253CHAPTER XXIIION HIS WAY
The sun hung well above the river mists and threw long, cherry-red beams across the choppy channel where clotted jets of steam and smoke from tug and steamer drifted with the fog; and still the captain of theVolhyniaand young Neeland sat together in low-voiced conference in the captain’s cabin; and a sailor, armed with cutlass and pistol, stood outside the locked and bolted door.
Off the port bow, Liverpool spread as far as the eye could see through the shredded fog; to starboard, off Birkenhead, through a haze of pearl and lavender, the tall phantom of an old-time battleship loomed. She was probably one of Nelson’s ships, now only an apparition; but to Neeland, as he caught sight of her dimly revealed, still dominating the water, the old ship seemed like a menacing ghost, never to be laid until the sceptre of sea power fell from an enervated empire and the glory of Great Britain departed for all time. And in his Yankee heart he hoped devoutly that such disaster to the world might never come upon it.
Few passengers were yet astir; the tender had not yet come alongside; the monstrous city beyond had not awakened.
But a boat manned by Liverpool police lay off theVolhynia’sport; Neeland’s steamer trunk was already in it; and now the captain accompanied him to the ladder, where a sailor took his suitcase and the olive-wood254box and ran down the landing stairs like a monkey.
“Good luck,” said the captain of theVolhynia. “And keep it in your mind every minute that those two men and that woman probably are at this moment aboard some German fishing craft, and headed for France.
“Remember, too, that they are merely units in a vast system; that they are certain to communicate with other units; that between you and Paris are people who will be notified to watch for you, follow you, rob you.”
Neeland nodded thoughtfully.
The captain said again:
“Good luck! I wish you were free to turn over that box to us. But if you’ve given your word to deliver it in person, the whole matter involves, naturally, a point of honour.”
“Yes. I have no discretion in the matter, you see.” He laughed. “You’re thinking, Captain West, that I haven’t much discretion anyway.”
“I don’t think you have very much,” admitted the captain, smiling and shaking the hand which Neeland offered. “Well, this is merely one symptom of a very serious business, Mr. Neeland. That an attempt should actually have been made to murder you and to blow me to pieces in my cabin is a slight indication of what a cataclysmic explosion may shatter the peace of the entire world at any moment now.... Good-bye. And I warn you very solemnly to take this affair as a deadly serious one and not as a lark.”
They exchanged a firm clasp; then Neeland descended and entered the boat; the Inspector of Police took the tiller; the policemen bent to the oars, and the boat shot away through a mist which was turning to a golden vapour.255
It was within a few boat-lengths of the landing stairs that Neeland, turning for a last look into the steaming golden glory behind him, saw the most splendid sight of his life. And that sight was the British Empire assuming sovereignty.
For there, before his eyes, militant, magnificent, the British fleet was taking the sea, gliding out to accept its fealty, moving majestically in mass after mass of steel under flowing torrents of smoke, with the phantom battle flags whipping aloft in the blinding smother of mist and sun and the fawning cut-water hurrying too, as though even every littlest wave were mobilised and hastening seaward in the service of its mistress, Ruler of all Waters, untroubled by a man-made Kiel.
And now there was no more time to be lost; no more stops until he arrived in Paris. A taxicab rushed him and his luggage across the almost empty city; a train, hours earlier than the regular steamer train, carried him to London where, as he drove through the crowded, sunlit streets, in a hansom cab, he could see news-venders holding up strips of paper on which was printed in great, black letters:
THE BRITISH FLEET SAILS
SPY IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS
CHARLES WILSON, M. P., ACCUSED
MISSING MEMBER SUPPOSED TO BE KARL BRESLAU,INTERNATIONAL SPY
And he noticed knots of people pausing to buy the latest editions of the papers offered.
But Neeland had no time to see much more of London than that—glimpses of stately grey buildings and256green trees; of monuments and palaces where soldiers in red tunics stood guard; the crush of traffic in the city; trim, efficient police, their helmets strapped to their heads, disentangling the streams of vehicles, halting, directing everything with calm and undisturbed precision; a squadron of cavalry in brilliant uniforms leisurely emerging from some park between iron railings under stately trees; then the crowded confusion of a railroad station, but not the usual incidents of booking and departure, because he was to travel by a fast goods train under telegraphed authority of the British Government.
And that is about all that Neeland saw of the mightiest city in the world on the eve of the greatest conflict among the human races that the earth has ever witnessed, or ever shall, D. V.
The flying goods train that took him to the Channel port whence a freight packet was departing, offered him the luxury of a leather padded armchair in a sealed and grated mail van.
Nobody disturbed him; nobody questioned him; the train officials were civil and incurious, and went calmly about their business with all the traditional stolidity of official John Bull.
Neeland had plenty of leisure to think as he sat there in his heavy chair which vibrated but did not sway very much; and his mind was fully occupied with his reflections, for, so far, he had not had time to catalogue, index, and arrange them in proper order, so rapid and so startling had been the sequence of events since he had left his studio in New York for Paris, via Brookhollow, London, and other points east.
One thing in particular continued to perplex and astonish him: the identity of a member of Parliament,257known as Charles Wilson, suddenly revealed as Karl Breslau, an international spy.
The wildest flight of fancy of an irresponsible novelist had never created such a character in penny-dreadful fiction. It remained incomprehensible, almost incredible to Neeland that such a thing could be true.
Also, the young man had plenty of food for reflection, if not for luncheon, in trying to imagine exactly how Golden Beard and Ali Baba, and that strange, illogical young girl, Ilse Dumont, had escaped from theVolhynia.
Probably, in the darkness, the fishing boat which they expected had signalled in some way or other. No doubt the precious trio had taken to the water in their life-jackets and had been picked up even before armed sailors on theVolhyniadescended to their empty state-rooms and took possession of what luggage could be discovered, and of the three bombs with their charred wicks still soaking on the sopping bed.
And now the affair had finally ended, Neeland believed, in spite of Captain West’s warnings. For how could three industrious conspirators in a fishing smack off the Lizard do him any further damage?
If they had managed to relay information concerning him to their friends ashore by some set of preconcerted signals, possibly the regular steamer train to and out of London might be watched.
Thinking of this, it presently occurred to Neeland that friends in France, also, might be stirred up in time to offer him their marked attentions. This, no doubt, was what Captain West meant; and Neeland considered the possibility as the flying train whirled him toward the Channel.
He asked if he might smoke, and was informed that258he might; and he lighted a cigarette and stretched out on his chair, a little hungry from lack of luncheon, a trifle tired from lack of sleep, but, in virtue of his vigorous and youthful years, comfortable, contented, and happy.
Never, he admitted, had he had such a good time in all his life, despite the fact that chance alone, and not his own skill and alertness and perspicacity, had saved his neck.
No, he could not congratulate himself on his cleverness and wisdom; sheer accident had saved his skin—and once the complex and unaccountable vagary of a feminine mind had saved him from annihilation so utter that it slightly sickened him to remember his position in Ilse Dumont’s stateroom as she lifted her pistol and coolly made good her boast as a dead-shot. But he forced himself to take it lightly.
“Good Lord!” he thought to himself. “Was ever a man in such a hellish position, except in melodrama? Andwhata movie that would have made! And what a shot that girl proved herself to be! Certainly she could have killed me there at Brookhollow! She could have riddled me before I ducked, even with that nickel-plated affair about which I was ass enough to taunt her!”
Lying in his chair, cheek on arm, he continued to ponder on what had happened, until the monotonous vibration no longer interfered with his inclination for a nap. On the contrary, the slight, rhythmic jolting soothed him and gradually induced slumber; and he slept there on the rushing train, his feet crossed and resting on the olive-wood box.
A hand on his arm aroused him; the sea wind blowing259through the open doors of the mail-van dashed in his face like a splash of cool water as he sat up and looked around him.
As he descended from the van an officer of the freight packet greeted him by name; a sailor piled his luggage on a barrow; and Neeland walked through the vista of covered docks to the pier.
There was a lively wind whipping that notoriously bad-mannered streak of water known as the English Channel. Possibly, had it been christened the French Channel its manners might have been more polite. But there was now nothing visible about it to justify its sentimental pseudonym of Silver Streak.
It was a dirty colour, ominous of ill-temper beyond the great breakwater to the northward; and it fretted and fumed inshore and made white and ghastly faces from the open sea.
But Neeland, dining from a tray in a portholed pit consecrated to the use of a casual supercargo, rejoiced because he adored the sea, inland lubber that he had been born and where the tides of fate had stranded him. For, to a New Yorker, the sea seems far away—as far as it seems to the Parisian. And only when chance business takes him to the Battery does a New Yorker realise the nearness of the ocean to that vast volume of ceaseless dissonance called New York.
Neeland ate cold meat and bread and cheese, and washed it down with bitters.
He was nearly asleep on his sofa when the packet cast off.
He was sound asleep when, somewhere in the raging darkness of the Channel, he was hurled from the sofa against the bunk opposite—into which he260presently crawled and lay, still half asleep, mechanically rubbing a maltreated shin.
Twice more the bad-mannered British Channel was violently rude to him; each time he crawled back to stick like a limpet in the depths of his bunk.
Except when the Channel was too discourteous, he slept as a sea bird sleeps afloat, tossing outside thundering combers which batter basalt rocks.
Even in his deep, refreshing sea sleep, the subtle sense of exhilaration—of well-being—which contact with the sea always brought to him, possessed him. And, deep within him, the drop of Irish seethed and purred as a kettle purrs through the watches of the night over a banked but steady fire.
261CHAPTER XXIVTHE ROAD TO PARIS
Over the drenched sea wall gulls whirled and eddied above the spouting spray; the grey breakwater was smothered under exploding combers;quai, docks, white-washed lighthouse, swept with spindrift, appeared and disappeared through the stormy obscurity as the tender from the Channel packet fought its way shoreward with Neeland’s luggage lashed in the cabin, and Neeland himself sticking to the deck like a fly to a frantic mustang, enchanted with the whole business.
For the sea, at last, was satisfying this young man; he savoured now what he had longed for as a little boy, guiding a home-made raft on the waters of Neeland’s mill pond in the teeth of a summer breeze. Before he had ever seen the ocean he wanted all it had to give short of shipwreck and early decease. He had experienced it on the Channel during the night.
There was only one other passenger aboard—a tall, lean, immaculately dressed man with a ghastly pallor, a fox face, and ratty eyes, who looked like an American and who had been dreadfully sick. Not caring for his appearance, Neeland did not speak to him. Besides, he was having too good a time to pay attention to anybody or anything except the sea.
A sailor had lent Neeland some oilskins and a sou’-wester; and he hated to put them off—hated the calmer waters inside the basin where the tender now lay262rocking; longed for the gale and the heavy seas again, sorry the crossing was ended.
He cast a last glance of regret at the white fury raging beyond the breakwater as he disembarked among a crowd of porters,gendarmes, soldiers, and assorted officials; then, following his porter to the customs, he prepared to submit to the unvarying indignities incident to luggage examination in France.
He had leisure, while awaiting his turn, to buy a novel, “Les Bizarettes,” of Maurice Bertrand; time, also, to telegraph to the Princess Mistchenka. The fox-faced man, who looked like an American, was now speaking French like one to a perplexed official, inquiring where the Paris train was to be found. Neeland listened to the fluent information on his own account, then returned to the customs bench.
But the unusually minute search among his effects did not trouble him; the papers from the olive-wood box were buttoned in his breast pocket; and after a while the customs officials let him go to the train which stood beside an uncovered concrete platform beyond thequai, and toward which the fox-faced American had preceded him on legs that still wobbled with seasickness.
There were no Pullmans attached to the train, only the usual first, second, and third class carriages with compartments; and a new style corridor car with central aisle and lettered doors to compartments holding four.
Into one of these compartments Neeland stepped, hoping for seclusion, but backed out again, the place being full of artillery officers playing cards.
In vain he bribed the guard, who offered to do his best; but the human contents of a Channel passenger263steamer had unwillingly spent the night in the quaint French port, and the Paris-bound train was already full.
The best Neeland could do was to find a seat in a compartment where he interrupted conversation between three men who turned sullen heads to look at him, resenting in silence the intrusion. One of them was the fox-faced man he had already noticed on the packet, tender, and customs dock.
But Neeland, whose sojourn in a raw and mannerless metropolis had not blotted out all memory of gentler cosmopolitan conventions, lifted his hat and smilingly excused his intrusion in the fluent and agreeable French of student days, before he noticed that he had to do with men of his own race.
None of the men returned his salute; one of them merely emitted an irritated grunt; and Neeland recognised that they all must be his own delightful country-men—for even the British are more dignified in their stolidity.
A second glance satisfied him that all three were undoubtedly Americans; the cut of their straw hats and apparel distinguished them as such; the nameless grace of Mart, Haffner and Sharx marked the tailoring of the three; only Honest Werner could have manufactured such headgear; only New York such footwear.
And Neeland looked at them once more and understood that Broadway itself sat there in front of him, pasty, close-shaven, furtive, sullen-eyed, theNew York Paris Heraldin its seal-ringed fingers; its fancy waistcoat pockets bulging with cigars.
“Sports,” he thought to himself; and decided to maintain incognito and pass as a Frenchman, if264necessary, to escape conversation with the three tired-eyed ones.
So he hung up his hat, opened his novel, and settled back to endure the trip through the rain, now beginning to fall from a low-sagging cloud of watery grey.
After a few minutes the train moved. Later the guard passed and accomplished his duties. Neeland inquired politely of him in French whether there was any political news, and the guard replied politely that he knew of none. But he looked very serious when he said it.
Half an hour from the coast the rain dwindled to a rainbow and ceased; and presently a hot sun was gilding wet green fields and hedges and glistening roofs which steamed vapour from every wet tile.
Without asking anybody’s opinion, one of the men opposite raised the window. But Neeland did not object; the rain-washed air was deliciously fragrant; and he leaned his elbow on his chair arm and looked out across the loveliest land in Europe.
“Say, friend,” said an East Side voice at his elbow, “does smoking go?”
He glanced back over his shoulder at the speaker—a little, pallid, sour-faced man with the features of a sick circus clown and eyes like two holes burnt in a lump of dough.
“Pardon, monsieur?” he said politely.
“Can’t you even pick a Frenchman, Ben?” sneered one of the men opposite—a square, smoothly shaven man with slow, heavy-lidded eyes of a greenish tinge.
The fox-faced man said:
“He had me fooled, too, Eddie. If Ben Stull didn’t get his number it don’t surprise me none, becuz he was265on the damn boat I crossed in, and I certainly picked him for New York.”
“Aw,” said the pasty-faced little man referred to as Ben Stull, “Eddie knows it all. He never makes no breaks, of course. You make ’em, Doc, but he doesn’t. That’s why me and him and you is travelling here—this minute—because the great Eddie Brandes never makes no breaks––”
“Go on and smoke and shut up,” said Brandes, with a slow, sidewise glance at Neeland, whose eyes remained fastened on the pages of “Les Bizarettes,” but whose ears were now very wide open.
“Smoke,” repeated Stull, “when this here Frenchman may make a holler?”
“Wait till I ask him,” said the man addressed as Doc, with dignity. And to Neeland:
“Pardong, musseer, permitty vous moi de fumy ung cigar?”
“Mais comment, donc, monsieur! Je vous en prie––”
“He says politely,” translated Doc, “that we can smoke and be damned to us.”
They lighted three obese cigars; Neeland, his eyes on his page, listened attentively and stole a glance at the man they called Brandes.
So this was the scoundrel who had attempted to deceive the young girl who had come to him that night in his studio, bewildered with what she believed to be her hopeless disgrace!
This was the man—this short, square, round-faced individual with his minutely shaven face and slow greenish eyes, and his hair combed back and still reeking with perfumed tonic—this shiny, scented, and overgroomed sport with rings on his fat, blunt fingers and the silk266laces on his tan oxfords as fastidiously tied as though a valet had done it!
Ben Stull began to speak; and presently Neeland discovered that the fox-faced man’s name was Doc Curfoot; that he had just arrived from London on receipt of a telegram from them; and that they themselves had landed the night before from a transatlantic liner to await him here.
Doc Curfoot checked the conversation, which was becoming general now, saying that they’d better be very sure that the man opposite understood no English before they became careless.
“Musseer,” he added suavely to Neeland, who looked up with a polite smile, “parly voo Anglay?”
“Je parle Français, monsieur.”
“I get him,” said Stull, sourly. “I knew it anyway. He’s got the sissy manners of a Frenchy, even if he don’t look the part. No white man tips his lid to nobody except a swell skirt.”
“I seen two dudes do it to each other on Fifth Avenue,” remarked Curfoot, and spat from the window.
Brandes, imperturbable, rolled his cigar into the corner of his mouth and screwed his greenish eyes to narrow slits.
“You got our wire, Doc?”
“Why am I here if I didn’t!”
“Sure. Have an easy passage?”
Doc Curfoot’s foxy visage still wore traces of the greenish pallor; he looked pityingly at Brandes—self-pityingly:
“Say, Eddie, that was the worst I ever seen. A freight boat, too. God! I was that sick I hoped she’d turn turtle! And nab it from me; if you hadn’t wired267me S O S, I’d have waited over for the steamer train and the regular boat!”
“Well, it’s S O S all right, Doc. I got a cable from Quint this morning saying our place in Paris is ready, and we’re to be there and open up tonight––”
“Whatplace?” demanded Curfoot.
“Sure, I forgot. You don’t know anything yet, do you?”
“Eddie,” interrupted Stull, “let me do the talkingthistime, ifyouplease.”
And, to Curfoot:
“Listen, Doc. We was up against it. You heard. Every little thing has went wrong since Eddie done what he done—every damn thing! Look what’s happened since Maxy Venem got sore and he and Minna started out to get him! Morris Stein takes away the Silhouette Theatre from us and we can’t get no time for ‘Lilith’ on Broadway. We go on the road and bust. All our Saratoga winnings goes, also what we got invested with Parson Smawley when the bulls pulled Quint’s––!”
“Ah, f’r the lov’ o’ Mike!” began Brandes. “Can that stuff!”
“All right, Eddie. I’m tellin’ Doc, that’s all. I ain’t aiming to be no crape-hanger; I only want you both to listen to methistime. Ifyou’dlistened to me before, we’d have been in Saratoga today in our own machines. But no; you done what you done—God! Did anyone ever hear of such a thing!—taking chances with that little rube from Brookhollow—that freckled-faced mill-hand—that yap-skirt! And Minna and Max having you watched all the time! You big boob! No—don’t interrupt! Listen tome! Where are you now? You had good money; you had a theaytre, you had backing!268Quint was doing elegant; Doc and Parson and you and me had it all our way and comin’ faster every day. Wait, I tell you! This ain’t a autopsy. This is business. I’m tellin’ you two guys all this becuz I want you to realise that what Eddie done was against my advice. Come on, now; wasn’t it?”
“It sure was,” admitted Curfoot, removing his cigar from his lean, pointed visage of a greyhound, and squinting thoughtfully at the smoke eddying in the draught from the open window.
“Am I right, Eddie?” demanded Stull, fixing his black, smeary eyes on Brandes.
“Well, go on,” returned the latter between thin lips that scarcely moved.
“All right, then. Here’s the situation, Doc. We’re broke. If Quint hadn’t staked us to this here new game we’re playin’, where’d we be, I ask you?
“We got no income now. Quint’s is shut up; Maxy Venem and Minna Minti fixed us at Saratoga so we can’t go back there for a while. They won’t let us touch a card on the liners. Every pug is leery of us since Eddie flimflammed that Battling Smoke; and I told you he’d holler, too! Didn’t I?” turning on Brandes, who merely let his slow eyes rest on him without replying.
“Go on, Ben,” said Curfoot.
“I’m going on. We guys gotta do something––”
“We ought to have fixed Max Venem,” said Curfoot coolly.
There was a silence; all three men glanced stealthily at Neeland, who quietly turned the page of his book as though absorbed in his story.
“That squealer, Max,” continued Curfoot with placid ferocity blazing in his eyes, “ought to have been put269away. Quint and Parson wanted us to have it done. Was it any stunt to get that dirty little shyster in some roadhouse last May?”
Brandes said:
“I’m not mixing with any gunmen after the Rosenthal business.”
“Becuz a lot of squealers done a amateur job like that, does it say that a honest job can’t be pulled?” demanded Curfoot. “Did Quint and me ask you to go to Dopey or Clabber or Pete the Wop, or any of them cheap gangsters?”
“Ah, can the gun-stuff,” said Brandes. “I’m not for it. It’s punk.”
“What’s punk?”
“Gun-play.”
“Didn’t you pull a pop on Maxy Venem the night him and Hyman Adams and Minna beat you up in front of the Knickerbocker?”
“Eddie was stalling,” interrupted Stull, as Brandes’ face turned a dull beef-red. “You talk like a bad actor, Doc. There’s other ways of getting Max in wrong. Guns ain’t what they was once. Gun-play is old stuff. But listen, now. Quint has staked us and we gotta make good. And this is a big thing, though it looks like it was out of our line.”
“Go on; what’s the idea?” inquired Curfoot, interested.
Brandes, the dull red still staining his heavy face, watched the flying landscape from the open window.
Stull leaned forward; Curfoot bent his lean, narrow head nearer; Neeland, staring fixedly at his open book, pricked up his ears.
“Now,” said Stull in a low voice, “I’ll tell you guys all Eddie and I know about this here business of270Captain Quint’s. It’s like this, Doc: Some big feller comes to Quint after they close him up—he won’t tell who—and puts up this here proposition: Quint is to open a elegant place in Paris on the Q. T. In fact, it’s ready now. There’ll be all the backing Quint needs. He’s to send over three men he can trust—three men who can shoot at a pinch! He picks us three and stakes us. Get me?”
Doc nodded.
Brandes said in his narrow-eyed, sleepy way:
“There was a time when they called us gunmen—Ben and me. But, so help me God, Doc, we never did any work like that ourselves. We never fired a shot to croak any living guy. Did we, Ben?”
“All right,” said Stull impatiently. And, to Curfoot: “Eddie and I know what we’re to do. If it’s on the cards that we shoot—well, then, we’ll shoot. The place is to be small, select, private, and first class. Doc, you act as capper. You deal, too. Eddie sets ’em up. I deal or spin. All right. We three guys attend to anything American that blows our way. Get that?”
Curfoot nodded.
“Then for the foreigners, there’s to be a guy called Karl Breslau.”
Neeland managed to repress a start, but the blood tingled in his cheeks, and he turned his head a trifle as though seeking better light on the open pages in his hands.
“This here man Breslau,” continued Stull, “speaks all kinds of languages. He is to have two friends with him, a fellow named Kestner and one called Weishelm. They trim the foreigners, they do; and––”
“Well, I don’t see nothing new about this––” began Curfoot; but Stull interrupted:271
“Wait, can’t you! This ain’t the usual. We run a place for Quint. The place is like Quint’s. We trim guys same as he does—or did.But there’s more to it.”
He let his eyes rest on Neeland, obliquely, for a full minute. The others watched him, too. Presently the young man cut another page of his book with his pen-knife and turned it with eager impatience, as though the story absorbed him.
“Don’t worry about Frenchy,” murmured Brandes with a shrug. “Go ahead, Ben.”
Stull laid one hand on Curfoot’s shoulder, drawing that gentleman a trifle nearer and sinking his voice:
“Here’s the new stuff, Doc,” he said. “And it’s brand new to us, too. There’s big money into it. Quint swore we’d get ours. And as we was on our uppers we went in. It’s like this: We lay for Americans from the Embassy or from any of the Consulates. They are our special game. It ain’t so much that we trim them; we also get next to them; we make ’em talk right out in church. Any political dope they have we try to get. We get it any way we can. If they’ll accelerate we accelerate ’em; if not, we dope ’em and take their papers. The main idee is to get a holt on ’em!
“That’s what Quint wants; that’s what he’s payin’ for and gettin’ paid for—inside information from the Embassy and Consulates––”
“What does Quint want of that?” demanded Curfoot, astonished.
“How do I know? Blackmail? Graft? I can’t call the dope. But listen here! Don’t forget that it ain’t Quint who wants it. It’s the big feller behind him who’s backin’ him. It’s some swell guy higher up who’s payin’ Quint. And Quint, he pays us. So where’s the squeal coming?”272
“Yes, but––”
“Where’s the holler?” insisted Stull.
“I ain’t hollerin’, am I? Only this here is new stuff to me––”
“Listen, Doc. I don’t know what it is, but all these here European kings is settin’ watchin’ one another like toms in a back alley. I think that some foreign political high-upper wants dope on what our people are finding out over here. Like this, he says to himself: ‘I hear this Kink is building ten sooper ferry boats. If that’s right, I oughta know. And I hear that the Queen of Marmora has ordered a million new nifty fifty-shot bean-shooters for the boy scouts! That is indeed serious news!’ So he goes to his broker, who goes to a big feller, who goes to Quint, who goes to us. Flag me?”
“Sure.”
“That’s all. There’s nothing to it, Doc. Says Quint to us: ‘Trim a few guys for me and get their letters,’ says Quint; ‘and there’s somethin’ in it for me and you!’ Andthat’sthe new stuff, Doc.”
“You mean we’re spies?”
“Spies? I don’t know. We’re on a salary. We get a big bonus for every letter we find on the carpet––” He winked at Curfoot and relighted his cigar.
“Say,” said the latter, “it’s like a creeping joint. It’s a panel game, Ben––”
“It’s politics like they play ’em in Albany, only it’s ambassadors and kinks we trim, not corporations.”
“Wecan’t do it! What the hell do we know about kinks and attachés?”
“No; Weishelm, Breslau and Kestner do that. We lay for the attachés or spin or deal or act handy at the bar and buffet with homesick Americans. No; the fine273work—the high-up stuff, is done by Breslau and Weishelm. And I guess there’s some fancy skirts somewhere in the game. But they’re silent partners; and anyway Weishelm manages that part.”
Curfoot, one lank knee over the other, swung his foot thoughtfully to and fro, his ratty eyes lost in dreamy revery. Brandes tossed his half-consumed cigar out of the open window and set fire to another. Stull waited for Curfoot to make up his mind. After several minutes the latter looked up from his cunning abstraction:
“Well, Ben, put it any way you like, but we’re just plain political spies. And what the hell do they hand us over here if we’re pinched?”
“I don’t know. What of it?”
“Nothing. If there’s good money in it, I’ll take a chance.”
“There is. Quint backs us. When we get ’em coming––”
“Ah,” said Doc with a wry face, “that’s all right for the cards or the wheel. But this pocket picking––”
“Say; that ain’t what I mean. It’s like this: Young Fitznoodle of the Embassy staff gets soused and starts out lookin’ for a quiet game. We furnish the game. We don’t go through his pockets; we just pick up whatever falls out and take shorthand copies. Then back go the letters into Fitznoodle’s pocket––”
“Yes. Who reads ’em first?”
“Breslau. Or some skirt, maybe.”
“What’s Breslau?”
“Searchme. He’s a Dutchman or a Rooshian or some sort of Dodo. What do you care?”
“I don’t. All right, Ben. You’ve got to show me; that’s all.”274
“Show you what?”
“Spot cash!”
“You’re in when you handle it?”
“If you show me real money—yes.”
“You’re on. I’ll cash a cheque of Quint’s for you at Monroe’s soon as we hit the asphalt! And when you finish counting out your gold nickels put ’em in your pants and play the game! Is that right?”
“Yes.”
They exchanged a wary handshake; then, one after another, they leaned back in their seats with the air of honest men who had done their day’s work.
Curfoot blinked at Brandes, at his excessively groomed person, at his rings.
“Youlookprosperous, Eddie.”
“It’s his business to,” remarked Stull.
Brandes yawned:
“It would be a raw deal if there’s a war over here,” he said listlessly.
“Ah,” said Curfoot, “there won’t be none.”
“Why?”
“The Jews and bankers won’t let these kinks mix it.”
“That’s right, too,” nodded Brandes.
But Stull said nothing and his sour, pasty visage turned sourer. It was the one possibility that disturbed him—the only fly in the amber—the only mote that troubled his clairvoyance. Also, he was the only man among the three who didn’t think a thing was certain to happen merely because he wanted it to happen.
There was another matter, too, which troubled him. Brandes was unreliable. And who but little Stull should know how unreliable?
For Brandes had always been that. And now Stull275knew him to be more than that—knew him to be treacherous.
Whatever in Brandes had been decent, or had, blindly perhaps, aspired toward decency, was now in abeyance. Something within him had gone to smash since Minna Minti had struck him that night in the frightened presence of Rue Carew.
And from that night, when he had lost the only woman who had ever stirred in him the faintest aspiration to better things, the man had gradually changed. Whatever in his nature had been unreliable became treacherous; his stolidity became sullenness. A slow ferocity burned within him; embers of a rage which no brooding ever quenched slumbered red in his brain until his endless meditation became a monomania. And his monomania was the ruin of this woman who had taken from him in the very moment of consummation all that he had ever really loved in the world—a thin, awkward, freckled, red-haired country girl, in whom, for the first and only time in all his life, he saw the vague and phantom promise of that trinity which he had never known—a wife, a child, and a home.
He sat there by the car window glaring out of his dull green eyes at the pleasant countryside, his thin lips tightening and relaxing on his cigar.
Curfoot, still pondering over the “new stuff” offered him, brooded silently in his corner, watching the others out of his tiny, bright eyes.
“Do anything in London?” inquired Stull.
“No.”
“Who was you working for?”
“A jock and a swell skirt. But Scotland Yard got next and chased the main guy over the water.”
“What was your lay?”276
“Same thing. I dealt for the jock and the skirt trimmed the squabs.”
“Anybody holler?”
“Aw—the kind we squeezed was too high up to holler. Them young lords take their medicine like they wanted it. They ain’t like the home bunch that is named after swell hotels.”
After a silence he looked up at Brandes:
“What ever become of Minna Minti?” he asked.
Brandes’ heavy features remained stolid.
“She got her divorce, didn’t she?” insisted Curfoot.
“Yes.”
“Alimony?”
“No. She didn’t ask any.”
“How about Venem?”
Brandes remained silent, but Stull said:
“I guess she chucked him. She wouldn’t stand for that snake. I got to hand it to her; she ain’t that kind.”
“What kind is she?”
“I tell you I got to hand it to her. I can’t complain of her. She acted white all right until Venem stirred her up. Eddie’s got himself to blame; he got in wrong and Venem had him followed and showed him up to Minna.”
“You got tired of her, didn’t you?” said Curfoot to Brandes. But Stull answered for him again:
“Like any man, Eddie needed a vacation now and then. But no skirt understands.”
Brandes said slowly:
“I’ll live to fix Minna yet.”
“What fixed you,” snapped Stull, “was that there Brookhollow stuff––”
“Can it!” retorted Brandes, turning a deep red.277
“Aw—don’t hand me the true-love stuff, Eddie! If you’d meant it with that little haymaker you’d have respected her––”
Brandes’ large face became crimson with rage:
“You say another word about her and I’ll push your block off—you little dough-faced kike!”
Stull shrugged and presently whispered to Curfoot:
“That’s the play he always makes. I’ve waited two years, but he won’t ring down on the love stuff. I guess he was hit hard that trip. It took a little red-headed, freckled country girl to stop him. But it was comin’ to Eddie Brandes, and it certainly looks like it was there to stay a while.”
“He’s still stuck on her?”
“I guess she’s still the fly paper,” nodded Stull.
Suddenly Brandes turned on Stull such a look of concentrated hatred that the little gambler’s pallid features stiffened with surprise:
“Ben,” said Brandes in a low voice, which was too indistinct for Neeland to catch, “I’ll tell you something now that you don’t know. I saw Quint alone; I talked with him. Do you know who is handling the big stuff in this deal?”
“Who?” asked Stull, amazed.
“The Turkish Embassy in Paris. And do you know who plays the fine Italian hand for that bunch of Turks?”
“No.”
“Minna!”
“You’re crazy!”
Brandes took no notice, but went on with a sort of hushed ferocity that silenced both Stull and Curfoot:
“That’s why I went in. To get Minna. And I’ll get her if it costs every cent I’ve got or ever hope to get.278That’s why I’m in this deal; that’s why I came; that’s why I’m here telling you this. I’m in it to get Minna, not for the money, not for anything in all God’s world except to get the woman who has done what Minna did to me.”
Neeland listened in vain to the murmuring voice; he could not catch a word.
Stull whispered:
“Aw, f’r God’s sake, Eddie, that ain’t the game. Do you want to double-cross Quint?”
“Ihavedouble-crossed him.”
“What! Do you mean to sell him out?”
“Ihavesold him out.”
“Jesus! Who to?”
“To the British Secret Service. And there’s to be one hundred thousand dollars in it, Doc, for you and me to divide. And fifty thousand more when we put the French bulls on to Minna and Breslau. Now, how does one hundred and fifty thousand dollars against five thousand apiece strike you two poor, cheap guys?”
But the magnitude of Brandes’ treachery and the splendour of the deal left the two gamblers stunned.
Only by their expressions could Neeland judge that they were discussing matters of vital importance to themselves and probably to him. He listened; he could not hear what they were whispering. And only at intervals he dared glance over his book in their direction.
“Well,” said Brandes under his breath, “go on. Spit it out. What’s the squeal?”
“My God!” whispered Stull. “Quint will kill you.”
Brandes laughed unpleasantly:
“Not me, Ben. I’ve got that geezer where I want him on a dirty deal he pulled off with the police.”279
Curfoot turned his pointed muzzle toward the window and sneered at the sunny landscape.
A few minutes later, far across the rolling plain set with villas and farms, and green with hedgerows, gardens, bouquets of trees and cultivated fields, he caught sight of a fairy structure outlined against the sky. Turning to Brandes:
“There’s the Eiffel Tower,” remarked Curfoot. “Where are we stopping, Eddie?”
“Caffy des Bulgars.”
“Where’s that?”
“It’s where we go to work—Roo Vilna.”
Stull’s smile was ghastly, but Curfoot winked at Brandes.
Neeland listened, his eyes following the printed pages of his book.