At that moment a low, confidential knock came on the door of the outer
office, followed by a discreet rattling of the knob.
“There he is at last!” thought Brainard, with a sense of relief.
He hurried to unbolt the door; but instead of Peters’s mild face, a
chubby, spectacled young fellow, wearing his derby hat pushed far back on
a round, bald head, confronted him.
“Who are you?” Brainard demanded, trying to close the door.
The man grinned back:
“And who are you?”
He had shoved his right leg into the opening, and with his question he
gave a powerful push that almost knocked Brainard from his feet.
“Well?” he said, once within the office, grinning more broadly. “I’m
Farson—Edward, Jr.—from the _Despatch_. We just had a wire from New York
that Krutzmacht’s been found, dead!”
“Dead!” Brainard exclaimed.
“Had a stroke or something, and died this morning in a hospital. One of
our old men down East got on to it, and tipped us the wire.”
The intruder settled himself comfortably on the top of the stenographer’s
little desk, and drew out a cigarette. Dangling his fat legs, he eyed
Brainard with an amused stare.
The latter stood for the moment dumfounded. Although he had at first
looked for this outcome, as the days had gone by he had come to believe
that the old man was recovering. Now he realized swiftly that with
Krutzmacht dead his power of attorney was no better than a piece of blank
paper. His position was doubly tenuous.
“Say!” The reporter interrupted his meditation in a burst of cynical
confidence. “The old man was a good pirate—fought to the last ditch, and
then got out.”
“What makes you think he got out?” Brainard inquired.
The reporter shrugged his shoulders.
“They had him, and he must have known it. That railroad crowd would have
taken the hide off him, and put what was left in the penitentiary.”
“Perhaps they made away with him,” Brainard suggested meaningly.
“You think so? My, that would be a fat scoop! What makes you think so?”
Brainard raised his eyebrows mysteriously, and the reporter nimbly filled
in a reasonable outline of the story.
“You mean he got the money down East that he needed to stop this
receivership, and they knew it, and put him out of the way, so that he
shouldn’t interrupt the game?”
“Possibly,” Brainard admitted.
The reporter jumped from his seat briskly. “Well, I must get
busy—they’re holding the paper for me. Who’s in charge here?”
“I am,” Brainard replied promptly.
“And what’s your name?”
He pulled a dirty note book from his hip-pocket.
“Wilkins,” Brainard answered quickly, “of Wilkins & Starbird, Mr.
Krutzmacht’s New York attorneys.”
The reporter looked at Brainard and whistled, but he wrote down the name.
“You folks didn’t lose any time in getting busy! I s’pose there’ll be
litigation and all that. Do you expect to save much from the wreck?”
“That’s what I am here for—to keep those pirates from making off with the
stuff!” His eye fell upon his valise, and a sudden resolution came to
him. “See here, Farson,” he said confidentially, laying a hand on the
reporter’s pudgy thigh, “do you see that bag? The Pacific Northern that
they’re after and the Shasta Company are right inside that bag, together
with a lot of other valuable property. I’m going to take it where those
pirates can’t lay a finger on it, in spite of all the courts in
California!”
The reporter’s eyes grew round.
“You’ve got your nerve!” he said admiringly.
“You see, time’s money—big money. So I can’t stay here all night gassing
with you. There is a train on the Santa Fé at ten, isn’t there?”
“Ten ten,” the reporter corrected.
“I must make that train, or—”
“Lose the trick?” the reporter suggested affably.
“I’m going to make it!”
“You’ll need some help in the get-away, I suppose?”
“Just so! If I make that train all right with this stuff, there’ll be a
couple of hundred dollars for you, my boy; and what’s more, you can have
the story all to yourself. It will be better than the old man’s death.”
A pleasant smile circled around the reporter’s chubby face.
“All right, Mr. Wilkins! What do you want now?”
“I’ve sent out for another bag,” Brainard explained. “I’ll just pass the
rest of these papers out to you, and you can stack them ready to pack
when the bag comes.”
Brainard opened the inner door and listened. There were faint sounds
like sobbing within the safe.
“If she can cry, she’ll last,” he said to himself. “Now for it! Where
in thunder can that fellow Peters be? I hope he hasn’t heard that the
old man is dead!”
He began to shove the books and papers through the door, which he kept
nearly closed, for fear that the reporter might detect the sounds that
came from the safe, and ask questions. It was dark now, but he did not
dare to turn on the electric lights, for the windows faced the street,
and he feared men might already be watching the office.
He had transferred all the packages not packed, and was struggling at his
heavy valise, when he heard a voice behind him, and started.
“I guess you thought I was never coming back,” Peters stammered
breathlessly. He was dragging a small trunk through the little back door
behind the safe. “It nearly broke my back getting this thing up those
five flights of stairs.”
“Bring it this way, Peters!” Brainard shouted nervously, pushing the old
man through the door into the outer office.
He banged the door shut just as a muffled scream issued from the safe.
“What’s that?” Peters asked, dropping the trunk to the floor.
“Somebody in the hall, I suppose,” Brainard replied coolly.
Fortunately the old man’s attention was distracted from the scream by the
sight of the reporter. Farson had lighted another cigarette, and was
swinging his legs and smiling amiably.
“Didn’t expect to see me, did you?”
“Who—”
“That’s all right. Your friend here seems to be in a hurry. He asked me
to stay and help in the spring moving.”
“Come, get to work!” Brainard called out, on his knees before the trunk.
“Cigars and explanations afterward!”
They slung the books and the packages of papers, which the reporter had
neatly arranged, into the little trunk. Then they closed and locked it.
Brainard unbolted the outer door.
“I wouldn’t make my exit by the front door,” the reporter advised. “I
reckon you’d be spotted before you got to the street. There’s a back
way, ain’t there?”
Brainard, thinking of the woman in the safe, hesitated.
“That’s how I brought up the trunk,” Peters said. “There’s nobody out
there.”
Brainard opened the door to the inner office, and listened. It was quite
still. Probably the woman had fainted.
“Come on!” he called, grasping one end of the trunk.
The reporter caught hold of the other, and Peters followed, tugging at
the heavy bag. As they crossed the inner office, there was not a sound.
Brainard hesitated at the door, thinking that he must release the girl
before he left; but as he stood before the safe, there was a squeal from
within which indicated sufficient liveliness on the part of the
stenographer. There would be time enough to attend to her after he had
got his loot to the street. If she were released now, her temper might
prove to be troublesome; so he joined the others on the landing, closing
the little door behind him.
“The old man used to get out this way sometimes,” Peters observed.
“I reckon he never will again,” the reporter laughed.
The hall opened on a narrow, circular iron staircase, without a single
light. Down this pit Brainard and the reporter plunged, tugging at the
trunk, which threatened to stick at every turn. The old man got on more
easily with the bag, which he merely allowed to slide after him.
Brainard was soaked in perspiration; the reporter puffed and swore, but
he stuck manfully at his job.
At last they tumbled out into the dark alley at the rear of the building.
After he had caught his breath, Brainard inquired where he could find a
cab.
“If I were you, young man,” the reporter replied, “I wouldn’t try being a
swell. I’d take the first rig I could charter. There’s one over there
now.”
He pointed down the alley, and waded off into the dark. Presently he
returned with a plumber’s wagon.
“He says he’ll land your baggage at the ferry for four bits. You can
ride or walk behind, just as you like.”
They loaded the trunk and the bag into the wagon, and the reporter,
perching himself beside the driver, announced genially:
“I’ll see you aboard!”
“How much time is there left?” Brainard asked.
“Thirty-two minutes—you can do it easily in twenty-five.”
“Wait a minute, then!”
Brainard took Peters to one side, and said to him in a low voice:
“You remember that noise you heard up there in the office? It came from
the girl—the stenographer. She got fresh while you were out, and I had
to lock her up in the safe to keep her quiet. I think there is enough
air to last her some time yet; but her last squeal was rather faint.
Suppose you run up and let her out!”
Peters, with a scared look on his face, made one bound for the stairs.
“Hold on, man!” Brainard shouted after him. “You don’t know the
combination. Here it is!”
He searched in his pockets for the slip of paper on which he had copied
the figures, but in the dark he could not find it.
“This ain’t any automobile,” the reporter suggested. “You’d better put
off your good-bys until the next time!”
“Try to remember what I say,” Brainard said to the frightened Peters, and
began repeating the combination from memory. “I’m pretty sure that’s
right. Say it over! There, again!”
The shaking man repeated the figures three or four times.
“Good! Keep saying it over to yourself as you go upstairs, and I’ll
telephone the office from the ferry and see if you’ve got her out.”
But Peters had already disappeared into the darkness within the building.
Brainard climbed into the plumber’s wagon, the man whipped up his horse,
and they jolted out of the alley. As they came in sight of the ferry
building, the reporter compared his watch with the clock, and remarked:
“Eight minutes to the good—fast traveling for a plumber!”
“Just look out for my stuff while I telephone!” Brainard exclaimed.
All the way to the ferry he had been anxious about the girl in the safe.
He had already resolved that if he found Peters had failed to open the
safe, he would go back and run the risk of capture.
When the operator rang up the number of Krutzmacht’s private office,
there was an agonizing wait before any one answered. Finally a woman’s
voice, very faint, called:
“Who is it?”
Prudence counseled Brainard to assume that the voice was that of the
stenographer, and to hang up the receiver. But he wished to make sure
that it was the woman herself, and so he asked:
“Are you feeling all right, miss?”
“You thief!” came hissing over the wire to his ear. “You won’t get—”
And there was no more.
She had dropped the receiver, probably for action. When Brainard stepped
from the telephone booth, he looked uneasily in the direction of Market
Street, as if he expected to see the stenographer flying through the
hurrying crowd. The reporter beckoned to him.
“Your trunk has gone aboard the ferry. Here’s the check—to Chicago. I
thought you’d rather tote this bag yourself, though it’s pretty heavy.”
“Much obliged for all your trouble,” Brainard replied warmly. “And now
for you!”
He pulled his roll of currency from his pocket, and handed five
hundred-dollar bills to the reporter.
“You earned it! I never should have got away in time without you.”
“I guess that’s so. Much obliged for the dough; but the scoop alone is
worth it. What a story! A light-fingered attorney from New York blowing
in here under the court’s nose and lifting the whole Pacific Northern,
and goodness knows what else besides, clean out of the State! Some folks
who think they know how to do things will be sick to-morrow morning when
they get the _Despatch_!”
He shoved the bills into his trousers pocket and pulled out another
cigarette.
“There’s the gong!” he remarked.
“Thanks!” Brainard said warmly, shaking the reporter’s fat hand. “I’ll
want to see your story. Send it to me!”
“And say, I’d make up a better yarn than that lawyer story, when you have
time.”
“So you didn’t believe me?”
“I guess I’m no cub reporter!” the _Despatch_ man laughed complacently,
as the ferry-boat began to move out of the slip.
Then he started on a run for the nearest telephone booth.
“If that girl means business, as I think she does, I shan’t get as far as
Chicago!” Brainard muttered to himself, turning into the cabin of the
ferry-boat.