AN AMATEUR MAN-HUNT WHEREIN MY OWN POSITION IS SOMEWHAT ANXIOUS
Sheila herself opened the door for me.
"You're Mr. Crosby, I suppose," she said, with that elusive reminiscence of a brogue that may not be put into words. "Sure, I'm obliged to you. An awful weight I must have been."
"You were no feather," I grinned. "Where is Miss Tabor?"
"She's in the library, sir, with a young gentleman. There's a letter here for you, sir." She pointed to a mail-strewn table near the door. Sure enough there was one—from Bob Ainslie, I judged, by the scrawled address.
A young gentleman in the library—who on earth could he be, and what did the fellow want?
"I've been three days finding you, you see," he was saying, "but I guess there's no doubt I've got you right. Now, I don't want to make any trouble—"
The rest of the sentence was too low to hear. I had been ripping absently at the letter, and now I glanced down at it. Then I stared with startled eyes and turned over the envelop to re-read the address. It was a dirty envelop, of the same shape as my own which still lay upon the table, and addressed not to me, but to Mr. Tabor. I carefully replaced the single sheet and as carefully stowed the whole in an inner pocket. It seemed a matter for Mr. Tabor's eyes alone.
Lady's voice came clearly through the curtained door. I thought it sounded a little strained.
"Mr. Maclean, I don't see why you should come to me at all about this matter. If we have a dark green automobile, so have ten thousand people. And your story of millionaire kidnappers on an errand of violence is hardly the kind of thing—if this is a joke, it seems to me in very poor taste."
"It won't quite do, Miss Tabor," the man answered. "'Tisn't a joke, and maybe the best thing you can do is to be frank with me."
"What am I to be frank about? You see, Mr. Maclean, the last man that came in to talk frankly wanted to sell us silver polish. Excuse me, but you have really nothing to sell, have you?"
He laughed, humorously embarrassed. "Why, no. At least, I don't want to sell you anythin'. Don't you sometimes call yourself Lady?"
"Mr. Maclean!"
"I only mean," he hurried on, "that I found your telegram on the floor. 'Coming for you in the car,' you said. Honestly, don't you think we're wastin' time?"
Lady gave a little cry, and with two strides I was at the door and had jerked aside the curtain. "If this fellow is annoying you—" I began.
The two were standing before me, Lady leaning back against the table as if at bay. The man was taller than I, and thin with vibrant energy. He turned half about at my voice.
"Jumping June-bugs!" he cried airily. "It's Crosby!"
"No other, Mac," I laughed. "What in the world are you ragging Miss Tabor about?"
Maclean blushed. "See here, Laurie," he stammered, "I'm a newspaper man, you see? What's more, I'm thought by some to be a good one. I've got the goods on this story, and you people ought to come across. It won't hurt you any. Were you the cheese that lugged the murdered scrubess down three flights of stairs?"
Lady looked at me imploringly. But the cat was so far out of the bag by now that I had to use my judgment. "I was," I answered. "What are you going to make out of it?"
"Now you're talkin'. Tell me the story."
"Not for publication," said I, with a glance at Lady, "because there's no story to publish. In the first place, you're barking up the right tree, but it's a mighty little one. In the second place, I've fallen so low as to be an assistant professor with a dignified reputation. Neither Miss Tabor nor I is going to be head-lined to make a journalistic holiday; and if we were, you wouldn't write it."
Maclean gnawed a bony knuckle, and pondered. "Darn you," he said. "Beg your pardon, Miss Tabor—I s'pose I can't, after that. But you'll admit I had the goods. I don't see how I can go back with nothing. They send me out on these things because I generally make good, you see?"
"Your imagination always was your greatest charm. Get to work, and use it. Miss Tabor, this human gimlet is 'Stride' Maclean. Let me give him a decent introduction: he probably slighted the matter. This gentleman, for he was a gentleman before he became a star reporter, had the honor to belong to my class, and he sings a beautiful tenor. Naturally he was popular; he may even have friends yet. We'll tell him all about it, and then perhaps we'll drown him. One crime more or less matters little to people of our dye."
Maclean scowled at me and laughed.
"Well, it all amounts to this. First, nobody has been murdered—as yet!" and I frowned at him. "Secondly, nobody has been kidnapped; lastly, it isn't a story, unless you are on the comic supplement. This Mrs. Carucci used to be Miss Tabor's nurse, and when Antonio beats her up too frequent, she comes up here for a vacation. Well, we were late going for her because the car broke down; so when we got there, he had just smitten her over the brow and retired to a well-earned slumber. Then the neighbors got inquisitive, and we ran away to escape precisely that immediate fame you were planning to give us. That's all. I will only add that branderine revived this wash-lady and we can prove it."
"Oh, fudge," said Maclean, "I can't write anything out of that at all. We had it before, all but you people. I hate to go back without a story, too."
The front door clicked, and I heard Mr Tabor's voice in the hall.
"Wait a minute," I said, with a sudden inspiration, "perhaps I can dig up another story for you. But I'll have to see Mr. Tabor first."
I found Mr. Tabor in his study, glooming over a paper. "What is it?" he asked, half rising. "Is anything the matter?"
"I don't know," I said. "I opened a letter of yours by mistake, and it looked as if I had better bring it to you myself."
He took the dirty envelop gingerly, and drew out the inclosure. Across the top was a badly drawn human hand smudged in with lead-pencil. Below this ran an almost illegible scrawl.
"If yu dont giv her back she wil be taken."
"What on earth does that mean?" I asked.
Mr. Tabor knit his white brows. "It begins to look as though Carucci had been let out of jail for want of proof against him. Evidently he is going into the black hand business. I suppose a demand for money will come next."
"Of course," he answered quickly. "Who else could it possibly be?" Then, more thoughtfully, "I don't like the fellow around, but I hardly see how to get rid of him. We can't appear in court against him; and money would only make him want more."
"Mr. Tabor," I said, "there's a man named Maclean in the other room, who went to college with me. He is a reporter—"
"A what?"
"A reporter. He found Miss Tabor's telegram—we were careless not to have looked for it—and that gave him enough to work on until he found us. However, you needn't have any uneasiness about him. He has promised me not to use the story."
"Good, Crosby, very good. Well, what about him?"
"I only thought, sir, that if he would help me, we might be able to find Carucci, and scare the life out of him so that he will keep away. He can't be certain that he hasn't killed his wife, and we can threaten him with that. If he's out of jail, you certainly don't want him about. And Maclean would help, I think, for the story in it. I'm sure that we could trust him not to bring us in."
"Very well. Suppose that you try your hand at it. Only you mustn't go to making inquiries that will mix us up in the matter."
"I'll be careful, sir," I answered.
When I spread the note out before Mac he sniffed and wrinkled his nose.
"Well?" I said.
"Nothin'. There ain't any black hand. It's all dope. Just a signature that any dago uses, like 'unknown friend.'"
"You ought to know," said I, "but here we are with this man hanging around. Take it or leave it. I should think there might be a story in it merely from his side, now that you can really connect him with the assault. Anyhow, I'm going after him."
"All right," Mac said, "I'm with you. Good afternoon, Miss Tabor."
"Good-by," she called after us; and I thought that she watched us from the window.
We pursued a trolley car and settled down panting on the rear seat. Maclean lay back in a meditative silence, his hands thrust deep into his trousers pockets, his shoulders hunched forward and his hat on the back of his head, staring before him where his feet loomed up in the distance. At the inn he suddenly straightened himself and slid off the car.
"I thought we were going up to town?" I said as I followed.
He glowered hollowly at me above a cavernous grin. "We are. But not in those flannels or that nice new college rah-rah shirt. We'd have the whole place wonderin' what you wanted, and the mothers showin' their little ones how a real gentleman ought to look."
"But you're respectable enough," I protested, laughing. "Are we both going to be disguised?"
"Disguise nothin'. You just want to cut out the comedy-chorus-man, you see? Put on a jersey, or anyhow a collar that don't meet in the middle, an' old shoes. Me, I look low-life anyway."
I rebelled when he rolled my gray suit into a ball and jumped on it, in the interest of realism. But at last we got started. On the car, Mac unfolded his plan of campaign.
"This guinea didn't put the cops on, because he wanted to get you himself, you see? He's out for the money—the mazume. So he beats it up here and drops Tabor a love-letter. But, he's just out of the jug, you see? An' he knows the force'll watch out for him. So he'll mix up with a lot of other dagoes, an' maybe get a job daytimes, so's to have an excuse for bein' here. Well, he don't love work, but he does love booze; an' he gets through at five p. m. with an awful thirst. So we'll hunt for him first where they sell the demon rum."
He dived into the police station, leaving me standing outside, and presently emerged with the lust of the hunter in his eye.
"I've located every cheap red-eye emporium in our beautiful little city. Now you spot all the fruit stores an' shoeblacks an' guinea grocers we pass, an' we'll take them later."
"You'll have to be careful how you inquire after him," I said.
"I ain't. I'm lookin' for his cousin, Giuseppe, that looks like him. Blue, an' hairy, an' tattoo-marks on his hands, you said. Come on."
We went through two or three saloons, where Maclean loitered what seemed to me an unconscionable time, weaving into an elaborate discussion of things in general, some curiosity as to the whereabouts of an Italian debtor whose name and personal affairs varied surprisingly without in the least altering his description. I knew that Mac had an inventive genius, but I was astonished at its fertility of detail.
"I didn't expect anythin' in those joints," he confided, as we pushed through a swinging door. "They're a peg too good for him. I just wanted to hear myself talk, an' get up my speed. Now, this place looks better. You take seltzer after this, or a cigar. Their snake-medicine'd poison you. Me, I'm immune."
It was low-ceiled and smoky, and full of large cuspidors and small tables. The bottles were fewer, and glittered with gilt ornamentation, like the bottles in a barber shop. A veil of dingy mosquito netting protected the mirrors. The bartender was blue-shaven and deliberate, with a neat trick of sliding bottles and glasses, without upsetting them, several feet along the dark, dull surface of the bar.
"Giovanni Scalpiccio been in to-night?" Mac asked casually, after ten minutes of excise problems and the pure food law.
"If he has, he ain't left his visiting-card," returned the bartender. "What do you think I am—delegate from the organ-grinders' union? I don't keep tab on every I-talian dago that comes into the place. What kind of a lookin' feller is he?"
"I don't know. They all look alike to me. Oh, a monkey-faced guy, all tattooed—works up the line here a little. His wife owes me on a sewin'-machine. Told me he was down here."
"Seems to me I seen that feller," the bartender reflected. "Talks all chokey, don't he? Yes, he was in to-night, about half an hour ago. Made an argument becuz I wouldn't hang him up—if that's him."
I waited, shuffling with impatience, while Maclean bought cigars and slowly changed the subject. Then I burst out of doors so hurriedly that I collided with two harmless-looking individuals who were coming in.
"What shall we do now?" I demanded.
"Take a cigarette instead o' that Simsbury cabbage, an' cool off. If it's our guinea, he's huntin' free drinks all up the street. We'll run into him the next two or three places, somewhere."
In the next we drew a blank, but in the one after that we learned that our man had just left; and to my disgust, were forced to listen to a circumstantial account of his pleas and expedients in quest of liquor on credit. I was more certain than ever that it was Carucci himself, and hurried Mac on to the next saloon. To my surprise, he led the way to a table in the farthest corner and sat down with his back to the door.
"You look here, Laurie," he muttered, leaning across the table as the bartender went back for our order. "There's more doing in this than we're wise to. Did you see those two ginks that we ran into in the door back there?"
"No," said I, "what about them?"
"Well, that's what little Mac wants to know, the first thing he does. They're after the same dago, or else they're after us, you see? Every joint we've been in, those two float along after a couple of minutes, all cagey, not seein' anybody. An' they look like guineas themselves. There they come now."
He spoke without turning his head, and I looked past him at the two men entering the room. They were small, sallow, and respectable, one of them decidedly fat; and they looked to me like small Italian tradesmen in their Sunday or traveling clothes. They stood at the bar, talking between themselves with rapid speech and gesture, and paying not the smallest attention to us. They did not even glance around the room, so absorbed were they in their own conversation.
"You're crazy," said I, "they don't even know we're here."
"All right. Maybe you think I've covered police stuff five years without knowin' when I'm being gum-shoed. I've seen that fat bologna before, somewhere, too. I ain't after a martyr's crown. Now, I tell you what you do. You pike out an' go back to that first place where we got the scent, an' wait around till I come. If they follow you there, you duck for the busy street, an' go home. If they don't I'll be along myself pretty quick. I want to know who they're after, you see?"
"What do you think they are?"
"I don't think yet: I'm goin' to know. Now you beat it—an' for Heaven's sake, jolly the barkeep for all you know how, an' try not to look as if you were wanted for arson."
I obeyed, wondering if Maclean's instinct for sensation had got the better of him. The two men took no notice whatever as I passed them, but went on with their talk. I heard enough to gather that they were discussing the price of butter. Yet, despite my skepticism, I walked up the street with something the sensation of having just passed a small boy with an ominous snowball. The other saloon was fairly crowded, and it was some minutes before I found myself drinking a very evil beer.
"Say," said the bartender, sliding my change down to me, "you're the guy that asked about the guinea, ain't yer?"
"Why, my friend was," I said carelessly. "Has he been back? He owes him for a—"
"That'll do all right to tell." He leaned across the bar, dropping his voice, "The reason I asked yer's because there's two other fellers after him, too. Guess they sold him a grand piano, likely."
He moved along to attend to other customers, leaving me staring excitedly about the room. A moment later, he came back again, swabbing the bespattered bar with a towel. As he passed me without a look, he turned his thumb over and motioned, as if the gesture were part of his work, toward the corner by the door. There sat the two little men at a table, still absorbed in discussion.
My throat became suddenly dry. I had started out hunting with the hounds to find myself running with the hare; and the notion of being shadowed by unknown Italians was more melodramatic than agreeable. With a confused memory of all the detective stories I had ever read seething in my mind I lounged toward the door, gained the street, and started off on a run. I turned the first corner, ran half way down the block, then walked quietly back. The two men were nowhere to be seen. As I stood on the corner, one of them, the thinner one, came slowly out of the saloon, pausing to light a cigarette, and strolled casually away from me up the street. It seemed impossible that he had any interest in me, but I would be sure. I followed carefully after him for half a dozen blocks. He neither looked around nor altered his pace in the least; and where we crossed the car tracks, I stood and watched him go steadily on out of sight. Then I jumped on a passing car, congratulating myself on having carried out my instructions, even though they had been rather unnecessary. And on the outskirts of the town, I stepped off to wait for my own car. Just as it turned the corner, some one touched me on the arm.
"Pardon; have you a match?"
I swallowed my heart down again with a gulp. The fat Italian scratched the match on his shoe, and breathed a soft cloud of smoke.
"Thank you, sare. Now tell me," he took me confidentially by the elbow, "w'at is it you want with Antonio Carucci?"
My car was passing. "I never heard of him," said I as blankly as I could. "You've got the wrong man."
"Excuse me, sare. No mistake at all." He smiled deprecatingly.
The car was almost beyond reach. "All right," I said. "Come in here, and if you can show any right to ask, I'll tell you." Then, as we turned together toward the hotel behind us, I flung him on his face with a sudden wrench, and sprinted after the car. As I clung gasping on the back platform, I heard a shout, and saw him following at a waddling run, waving his arm angrily. The car stopped; and for a sickening instant, I thought that my last device had been in vain. But at that moment a couple of men ran from the sidewalk behind my pursuer and caught him by the coat. The three stood in the middle of the street, wrangling and gesticulating; and the conductor, with a disgusted jerk of the bell, started the car again.
Later in the evening, Maclean called me up on the telephone.
"Say, you made a pretty good getaway for an amateur. Did you see us stop your fat friend?"
"What? Was that you?"
"Sure was it; me and the other one. Now listen. Hello! Can you hear? Those two parties are plain-clothes men after the other party. That's what they let him out for, to watch him, you see? I'm with 'em now. You people better just lie as low as you can, and do nothin' at all, if you want to keep out of it. And if I get wise to anythin' I'll call you up. Good-by."
And his receiver went up with a cluck.