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-blackened 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. "Safeblowing 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 our 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--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 plainclothes 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 cute 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 yon 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. Kharkov'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."