CHAPTER XXI. A BURGLARY FOR JUSTICE
Shirley rose, and once more applied that gridiron-trained boot of his: this time to the lock of the door. Two doses resulted in a complete cure for its obstinacy. As he rushed into the room, he saw a figure swing out of the window on a dangling rope. He hesitated—the desire to chase this intruder to the roof of the club struggled with his duty to the unfortunate Jap, who lay on the floor, where he was being garroted by a burly ruffian in a chauffeur's habiliments. He sprang toward his little assistant, and made quick work of the big man.
As he threw the other, with one of his “silencer” twists of the neck cords, the Jap sprang up. A demoniac anger twisted that usually smiling countenance, and it took all of Shirley's strength, to wrest away the automatic revolver from the maddened valet, to prevent swift revenge.
“Why, Chen. He's caught. Don't shoot him now!”
Chen, with a voluble stream of Nagasaki profanity, spluttered in rage, and strove like a bantam rooster to get at his antagonist. The necessity for quieting him to prevent bloodshed was fatal to the pursuit of the other man, as Shirley realized bitterly. The servants were running to the room by this time. The club steward opened the battered door, and Shirley turned to explain.
“You have a brave little man, here, Cushman. Chen heard this burglar in my room, and tried to capture him at the risk of his own life. He deserves promotion and a raise in salary. Go downstairs and call the police. We'll have this fellow locked up!”
The man glared at Shirley, and rubbed his throat which throbbed from the vice-like grip of the jiu-jitsu. Chen still breathed hard and his almond eyes rolled nervously. At last he was quiet again, although the slender fingers twitched hungrily for a clawing of that dirty neck. Shirley patted him on the back. Judgment had come to another of the gangsters, and the criminologist was pleased at the diminution in the ranks of his opponent.
An examination of his cabinet and dresser drawers showed that the pillaging had barely begun when Chen popped out of his hiding-place. It was no wonder that Warren had been so solicitous as to the speeding time: intuition had once more intervened to interrupt these well-laid schemes.
The little Jap could tell barely more of his adventure than that he had opened the door when he heard men walking and talking in the room. Then the struggle had ensued, with the result already described.
Now, indeed, was Shirley more puzzled than ever at Warren's sudden departure. It had upset the plans of the conspirators: it was an unwelcome surprise to their Chief. And furthermore it had interfered with a little scheme of the criminologist by which he had expected to craftily imprison his guest for the remainder of the night.
The room was put in order—not much was there to rearrange, for the tussle had come so promptly. With a final look at his belongings, Shirley left Chen in charge, not forgetting to slip to him another reward for his courage.
Then he went downstairs and hurried over to the Hotel California to hold a conference of war with Helene Marigold.
She was nervous, as she greeted him. Yet a subtle smile on her face showed that she was not surprised by the visit. Shirley quickly outlined the occurrences of the dinner hour. When he asked her opinion, for he had learned to place a growing trust in her quick grasp of things, she walked silently to her typewriter.
“Here, sir, is a little note which may amuse you.”
She handed him a piece of paper. It read:
“Chief: The Monk has turned up at the Blue Goose on Water Street. He is drunk and telling all he knows. Come down at once to help us quiet him. Hurry or every thing will be known. You know who.”
Shirley looked at the message, and then with tilted eyebrows at his fair companion.
“What do you know about the Blue Goose?” he asked. “And the Monk? For I presume that you wrote this out?”
“Your presumption is correct. I remembered hearing Warren ask Taylor this afternoon after that telephone call from you, where the Blue Goose saloon could be. Taylor told him it was a sailor's dive on Water Street. The night they thought me dreaming on his library couch, I heard Taylor ask Warren if they had heard from the Monk. So, it seemed to me that the two questions might interest Mr. Reginald Warren if presented in a language that he understood.”
“And what was that language?”
“It was a code message, which I typed out on this Remwood machine here, by the system you told me. It was slow work, but I finished it and sent it over to the club, knowing Warren would be with you. I really don't know what good the message would do. But being an illogical woman, and a descendant of Pandora, I thought it would be amusing to open the Pandora's box and let all the little devils loose, just to see the glitter of their wings!”
Shirley caught her hands delightedly.
“You bully girl! Nothing could have happened better. I'll improve my time now, by visiting Mr. Warren's apartment, impolite as it is without an invitation. And then I think I will go calling in that little cave of the winds in the rear of his art collection, on the other street.”
“But, Monty—I Mean, Mr. Shirley,” and a rosy embarrassment overcame her, “you will put your head into the lion's mouth once too often. Why not wait until you get him under lock and key?”
“My dear girl, we will telephone my club and talk to the door man. I think that he may be under lock and key by this time, in a manner you little suspect. Let me have the number.”
He went to the instrument on her dressing-table. The club was soon reached, and Dan the door man was answering his eager question.
“Yes, sir, the taxi has come back, sir.”
“Send the chauffeur to the wire. I want to talk to him,” said Shirley. The man was soon speaking. “What address did you take that gentleman to, my man?”
“Why, sir, I started out for the Battery, but sir, a terrible thing happened.”
“What was it?”
“The gentleman was overcome with an ep'leptic stroke or somethin' like that. He pounded on the winder behind me, and when I stopped me car, and looked in he was down an' out. I was on Thirty-third Street and Fift' Avenue at the time, so I calls a cop, and he orders me to run 'im over to Bellevue. He's there now, sir. He ain't hardly breathin', sir. It's terrible!”
“Too bad, I must go and call, to see if I can help him!” was Shirley's remark as he hung up the receiver. He repeated the news to Helene. Her eyes sparkled, as she said: “Ah, those symptoms resemble the ones you told me which came from that amo-amas-amat-citron, or whatever it was.”
“Not quite such a loving lemon, Miss Marigold,” he chuckled. “Amyl nitrite. The same soothing syrup which quieted our would-be robbers on Sixth Avenue, that night when we left his apartment. It will wear off in about three hours. I had a little glass container folded in my own handkerchief, which I put in his overcoat pocket as a parting souvenir, crushing it as I did so. I reasoned that undue anxiety which he displayed might cause him to mop his brow, close to that student-duel scar. One smell of the chemical on that handkerchief, in the quantity which I gave, was enough to quiet his worries. Now for the Somerset Apartment.”
He looked at his watch.
“It is eight fifteen. I want you to telephone up to Warren's apartment exactly at ten o'clock. Tell them—there should be a them, that I have been overcome in your apartment, and that they are the only people who can help you, or who know you. I believe that the idea of finding me unconscious, and getting me away will bring any and all of his friends who may be there. If Taylor is there with others, he will hardly leave them in the place when he goes. What I want is to be sure that the coast is cleared of people at that hour. Then I will make an investigation into his papers and other matters of interest. Can I count on you?”
A reproachful pouting of the scarlet lips was the only answer. Shirley left, this time hurrying uptown to a certain engine-house, whose fire captain he had known quite well in the old reportorial days.
It was beginning to snow once more. And as Shirley slipped out of the engine-house, carrying a scaling ladder which he had borrowed after much persuasion from his good-natured friend, he thanked his luck for this natural veiling of the night, to baffle eyes too curious about the campaign he had planned. He knew the posts of the policemen on this street, and sedulously avoided them.
The Warren apartment faced the Eastern side of the structure, and when he reached the front of the Somerset, he sought for a way in which to use his implement. A scaling ladder, it may be explained to the uninitiated, is about eight feet long—a single fire-proof bar, on which are short cross-pieces. At one end is a curiously curving serrated hook, which is used for grappling on the sills of windows or ledges above. It is the most useful weapon for the city fire-fighter, enabling him to climb diagonally across the face of a threatened structure, or even to swing horizontally from one window to a far one, where ladders and hose-streams might not reach.
A hundred feet to the West of the Somerset he found the excavations for a new apartment house. No watchman was in sight, in the mist of falling flakes, so the criminologist disappeared over the fence which separated the plot of ground from the sidewalk. Advancing with many a stumble through the blasted rock and shale, he obtained ingress to an alleyway in the rear. Following this brought him to the back of the Somerset. Shirley had an obstinate grandfather, and heredity was strong upon him. It seemed a foolhardy attempt to scale the big structure, but he raised the ladder to the window-sill of the second story, climbing cautiously up to that ledge.
On the second sill he rested, then stretched his scaler diagonally forward to the left. As he put his feet upon this, he swung like a pendulum across the space. It was a severe grueling of nerves, but his judgment of placement was good. When the ladder stopped swinging he clambered up another story, as he had learned to do on truant afternoons wasted at the firemen's training school, during the privileged days of journalistic work.
Floor after floor he ascended, until he reached the eighth, on which was Shirley's great goal. Here he exerted the utmost prudence, refraining from the natural impulse to look down at the great crevasse beneath him. His footing was slippery, but the thickening snowfall was a boon in white disguise, for it protected him from almost certain observation from the street below. Slowly he raised his eyes to a level with the illuminated window, and peered in.
A strange sight greeted him.
Shine Taylor was busily engaged in the 'twisting of coils of wire, about shiny brass cylinders, with an array of small and large clocks, electric batteries and mysterious bottles on the carved library table. He was intent upon the manufacture of another of his diabolical engines of death!
Even as he watched, the door opened and who should stagger into the room but Reginald Warren!
“Great Scott, Reg! What hit you?” was Taylor's ejaculation, as the other stumbled forward, with a hand to his purple face, to sink into an easy-chair, groaning. The man outside the window could not distinguish the words, but the current of thought was well expressed in pantomime.
“I've been drugged!” moaned Warren. “That devil put something on my handkerchief which knocked me out. I came to in Bellevue and I had a time getting away to come back here. What about the Monk? Did you see him?”
Taylor had run to his side. It seemed as though Warren's eyes would pop from his head. The veins were swollen on his pallid brow, and he gasped for air.
“Open the window!” he murmured, and his confederate rushed to the very portal through which the criminologist was watching this unusual scene, with bated breath. His heart sank, as he lowered himself with a suddenness which vibrated the loosely-attached scaler. For the first time his eyes turned toward the terrifying distance from which he had ascended.
There was a squeak and he heard the window slide in its frame. He felt that all was over. It would be impossible for Shine Taylor not to observe the hooked prong of the ladder, with its curving metal a few inches from his hands. In this ghastly minute of suspense, Shiley's thoughts, strangely enough turned back to one thing. He did not dash through the gamut of his life experiences nor regret all past peccadilloes, as novelists inform us is generally the ultimate thought in the supreme moment before a dash into eternity! He felt only a maddening, itchingly bewitching desire to reach up to his coat pocket and draw out that scent-laden page of typed note-paper which had been glorified by its caress of the warm, bare bosom of the wonderful woman who had so mysteriously drifted into the current of his life.
Then he heard a voice through the open window so close to his ears: it was Shine Taylor's nasal whine.
“It's snowing, Reg. The air will do you good. What a gorgeous night for a murder. Tell me now, what was the trouble?”
And Shirley swung, and swung and swung!
CHAPTER XXII. IN THE DOUBLE TRAP
Eternity had passed, the Judgment Day had been overlooked and new aeons had gone their way, it seemed to the criminologist, when the voice was audible again.
“Oh, all right. I just drew it down from the top. Tell me about your doping. Who was the devil?”
He had been unobserved. By the grace of the fates, Warren's sudden appearance had given him a better chance to hear their secrets, and Taylor's own abstraction had dissipated any interest in the world beyond the window. Again he lifted himself to the level of the sill, sure that the creamy curtains upon which the light from the big electrolier was beaming, would shield him from their view. Warren called for some brandy. Taylor served him, but it was three minutes or more before the other could collect himself. Then he began furiously, as the pain in his forehead diminished.
“This Shirley: he's a clever dog. He put something on my handkerchief, and when I got that message of yours it got me, right in the taxicab, as I was on my way to the Blue Goose to meet you.”
“To meet me?” and Taylor's turn came to be startled. “I don't know why you should meet me at the Blue Goose!”
“Say, didn't you send me this note in code?” demanded Warren, drawing out the typewritten sheet. Taylor shook his head, with a blanched face.
The other looked at him with the first evidence of fear which Shirley had ever seen on the confident face. Warren caught his assistant's hand, and drew his face down toward the note.
“Look, it is in our code. Phil can read it but he is the only one beside you. He is locked up in jail, and couldn't reach a typewriter. I got a message from him this afternoon that he wouldn't squeal. You know how he smuggled it out to me. Tell me how could any one know about the Monk and write this so?”
Taylor shook his head, speechless. As he turned his face toward the window Shirley observed the great drawn shadows under his squinting eyes. The sudden shock was telling on that weasel face. Taylor walked unsteadily toward the infernal machine, and he looked blankly toward Warren again. The other's blazing orbs were full upon him now. There was a frightful menace in their glittering depths as he spoke.
“Taylor, if I thought you had sold out I'd skin you alive right now!”
“Reg—Reg—you are my best friend. Don't say a thing like that.”
“Are you selling me for some purpose. Are you soft on that chicken? Has she blarneyed you into this?” demanded his chief, rising, unsteadily, but fierce in his suspicious tensity.
Taylor cowered, with imploring hands stretched out.
“Why, Reg, no one ever did for me what you've done. I'd die rather than sell you out, and there ain't a dame in the world that could make me soft on a real game like this.”
As Warren studied his white face there came a tinkle on the telephone.
“What's that? Who's that?” Warren turned and ran toward the instrument, still studying the face of his companion. It was evident that a seed of distrust was planted in his bosom. He answered nervously.
“Yes, yes! What do you want? Who's speaking?”
Then he listened, and a wise expression came over his face. It broke into a smile for the first time since he entered the room. He winked at Taylor who drew near him. Shirley strained his ears to catch the words.
“Yes, yes, why, my dear Miss Bonbon. Surely, I'll be glad to come down—To help take care of Mr. Shirley—Of course, I will come in my machine and bring him uptown to a hospital—That's what you want?—Yes, indeed, nothing would give me greater pleasure.”
He rang off, and turned toward Taylor.
“That smooth devil has sniffed some of his own dope as sure as you live, Shine. We'll get him. Call up and have the machine sent around. You and I will be a committee of two, and we'll end this tonight. Bring what you need.”
Warren drank another full glass of brandy, while Taylor gave a quick order over the telephone. Then the latter snatched up a small black satchel which was standing on a side table. The assistant came to the window, and Shirley dropped down out of sight, for another moment of suspense. But the sash was quickly closed and bolted.
The light was turned out, and he waited another five minutes, stiffening in the cold wind which had sprung up to send the big flakes in eddies against his numbed fingers. With difficulty he fished out a long, thin wire from his pocket, with which he had frequently turned the safety catch of windows on other such occasions. Again it served its purpose, and he drew himself up to the sash of the opened window. He brushed off the snow, so as to leave no telltale puddles of drippings. He went to the door of the library, and then to that of the vestibule.
It was locked from the outside, even as they had done when Helene was the drowsy prisoner.
He had little time, he knew, for his search, but he first thought of the girl's predicament. He must cover the tracks there. He took up the receiver, and in a minute was talking to her.
“I'm in. Leave word downstairs (and pay the clerk and bell-boy a good bribe) that you have gone to a hospital with a sick friend. Tell them to swear to that, and better still leave the hotel at once, hunt up Dick Holloway—you'll find him at the Thespis Club to-night. Send in the chauffeur to ask for him and have him stay with you in the machine. I am going to visit the other place when I finish here. I'll be down there, at the Thespis Club, by eleven again. Good-bye—use your wits.”
Then he began a hurried ransacking of the apartment. He picked up a note-book here, sheets of memoranda there, letters and documents which he thought would be convenient. Warren's bedrooms were locked, but a small “jimmie” sufficed to force them open. He found in one drawer a dozen or more bank books, with as many different financial houses, and under many names. This he shoved into his pockets. At last, satisfied that he could gain no more, he retreated to the window. He shut this and was once more on the windowsill. Here he looked down, and a new inspiration came to him. He would have difficulty in getting admission to the apartment entrance, at this time of night. The attendant would remember him and warn Warren upon the latter's return. It was but one more climb, a single story, to the roof. So, up he went, deserting the faithful scaling ladder on the roof, for the time being.
He sought around for several minutes on the snowy, slippery surface before he found the entrance to the iron stairway close by the elevator shaft. Then he went softly down.
Past Warren's apartment, on his way without a noise, his boots off, he continued until he reached the second floor. Here he was baffled again. Why had he not taken some impression of the pass-key of the negro attendant when let in before? Yet now he remembered that the man had never relinquished his hold upon that open sesame. He remembered the “jimmy”—yet this would betray him, by the broken lock!
There was the servant's entrance, however, in the rear of the hallway. To this he slipped, even as the elevator passed up bearing Warren and Shine Taylor, muttering angrily. Shirley found the rear door to the rooms, and there he worked quickly, forcing the lock. He was soon inside, and hid himself in the pantry of the darkened apartment. He had not long to wait.
There was a clicking noise which reverberated through the empty room, as the other two entered by the front portal. He heard them talking in whispers, then the creaking of a window, and all was silent again.
Shirley went to the same small window through which he had descended before. With his boots tied together by their laces, and suspended from his neck, on either side, he went down the rope noiselessly. He found the iron door partially opened, as he reached the end of the corridor. A block of wood held it back from the jamb.
“He is prepared for a quick retreat. So shall I be,” thought Shirley, as he noiselessly crept into the chamber, after having drawn away the wooden block. He let the door come gently to its frame, stopping it within an inch of its lock. As he turned slightly forward he caught two curious silhouettes: Warren at his table, with Shine at his side, their outlines clear and black against the brightness of the headlights. On, the other side of the transparent screen stood a man, with one eye blackened, his face badly bruised and wicked in its battered condensation of evil determination with rage and fright, so oddly mixed.
“It ain't my fault, Chief! There are only six of the boys left. I tried me best but this little Chinyman he soaks me one on the lamp, with a gun butt. Me pal was nabbed in the room when I sneaks out on the rope. I finds out afterward that Jimmie's watch must-a been about twenty minutes slow. That's how we misses.”
“But you didn't get him, and I'm going to break you for this!”
“But gov'nor, listen—we leaves the machine all right. That'll git 'im anyway. What'll I do?”
“I have the addresses of the other men here in my pocket. You tell them to stick right in their rooms for the next twenty-four hours. If they don't hear anything from me, tell them to go to Frisco by roundabout ways and I'll forward their money, care of Kelso. Now get out.”
The man disappeared and there was a double click as the door to the front compartment closed. Warren turned toward Taylor, While Shirley flattened himself against the rear wall, and crouched down slowly, without a betraying sound.
“I don't understand that girl not being there. Some one's closing in on us. I'm going to break that girl's spirit before I'm through. She'll be on the yacht tonight, for everything's ready now. What sort of a machine did you arrange for his room?”
“The old telephone one we worked in Oakland. It is under his bed. I told the men to do that first before they went through his things. Then it would look like plain robbery, and when he goes to take the receiver off the hook it's 'good-night, nursey!' That little popper will blow the roof off that club house!”
Shirley's blood might have run cold at the calm pride of this degenerate fiend, had it not been boiling at the reference to Helene. He crept nearer to them, along the wall. He lay down on the floor, below the level of the first bullet paths. Then he drew his automatic and the bulb light, ready for his surprise.
“I'll call up Kick Brown at the telephone company. He's on duty until twelve. That's an hour yet.”
He placed the plug in position but there came no answer over his private wire. Warren cursed: this time in a dialect unknown to Shirley. The man was asserting his most primitive nature now.
“What does that mean? He knows that it's important to-night. I wonder if some one has squealed. You know what I said upstairs, Shine?” Warren's voice was ominous. “I don't like the looks of things. And you're the only one who has ever known the inside working of my system. I've even told you the key to my code—Phil knows it in part, but there is nothing I've kept from you.”
Here Shirley's dramatic instinct asserted itself. In a sepulchral voice, he spoke: “One key to the right, in writing. One to the left to read. Hands up, Warren, you're wanted in Paris, and we have the goods on you!”
Placing the bulb light far to his left, he twisted the little catch which kept it glowing permanently. The light fell full on the face of Warren and Taylor as they sprang up back to back!
“Drop that revolver. It's all up now. You go to the chair for these murders.”
Warren shot for the body he supposed to be above the little light. As he did so Shirley sent a bullet into the arch criminal's right wrist. The weapon dropped from his hand to the table. Shine Taylor, terror-stricken, staggered against his companion, groping for support. Warren misunderstood it: he thought his assistant was trying to hold him. The swift interpretation gave new fuel to the flame of mistrust which had sprung up in his heart. He knew not how many men were about him—he merely realized that his crafty plans had been set at naught,—there could be only this one explanation. He struck at Taylor, who moaned in pain.
“You cur, you've squealed on me!” With his uninjured left hand he caught the other in his Oriental death grip, with all his consummate skill. Astonished at the sudden move, Shirley rose to his feet. But he hesitated too long.
With a faint gurgle, Shine Taylor, pickpocket, mechanical artist and criminal genius sank to the mouldy ground of the cellar—lifeless!
Shirley snatched up the light, instinctively throwing its rays upon the face of the dead man. It was horrible to see this ghastly ending of the miserable life, so suddenly conceived and grewsomely executed! Here was Warren's opportunity. He caught up his weapon from the table with the left hand, and sent a shot at the intruder, leaping at the same time toward the rear entrance. Monty swung the light about, but the other threw on an electric switch. He stood by the iron portal a fiendish smirk on his distorted features.
“So, my luck is good after all: I've got you where I most want you!” His weapon covered Shirley's. “I shoot as well with my left hand as with my right. But, no, I won't shoot you. I'll put you away without a trace left. That is always the clever way. I told you that the average criminal was too careless about little things. Good-bye, Mr. Montague Shirley, I wish you a pleasant journey!”
His hand, bleeding from the bullet wound, was pushing the iron door, behind him as he faced Shirley. Suddenly a frightful sound broke the stillness: it was the final exhalation of air from the dead man's lungs. It sent a creeping chill through Shirley's blood. Warren's right hand dropped, nervously for an instant, despite his resolution. In that second Shirley had brought his own weapon up to a level with the other's eyes.
The door closed with a clang!
Warren's face lost its sneering smile. He was locked in from the rear!
“Now, let's see you get out the front way,” retorted the criminologist. He had one hand behind him. He felt a metal contrivance, With three buttons on it. He thought perhaps it were the controlling switch for the lights. He would take his chances in the dark. He pressed all three quickly.
There was a clang from the front, as some mechanism whirred for an instant. A gong sounded above, and scurrying feet could be heard—then were audible no more. It was the warning alarm for the gangsters: they had fled.
Suddenly to Shirley's straining ears came the tick-ticking of an alarm clock, from the corner of the room to his right. He dare not look at it. Warren's eyes grew black with the Great Fear!
“You fool, you've locked all the entrances, and sent the men away. That clock will ring in exactly five minutes. When it does, this place will go up from a load of lyddite. You've dug your own grave!”
Warren's voice was hoarse, and his bright eyes radiated venomously, as he kept his weapon pointed, like Shirley's, at the face opposite. They were both prisoners in the death cellar, with the advantage in favor of neither!
And the ticking clock, with its maddening, mechanical death chant seemed to Shirley to cry, with each beat, like the reminiscence of some nightmare barbershop: “Next! Next! Next!”
CHAPTER XXIII. CAPTURED AND THEN
Warren's white lips were moving in perfect synchronism, as he counted the seconds and ticks of the clock. Shirley, never so acute, cudgeled his mind for some devise by which he might overcame the other. It was hopeless. At last, just as he knew the inevitable second was almost completed, a faint rustling came from the other side of the iron door. Warren's face brightened with hope. With a nerve-racking rasp, the iron bar on the other side was raised: it was a torturing delay as the two waited!
The door slowly opened. After a harrowing pause a revolver muzzle slid gently through the crack, and a woman's voice murmured softly: “Drop the gun!”
It was Helene Marigold!
Warren's ashen face changed to purple hue, his hand trembled just enough to incite Shirley to a desperate chance. As the criminal drew the trigger with a spasmodic jerk, Shirley was dropping to the floor, whence he pushed himself forward with a froglike leap, as he straightened out the great muscles.
Together they rolled in a frenzied struggle.
“Run back, Helene. The clock will explode!” cried Shirley, desperately. Instead, she sprang into the bright room, espied the diabolical arrangement in the corner, and ran to pick it up. She saw the wire, and her deft fingers reached behind the clock to turn back its hands. Had she torn the wire, as a man would have done, the dreaded explosion would have ended it all.
“We're coming!”
It was the voice of Pat Cleary from the passageway. He rushed through the subterranean passage, followed by several men, with Dick Holloway excitedly in their train. After a titanic struggle, with the man baffled in this maddening moment of ruined triumph, they handcuffed him.
Shirley led Helene into the front compartment before she could observe the horror stamped upon the face of the murdered rogue.
The girl turned her glorious eyes to his, reached forth her hands, and then the eternal feminine conquered as she trembled unsteadily and sank into his arms.
“Break down the doors, Cleary. Out here, to the street. Pull off the hands of that clock—it's a lyddite bomb!” cried Shirley, excitedly.
One of the men used the table with clattering effect. The iron door of the front room gave way, and Shirley carried Helene up the ladder, to the main floor of the old garage. She seemed a sleeping lily—so pale, so fragile, so fragrant in her colorless beauty. He had never seen her so before! For an instant a great terror pierced him: she seemed not to breathe. But as he placed his face close to her mouth, her eyes opened for one divine look, then drooped again. A white hand and arm curled, with childish confidence, about his shoulder. He bore her thus to the big car from the Agency, which stood outside.
“Quick, down to the Hotel California,” he called to the chauffeur, “Pat Cleary can handle matters there.”
As they sped toward her apartment the roses took their wonted place in her cheeks. She sat up to smile in his face. Then she lowered her glance, with carmine mounting hotly to her brow. Helene said no word—nor did Shirley. She simply leaned toward him, to bury her face upon the broad shoulder, as neither heeded the possible curiosity of the driver on the seat in front.
At least, they understood completely. There was nothing else to say!
As Shirley left her at the door of the apartment, he turned into the elevator, his mind whirling with the strange imprisonment into which he had let his unwilling heart drift. The clerk stopped him at the lower floor.
“There's a call for you, sir. It's rush, the gentleman said!”
“Great Scott! What now?” he ran to the instrument, and he heard Captain Cronin's excited voice.
“Shirley. The man's escaped again! They just came into the place. He threw some sort of bottle at the front of the patrol wagon which blew it all to pieces. He got away in the mix-up—three policemen were injured!”
“I'll get him, Captain, if it's the last act of my life.”
To the surprise of the blase clerk, the well-known club man ran out of the hotel, dropping his hat in his excitement. He shouted to the driver who still waited in the agency machine.
“The sky's the limit, now, son. Race for Twenty-first Street and the East River. Let me off at the end of the dock. Then go back to get some men from the agency, as I'll have a prisoner, then, or they'll get my body!”
The machine raced down the street, regardless of the warnings of policemen. Shirley was confident that his was not the only car on such a mission. He reached the dock of Manby, where was waiting the expert engineer of the hydroplane. He had not planned in vain.
“Have you seen an auto go past here before mine?”
“Yes, sir, I was smoking me pipe, and settin' on the rail of the dock, when one shoots up toward the Twenty-third Street Ferry, with a cop on a motor-cycle chasin' it behind.”
“Then, quick, into the boat.”
They clambered down the wet ladder, and after an aggravating delay, the whirring engines of the racing craft were started. Shirley took off his coat, and lashed a long rope about his waist. He tied the other end of it securely to a thwart in the boat.
“What's your idee, Cap?” asked the engineer, as he waited the signal.
“There's a man trying to catch that white yacht out in the river. I want to get him, that's all. If I fall out of this boat, keep right on going, for I'm tied up now. Where's the boat hook?”
“Here, sir. Are you ready? Just give me your directions. All right, sir, we're off.”
Shirley grunted and the hydroplane sped out onto the river, in a big curve, as he directed. Like a white ghost on the river was the trim yacht, which even now could be seen speeding down the stream, all steam up. There were two toots on the whistle and Shirley feared that his man had boarded her. But the hydroplane, ploughing through the cold waves, whizzed toward the yacht, as he climbed out to the small flat stern. A small boat had swung close to the yacht now. A ladder had been lowered from a spar, while a man standing in the little craft missed it. The yacht was gliding past the boat, when another rope ladder was deftly swung over the stern.
The hydroplane was close up now, and Shirley saw his prey dangling at the end of the ladder, now in the water, struggling with the rungs of the ladder, and now being drawn up.
His engineer, with a skilful hand on the helm, swung in close to the yacht, as keen for the capture as his patron. They whizzed past at almost railroad speed, and Shirley, sprang toward the ladder. His arms closed about the body of Reginald Warren in a grip which he braced by a curious finger-lock he had learned in wrestling practice.
Two revolvers barked over the taffrail of the yacht, as the hydroplane raced onward, dragging Shirley and his prisoner at the end of the rope, through the water. Again the shots rang out, but they were out of range, on the dark waters so quickly, that before the police boat had set out from shore to investigate the firing from the pleasure vessel, the criminologist's struggle with his wounded antagonist was over.
Half drowned, himself, with Warren completely past consciousness, Shirley was pulled into his own boat as the engines were slowed down. They returned rapidly to the dock.
“Help me work him—that was a pretty rough yank. He's been shot in the hand already.”
They rolled Warren on a barrel, “pumped” his arms, and by the time the Cronin automobile had returned with the other detectives, Warren was restored to understanding again. Shirley forced some liquor between his teeth, to be greeted with a torrent of strange oaths.
“The jig is up, Warren,” said the criminologist. “As a chess-player in the little game, you are a wonder. But, I think I may at last call 'Checkmate.'”
“I'm not dead yet, Shirley,” hissed Warren. “I gave you your chance to keep out of this. But you wouldn't take it. I'll settle the score with you before I'm finished. There's one man in the world who knows how to get away from bars. I'm that man.”
Then his teeth snapped together with a click. He said nothing more that night, even during the operation for probing Shirley's bullet, and the painful dressing. At the station-house, and his arraignment before the magistrate at Night Court, where he saw some other familiar faces of his fellow gangsters—now rounded up on the same charges—he still maintained that feline silence.
And his eyes never left the face of Montague Shirley, as long as that calm young man was in sight!
Shirley merely presented his charge of murder—for the strangling of Shine Taylor. The names of the aged millionaires were not brought into the matter—there was no need. He had done his work well.
At Cronin's agency, late that night, there came a cablegram from the greatest detective bureau of France.
“The Montfleury case” was the most daring robbery and sale of state war secrets ever perpetrated in Paris. It had been successful, despite the capture, and conviction of the criminal, Laschlas Rozi, a Hungarian adventurer who had killed three men to carry his point. The scoundrel had escaped after murdering his prison guard, and wearing his clothes out of the gaol. A reward of 100,000 francs had been offered for his capture, by the Department of Justice.
“Monty, who gets all the credit for this little deal—that's what's bothering me?” asked Captain Cronin, as they sipped a toast of rare old port, in his rear office.
Shirley lit the ubiquitous cigarette, and tilted back in his chair.
“Captain: why ask foolish questions? This case ought to buy you five or six of those big farms you've been planning about—and leave you fifty thousand dollars with which to pay the damages for being a gentleman farmer.”
“And you, Monty? You know you never have to present a bill with me. What will you do with your pin money?”
“I'm going down on Fifth Avenue tomorrow and invest it in a solitaire ring, for a very small finger.”