven asphalt. "Have you ever met Saratovsky?"
"No," I replied dubiously. "Will you guarantee that he will not
blow us up with a bomb?"
"Grandmother!" replied Craig. "Why, Walter, he is the most gentle,
engaging old philosopher - "
"That ever cut a throat or scuttled a ship?" I interrupted.
"On the contrary," insisted Kennedy, somewhat nettled, "he is a
patriarch, respected by every faction of the revolutionists, from
the fighting organisation to the believers in non-resistance and
Tolstoy. I tell you, Walter, the nation that can produce a man
such as Saratovsky deserves and some day will win political freedom.
I have heard of this Dr. Kharkoff before, too. His life would be
a short one if he were in Russia. A remarkable man, who fled after
those unfortunate uprisings in 1905. Ah, we are on Fifth Avenue.
I suspect that he is taking us to a club on the lower part of the
avenue, where a number of the Russian reformers live, patiently
waiting and planning for the great 'awakening' in their native land."
Kharkoff's cab had stopped. Our quest had indeed brought us almost
to Washington Square. Here we entered an old house of the past
generation. As we passed through the wide hall, I noted the high
ceilings, the old-fashioned marble mantels stained by time, the
long, narrow rooms and dirty-white woodwork, and the threadbare
furniture of black walnut and horsehair.
Upstairs in a small back room we found the venerable Saratovsky,
tossing, half-delirious with the fever, on a disordered bed. His
was a striking figure in this sordid setting, with a high
intellectual forehead and deep-set, glowing coals of eyes which
gave a hint at the things which had made his life one of the
strangest among all the revolutionists of Russia and the works he
had done among the most daring. The brown dye was scarcely yet
out of his flowing white beard - a relic of his last trip back to
his fatherland, where he had eluded the secret police in the
disguise of a German gymnasium professor.
Saratovsky extended a thin, hot, emaciated hand to us, and we
remained standing. Kennedy said nothing for the moment. The sick
man motioned feebly to us to come closer.
"Professor Kennedy," he whispered, "there is some deviltry afoot.
The Russian autocracy would stop at nothing. Kharkoff has probably
told you of it. I am so weak - "
He groaned and sank back, overcome by a chill that seemed to rack
his poor gaunt form.
"Kazanovitch can tell Professor Kennedy something, Doctor. I am
too weak to talk, even at this critical time. Take him to see
Boris and Ekaterina."
Almost reverently we withdrew, and Kharkoff led us down the hall
to another room. The door was ajar, and a light disclosed a man
in a Russian peasant's blouse, bending laboriously over a
writing-desk. So absorbed was he that not until Kharkoff spoke
did he look up. His figure was somewhat slight and his face pointed
and of an ascetic mould.
"Ah!" he exclaimed. "You have recalled me from a dream. I fancied
I was on the old mir with Ivan, one of my characters. Welcome,
comrades."
It flashed over me at once that this was the famous Russian novelist,
Boris Kazanovitch. I had not at first connected the name with that
of the author of those gloomy tales of peasant life. Kazanovitch
stood with his hands tucked under his blouse.
"Night is my favourite time for writing," he explained. "It is then
that the imagination works at its best."
I gazed curiously about the room. There seemed to be a marked touch
of a woman's hand here and there; it was unmistakable. At last my
eye rested on a careless heap of dainty wearing apparel on a chair
in the corner.
"Where is Nevsky?" asked Dr. Kharkoff, apparently missing the person
who owned the garments.
"Ekaterina has gone to a rehearsal of the little play of Gershuni's
escape from Siberia and betrayal by Rosenberg. She will stay with
friends on East Broadway to-night. She has deserted me, and here
I am all alone, finishing a story for one of the American magazines."
"Ah, Professor Kennedy, that is unfortunate," commented Kharkoff.
"A brilliant woman is Mademoiselle Nevsky - devoted to the cause. I
know only one who equals her, and that is my patient downstairs, the
little dancer, Samarova."
"Samarova is faithful - Nevsky is a genius," put in Kazanovitch.
Kharkoff said nothing for a time, though it was easy to see he
regarded the actress highly.
"Samarova," he said at length to us, "was arrested for her part in
the assassination of Grand Duke Sergius and thrown into solitary
confinement in the fortress of St. Peter and St. Paul. They
tortured her, the beasts - burned her body with their cigarettes.
It was unspeakable. But she would not confess, and finally they
had to let her go. Nevsky, who was a student of biology at the
University of St. Petersburg when Von Plehve was assassinated, was
arrested, but her relatives had sufficient influence to secure her
release. They met in Paris, and Nevsky persuaded Olga to go on
the stage and come to New York."
"Next to Ekaterina's devotion to the cause is her devotion to
science," said Kazanovitch, opening a door to a little room. Then
he added: "If she were not a woman, or if your universities were
less prejudiced, she would be welcome anywhere as a professor. See,
here is her laboratory. It is the best we - she can afford. Organic
chemistry, as you call it in English, interests me too, but of course
I am not a trained scientist - I am a novelist."
The laboratory was simple, almost bare. Photographs of Koch,
Ehrlich, Metchnikoff, and a number of other scientists adorned the
walls. The deeply stained deal table was littered with beakers and
test-tubes.
"How is Saratovsky?" asked the writer of the doctor, aside, as we
gazed curiously about.
Kharkoff shook his head gravely. "We have just come from his room.
He was too weak to talk, but he asked that you tell Mr. Kennedy
anything that it is necessary he should know about our suspicions."
"It is that we are living with the sword of Damocles constantly
dangling over our heads, gentlemen," cried Kazanovitch passionately,
turning toward us. "You will excuse me if I get some cigarettes
downstairs? Over them I will tell you what we fear."
A call from Saratovsky took the doctor away also at the same moment,
and we were left alone.
"A queer situation, Craig," I remarked, glancing involuntarily at
the heap of feminine finery on the chair, as I sat down before
Kazanovitch's desk.
"Queer for New York; not for St. Petersburg, was his laconic reply,
as he looked around for another chair. Everything was littered
with books and papers, and at last he leaned over and lifted the
dress from the chair to place it on the bed, as the easiest way of
securing a seat in the scantily furnished room.
A pocketbook and a letter fell to the floor from the folds of the
dress. He stooped to pick them up, and I saw a strange look of
surprise on his face. Without a moment's hesitation he shoved the
letter into his pocket and replaced the other things as he had
found them.
A moment later Kazanovitch returned with a large box of Russian
cigarettes. "Be seated, sir," he said to Kennedy, sweeping a mass
of books and papers off a large divan. "When Nevsky is not here
the room gets sadly disarranged. I have no genius for order."
Amid the clouds of fragrant light smoke we waited for Kazanovitch
to break the silence.
"Perhaps you think that the iron hand of the Russian prime minister
has broken the backbone of revolution in Russia," he began at length.
"But because the Duma is subservient, it does not mean that all is
over. Not at all. We are not asleep. Revolution is smouldering,
ready to break forth at any moment. The agents of the government
know it. They are desperate. There is no means they would not use
to crush us. Their long arm reaches even to New York, in this land
of freedom."
He rose and excitedly paced the room. Somehow or other, this man
did not prepossess me. Was it that I was prejudiced by a puritanical
disapproval of the things that pass current in Old World morality?
Or was it merely that I found the great writer of fiction seeking
the dramatic effect always at the cost of sincerity?
"Just what is it that you suspect?" asked Craig, anxious to dispense
with the rhetoric and to get down to facts. " Surely, when three
persons are stricken, you must suspect something."