“Why, yes. Perhaps whatever is troubling you will cease to trouble. We’ll talk of it to-night? You’ll let me help you?”
“Yes,” she said, “we’ll talk of it to-night. We must talk of it to-night.”
Verbeck hurried out, got into the car, and started for the business district. Faustina’s actions and manner worried him, yet his mind was busy with the Black Star and his affair. Once the Black Star and his band of crooks were handed over to the police he’d look into Faustina’s trouble, he told himself. Perhaps Howard was running about too much. Perhaps there was financial trouble in the family. Whatever it was, he’d smooth things out, he promised. He couldn’t have Faustina worrying.
He drove carefully now through the heavy traffic, and finally stopped before a hotel. There he entered a public telephone booth, and called police headquarters again. Once more he got the chief on the wire.
“Will you listen now, and ask no questions?” he demanded. “This is no hoax, so you’d better act on my tip.”
Then he told the chief where the members of the Black Star’s band could be captured, and when and how.
[CHAPTER IX—“CHICKENS COME HOME TO ROOST”]
That evening there came the heavy winds again. They came as night descended, to howl about buildings and shriek through the streets, carrying the merest suggestion of snow. They swayed the arc lights, rattled signs, and shook skeletons of trees. And then they settled down to a steady blow from the north, and soft snow began to fall heavily. And through the steady sheet of snow gleamed thousands upon thousands of incandescent bulbs at the big hall where the Charity Ball was to be held.
That hall had been built to hold thousands, and its capacity would be tested this night. On the dancing floor would be women famous in society, stately matrons, pretty girls enjoying their first social season. Gowns to dazzle would be shown by hundreds, and jewels—precious and famous jewels—would flash reflection from myriads of electric lights—jewels taken from safe-deposit boxes to be worn at this affair, and then to be returned to their hiding places.
The galleries would be filled with spectators; a gigantic orchestra would please musical ears; in the streets outside, hundreds of limousines would be waiting for the end.