CHAPTER XIMARY PLANS ANEW
Thefollowing morning Clifford called at the Grantham and asked if Mrs. Morton was in.
The clerk examined the hotel’s file of guests. “There is no Mrs. Morton staying here.”
So, after all, they had not registered. He recalled that Mary had formerly been known here as Mrs. Gardner.
“May I see Mrs. Gardner, then?” he asked.
“Mrs. Gardner moved from the Grantham early this morning,” replied the clerk. “I’d just come on duty when she left.”
“Was there a—was her brother with her?”
“She was alone.”
“If you will kindly give me her new address—”
“She left no address.”
Clifford walked out of the Grantham in deep thought. Mary had realized her situation, she had acted promptly. But what was her plan?—for undoubtedly she had evolved a plan during the night. And where had she gone?
And how was it all going to work out? To be sure, the penetration of the designs of Loveman and Bradley was his real business; but he could not help himself, he was vastly more interested inwhat Mary might be doing, and in what was to be the end of it all for her. He called on Slant-Face; but her brother still had not seen or heard from her directly since her return to New York. He kept Loveman under surveillance, and also Bradley; the maneuvers of either might lead him to her. And also he kept watch upon Hilton, whose eyes had suddenly lighted when he had seen Mary quickly thrust her rings into her gloves. But he picked up nothing.
Clifford might have been greatly helped in his search for Mary by Commissioner Thorne: a general alarm might quickly have located her. But he did not want Mary brought before the general attention of the police. However questionable the ethics of the course her ambition had planned, there was in it nothing that was legally criminal.
For a week he kept close surveillance upon Loveman, Bradley, and the dark young man; and learned not a thing about Mary and not a thing about the plans of the others. Then one day he ran across the elder Morton, who had just returned to the city after a trip to Chicago.
“You won’t believe it when I tell you,” said the older man, “but Jack’s gone to work.”
“Where?”
“In my New York offices. Been working there a week—and they tell me he’s been as regular as a clock. Remarkable change!” His voice lowered. “But here’s a point that seems odd: though he’skept his rooms at the Biltmore, the people there have hardly seen him.”
The finding of Mary now seemed simple enough. But Clifford realized that mere knowledge of her whereabouts would not satisfy him. Clifford considered rapidly how he might achieve a private meeting with her. Half an hour later he was sitting with Uncle George in Monsieur Le Bain’s Grand Alcazar, and was telling this wise old man of Broadway all that had happened.
“Certainly some little situation for Mary Regan!” Uncle George looked at Clifford with his shrewd old lashless eyes. “But, son, I hope your motor’s not missing fire over her—and her a married woman?”
“I’m concerned because I’m certain Loveman is planning to use her. I can protect her better, and I stand a better chance to land Loveman, if I know where she is.”
“H’m. And is that the three-mile limit of your interest?”
“I’m human enough to want to know what she’s done and how she’s planned to meet the future. Knowing that will help me against Loveman.”
“Well, son, be sure you’re not passing phony money off on yourself—which is what the average citizen does when he thinks he has one of these here righteous thoughts. I suppose you’ve got me fitted into some nice little idea?”
“You’re going to help me meet her.”
“Oh, that’s all, is it!” the old man said dryly. “All I’ve got to do is to step out on Broadway, touch her on the sleeve, and say, ‘Good-afternoon, Mary; Bob Clifford wants to one-step with you to a bit of nice chin-music’—and in she’ll come wearing a smile on all four sides, you being so popular with her!”
“All you’ve got to do, Uncle George, is something else. Jack likes you; Mary considers you one of her best friends. You go into that telephone booth, call up Jack at his father’s office, and learn where she is—and after you’ve learned that we’ll dope out the rest.”
“I didn’t think that in my old age I’d sink to be a stool for a copper,” sighed Uncle George, with mock mournfulness.
He heaved his big body up and crossed to a booth. Five minutes later he swayed back to Clifford’s side.
“I got a line on her. But it’s up to me to do some of this here super-delicate detective work. Sit where you are—though it’s an awful risk to leave you alone and unprotected right over a wine cellar. I may be back in an hour. So-long.”
He was back in half an hour. “She’s having tea over at the Ritz. Come on. I got a taxi waiting outside.”
He led the way out and across the sidewalk, bulking large before Clifford. “May God pity an old sinner for what’ll be comin’ to him for this!” hemurmured. At the door of the taxi he stepped aside. “Get in first,” he said to Clifford; and, as Clifford obeyed, he smartly closed the door on Clifford’s back. “All right,” he called to the chauffeur.
As the taxi moved away, a startled voice within the car exclaimed: “You!”
Clifford then saw that he was sitting beside Mary. “Miss Regan!” he ejaculated, forgetting her new name.
“Uncle George told me we were to pick up Jack.”
“I hope you’ll forgive the deception. Don’t blame Uncle George. Blame me.”
“What does this mean?” she demanded.
“I felt I had to see you at once.”
“Why?”
“You see, I could hardly help wanting to know what you had done.”
He had thought it more than likely that she would be angry. Her dark eyes did flash at him; but when she spoke she spoke very calmly.
“There’s no reason why you should not know; and I have no objections to telling you everything. What do you wish to know first?”
“What you did first.”
She considered, then spoke with a cold frankness that was in keeping with her recent attitude toward him—to show him her calculating worldliness, stark, unexcused.
“I thought I had passed through the GoldenDoors,—that’s a phrase of mine,—but after that night at the Grantham when I saw you, I realized that I still stood far without them. I saw that I had either to vanish—or be willing to wait my time, perhaps a long time, if I would see it through. I decided on the latter.”
“Yes,” Clifford prompted.
“That meant,” the unsparing voice went on, “that for a long time Jack and I would hardly dare be seen openly together, that we had to live in seclusion. I made Jack see things as I saw them, so we sublet an apartment on Riverside Drive, and we’re known there as Mr. and Mrs. Grayson.”
“And what about Jack’s going to work?”
“I thought that if through my influence Jack should settle down, it would help when his father finds out.”
“I see.”
“I realize perfectly,” the cold voice continued, “another problem that I have to face. Jack likes gay company; further, you said it is not his nature to care for one woman long. Well, I must make Jack like me for a long time, and make him like me despite the solitude. I shall do it.” She paused, then added: “I believe that is everything.”
They rode on in silence, Clifford covertly eyeing the erect, contained figure beside him—guessing at what it must have cost her to give up her dreamed-of pleasure, to be forced into seclusion, to be forced to undertake the responsibility of sobering down ajoyous spendthrift. Life certainly had not given her what she had expected in her bargain.
Again the question rose: how was it all coming out?
The next afternoon Clifford, following Hilton, saw his quarry enter the Mordona, the great apartment house on the Drive before which he had left Mary the night before. He followed into the lobby just as his man disappeared into an elevator. He had no doubt on whom the dark gentleman was calling, or for what reason he called.
Opening into the elaborate lobby, for whose gilded ostentation the tenants were assessed a goodly portion of their rent, was a florist’s shop. Into the comparative privacy of this Clifford stepped to wait until his man came down: a move that was just in time, for from a descended elevator, which must have passed the one bearing Hilton aloft, stepped the square, solid figure of Bradley. Again Clifford had no doubt on whom the call had been made, or why.
At last he had picked up a warm and very busy trail. Under pretense of an indecision over the flowers he should purchase, he waited for his man to come down, trying to reproduce the scene that was now going on in the “Graysons’” apartment, and the scene prior to it in which Bradley had figured. A quarter of an hour passed, then the debonair Hilton emerged from an elevator and strode out with a jaunty, smiling air.
The next moment Clifford was in an elevator, shooting upward, and two minutes later Mary’s maid was bearing his card through a curtained doorway. He caught Mary’s voice sounding as though it were two rooms away, finishing what was obviously a telephone conversation: “You’ll come as soon as you can get here? That’s most kind of you. Good-bye.”
There was a delay; he guessed that Mary was surprised at this third successive call; then he was shown through the curtained doorway into the drawing-room. His swift impression of the room was that it was large for a New York apartment, and that its prodigal furnishings bespoke wealth rather than taste on the part of its absent lessee. The next moment Mary came in through a door which he judged led from the library. There was now in her bearing nothing of the cold frankness which she had shown him the day before. She was taut with controlled excitement, which he knew to be the product of the so recent interviews. Her manner was challenging.
“What doyouwant?”
He tried to speak in a steady, impersonal tone. “Mr. Bradley was here a few minutes ago. I’d be obliged if you’d tell me what he came for.”
“Pardon me for not obliging you—but that is my own affair. Is this all?”
“Another gentleman just called on you. Would you tell me what he wanted?”
“That also is my own affair.”
“It might help me greatly if I knew exactly what he asked for,” Clifford urged.
“Perhaps. But that cannot concern me.”
“Then you will not tell?”
“No.”
“Are you aware who this man is?”
“He’s a friend of Jack’s.”
“Not much of a friend, I hope.” Clifford still spoke in his steady, impersonal tone. “Mr. Hilton is one of several men that I am after—and he’s one of the cleverest and most dangerous of the lot. It is the easiest thing in the world for a crook who is well-dressed, well-mannered, and who can dance, to make acquaintances wherever he likes. The regular game of these crooks is to pick out a woman with money, or who can get money, make her acquaintance, gain her confidence and some of her secrets, and then lead her into a situation where she must pay or be exposed. This is your last visitor’s special line. You might help me a lot if you would tell me what Mr. Hilton wanted from you.”
“He came to see me about a personal matter of no importance,” she replied.
“Pardon me if I do not believe you,” he said.
She made no response.
“You will not tell?” he demanded.
“I have nothing to tell,” was her steady answer.
“I might force you to tell—” he snapped at her, but instantly cut himself off.
“Since you won’t tell me,” he said, stepping moresquarely before her, “then I’ll tell you. Bradley came here to blackmail you; blackmail is one of Bradley’s big side-lines just now. Hilton was a follow-up man on the same business. If he wasn’t in this particular game before, he got next the other night at the Grantham. He saw you slip off your rings and hide them when Jack’s father was coming to your table. He guessed what that action meant, and it was easy for him to dig up the rest.”
Clifford paused. “I’m right so far, yes?” he demanded.
But she did not speak.
“And I can tell you just what he said,” Clifford continued, “and how he said it—for he’s a most gentle-spoken party. It would cause him very great regret to have to tell Mr. Morton that his son had contracted a secret marriage, and it would cause him even greater regret to have to tell both the Mortons just who Mary Regan has been and just who are the members of her family. The only way he can be saved from inflicting upon himself this regret is for you to come across with a large sum of money. Well, isn’t that about it? Now will you help me out?”
“I can say no more than I have said,” she replied.
“Then I shall have to get him alone,” Clifford said, with grim quiet. “Him and the others.”
He left her with no further word. On the way down in the elevator he recalled the fragment he had heard over the telephone; and again he steppedinto the convenient privacy of the florist’s shop. Not more than two minutes had passed when he saw Peter Loveman enter one of the elevators. So it was Loveman she had been telephoning to. She had doubtless sent for the little lawyer to ask his advice—the irony of it!
Clifford waited for Loveman to descend. Fifteen minutes passed—it was now getting on toward six; then into the lobby, walking eagerly, came Jack Morton. And then in the entrance, watching but discreetly unobtrusive, appeared Jack’s father. Jack’s elevator had made its trip up and had just descended, when the elder Morton crossed the lobby and addressed the elevator-man. The florist’s door stood open, so Clifford heard every word.
“By the way,” said Mr. Morton, “what is the name of the gentleman, your only passenger, that you just took up? I thought I recognized him as an acquaintance.”
“Mr. Grayson, sir.”
“He lives here?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I suppose he has one of your bachelor apartments?”
“No, sir. He lives here with Mrs. Grayson.”
“To be sure. I didn’t know Mrs. Grayson’s health had permitted her to come back from California. Please don’t mention my having been here; they might feel hurt at my not having come up.”
He slipped the man a bill and went out. Cliffordrealized that Mr. Morton had been engaged upon a bit of private sleuthing on his own account: which might lead to—what?
Clifford thought a moment. Then he sought out the superintendent of the building, and after some very confidential talk, and a showing of credentials, which the superintendent verified by calling up Police Headquarters, he departed, bearing with him a pass-key to all the apartments of the Mordona.