Seven Keys to Baldpate

by Earl Derr Biggers

"One day Hayden told me of a chance we might take which would make us rich. It was not—altogether within the law. But it was the sort of thing that other men were doing constantly, and Hayden assured me that as he had arranged matters it was absolutely safe. My great sin is that I agreed we should take the chance—a sin for which I have paid, Mr. Magee, over and over."

Again he paused, and gazed steadily at the fire. Again Magee noted the gray at his temples, the aftermath of fevers in his cheeks.

"We—took the chance," he went on. "For a time everything went well. Then—one blustering March night—Hayden came to me and told me we were certain to be caught. Some of his plans had gone awry. I trusted him fully at the time, you understand—he was the man with whom I had sat on the window-seat of my room at college, settling the question of immortality, and all the other great questions young men settle at such times. I have at this moment no doubt that he was quite truthful when he said we were in danger of arrest. We arranged to meet the next night at the Argots Club and decide on what we should do.

"We met—in the library of the club. Hayden came in to me from the card-room adjoining, where he had been watching the admiral doddering over his eternal game. The old man had become a fixture at the club, like Parker down at the door, or the great chandelier in the hall. No one paid any attention to him; when he tried to talk to the younger men about his game they fled as from a pestilence. Well, as I say, Hayden came to meet me, and just at that moment the admiral finished his game and went out. We were alone in the library.

"Hayden told me he had thought the matter over carefully. There was nothing to do but to clear out of Reuton forever. But why, he argued, should we both go? Why wreck two lives? It would be far better, he told me, for one to assume the guilt of both and go away. I can see him now—how funny and white his face looked in that half-lighted room—how his hands trembled. I was far the calmer of the two.

"I agreed to his plan. Hayden led the way into the room where the admiral had been playing. We went up to the table, over which the green-shaded light still burned. On it lay two decks of cards, face up. Hayden picked up the nearest deck, and shuffled it nervously. His face—God, it was like the snow out there on the mountain."

Kendrick closed his eyes, and Magee gazed at him in silent pity.

"He held out the deck," went on the exile softly, "he told me to draw. He said if the card was black, he'd clear out. 'But if it's red, David,' he said, 'why—you—got to go.' I held my breath, and drew. It was a full minute before I dared look at the card in my hand. Then I turned it over and it was—red—a measly little red two-spot. I don't suppose a man ever realizes all at once what such a moment means. I remember that I was much cooler than Hayden. It was I who had to brace him up. I—I even tried to joke with him. But his face was like death. He hardly spoke at all at first, and then suddenly he became horribly talkative. I left him—talking wildly—I left Reuton. I left the girl to whom I was engaged."

To break the silence that followed, Mr. Magee leaned forward and stirred the logs.

"I don't want to bore you," Kendrick said, trying to smile. "I went to a little town in South America. There was no treaty of extradition there—nor anything else civilized and decent. I smoked cigarettes and drank what passed for rum, on the balcony of an impossible hotel, and otherwise groped about for the path that leads to the devil. After a year, I wrote to Hayden. He answered, urging me to stay away. He intimated that the thing we had done was on my shoulders. I was ashamed, frightfully unhappy. I didn't dare write to—her. I had disgraced her. I asked Hayden about her, and he wrote back that she was shortly to marry him. After that I didn't want to come back to Reuton. I wanted most—to die.