Chapter IV.Roving CommissionsAfter the Chief left, Moore gave me my instructions for that night. We were to leave the room separately. I was to get into the same taxi which I would find waiting and I was to pick up Moore at the corner of Waverley Place and Fifth Avenue.I followed instructions, found the taxi waiting and told the man to drive to Washington Square. Five minutes later my driver stopped without being told and Moore jumped in beside me. The driver started off uptown at once.Moore turned to me with a smile. “Well, I guess you’ll do. You caught the idea like a shot. Now let’s get to business, for we’ve got one heluva lot to talk about.”“Fire ahead.”“One of the first things I am to impress on you is the fact that from now on both our lives may depend upon eternal vigilance. A single false step, a single unguarded word or glance may easily mean—finish—for us. Stow that away in your brain and don’t forget it. Take it out and look at it every five minutes if you can.” He paused a moment. “I’m not fussy myself, Clayton. I’ve gone into this game for my own reasons. But this is the meanest-looking job I’ve ever tackled, and that’s the truth. And I don’t want to get bumped off before we’ve put the job through.”“I’ll remember,” I told him, “and I’m just as eager to put it through as you are.”“I know,” he answered. “Well, I want to tell you something about the plan for you and me, so far as we’ve mapped it out. The Chief told you his theory—that these abductions and the smuggled drugs are the work of the same gang. And he told you his reasons for believing that the gang is highly placed, or has members highly placed, socially.”I nodded.“Well, that’s where you and I come in. He wants us to work together. And he wants us to be regular lounge lizards, worming our way into all sorts of social circles, fast, slow and medium. His idea is that sooner or later we’ll run across something in the nature of a clew. And when that happens we’re to follow it up like grim death.”“Seems pretty vague stuff to work on,” I observed.“It is and it isn’t. As far as the girls are concerned, we haven’t anything very definite to go on until after the event—and then it’s too late, for they will have covered up their tracks, in their skillful way. But it’s different with the drug business. For there there ought to be something to work on, if we’re smart enough to see it. And if the Chief is right about it being the same gang, why that helps us with the other affair, do you see!”“If heisright!” I said.“Well, I think he is. Anyhow it seems reasonable and it’s about all we have got. But here’s another thing. We had a talk yesterday before you turned up, and the Chief agreed with me that it might be better for us not to know each other. I mean, of course, we may meet casually, but it’s highly probable that they have their suspicions about me as it is, and it’s no use dragging you down with me. For if we’re pretty thick, they’ll suspect you too if they suspect me. That business in your rooms that night looked bad, for I haven’t any other enemies that I can think of.”“But look here,” I told him, “we’ll have to work together to some extent—compare notes and all that—and besides, I’m quite ready to stand in with you on the risk and that sort of thing.”Moore shook his head and smiled. “Spoken like a pal,” he said. “But this is a business proposition, Clayton, and a tough one. And if we don’t work together, why that leaves you all the freer to step in and haul me out, if I get in a tight corner, don’t you see?”I didn’t like it very much, but there was no point in arguing about it just then. He knew more about the game than I did, anyway. And I found out very soon how wise his decision had been.“Then,” he went on, “although we’re not connected in any way in the public eye, we’ve got to fix up some method of getting in touch with each other at any time, on the instant and privately. Now this is what I doped out to that end. I thought I’d take a room or rooms somewhere near you. Perhaps I might take one in the same building, anyway in the same block, so that we had no street between. Then, with the aid of that young Irishman of yours, we ought to be able to lay a private wire between your room and mine. What do you think of it?”I laughed at the reference to Larry. “Sounds all right to me,” I answered, “if you can get the room. They’re pretty hard to find nowadays. But that building I’m in seems to have quite a number of bachelor apartments. I don’t see that your being in the same building would connect us any, unless we blew into each other’s rooms when some one was watching. That private wire sounds good, but I don’t see how we’re going to lay it where it won’t be seen, or without being seen doing it.”“Do it at night. That’s easy enough. But we will have to dope out some way so that it won’t be found, except on the wildest of bad luck. Of course they’re always making repairs and putting in telephones in those apartment houses, and we’ll have to watch out for that.”“Did the Chief mention any particular sets in New York that he wanted us to go for? There are so many thousands of cliques and social groups that we might wander around for years without striking the right one. And then we might not know it for the right one if we saw it.”“No. He left it pretty much up to us. But he did suggest leaning toward the faster semi-Bohemian sets as being more likely to indulge in drugs.”Moore paused a moment. “Anyhow, Clayton, that’s the gist of it. Work all your introductions for all you’re worth. I thought at first that it might be well for you to change your name and begin all over again, on account of the gang knowing that you had lost your sister, and therefore suspecting you of being still on their trail. But that would mean giving up all your introductions and losing a lot of time, and also the possibility of running into people that you’d known before, which would make complications. So the Chief decided that it would be better to run the risk of their suspicion, because your principal value in the search is your actual and potential socialentrée.”“Did he map out any particular attitude he wanted me to take—sort of character line?”“No. But he thought you might let it escape you that you had given up all hope of finding your sister, and that you were broken by it and letting yourself go to the dogs as the easiest way out. That would serve your ends both ways. For taking to drugs would be the most natural thing in the world for a man in your position, and before you could do that, you would have to get hold of the drugs. So that gives you a line to work on.”“Pretty smart of the Chief, I think.”“Oh, he’s no slouch. Now I’m going to bed. But before I go, take this.” He drew from his pocket a tiny golden panther strung on a black cord. “Wear it where you can get at it, but where no one else would see it or could pick your pocket for it. And if any one shows you one like it, trust him. It’s the symbol for this particular job. I won’t see you in the morning at all. But to-morrow night suppose you meet me upstairs in a little chop-suey joint in Broadway at 39th Street. The tables are screened off and no one will notice us. We can talk there in peace and quiet and make some more definite plans for keeping in touch with each other. In the meantime try to get started on the social stuff. Dig up all your old friends and start things going. Maybe that Mrs. Furneau might be a good one to start on. After all you don’t know much about her.”Moore got up. “Well, meet me at that chop-suey joint, remember. Broadway at 39th at eight, and we’ll have another powwow. In the meantime, good luck!”He gave me a quick handshake, rapped on the window of the cab and as the vehicle slowed up, flung open the door and slipped out. A moment later he had disappeared among the shifting pedestrians on the Avenue.When I got back I found that Larry was disposed to consider his feelings hurt. The affliction took the form of an attitude of exaggerated servitude which was irritating in the extreme. He wanted as much disciplining as a puppy.However, something occurred almost at once that brought him out of it with a bump.I asked him whether anything had happened in my absence.“No, sir,” he answered in the true butler manner. “Nothing of any moment, sir.” His English was excellent when he wanted to make it so.“What do you mean—nothing of any moment?” I demanded curiously.“Why, nothing, sir, nothing happened at all.” He bowed deferentially. “Have you breakfasted, sir?”I felt like kicking him. “Drop it, Larry,” I told him. “I don’t know what’s biting you and I haven’t the time to bother to find out. But if you take my advice, you’ll drop that butler business, you ignoramus. Now get out of it.”Larry departed and I went to my desk to look up the address of some of my one-time friends and to drop a line to Mrs. Furneau. A moment later I rang for Larry.“How many times have I told you to leave my desk alone?” I demanded.Larry scratched his head. “Sure, times and thin times,” he answered. “But faith, I haven’t so much as laid a finger on it.”“Don’t talk nonsense. I left these papers under that folded map of New York. Now the papers are all mixed up and the paper-weight is on them. I found the map over here—and, by golly, you’ve even unfolded it and folded it up again the wrong way. What do you mean by it?”Larry’s butler manner dropped from him now like a garment. “Faith, thin, sor, I haven’t so much as touched the desk, that I haven’t!” he declared earnestly. “Maybe you forgot, like, the way you left things.”I shook my head and stood staring at him a moment. “Are you sure?” I demanded.“Sure and sartin, sor. I haven’t touched it.”“Well then, Larry, somebody else has!” I told him. “I thought you said nothing had happened. Who’s been here, anyway?”“Not a soul, sor,” he answered quickly.“Have you been here all the time yourself?” I demanded.“Ivery minute, sor, except for a walk round yesterday afternoon and a trip to the corner last night, to lay in a bit of bread and meat like.”I had never known Larry to lie about anything at all serious, and he was obviously speaking the truth this time. “All right, never mind, Larry. No harm done,” I told him. And again Larry took himself off, thoroughly crestfallen now.But I stowed away another bit of news for Moore that night. For I was certain that my papers had been tampered with in my absence, although, fortunately, they were merely personal letters and bills.I wrote to Mrs. Furneau, asking her whether she had heard anything at all in the way of possible clews, and whether I might call and talk things over with her once more, adding that I had practically given up hope. It went against the grain a little, in view of my earlier distrust, but perhaps she was as good a starting-place as any for my social career. And perhaps, in view of the Chief’s wild suspicion of her, she was a shade better than most people, as being at least remotely connected with Margaret’s disappearance.Later in the day, I told Larry that the search was to continue and that Moore was going to help. I also told him that he was to let Moore in at any time and ask no questions, but that if he should happen to meet him outside in any way, he was not to know him at all.Traces of the green-eyed monster became apparent in Larry at once. “Oh,” said he, “ ’tis himself will find her no doubt, when we could not. But I’m thinkin’ he’s a mysterious kind of a man altogether. Sure the next toime I let him in, I’ll be keepin’ an eye on him pretty close, the way he wouldn’t be bringin’ in some more of his murtherin’ friends.”This would never do. “Now look here, Larry,” I told him, “this man Moore is my very good friend. And as such he’s your very good friend too. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, and don’t forget it. I can’t tell you as much about things as I’d like to at present, but I can tell you that this search is running us up against something pretty stiff—and Moore’s a mighty good friend to have in a pinch. If you don’t want to put the whole thing on the fritz, do just what I’ve told you to, and help Moore in any way possible. This is serious!”Larry shifted from one foot to the other and then suddenly he grinned in a sheepish way. “Sure, I was only foolin’,” he said, and took himself off.Never, from the beginning of our acquaintance, have I had any doubts of Larry.At eight that night I met Moore and we compared notes over our dinner. I told him about finding that my papers had been disturbed, and also that I had written to Mrs. Furneau. Then he told me his news.“Well, Clayton, I’ve taken a couple of rooms in the house that is back to back with your apartment house. It’s an old-fashioned place and I had no difficulty in getting the rooms. Unfortunately, as you’re way up on the eighth floor and I’m on the second in this place, we’ll have some trouble running that wire. I think as soon as we get through here we’d better get started on it. Then we can take care of the outdoor part of it later in the night.”We were sitting in a sort of cubicle against the wall, shut off from the others like it by the high wooden backs of the seats. Each table was lit by a softly shaded electric globe, which threw little light beyond the table, and the rest of the room was but dimly lit.In the middle of our conversation about our house-to-house wire, I looked up to order our coffee, and suddenly saw that the soft-footed Chinese boy was standing quite close to Moore, although beyond the end of the seat, so that I could only see his elbow. We had spoken in very low tones and I thought nothing about it at the time. But I had cause to remember that Chinese boy later on.A few moments later we left the restaurant separately and made our way by separate routes to Moore’s new rooms, to begin work on our private wire. It seemed like making defensive preparations in advance before declaring war. For even after Moore’s warning I failed to realize fully that, with our murderous visitor that night and the subsequent search of my papers, if such it was, war had already been declared—and not by us.
After the Chief left, Moore gave me my instructions for that night. We were to leave the room separately. I was to get into the same taxi which I would find waiting and I was to pick up Moore at the corner of Waverley Place and Fifth Avenue.
I followed instructions, found the taxi waiting and told the man to drive to Washington Square. Five minutes later my driver stopped without being told and Moore jumped in beside me. The driver started off uptown at once.
Moore turned to me with a smile. “Well, I guess you’ll do. You caught the idea like a shot. Now let’s get to business, for we’ve got one heluva lot to talk about.”
“Fire ahead.”
“One of the first things I am to impress on you is the fact that from now on both our lives may depend upon eternal vigilance. A single false step, a single unguarded word or glance may easily mean—finish—for us. Stow that away in your brain and don’t forget it. Take it out and look at it every five minutes if you can.” He paused a moment. “I’m not fussy myself, Clayton. I’ve gone into this game for my own reasons. But this is the meanest-looking job I’ve ever tackled, and that’s the truth. And I don’t want to get bumped off before we’ve put the job through.”
“I’ll remember,” I told him, “and I’m just as eager to put it through as you are.”
“I know,” he answered. “Well, I want to tell you something about the plan for you and me, so far as we’ve mapped it out. The Chief told you his theory—that these abductions and the smuggled drugs are the work of the same gang. And he told you his reasons for believing that the gang is highly placed, or has members highly placed, socially.”
I nodded.
“Well, that’s where you and I come in. He wants us to work together. And he wants us to be regular lounge lizards, worming our way into all sorts of social circles, fast, slow and medium. His idea is that sooner or later we’ll run across something in the nature of a clew. And when that happens we’re to follow it up like grim death.”
“Seems pretty vague stuff to work on,” I observed.
“It is and it isn’t. As far as the girls are concerned, we haven’t anything very definite to go on until after the event—and then it’s too late, for they will have covered up their tracks, in their skillful way. But it’s different with the drug business. For there there ought to be something to work on, if we’re smart enough to see it. And if the Chief is right about it being the same gang, why that helps us with the other affair, do you see!”
“If heisright!” I said.
“Well, I think he is. Anyhow it seems reasonable and it’s about all we have got. But here’s another thing. We had a talk yesterday before you turned up, and the Chief agreed with me that it might be better for us not to know each other. I mean, of course, we may meet casually, but it’s highly probable that they have their suspicions about me as it is, and it’s no use dragging you down with me. For if we’re pretty thick, they’ll suspect you too if they suspect me. That business in your rooms that night looked bad, for I haven’t any other enemies that I can think of.”
“But look here,” I told him, “we’ll have to work together to some extent—compare notes and all that—and besides, I’m quite ready to stand in with you on the risk and that sort of thing.”
Moore shook his head and smiled. “Spoken like a pal,” he said. “But this is a business proposition, Clayton, and a tough one. And if we don’t work together, why that leaves you all the freer to step in and haul me out, if I get in a tight corner, don’t you see?”
I didn’t like it very much, but there was no point in arguing about it just then. He knew more about the game than I did, anyway. And I found out very soon how wise his decision had been.
“Then,” he went on, “although we’re not connected in any way in the public eye, we’ve got to fix up some method of getting in touch with each other at any time, on the instant and privately. Now this is what I doped out to that end. I thought I’d take a room or rooms somewhere near you. Perhaps I might take one in the same building, anyway in the same block, so that we had no street between. Then, with the aid of that young Irishman of yours, we ought to be able to lay a private wire between your room and mine. What do you think of it?”
I laughed at the reference to Larry. “Sounds all right to me,” I answered, “if you can get the room. They’re pretty hard to find nowadays. But that building I’m in seems to have quite a number of bachelor apartments. I don’t see that your being in the same building would connect us any, unless we blew into each other’s rooms when some one was watching. That private wire sounds good, but I don’t see how we’re going to lay it where it won’t be seen, or without being seen doing it.”
“Do it at night. That’s easy enough. But we will have to dope out some way so that it won’t be found, except on the wildest of bad luck. Of course they’re always making repairs and putting in telephones in those apartment houses, and we’ll have to watch out for that.”
“Did the Chief mention any particular sets in New York that he wanted us to go for? There are so many thousands of cliques and social groups that we might wander around for years without striking the right one. And then we might not know it for the right one if we saw it.”
“No. He left it pretty much up to us. But he did suggest leaning toward the faster semi-Bohemian sets as being more likely to indulge in drugs.”
Moore paused a moment. “Anyhow, Clayton, that’s the gist of it. Work all your introductions for all you’re worth. I thought at first that it might be well for you to change your name and begin all over again, on account of the gang knowing that you had lost your sister, and therefore suspecting you of being still on their trail. But that would mean giving up all your introductions and losing a lot of time, and also the possibility of running into people that you’d known before, which would make complications. So the Chief decided that it would be better to run the risk of their suspicion, because your principal value in the search is your actual and potential socialentrée.”
“Did he map out any particular attitude he wanted me to take—sort of character line?”
“No. But he thought you might let it escape you that you had given up all hope of finding your sister, and that you were broken by it and letting yourself go to the dogs as the easiest way out. That would serve your ends both ways. For taking to drugs would be the most natural thing in the world for a man in your position, and before you could do that, you would have to get hold of the drugs. So that gives you a line to work on.”
“Pretty smart of the Chief, I think.”
“Oh, he’s no slouch. Now I’m going to bed. But before I go, take this.” He drew from his pocket a tiny golden panther strung on a black cord. “Wear it where you can get at it, but where no one else would see it or could pick your pocket for it. And if any one shows you one like it, trust him. It’s the symbol for this particular job. I won’t see you in the morning at all. But to-morrow night suppose you meet me upstairs in a little chop-suey joint in Broadway at 39th Street. The tables are screened off and no one will notice us. We can talk there in peace and quiet and make some more definite plans for keeping in touch with each other. In the meantime try to get started on the social stuff. Dig up all your old friends and start things going. Maybe that Mrs. Furneau might be a good one to start on. After all you don’t know much about her.”
Moore got up. “Well, meet me at that chop-suey joint, remember. Broadway at 39th at eight, and we’ll have another powwow. In the meantime, good luck!”
He gave me a quick handshake, rapped on the window of the cab and as the vehicle slowed up, flung open the door and slipped out. A moment later he had disappeared among the shifting pedestrians on the Avenue.
When I got back I found that Larry was disposed to consider his feelings hurt. The affliction took the form of an attitude of exaggerated servitude which was irritating in the extreme. He wanted as much disciplining as a puppy.
However, something occurred almost at once that brought him out of it with a bump.
I asked him whether anything had happened in my absence.
“No, sir,” he answered in the true butler manner. “Nothing of any moment, sir.” His English was excellent when he wanted to make it so.
“What do you mean—nothing of any moment?” I demanded curiously.
“Why, nothing, sir, nothing happened at all.” He bowed deferentially. “Have you breakfasted, sir?”
I felt like kicking him. “Drop it, Larry,” I told him. “I don’t know what’s biting you and I haven’t the time to bother to find out. But if you take my advice, you’ll drop that butler business, you ignoramus. Now get out of it.”
Larry departed and I went to my desk to look up the address of some of my one-time friends and to drop a line to Mrs. Furneau. A moment later I rang for Larry.
“How many times have I told you to leave my desk alone?” I demanded.
Larry scratched his head. “Sure, times and thin times,” he answered. “But faith, I haven’t so much as laid a finger on it.”
“Don’t talk nonsense. I left these papers under that folded map of New York. Now the papers are all mixed up and the paper-weight is on them. I found the map over here—and, by golly, you’ve even unfolded it and folded it up again the wrong way. What do you mean by it?”
Larry’s butler manner dropped from him now like a garment. “Faith, thin, sor, I haven’t so much as touched the desk, that I haven’t!” he declared earnestly. “Maybe you forgot, like, the way you left things.”
I shook my head and stood staring at him a moment. “Are you sure?” I demanded.
“Sure and sartin, sor. I haven’t touched it.”
“Well then, Larry, somebody else has!” I told him. “I thought you said nothing had happened. Who’s been here, anyway?”
“Not a soul, sor,” he answered quickly.
“Have you been here all the time yourself?” I demanded.
“Ivery minute, sor, except for a walk round yesterday afternoon and a trip to the corner last night, to lay in a bit of bread and meat like.”
I had never known Larry to lie about anything at all serious, and he was obviously speaking the truth this time. “All right, never mind, Larry. No harm done,” I told him. And again Larry took himself off, thoroughly crestfallen now.
But I stowed away another bit of news for Moore that night. For I was certain that my papers had been tampered with in my absence, although, fortunately, they were merely personal letters and bills.
I wrote to Mrs. Furneau, asking her whether she had heard anything at all in the way of possible clews, and whether I might call and talk things over with her once more, adding that I had practically given up hope. It went against the grain a little, in view of my earlier distrust, but perhaps she was as good a starting-place as any for my social career. And perhaps, in view of the Chief’s wild suspicion of her, she was a shade better than most people, as being at least remotely connected with Margaret’s disappearance.
Later in the day, I told Larry that the search was to continue and that Moore was going to help. I also told him that he was to let Moore in at any time and ask no questions, but that if he should happen to meet him outside in any way, he was not to know him at all.
Traces of the green-eyed monster became apparent in Larry at once. “Oh,” said he, “ ’tis himself will find her no doubt, when we could not. But I’m thinkin’ he’s a mysterious kind of a man altogether. Sure the next toime I let him in, I’ll be keepin’ an eye on him pretty close, the way he wouldn’t be bringin’ in some more of his murtherin’ friends.”
This would never do. “Now look here, Larry,” I told him, “this man Moore is my very good friend. And as such he’s your very good friend too. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, and don’t forget it. I can’t tell you as much about things as I’d like to at present, but I can tell you that this search is running us up against something pretty stiff—and Moore’s a mighty good friend to have in a pinch. If you don’t want to put the whole thing on the fritz, do just what I’ve told you to, and help Moore in any way possible. This is serious!”
Larry shifted from one foot to the other and then suddenly he grinned in a sheepish way. “Sure, I was only foolin’,” he said, and took himself off.
Never, from the beginning of our acquaintance, have I had any doubts of Larry.
At eight that night I met Moore and we compared notes over our dinner. I told him about finding that my papers had been disturbed, and also that I had written to Mrs. Furneau. Then he told me his news.
“Well, Clayton, I’ve taken a couple of rooms in the house that is back to back with your apartment house. It’s an old-fashioned place and I had no difficulty in getting the rooms. Unfortunately, as you’re way up on the eighth floor and I’m on the second in this place, we’ll have some trouble running that wire. I think as soon as we get through here we’d better get started on it. Then we can take care of the outdoor part of it later in the night.”
We were sitting in a sort of cubicle against the wall, shut off from the others like it by the high wooden backs of the seats. Each table was lit by a softly shaded electric globe, which threw little light beyond the table, and the rest of the room was but dimly lit.
In the middle of our conversation about our house-to-house wire, I looked up to order our coffee, and suddenly saw that the soft-footed Chinese boy was standing quite close to Moore, although beyond the end of the seat, so that I could only see his elbow. We had spoken in very low tones and I thought nothing about it at the time. But I had cause to remember that Chinese boy later on.
A few moments later we left the restaurant separately and made our way by separate routes to Moore’s new rooms, to begin work on our private wire. It seemed like making defensive preparations in advance before declaring war. For even after Moore’s warning I failed to realize fully that, with our murderous visitor that night and the subsequent search of my papers, if such it was, war had already been declared—and not by us.