The Voice in the Fog - Harold MacGrath (new reading txt) 📗

Broadway. He had not seen the archeologist since his return from Europe.

"Hey, Mr. Crawford!" Haggerty bawled, putting his head into the window.

"Why, Haggerty, how are you? Can I give you a lift?"

"If it won't trouble you."

"Not at all. Pretty hot weather."

"For my business. Wish I could run off t' th' seashore like you folks. Heard o' th' Maharajah's emeralds?"

"Yes. You're on that case?"

"Trying t' get on it. Looks blank jus' now. Clever bit o' work; something new. But I've got news for you, though. Your man Mason is back here again. I thought I wouldn't say nothing t' you till I put my hand on his shoulder."

"I'm sorry. I had hoped that the unfortunate devil would have had sense to remain abroad."

"Then you knew he was over there?"-quickly. "See him?"

"No. I shall never feel anything but sorry for him. You can not live with a man as I did, for ten years, and not regret his misstep."

"Oh, I understand your side. But that man was a born crook, an' th' cleverest I ever run up against. For all you know, he may have been back of a lot o' tricks Central never got hold of. I'll bet that each time that you went over with him, he took loot an' disposed of it. I may be pig-headed sometimes, but I'm dead sure o' this. Wait some day an' see. Say, take a whiff o' this an' tell me what y' think it is." Haggerty produced the handkerchief.

"I don't smell anything," said Crawford.

Haggerty seized the handkerchief and sniffed, gently, then violently. All he could smell was reminiscent of washtubs. The mysterious odor was gone.


CHAPTER XIV

This is not a story of the Maharajah's emeralds; only a knot in the landing-net of which I have already spoken. I may add with equal frankness that Haggerty, upon his own initiative, never proceeded an inch beyond the keyhole episode. It was one of his many failures; for, unlike the great fictional detectives who never fail, Haggerty was human, and did. It is only fair to add, however, that when he failed only rarely did any one else succeed. If ever criminal investigation was a man's calling, it was Haggerty's. He had infinite patience, the heart of a lion and the strength of a gorilla. Had he been highly educated, as a detective he would have been a fizzle; his mind would have been concerned with variant lofty thoughts, and the sordid would have repelled him: and all crimes are painted on a background of sordidness. In one thing Haggerty stood among his peers and topped many of them; in his long record there was not one instance of his arresting an innocent man.

So Haggerty had his failures; there are geniuses on both sides of the law; and the pariah-dog is always just a bit quicker mentally than the thoroughbred hound who hunts him; indeed, to save his hide he has to be.

Nearly every great fact is like a well-balanced kite; it has for its tail a whimsy. Haggerty, on a certain day, received twenty-five hundred dollars from the Hindu prince and five hundred more from the hotel management. The detective bore up under the strain with stoic complacency. "The Blind Madonna of the Pagan-Chance" always had her hand upon his shoulder.

Kitty went to Bar Harbor, her mother to visit friends in Orange. Thomas walked with a straight spine always; but it stiffened to think that, without knowing a solitary item about his past, they trusted him with the run of the house. The first day there was work to do; the second day, a little less; the third, nothing at all. So he moped about the great house, lonesome as a forgotten dog. He wrote a sonnet on being lonesome, tore it up and flung the scraps into the waste-basket. Once, he seated himself at the piano and picked out with clumsy forefinger Walking Down the Old Kent Road . Kitty could play. Often in the mornings, while at his desk, he had heard her; and oddly enough, he seemed to sense her moods by what she played. (That's the poet.) When she played Chopin or Chaminade she went about gaily all the day; when she played Beethoven, Grieg or Bach, Thomas felt the presence of shadows.

There was a magnificent library, mostly editions de luxe. Thomas smiled over the many uncut volumes. True, Dickens, Dumas and Stevenson were tolerably well-thumbed; but the host of thinkers and poets and dramatists and theologians, in their hand-tooled Levant . . . ! Away in an obscure corner (because of its cheap binding) he came across a set of Lamb. He took out a volume at random and glanced at the fly-leaf-"Kitty Killigrew, Smith College." Then he went into the body of the book. It was copiously marked and annotated. There was something so intimate in the touch of the book that he felt he was committing a sacrilege, looking as it were into Kitty's soul. Most men would have gone through the set. Thomas put the book away. Thou fool, indeed! What a hash he had made of his affairs!

He saw Killigrew at breakfast only. The merchant preferred his club in the absence of his family.

Early in the afternoon of the fourth day, Thomas received a telephone call from Killigrew.

"Hello! That you, Webb?"

"Yes. Who is it?"

"Killigrew. Got anything to do to-night?"

"No, Mr. Killigrew."

"You know where my club is, don't you?"

"Yes."

"Well, be there at seven for dinner. Tell the butler and the housekeeper. Mr. Crawford has a box to the fight to-night, and he thought perhaps you'd like to go along with us."

"A boxing-match?"

"Ten rounds, light-weights; and fast boys, too. Both Irish."

"Really, I shall be glad to go."

"Webb?"

"Yes."

"Never use that word 'really' to me. It's un-Irish."

Thomas heard a chuckle before the receiver at the other end clicked on the hook. What a father this hearty, kindly, humorous Irishman would have made for a son!

In London Thomas' amusements had been divided into three classes. During the season he went to the opera twice, to the music-halls once a month, to a boxing-match whenever he could spare the shillings. He belonged to a workingmen's club not far from where he lived; an empty warehouse, converted into a hall, with a platform in the center, from which the fervid (and often misinformed) socialists harangued; and in one corner was a fair gymnasium. Every fortnight, for the sum of a crown a head, three or four amateur bouts were arranged. Thomas rarely missed these exhibitions; he seriously considered it a part of his self-acquired education. What Englishman lives who does not? Brains and brawn make a man (or a country) invincible.

At seven promptly Thomas called at the club and asked for Mr. Killigrew. He was shown into the grill, where he was pleasantly greeted by his host and Crawford and introduced to a young man about his own age, a Mr. Forbes. Thomas, dressed in his new stag-coat, felt that he was getting along famously. He had some doubt in regard to his straw hat, however, till, after dinner, he saw that his companions were wearing their Panamas.

Forbes, the artist, had reached that blasé period when, only upon rare occasions, did he feel disposed to enlarge his acquaintance. But this fresh-skinned young Britisher went to his heart at once, a kindred soul, and he adopted him forthwith. He and Thomas paired off and talked "fight" all the way to the boxing club.

There was a great crowd pressing about the entrance. There were eddies of turbulent spirits. A crowd in America is unlike any other. It is full of meanness, rowdyism, petty malice. A big fellow, smelling of bad whisky, shouldered Killigrew aside, roughly. Killigrew's Irish blood flamed.

"Here! Look where you're going!" he cried.

The man reached back and jammed Killigrew's hat down over his eyes. Killigrew stumbled and fell, and Crawford and Forbes surged to his rescue from the trampling feet. Thomas, however, caught the ruffian's right wrist, jammed it scientifically against the man's chest, took him by the throat and bore him back, savagely and relentlessly. The crowd, packed as it was, gave ground. With an oath the man struck. Thomas struck back, accurately. Instantly the circle widened. A fight outside was always more interesting than one inside the ropes. A blow ripped open Thomas' shirt. It became a slam-bang affair. Thomas knocked his man down just as a burly policeman arrived. Naturally, he caught hold of Thomas and called for assistance. The wrong man first is the invariable rule of the New York police.

"Milligan!" shouted Killigrew, as he sighted one of the club's promoters.

Milligan recognized his millionaire patron and pushed to his side.

After due explanations, Thomas was liberated and the real culprit was forced swearing through the press toward the patrol-wagon, always near on such nights. Eventually the four gained Crawford's box. Aside from a cut lip and a torn shirt, Thomas was uninjured. If his fairy-godmother had prearranged this fisticuff, she could not have done anything better so far as Killigrew was concerned.

"Thomas," he said, as the main bout was being staged, the chairs and water-pails and paraphernalia changed to fresh corners, "I'll remember that turn. If you're not Irish, it's no fault of yours. I wish you knew something about coffee."

"I enjoy drinking it," Thomas replied, smiling humorously.

Ever after the merchant-prince treated Thomas like a son; the kind of a boy he had always wanted and could not have. And only once again did he doubt; and he longed to throttle the man who brought into light what appeared to be the most damnable evidence of Thomas' perfidy.


CHAPTER XV

We chaps who write have magic carpets.

Whiz!

A marble balcony, overlooking the sea, which shimmered under the light of the summer moon. Lord Henry Monckton and Kitty leaned over the baluster and silently watched the rush of the rollers landward and the slink of them back to the sea.

For three days Kitty had wondered whether she liked or disliked Lord Monckton. The fact that he was the man who had bumped into Thomas that night at the theater may have had something to do with her doddering. He might at least have helped Thomas in recovering his hat. Dark, full-bearded, slender, with hands like a woman's, quiet of manner yet affable, he was the most picturesque person at the cottage. But there was always something smoldering in those sleepy eyes of his that suggested to Kitty a mockery. It was not that recognizable mockery of all those visiting Englishmen who held themselves complacently superior to their generous American hosts. It was as though he were silently laughing at all he saw, at all which happened about him, as if he stood in the midst of some huge joke which he alone was capable of understanding: so Kitty weighed him.