Nelse Ackerman’s home was far out in the suburbs of the city, upon a
knoll surrounded by forest. It was a couple of miles from the
nearest trolley line, which forced Peter to take a hot walk in the
sun. Apparently the great banker, in selecting the site of his
residence, had never once thought that anybody might want to get to
it without an automobile. Peter reflected as he walked that if he
continued to move in these higher circles, he too would have to join
the motor-driving class.
About the estate there ran a great bronze fence, ten feet high, with
sharp, inhospitable spikes pointing outwards. Peter had read about
this fence a long time ago in the American City “Times”; it was so
and so many thousand yards long, and had so and so many spikes, and
had cost so and so many tens of thousands of dollars. There were big
bronze gates locked tight, and a sign that said: “Beware the dogs!”
Inside the gates were three guards carrying rifles and walking up
and down; they were a consequence of the recent dynamite conspiracy,
but Peter did not realize this, he took them for a regular
institution, and a symbol of the importance of the man he was to
visit.
He pressed a button by the side of the gate, and a lodgekeeper came
out, and Peter, according to orders, gave the name “Arthur G.
McGillicuddy.” The lodge-keeper went inside and telephoned, and then
came back and opened the gate, just enough to admit Peter. “You’re
to be searched,” said the lodge-keeper; and Peter, who had been
arrested many times, took no offense at this procedure, but found it
one more evidence of the importance of Nelse Ackerman. The guards
went thru his pockets, and felt him all over, and then one of them
marched him up the long gravel avenue thru the forest, climbed a
flight of marble steps to the palace on the knoll, and turned him
over to a Chinese butler who walked on padded slippers.
If Peter had not known that this was a private home he would have
thought it was an art gallery. There were great marble columns, and
paintings bigger than Peter, and tapestries with life-size horses;
there were men in armor, and battle axes and Japanese dancing
devils, and many other strange sights. Ordinarily Peter would have
been interested in learning how a great millionaire decorated his
house, and would have drunk deep of the joy of being amid such
luxury. But now all his thoughts were taken up with his dangerous
business. Nell had told him what to look for, and he looked.
Mounting the velvet-carpeted staircase, he noted a curtain behind
which a man might hide, and a painting of a Spanish cavalier on the
wall just opposite. He would make use of these two sights.
They went down a hall, like a corridor in the Hotel de Soto, and at
the end of it the butler tapped softly upon a door, and Peter was
ushered into a big apartment in semi-darkness. The butler retired
without a sound, closing the door behind him and Peter stood
hesitating, looking about to get his bearings. From the other side
of the room he heard three faint coughs, suggesting a sick man.
There was a four-poster bed of some dark wood, with a canopy over it
and draperies at the side, and a man in the bed, sitting propped up
with pillows. There were more coughs, and then a faint whisper,
“This way.” So Peter crossed over and stood about ten feet from the
bed, holding his hat in his hands; he was not able to see very much
of the occupant of the bed, nor was he sure it would be respectful
for him to try to see.
“So you’re--(cough) what’s your name?”
“Gudge,” said Peter.
“You are the man--(cough) that knows about the Reds?”
“Yes, sir.”
The occupant of the bed coughed every two or three minutes thru the
conversation that followed, and each time Peter noticed that he put
his hand up to his mouth as if he were ashamed of the noise.
Gradually Peter got used to the twilight, and could see that Nelse
Ackerman was an old man with puffy, droopy cheeks and chin, and dark
puffy crescents under his eyes. He was quite bald, and had on his
head a skull cap of embroidered black silk, and a short, embroidered
jacket over his night shirt. Beside the bed stood a table covered
with glasses and bottles and pill-boxes, and also a telephone. Every
few minutes this telephone would ring, and Peter would wait
patiently while Mr. Ackerman settled some complex problem of
business. “I’ve told them my terms,” he would say with irritation,
and then he would cough; and Peter, who was sharply watching every
detail of the conduct of the rich, noted that he was too polite even
to cough into the telephone. “If they will pay a hundred and
twenty-five thousand dollars on account, I will wait, but not a cent
less,” Nelse Ackerman would say. And Peter, awe-stricken, realized
that he had now reached the very top of Mount Olympus, he was at the
highest point he could hope to reach until he went to heaven.
The old man fixed his dark eyes on his visitor. “Who wrote me that
letter?” whispered the husky voice.
Peter had been expecting this. “What letter, sir?”
“A letter telling me to see you.”
“I don’t know anything about it, sir.”
“You mean--(cough) you didn’t write me an anonynious letter?”
“No, sir, I didn’t.”
“Then some friend of yours must have written it.”
“I dunno that. It might have been some enemy of the police.”
“Well, now, what’s this about the Reds having an agent in my home?”
“Did the letter say that?”
“It did.”
“Well, sir, that’s putting it too strong. I ain’t sure, it’s just an
idea I’ve had. It’ll need a lot of explaining.”
“You’re the man who discovered this plot, I understand?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, take a chair, there,” said the banker. There was a chair near
the bedside, but it seemed to Peter too close to be respectful, so
he pulled it a little farther away, and sat down on the front six
inches of it, still holding his hat in his hands and twisting it
nervously. “Put down that hat,” said the old man, irritably. So
Peter stuck the hat under his chair, and said: “I beg pardon, sir.”