CHAPTER IV.
Blindfold.
The offices of the Joseph P. McCormick Detective Agency, Incorporated, occupied the entire nineteenth floor of the Leicester Building and more nearly resembled those of a potentate of finance than a private investigator. The Chief's sanctum was protected by a series of smaller communicating offices presided over by subordinates of ascending rank and importance, through whose hands the visitor, client or culprit, must pass before gaining audience with the great man himself; a process which tended either to crush or irritate the stranger, according to his temperament.
The lady who sent in her card to the Chief on a certain crisp morning in late winter, however, seemed to find food for amusement in the ceremonious progression. She was of the type which proclaims rather than admits age, but in spite of her snow-white hair, her tall figure was as erect as that of a girl and her snapping gray eyes behind the goldpince-nezwere neither dimmed nor mellowed by time.
A dry smile tightened the fine lines about her lips as she was ushered into the last of these offices, which served as an ante-chamber to the supreme consulting room. A slim, mild-looking youth with the face of a student was seated behind a typewriter table and raised his eyebrows superciliously as he greeted her with the question which through reiteration had appealed to her sense of humor.
"You wish to see Mr. McCormick himself?"
"That fact should be self-evident even to a detective, since I have gained admittance as far as this." Her tone was pleasant, but peremptory, as if she were addressing an inquisitive schoolboy, and the young man gasped, but preceded doggedly with the formula.
"You have no appointment?"
"None. I have already stated that to a red-headed boy, two totally uninterested young ladies and several men, as you are doubtless aware."
A harassed look was creeping into the eyes of her inquisitor.
"If you will kindly state the nature of your business, Madame—"
"I came here to consult a private detective, not to discuss my affairs with his subordinates or shout them from the housetops." A sharper note had penetrated her tones as if a smooth weapon were suddenly turned edge upwards. "If your Mr. McCormick is too busy to talk to me in person, I prefer not to waste further time."
The young man rose resignedly.
"I think the Chief is at liberty now. Step this way, Madame."
He threw back a door at the farther end of the office, revealing a huge corner room walled on two sides by windows, from which a dazzling glare shone full upon their faces. A heavy-set, brawny figure, with keen eyes beneath beetling brows and a straight-clipped black mustache, rose impressively to receive her as the door closed behind her guide.
The old lady brusquely forestalled his opening remark.
"Young man," the Chief was at least forty-five, "I've been presented at five European courts with less fuss and bother than I have experienced in trying to reach you. Let us come to the point. I want someone found; if you think you can accomplish it for me, name your price."
The Chief smiled slightly as he glanced at her card on the desk before him.
"It is possible that I can be of service, Madame Dumois." His voice was blandly ingratiating. "Take this seat and give me the particulars. Is the missing person a relative?"
Madame Dumois seated herself as he had indicated and her lips set in a straight line.
"I did not come here to be cross-examined, my good man, and I haven't said the person was missing. I mean there has been no mysterious disappearance, if that is what you are getting at. I will tell you as much as I have a mind to and no more, and if you do not find it sufficient to work on, we can stop right here. I have lost track of a certain young woman, and I want to locate her. Never mind why, or what our relations have been. I'd pay a good price to lay eyes on her again."
Her voice hardened perceptibly and a faint, angry flush mounted in her faded cheeks and boded ill for the unfortunate object of her search. Detective McCormick leaned forward persuasively in his chair.
"But my dear Madame, I must have a few personal details or I shall not know what type of operative to assign to the case. I take it that it is strictly confidential?"
"I congratulate you!" Her lips twitched again in grim humor. "I seemed unable to convey that impression to your various secretaries. Your operative will have to be a person of intelligence and tact, and if he is to come in personal contact with this young woman, he must be a gentleman. She is what you would call a lady, I'll say that much for her."
"You do not care to give me her name?"
"It is immaterial."
The detective lifted his shaggy brows.
"May I ask if this young woman is a fugitive? Is there a likelihood that you will bring charges, criminal or civil, when she is located?"
"It is possible, under certain conditions." Madame Dumois' tones trembled for the first time, then steadied and she added in a sharper key. "That is beside the point. I want her found; your case ends there. The rest is my affair. Call in your operative and I will put him in possession of such facts as I consider essential."
"It is absolutely essential that I should know more, myself, before I can assign anyone to the case." The detective squared himself firmly in his chair. "Have you any idea where this young woman may be found? Any possible clue? Where and when was she last seen?"
Madame Dumois rose majestically.
"I will not take up more of your valuable time, Mr. McCormick. I see that we will be unable to come to an understanding. Good morning."
She turned to the door, but he extended a swift detaining hand.
"My dear Madame Dumois! I am prepared to do anything that is possible to be of service to you, but you must realize that you have given me no data whatever to work upon."
"I was under the impression that you would not undertake this matter personally in any event." She had halted, but there was no yielding in her tone. "If you have a moderately clever, discreet operative with the bearing and appearance of a gentleman, I will talk with him. I do not wish to discuss the details of the case any more than is absolutely necessary. I will give him a description of the young woman, nothing more. The rest will be in his hands."
The detective reflected.
"I think I have just the man for you," he announced at last. "Unfortunately, he is out on a case at the present moment, but I will recall him and send him up to see you this afternoon, if you will leave your address."
"I will meet him here," Madame Dumois replied hastily. "If he has tact enough to accept what information I am prepared to give him, and brains enough to turn it to account, it will be all I shall ask. At what hour can you have him here?"
"Shall we say three o'clock? I am confident that you will find Mr. Ross eminently suitable for your purposes. He is young, good-looking and discreet, with great personal magnetism—"
"I am not requesting him to make love to the girl." A flash of her old humor returned. "And now, Mr. McCormick, what are your terms?"
The business arrangement was briefly concluded and the detective bowed his visitor out with grudging admiration in his eyes. He waited until her firm, methodical footsteps had died away down the corridor, and then pressed a button upon the under edge of his desk top. The studious-looking young man made his appearance almost instantaneously from the adjoining office.
"Yes, sir?"
"Disappearance. Young woman, good standing. Probable social scandal. Detail Clark to tail Madame Dumois and get what info he can. Try the hotels, the old-fashioned conservative ones first. Wire Ross, 192-A. Spring Garden Street, Philadelphia, to return immediately earliest train and report here at two-thirty. Send Luders out to take his place."
The young man whipped out a pad, wrote rapidly and then paused with an inquiring glance. His chief nodded, chuckling.
"That's all. Peppery old lady, but she knows her business. Ross is the chap to handle her."
At precisely half-past two a young man bounded up the steps of the Leicester Building and, elbowing his way good-naturedly into the already packed elevator, shot up to the nineteenth floor. He was boyish-looking and slim, but his broad, straight shoulders and lithe hips betokened the athlete and his laughing eyes had a habit of narrowing suddenly in keen intensity.
He nodded a careless greeting to the red-headed boy and the burly strong-arm man who guarded the outer office, and made his way unceremoniously into the presence of his chief.
The latter explained the reason for his recall and told him succinctly of the morning's interview.
"Tactful and brainy and a gentleman; that's what the old lady says she wants, and I guess you fill the bill, Bert," McCormick added. "You're the gentleman, all right, because you were born one, and that's something you never lose and can't fake. For kid glove cases no one stands in the same class with you, but you'll need more than that in handling Madame Dumois; asbestos gloves would be safer. She wants to find the girl, but she's dead scared of our getting a line on her. Sharp as a steel trap, she is—a regular Tartar!"
"Um—French?" Herbert Ross seemed in no wise perturbed by the formidable description.
"No. Yankee accent, but there's a Paris look to her clothes. Dressy old party, in spite of her widow's cap. Shouldn't wonder if she's just back from the other side. That's why I had her looked up at the hotels, but I couldn't smoke her out. Don't antagonize her by asking questions or you're a goner. Just let her do the talking and pick up what scraps of data you can. I'm not worrying about your ability to make a success of it, Bert, if you can only get enough out of the old lady to work on, but blood from a stone would be a cinch in comparison."
"Any hint as to why she wants the subject located?"
Ross lighted a cigarette and leaned forward in his chair.
"Not in words, but from her manner I judge it is not from any desire to remember the young woman in her will," the Chief responded dryly. "Looks more like a scandal than anything else, as she's so anxious to keep the girl's identity a secret. I tried my level best to worm some information from her, but she flared up and threatened to call it all off. The best I've got is that the subject is young, refined and to all appearances a lady, although Madame Dumois seemed to grudge that fact. You go to it, Bert, and see what you can do." The young operator pondered for a moment.
"Well, sir," he began at last, "I can't hope to succeed where you have failed, if I work along the same lines. In your official capacity you have had the bad luck to antagonize her, so I think I shall try another scheme. May I have the reference library for an hour? I'll receive her there instead of here."
"Take the whole shop if you want it, but get the right dope from her about the girl!" The detective brought his hand down on the desk in a resounding slap. "It will be a long step up the ladder for you if you can start to make a reputation for yourself of successful discreet work among conservative people of the sort the old lady belongs to. That's why I put you on this; I haven't the time to go after it myself and it requires class as well as brains. The woods are full of refined young ladies who have turned one trick or another; a chance word may give you a line on how to locate this one. Try any scheme you like, but get results. That's all we're after."
The reference library was more like a club room than the sanctum of a private detective. A long, mahogany table surrounded by heavily carved chairs occupied the center of the room, and the walls were lined with bookcases, interspersed with tall glass cabinets filled with curios. A few prints and signed photographs hung above them and over the mantel was mounted a neat arrangement of firearms and various weapons.
There was nothing remarkable about the room or its appointments at first glance, save its obvious incongruity with the rest of the suite, but a closer inspection would have revealed the fact that all the volumes—with the exception of those in a small case between two windows—dealt with one subject; crime. The curios in the cabinets, the weapons above the mantel, each had its individual history, tragic or sordid, to bear mute testimony to the futility of defiance of the law.
Madame Dumois' return was punctual to the moment and she was ushered without delay to the apartment, where Ross awaited her. She stared critically at the slim, straight, immaculate figure as he turned toward her from the low bookcase, a quaint vellum-covered volume open in his hands.
"Madame Dumois?" he bowed low with continental courtesy over her hand. "I have come from Philadelphia to be of what service to you I may; I am Herbert Ross."
"Mr. McCormick suggested you—" she began, but he interrupted her swiftly.
"Do you know, while awaiting you I have come upon a real treasure here? The collected verse of Nizami!"
Mme. Dumois stepped backward, blinking.
"Poetry!" she ejaculated faintly, in blank amazement.
"Ah! I see you are interested." His face lightened in boyish eagerness. "Nothing so appeals to the woman of rare discernment and feeling as the lilting charm of the early Persians. The casual reader knows only the Bacchanalian philosophy of Omar, but you, I am sure are familiar with Rumi and this greatest of lyricists, Nizami, to say nothing of Hafiz—"
"Upon my soul!" Mme. Dumois had backed until the table barred her retreat. "You are a most extraordinary young man!"
"Should one permit the ugliness of life to blind one to the beauties of expression? But I see you have not done so. You possess that rarest of all gifts, sympathetic appreciation, Madame Dumois!" He beamed upon her. "Do you remember this lament of Majnun over the grave of Laili? Where even in the exquisite love letters of your own Abelard to Heloise, can you find such haunting beauty? Listen, I beg of you:
"Oh, bower of joy, with blossoms fresh and fair,But doomed, alas! no ripened fruit to bear.Where shall I find thee now in darkness shrouded!Those eyes of liquid fire forever clouded—"
"Oh, bower of joy, with blossoms fresh and fair,But doomed, alas! no ripened fruit to bear.Where shall I find thee now in darkness shrouded!Those eyes of liquid fire forever clouded—"
"Oh, bower of joy, with blossoms fresh and fair,But doomed, alas! no ripened fruit to bear.Where shall I find thee now in darkness shrouded!Those eyes of liquid fire forever clouded—"
"Oh, bower of joy, with blossoms fresh and fair,
But doomed, alas! no ripened fruit to bear.
Where shall I find thee now in darkness shrouded!
Those eyes of liquid fire forever clouded—"
He sighed dramatically and closed the book. "Your French poets—but I forgot; I had fancied from your name that you were a native of France—"
"I am American—" Madame Dumois stammered, still dazed from his unexpected onslaught.
"That I realized at once when I saw you. I knew even the part of the country from which you came, Madame." He bowed again. "Only the women of New England retain their girlhood grace and beauty of form with their native charm of manner through years of cosmopolitan life, as this little volume has retained its beauty of thought and inspiration in spite of the fact that it was discovered in the pocket of an arch murderer when he was searched in the death house."
A faint flush had risen to the faded cheeks of the old lady at his daring flattery, but she paled again with an involuntary shudder.
"Mercy! Put the horrid thing away!"
He laid the book upon the table.
"Forgive the digression, Madame Dumois. I am at your service."
For once she seemed at a loss.
"You are really a detective?" Her eyes searched his face keenly, as he pulled out a chair for her.
"That is my profession," responded Ross, with a touch of quiet dignity.
"This McCormick person has told you what I require?"
"You wish to find a certain young lady, whom you will describe to me."
"Precisely." Madame Dumois' tone was gracious. "I think, Mr. Ross, that we shall get on. This young woman appears refined, well-bred and rather more comprehensively educated than the average girl of today, but in appearance she is quite a usual type, neither blonde nor brunette, not actually pretty nor strikingly plain."
Ross nodded encouragingly as if he found valuable points in the negative description, and the old lady warmed to her task.
"She has brown hair and blue eyes, and her taste in dress is conservative, but her manner when last I saw her was altogether too self-reliant; pert, it would have been considered when I was a girl. There is very little more that I can tell you about her, but I believe her to be in the city somewhere."
"Your description is remarkably clear." The young detective preserved an inscrutable face as he added blandly: "No doubt you have a photograph of her?"
"If I had, young man, I should not exhibit it," the old lady retorted.
"Only to me," he smiled persuasively, then dodged the issue. "You say, Madame Dumois, that the young woman is well educated. Is she also accomplished? Music, art, languages?"
"A mere smattering of music, but she is a perfect parrot in picking up strange tongues; a born linguist." She caught herself up abruptly. "However, I did not come here to answer questions, Mr. Ross, as I explained very definitely this morning. I want this young woman found. You have her description; now go ahead and find her."
"I will do my best." His smile had not wavered, and he bent forward ingratiatingly. "But will you permit one solitary question? It will not be an impertinent one, and it would simplify matters greatly. It has been said, you know, that the most passive, idle-minded of us has one pet enthusiasm, one hobby or talent, call it what you will, which interests us above all other things. Has this young woman any special predilection?"
"I hadn't thought of that!" Madame Dumois exclaimed. "Of course, she has, and a most ridiculous one for a gentlewoman: Egyptology."
The detective gave no sign that at last a clue lay within his grasp, but remarked with studied carelessness:
"Oh, that sort of thing is a fad nowadays, to acquire the patter of some science or art and pose as a savant or connoisseur. In all probability the young woman has no real knowledge of the subject."
"If she hasn't it is her own fault." The old lady returned in unguarded haste. "She was a pupil of the greatest authority of the age, Professor Mallory, of Cairo."
"Indeed. I have not heard of him." Ross brushed the information aside with a slight gesture, as if it were of no moment. "I think, however, that I shall be able to proceed with the data you have given me."
Madame Dumois rose, and her sharp eyes flashed in a sort of grim exultation.
"In that case, I can only wait for your success. If you can lay your hands on that young woman, Mr. Ross, you will not find me unappreciative. You will report to me——?"
"But not here!" he expostulated. "The atmosphere, you know, for a person of your delicate sensibility in frequent visits to a detective agency would be too repellent to be borne. I will be delighted to come to you, Madame Dumois. I do not anticipate any insurmountable difficulty in the case, but if I find myself in a quandary I am sure your opinion and advice would be of inestimable value."
The broad touch of flattery proved the final straw to break the back of her prejudice, and the old lady capitulated.
"Well, you may call, if you like. I am staying with an old friend, Mrs. Hemmingway, on the North Drive, but I do not care to have my address bandied about this office, Mr. Ross."
"I quite understand." As he held the door open for her to depart he added coolly: "I will come tomorrow for the photograph."
"Which you will not get!" She chuckled in frank enjoyment of his pertinacity. Then the stern lines tightened about her mouth. "Find this young woman with the information I have given you, Mr. Ross, or drop the case. You have wormed more out of me than I meant you to, but I think I can trust you not to take advantage of it in any way other than to promote my object. The girl must be found."