THE CREAKING STAIRS
The cackling of geese saved Rome. A spider by his patience once gave the
immortal Bruce the courage needed to win a great victory. Even a mouse
may cause a deal of disturbance; Joyce Mills was to discover this on the
very night that Johnny and Curlie sat planning their flight.
That night she visited the camp of the Bolsheviks. In spite of all that
Johnny had said, she still believed that these radicals who were bent on
destroying the present form of government in America had robbed the Air
Mail.
“They are shrewd people,” she told herself. “They have members, yes, and
spies, in every corner of our land. They were expecting the package. The
American Secret Service men learned of its arrival. They had planned to
seize it the moment it arrived in this city. What was to hinder the
radical spies from finding out that the Secret Service men were after
their Russian Crown jewels? What more natural than that they make a bold
attempt to re-take the jewels before it was too late?”
Thus she reasoned as she made her way alone down the city street that
led to the radical center.
As she neared the place she shuddered a little. She had attended many of
these meetings, and yet the thought of them always affected her in the
same way. “As if I had seen a snake in the grass,” she told herself.
The building occupied by this radical group was long and low. A
one-storied structure, it ran the length of the block, but extended back
from the street only about sixty feet.
During a great fair there had been many small shops there. After the
fair, the store-rooms had been transformed into cheap studios. Here
musicians of a sort and artists who painted futuristic daubs and other
strange distortions of art lived.
In one of these buildings lived Brother Krosky. It was in his studio
that the brethren of his set met.
His studio was divided into two rooms, a large front room and a very
secret back room. Besides these, there was a cubbyhole of a place where
one prepared a meal.
Many times Joyce Mills had been admitted to the front room. There, in
uncomfortable chairs, over very weak tea, all sorts of people, young
students with bright, simple faces, old artists with long hair,
middle-aged women with clicking false teeth, and many others mouthed big
words and looking wise as owls proceeded to solve all the problems of a
great nation at a single sitting.
They had interested Joyce a little and had often amused her. But now she
was in deadly earnest. She had never been in that secret back room.
To-night, whether invited or not, she meant to go in. For to this room,
she knew right well, a certain little group of dark and gloomy-faced
individuals including Brother Krosky retired at a rather late hour to
discuss matters of weight and importance. The subjects talked of so
freely in the outer room were of a general nature, the discussions
rather vague. She guessed that in the back room all high sounding talk
ceased and the brethren “got down to brass tacks.”
“If the package of jewels is still missing from their treasure house,
there is sure to be some discussion regarding it. And that is exactly
what I want to hear,” she told herself.
So, when the hour had grown late and the tea very thin indeed, she
seized upon a moment when a certain brother held the others spellbound
with his eloquent discussion of the rights of the proletariat, to slip
through the door into the secret chamber. She was more than a little
frightened at first. The place was completely dark. How was she to find
a place of hiding?
Fortune favored her, for almost at once her hand came into contact with
a long davenport. At once she dropped on her knees to feel beneath.
“Just room,” she breathed. “Glad I’m thin as a rail.”
Ten seconds later found her flat on her stomach beneath that davenport,
waiting patiently for secret matters to transpire.
* * * * * * * *
At this same hour a plainly dressed youth was preparing to enter a dingy
brick building in an unlovely section of the great city. With his hand
on the knob, he glanced right and left. As if apprehensive of being
followed, he lingered on the threshold.
Seeing no one, he disappeared quickly within. At once there came the
sound of a key being turned in a lock.
This ceremony performed, he proceeded in a leisurely manner up seven
flights of grimy, unscrubbed wooden stairs to a small room beneath the
eaves.
This youth was none other than the one of the burning eyes—the one who,
having been introduced to Johnny Thompson by “The Ferret,” had taken him
for an eight mile walk with no apparent reason except that he wished
Johnny to know that hundreds of thousands of honest people lived in the
city. To-night his eyes appeared to shine in the dark.
That he had reason for apprehension on this particular night might
easily have been discovered by anyone who chanced to linger near that
street doorway. Hardly had the boy’s footsteps died away than a short,
dark individual, whose features were all but hidden by a turned-up
collar and a pulled down cap, moved stealthily toward the same door.
Having applied an ear to the keyhole, he remained motionless for the
space of sixty seconds. After that he tried the door. Finding it locked,
he produced a prodigious bunch of keys. He studied them critically for a
moment, and then selecting three, applied the first of them to the
keyhole.
With a grunt of disapproval, he discarded this to try the second. No
better result. The third did the trick. The lock clicked, the door swung
open. More silent than a mouse, the man slipped inside.
“Always,” he whispered, “it is the third one.”
Sitting down on the first step he removed his shoes. Having tied the
strings together, he threw them over his shoulder. After that, with no
sound at all save the occasional creak of a board that roused him to
silent profanity, he ascended the seven flights of stairs.
Arrived at the last landing, he paused to listen. Like those of certain
wild animals, his ears appeared to rise to the sound that came from
within.
Some one was talking; yet, when the youth had entered he had found no
one there. The room had no other entrance. No words could be
distinguished. Still, by the manner in which the speaker went steadily,
endlessly on and on, one might have judged that he was deeply in
earnest.
The “Spy”—for such was the name given to him long ago by the
underworld—listened at the keyhole but for a single moment. Then,
cocking his head on one side, he twisted his face into a smile that was
a horrible thing to see and uttered a sound half aloud:
“Uh huh! Uh huh!”
The sound coming through his nose resembled nothing quite so much as the
grunt of a satisfied pig. He repeated it once again:
“Uh huh!”
Then, turning, he crept noiselessly down the stairs.
At the first landing he paused to rub his hands and mutter aloud:
“Five grand! Five thousand dollars. And so easy. So easy!”
As if the thing pleased him immensely, he paused at each landing to
repeat this little ceremony, which in the darkness resembled an
obeisance to some ancient god of evil.
The “Spy” belonged to the underworld. He was by nature a spy. Never in
his whole life had he committed a crime, as we think of crimes. He had
never snatched a purse, robbed a safe, nor held a man up on the street.
Yet he had assisted in many such events, and always for pay. The “Spy”
had but one god. That was money. He had but one talent; that was for
spying. He never sold his services to the city or the State. All his
life he had worked for evil doers. When a bank was to be robbed, the
“Spy” looked into all such matters as burglar alarms, late working
clerks and watchmen. It was the same with a payroll holdup. He smoothed
the way. And always, as I have said, for pay.
The creatures of the underworld did not love him. They hated and
despised him; yet, because of his art of spying, they used him. The
officers of the law feared and hated him. Gladly would they have flung
him into jail. But until now they had found no charge against him.
Now, as it would seem, he was embarked upon an enterprise of no
inconsiderable importance. His fee was to be five thousand dollars. A
tidy sum. A year’s pay for a bright and capable man. Yet, by the mere
climbing of seven flights of stairs he considered it earned.
There are times when that which seems earned is not really earned at
all. By labor and pain man earns his bread. In this case, as we shall
see, the pain outweighed the labor.