CHAPTER X
THE BIG GAME
When the police of Mulberry Street find themselves face to face with some problem other than the trivial, every-day theft, burglary or murder, as the case may be, they are wont to rise up and run around in a circle. The case of Red Haney and the diamonds, blared to the world at large in the newspapers of Sunday morning, immediately precipitated a circular parade, while Haney, the objective center, snored along peacefully in a drunken stupor.
The statement of the case in the public press was altogether negative. There had been no report of the theft of fifty thousand dollars' worth of uncut diamonds in any city of the United States; in fact, diamonds, as a commodity in crime, had not figured in police records for several weeks—not even an actress had mislaid a priceless necklace. The newspapers were unanimously certain that stones of such value could not rightfully belong to a man of Haney's type, therefore, to whom did they belong?
Four men, at least, of the thousands who read the detailed account of the affair Sunday morning, immediately made it a matter of personal interest to themselves. One of these was Mr. Latham, another was Mr. Schultze, and a third was Mr. Birnes. The fourth was Mr. E. van Cortlandt Wynne. In the seclusion of his home in Thirty-seventh Street, Mr. Wynne read the story with puckered brows, then re-read it, after which he paced back and forth across his room in troubled thought for an hour or more. An oppressive sense of uneasiness was coming over him; and it was reflected in eyes grown somber.
After a time, with sudden determination, the young man dropped into a chair at his desk, and wrote in duplicate, on a narrow strip of tough tissue-paper, just one line:
Are you safe? Is all well? Answer quick.
W.
Then he mounted to the roof. As he flung open the trap a man on the top of the house next door darted behind a chimney. Mr. Wynne saw him clearly—it was Frank Claflin—but he seemed to consider the matter of no consequence, for he paid not the slightest attention. Instead he went straight to a cage beside the pigeon-cote, wherein a dozen or more birds were imprisoned, removed one of them, attached a strip of the tissue-paper to its leg, and allowed it to rise from his out-stretched hand.
The pigeon darted away at an angle, up, up, until it grew indistinct against the void, then swung widely in a semicircle, hovered uncertainly for an instant, and flashed off to the west, straight as an arrow flies. Mr. Wynne watched it thoughtfully until it had disappeared; and Claflin's interest was so intense that he forgot the necessity of screening himself, the result being that when he turned again toward Mr. Wynne he found that young man gazing at him.
Mr. Wynne even nodded in a friendly sort of way as he attached the second strip of tissue to the leg of another bird. This rose, as the other had done, and sped away toward the west.