“Hate to use you as a messenger boy, Uncle George,” he said rapidly—“but you’re the best possible man for the job. Mind skirmishing around Broadway until you find Jimmie Kelly and some more of his men?”
“I’m hired,” the old man replied promptly.
“Tell Jimmie to hang around the Knickerbocker on the chance that I may telephone him. And you might hang around the ’phone yourself.”
“I’ll never leave it!” said Uncle George.
Clifford hurried from Le Minuit, and five minutes later he was unlocking the heavy outside door, and then the door within that, of the dark-faced house in the upper Forties. He crept down the dim hall, muted with Persian rugs, and soon he was gazing through cautiously parted curtains into the oak-paneled dining-room, and at the six celebrants of Jack Morton’s third birthday party of that week.
Clifford watched and listened, every sense alert. The last of that little scene between Jack and Nina Cordova over the checks was being enacted: he saw Jack, laughing at the business ignorance of the “pre’ li’l’ fool,” sign the checks and hand them over—and he saw Nina’s scribbling pen fill them in (before Jack’s eyes)—and he heard her slowly repeat: “Payable to—Cash—Five—Hundred—Dollars.”
Clifford drew a quick breath. He understood it all now—or thought he did. So that was what Loveman was up to! Well, it was worth Loveman’s while to pay almost any price for the guaranteed privacy of Le Bain’s house!
The next moment Loveman was coming straight toward him. But Clifford had already made a swift survey of the resources of his situation; and before Loveman was in the hallway, he was behind a pair of tapestries at the forward end of the hall. The space behind him was unlighted, but he sensed that he was in the drawing-room. Peering out, he saw the brief scene between Nina and Loveman. That little scene convinced him that he had been correct in his conclusion of a few minutes before as to the significance of this affair in this house that told no secrets.
For a minute Clifford thought he had solved the mystery—that he had his case complete, all except arranging for his arrests. Then Loveman entered the telephone booth beneath the stairway. That was a new element. What could Loveman be about? Clifford leaned out and strove to listen, but not one word of Loveman’s filtered through the closet’s sound-proof door.
Loveman left the booth and rejoined the company. Clifford had noted a slit of light at one side of the darkened drawing-room, and toward this he now noiselessly made his way. The slit proved to be a parting in the heavy curtains between the drawing- and dining-rooms. Motionlessly Clifford watched the group of six—and all the while he wondered what Loveman’s telephoning could be about. There was drinking, and banter, and reassertions of Jack’s determination to prove himself a free spirit, and two stumbling attempts by Jack to dance with Nina to the music of his own singing—and thus half an hour passed.