CHAPTER XXIXCLIFFORD WAITS ON GUARD
Fora minute or more, after he had seen Loveman go up the high stoop of Le Bain’s dark-windowed house, Clifford had stood with Uncle George in the shadow across the deserted street and had thought rapidly. He knew the character of that silent, respectable-fronted residence; he had heard rumors, vague, to be sure, of certain happenings that had taken place within; and he had heard rumors—again only rumors—of happenings in which unwitnessed and unrestrained pleasure was not the dominant purpose of the organizer of the party. He was certain that some vital phase of Loveman’s shrewd scheming was being, or was to be, enacted within: Le Bain’s reticent and expensive house was not taken for ordinary pleasures or commonplace enterprises.
He had to get inside, somehow; he had to know what was happening there. Without making the test, he knew Le Bain would have upon those two front doors, stoop and basement, locks of a character that it would be wasted time to try to pick or force quietly. Of course he might get police aid, and, ignoring such a mere detail as law, might break down a door—but that would give the alarm towhoever might be within and would spoil everything. And then he might ring the bell, and before the person who answered could slam the door upon him, he could drive his way through—but this again would give alarm and would ruin everything. The very essence of the plan forming in his mind was to try to keep himself in the unseen background, to discover just what Loveman and his associates had under way, to let them carry their plan through to its completion, and then, when he had the goods on them, to act swiftly. That is, if he could. There was no other way.
With Uncle George he reëntered the waiting taxi-cab and hurried toward Le Minuit. On Broadway he met two of Lieutenant Jimmie Kelly’s plain-clothes men who were willingly impressed into his service.
At the blazing entrance to Le Minuit Uncle George halted. “I guess I’ll not go up with you, son,” he said. “I’ll do more good if I don’t openly mess in police affairs. But I’ll hang about.”
Clifford nodded. With the two plain-clothes men he mounted the wide bright stairway that led to the Midnight Café.
“Tell Le Bain I want to see him in his office,” he said to the door-man, and moved quickly among the tables and passed through a gray-and-gilt door. In less than a minute Le Bain entered.
“Joe,” Clifford began brusquely, without prelude. “I want the key to that private house of yours, and I want it damned quick.”
Le Bain tried to look blank. “What private house? Why, Bob, I don’t know—”
“Cut out the stalling!” interrupted Clifford. “It won’t do you any good—and I’ve no time to listen to it. I know all about that house. And you needn’t say the people who have it to-night have the only keys—I know you have a lot of duplicates for the convenience of members of a party that prefer not to go there in a group. So come across!”
“But, Bob, honest to God—”
“No time for your lies, Joe! Now, you listen to this if you care for your own health. The people there won’t know I got in with your consent, and you’ll not get in bad with them. That is, unless they are pulling something raw there—in which case I can testify that you assisted me. On the other hand, if you don’t come across I’ll have the Commissioner of Licenses revoke your license for Le Minuit within twenty-four hours, and you’ll find you’ll never be able to do business again in this town. Quick, now,—let’s have that key!”
Monsieur Le Bain, immigrant from somewhere in that part of France which lies below Fourteenth Street, slowly turned about and fumbled in a drawer of his desk. He was a long time about it, but when he finally turned there was a key in his long yellowish-white hands. Clifford took the key, but as he did so he caught the fading remnant of a crafty look in Le Bain’s shifty eyes.
“Boys,” he said sharply, “you stick right hereand entertain this gentleman for two hours. He can do anything he likes except talk to people—or talk into that telephone.”
Clifford caught the twitch in Le Bain’s face, and he knew he had forestalled the other’s intent to telephone warning to the brief tenants of the house.
Clifford was down in the street two minutes after he had entered Le Minuit. Here he found Uncle George, waiting.
“Hate to use you as a messenger boy, Uncle George,” he said rapidly—“but you’re the best possible man for the job. Mind skirmishing around Broadway until you find Jimmie Kelly and some more of his men?”
“I’m hired,” the old man replied promptly.
“Tell Jimmie to hang around the Knickerbocker on the chance that I may telephone him. And you might hang around the ’phone yourself.”
“I’ll never leave it!” said Uncle George.
Clifford hurried from Le Minuit, and five minutes later he was unlocking the heavy outside door, and then the door within that, of the dark-faced house in the upper Forties. He crept down the dim hall, muted with Persian rugs, and soon he was gazing through cautiously parted curtains into the oak-paneled dining-room, and at the six celebrants of Jack Morton’s third birthday party of that week.
Clifford watched and listened, every sense alert. The last of that little scene between Jack and Nina Cordova over the checks was being enacted: he sawJack, laughing at the business ignorance of the “pre’ li’l’ fool,” sign the checks and hand them over—and he saw Nina’s scribbling pen fill them in (before Jack’s eyes)—and he heard her slowly repeat: “Payable to—Cash—Five—Hundred—Dollars.”
Clifford drew a quick breath. He understood it all now—or thought he did. So that was what Loveman was up to! Well, it was worth Loveman’s while to pay almost any price for the guaranteed privacy of Le Bain’s house!
The next moment Loveman was coming straight toward him. But Clifford had already made a swift survey of the resources of his situation; and before Loveman was in the hallway, he was behind a pair of tapestries at the forward end of the hall. The space behind him was unlighted, but he sensed that he was in the drawing-room. Peering out, he saw the brief scene between Nina and Loveman. That little scene convinced him that he had been correct in his conclusion of a few minutes before as to the significance of this affair in this house that told no secrets.
For a minute Clifford thought he had solved the mystery—that he had his case complete, all except arranging for his arrests. Then Loveman entered the telephone booth beneath the stairway. That was a new element. What could Loveman be about? Clifford leaned out and strove to listen, but not one word of Loveman’s filtered through the closet’s sound-proof door.
Loveman left the booth and rejoined the company. Clifford had noted a slit of light at one side of the darkened drawing-room, and toward this he now noiselessly made his way. The slit proved to be a parting in the heavy curtains between the drawing- and dining-rooms. Motionlessly Clifford watched the group of six—and all the while he wondered what Loveman’s telephoning could be about. There was drinking, and banter, and reassertions of Jack’s determination to prove himself a free spirit, and two stumbling attempts by Jack to dance with Nina to the music of his own singing—and thus half an hour passed.
Presently there was a ring. At a word from Loveman, the evilly handsome young man—“Slim” Harrison, Clifford knew him to be, a crack driver of racing-cars, and a proficient in all the evils of Broadway—rose and left the drawing-room and passed forward through the hallway. Clifford heard him open the front door, and remark courteously: “Come right in—Mr. Clifford is waiting for you.”
Footsteps—two pairs of them—returned down the hallway, and then Clifford saw Slim Harrison swing apart the other pair of tapestries, saying, “They’re waiting for you in here.” And then stepping into the brilliant light of the great dining-room he saw Mary Regan.
Two paces within the doorway she suddenly halted. “Where’s Mr. Clifford and Lieutenant Kelly?” she exclaimed. Clifford saw her stiffen andsharply eye the group at the table. Then her gaze fixed upon Jack, and she said quietly enough: “Jack—I’ve come to take you home.”
Jack swayed uncertainly to his feet, his face sagging with amazement. “Why—why—Mary—”
But Clifford heard nothing of the next few sentences. That instant he understood it all—or thought he did. He knew now the substance of Loveman’s telephone message. He saw now the magnitude of this present situation just before him. Loveman’s great scheme—the whole of it—had been planned and drawn together, and timed to take place within that hour. Clifford did not yet prevision the exact character of the further developments—but what better place for it than Le Bain’s house, from which no sound issued, which kept secret all it saw and heard?
Swiftly, silently, Clifford slipped out into the hallway, into the telephone closet, and closed the sound-proof door. He got the Knickerbocker Hotel on the wire, and a few minutes later he was snapping out sentences to Uncle George.
“What, Jimmie hasn’t showed up yet!... For God’s sake, get hold of him somehow—tell him to come right over to Le Bain’s house—you know the number—with three or four of his men. Something big is going to break!—big!—you get me? And tell him to round up Mr. Morton on the way and see that he comes here after his son. I’ll put the key under the doormat, so he can get in withoutdisturbing any one. I want the thing to come to a head before we act.”
Noiselessly Clifford crept out and hid the key. Then noiselessly he slipped back to his post at the curtains in the drawing-room.