“Well, I’ll give you till over Sunday to make up your mind, then,” said Scarra, he secretly being well content with the progress that had been made. “If by Monday you’ve decided to go through with your share of the deal, you can come back here and bring that will with you and I’ll sign it. If you don’t show up on Monday I’ll know you’re too chicken-hearted for your own good. Remember this, though, Finburg—one way or another I’m going to get that pill. If you don’t want to help, that’s your lookout—you’ll only be kissing good-by to what’s down in them safe-deposit vaults on Third Avenue. And if you do—well, I guess you’re wise enough to protect yourself at every angle. It’s easy pickings for you, Finburg—easy pickings. So think it over before you decide to say no. Well, so long, see you Monday.”
He fell back from the grating and to the keeper at the farther end of the corridor motioned to indicate that his interview with his counsel was ended and that he was ready to be returned to his cell.
Monday morning, good and early, Mr. Finburg was back again. His mind had been made up for many hours. In fact it was made up before he left on Friday afternoon. Only, at the time, he had not cared to say so or to look so. To wear a mask was one part of Mr. Finburg’s professional attitude. To do things deviously was another. For him always, the longest way round was the shortest way across. His mind was a maze of detours, excepting when he was collecting his retainers or pressing for his principal fees. Then he could be straightforward enough to satisfy anybody. The practice of the criminal law does this to some of its practitioners.
It was because of this trait of Mr. Finburg’s that certain preliminary steps in the working-out of his share in the plot were elaborated and made intricate. Since Friday evening when his train landed him at the Grand Central, he had been a reasonably busy young man. From the station he went directly to the Public Library and there, at a table well apart from any other reader, he consulted a work on toxicology, with particular reference to the effects of the more deadly poisons. Before midnight he was in touch with a chemist of his acquaintance who served as laboratory sharp and chief mixer for a bootlegging combine specializing in synthetic goods with bogus labels on them. His real purpose in this inquiry was, of course, carefully cloaked; the explanation he gave—it referred to experiments which a purely supposititious client was making with precious metals—apparently satisfied the expert, who gave information fully.
By virtue of a finely involved ramification of underworld connections, Mr. Finburg was enabled next to operate through agents. Three separate individuals figured in the transaction. But no one of the three beheld more than his particular link in a winding chain and only one of the three had direct dealings with the principal, and this one remained in complete ignorance of what really was afoot. All he knew, all he cared to know, was that, having been dispatched on a mission which seemed to start nowhere and lead nowhere, he had performed what was expected of him and had been paid for it and was through. By such deft windings in and out, Mr. Finburg satisfied himself the trail was so broken that no investigator ever could piece it together. There were too many footprints in the trace; and too many of them pointing in seemingly opposite and contrary directions.
He was quite ready for the man Isgrid when that person came to his apartment on Sunday morning. Whether Isgrid studied Finburg is of no consequence to this narrative, but we may be quite assured that Finburg studied Isgrid, seeing the latter as a stolid, dull person, probably of Scandinavian ancestry and undoubtedly of a cheap order of mentality. About Isgrid as interpreted by Finburg, there was nothing to suggest any personal initiative. He appeared close-mouthed and secretive, though—in short, a man who being committed to a venture would go through it with a sort of intent and whole-hearted determination. This greatly pleased the little lawyer. For the rôle of an unthinking middleman Isgrid seemed an admirable choice. He had such a dependable dumb look about him. Nevertheless it suited Mr. Finburg’s book that his conspirings with this man should be marked by crafty play-acting. There sat the two of them, entirely alone, yet Mr. Finburg behaved as though a cloud of witnesses hovered to menace him.
He asked Isgrid various questions—leading questions, they would be called in court—but so phrased that they might pass for the most unsuspicious of inquiries. Then, being well satisfied by the results of such cross-examination, the lawyer came to business.
“Look here,” he said, pointing, “on this table is a little box with the lid off. See it? Well, in it are twelve five-grain capsules same as you’d get from any drug-store if you had a touch of grippe and the doctor gave you a prescription to be filled. Between ourselves we’ll just say it is a grippe cure that we’ve got here. Well, one of these capsules is stronger than the others are. If I’m not mistaken, it’s this one here”—his finger pointed again—“the last one in the bottom row, the one with a little spot of red ink on it. It’s marked that way so a fellow will be wised up to handling it pretty carefully.
“Now then, I’m going into the next room. I’ve got a wall safe there where I keep some of my private papers and other valuables, including money. I’m going to get a bill—a nice new United States Treasury certificate for one thousand dollars—out of my safe. It may take me two or three minutes to work the combination and find the bill. When I come back, if one or two of those capsules should happen to be missing, why I’ll just say to myself that somebody with a touch of grippe, or somebody who’s got a friend laid up somewhere with the grippe, saw this medicine here and helped himself to a dose or so without saying anything about it. It won’t stick in my mind; what difference does a measly little drug-store pill or two mean to me or to anybody else, for that matter? Inside of ten minutes I’ll have forgotten all about it.