The Million Dollar Mystery - Harold MacGrath (best books under 200 pages .TXT) 📗

within twenty yards. Jones sought a perfect range. He would have to find this spot again.

"Surrender!" yelled Felton.

In reply Jones raised the precious box and deliberately dropped it into the sea. Then he turned his automatic upon his pursuers and succeeded in setting their boat afire.

All this within the space of an hour. During dinner that night (there was now a cook) Jones walked about the dining-table, rubbing his hands together from time to time.

"Jones," said Florence, "why do you rub your hands like that?"

"Was I rubbing my hands, Miss Florence?" he asked innocently.

CHAPTER VI

"Did you get the range?" asked the countess, when that night Braine recounted his adventure.

"Range!" he snarled. "My girl, haven't I just told you that I had to fight for my life? My boat was in flames. We had to swim for it till we were picked up by a Long Island barge tug. I don't know what became of the motorman. He must have headed straight for shore. And I'm glad he did. Otherwise he'd be howling for the price of another boat. Olga, for the first time I've had to let one of the boys have a look at my face. Doesn't know the name; but one of these days he'll stumble across it, and the result will be blackmail, unless I push him off into the dark. It was accidental."

The countess leaned forward, her hands tightly clinched.

"But the box!"

Braine made a gesture of despair.

"Leo, are you using any drug these days?"

"LEO, ARE YOU USING ANY DRUGS THESE DAYS?"
"LEO, ARE YOU USING ANY DRUGS THESE DAYS?"

"Don't make fun of me, Olga," impatiently. "Did you ever see me drink more than a pint of wine or smoke more than two cigars in an evening? Poor fools! What! Let my brain go into the wastebasket for the sake of an hour or so of exhilaration? No, and never will I! I'm keen about the gray matter I've got, and by the Lord Harry, I'm going to keep it. There's only one dope fiend in the Hundred, and he's one of the best decoys we have; so we let him have his coke whenever he really needs it. But this man Felton has seen my face. Some day he'll see it again, ask questions, and then..."

"Then what?"

"A burial at sea," he laughed. The laughter died swiftly as it came. "Threw it into eight hundred feet of water, on a bar where the sands are always shifting. He'll never find it, even if he took the range. He could not have got a decent one. The sun was dropping and the shadows were long. He threw the chest into the water and then began pegging away at us, cool as you please, and fired our tank."

"It looks to me as if he had wasted his time."

"That depends. Between you and me and the gatepost, I've a sneaking idea that this man Jones, whom nobody has given any particular attention, is a deep, clever man. He may have been honestly attempting to find a new hiding place; the advertisement in the newspaper may have drawn him. He may have thrown the box over in pure rage at seeing himself checkmated. Again, the whole thing may have been worked up for our benefit, a blind. But if that's the case, Jones has us on the hip, for we can't tell. But we can do what in all probability he expects we'll cease to do—watch him just as shrewdly as before."

Olga caught his hand and drew him down beside her. "I wasn't going to bother you to-night, but it may mean something vital."

"What?" alertly.

For reply she rose and walked over to the light button. She pressed it and the apartment became dark.

"Come over to the window, quick!" She dragged him across the room. "Over the way, the house with the marble frontage."

A man emerged, lit a cigarette, and walked leisurely down the street.

"No!" she cried, as Braine turned to make for the door doubtless with the intention of finding out who the man was. "Every night after you leave he appears."

"Does he follow me?"

"No. And that's what bothered me at first. I believed he was watching some apartment above. But regularly when I turn out the lights he comes forth. So there's no doubt he watches you enter and takes note of your departure."

"But doesn't follow me. That's odd. What the devil is his idea?"

"I'd give a good deal to learn."

The shadow and the glowing cigarette disappeared around the corner, and the lights in the apartment were turned on again.

"He's gone. You really think he's watching me?"

"He is watching this apartment, I know that much."

And even at that moment the watcher was watching from his vantage behind the corner.

"Suspicious!" he murmured, tossing the cigarette into the gutter. "They're watching me for a change. I'll drop out. I know what I know. It's a great world. It's fine to be alive and kicking on top of it." He went on without haste and took the subway train for down-town.

"Is there any way I could get near him?" asked Braine.

"To-morrow night you might leave by the janitor's entrance. I'll keep the lights on till you're outside. Then I'll turn them off and you can follow and learn who he is."

"It's mighty important."

"Don't scowl. At your age a wrinkle is apt to remain it you once get it started."

He laughed. "Wrinkles!" She could talk of wrinkles!

"They are more important than you think. Every morning I rub out the wrinkle I go to bed with."

"I wish you could rub out the general stupidity which is wrinkling my brain. I've made three moves and failed in each. What's come over me?"

"Perhaps you've had too many successes. The wheel of chance is always turning around."

"May I smoke?"

"Thanks. At least it proves you still have some consideration for me. You would smoke whether it was agreeable or not. But I like the odor of a good cigar. And it always helps you to think."

Braine lighted his cigar and began his customary pacing. At length he paused.

"Suppose we have a real old-fashioned coaching party out to the old mansion we know about?"

"And what shall we do there?"

"Make the mansion, an enchanted castle where sometimes people who enter can't get out. Do you think you could get her to go?"

"I can try."

"Olga, I must have that girl; and I must have her soon. Sometimes I find myself mightily puzzled over the whole thing. If Hargreave is alive, why doesn't he turn up now that it's practically known that his daughter presides over his household? I might understand it if I didn't know that Hargreave is really afraid of nothing. Where is the man with the five thousand, picked up at sea? What was the reason for Jones carrying that box out in broad daylight? Who is the chap watching across the street? Sometimes I believe in my soul—if I have one!—that Hargreave is playing with us, playing! Well," flinging the half consumed cigar into the grate, "the Black Hundred always goes forward, win or lose, and never forgets."

"We are a fine pair!" said the woman bitterly.

"We are exactly what fate intended us to be. They wrote you down in the book as a beautiful body with a crooked mind. They wrote me down as the devil, doomed to roam the earth's top till I'm killed."

"Killed?"

"Why, yes. I'm not the kind of chap who dies in bed, surrounded by the weeping members of the family, doctor, nurse, and priest. I'm a scoundrel; but it has this saving grace, I enjoy being the scoundrel. Now, I'm going up to the club. There's nothing like a game of billiards or chess to smooth that wrinkle which seems to worry you."

In the great newspaper office there was a mighty racket. Midnight always means pandemonium in the city room of a metropolitan daily. Copy boys were rushing to and fro, messengers and printers with sticky galleys in their hands; reporters were banging away at their typewriters, and intermingling you could hear the ceaseless clickety-click from the telegraph room.

The managing editor came out of his office and approached the desk of the night city editor.

"Editorial page gone down?"

"Twenty minutes ago," said the night city editor.

"I wanted a stick on that Panama rumpus."

"Too late."

"Where's Jim Norton?"

"At the chamber of commerce banquet. The major is going to throw a bomb into the enemy's camp."

"Nothing on the Hargreave stuff?"

"No. Guess I'd better put that in the cubbyhole. He's dead."

"No will found yet?"

"Not a piece as big as a postage stamp."

"That will leave the girl in a tough place. No will, no birth certificate; and, worst of all, no photograph of the old man himself. I don't see why Jim sidestepped this affair. He is the only man in town who knew anything about Hargreave."

"He hasn't given it up; but he wants to cover it on his own, turn the yarn over when he's got it, no false alarms."

"Ah! So that's the game?"

"Yes; and Jim is the sort every paper needs. When the time comes the story turns up, if there is one. Here he is now. Looks like an actor in the fourth act of a drama. Good-looking chap, though."

Norton came in through the outer gates. He was in evening clothes, top hat. A dead cigarette dangled between his lips.

"How much do you want?" asked the night city editor.

"Column and a half."

"Off with your glad rags!"

"Anything good?" asked the managing editor.

"The lid has been jammed on tight. No wine in any restaurant after one o'clock. There'll be a roundup of every gunman in town."

"Good work! Go to it."

It was one o'clock when Norton turned in his last sheet of copy and started for home. Just outside the entrance to the building a man with a slouch hat drawn down over his eyes stepped forward.

"Mr. Norton?"

"Yes." Norton stepped back suspiciously.

The other chuckled, raised and lowered his hat swiftly.

"Good lord!" murmured the reporter.

"Will you take a ride with me in a taxi?"

"All the way to Syracuse, if you say so. Well, I'll be tinker d—d!"

"No names, please!"

What took place in that taxicab was never generally known. But at ten o'clock the next morning Norton surprised the elevator boy by going out. Norton proceeded down-town to the national bank, where he deposited $5,000 in bills of large denominations. The teller had some difficulty in counting them. They stuck together and retained the sodden appearance of money recently submerged in water.

Florence was delighted at the idea of a coaching party. Often during her schoolgirl days she had seen the fashionable coaches go careening along the road, with the sharp, clear note of the bugle rising above the thunder of hoofs and rattling of wheels. Jones was not enthusiastic; neither was he a killjoy.

"But you are to go along, too," said Florence.

"I, Miss Florence?"

"The countess invited you especially. You will go with a hamper."

"Ah, in my capacity as butler; very good, Miss Florence." To her he gave no sign of his secret great satisfaction.

The hour arrived, and the gay party bowled away. They wound in and out of the streets toward the country to the crack of the whip and the blare of the horn. Florence's enjoyment would have been perfect had it not been for the absence of Norton. Why hadn't he been invited? She did not ask because she did not care to disclose to the countess her interest in the reporter. They were nearing the limits of the city, when the coach was forced to take a sharp turn to avoid an automobile in trouble. The man puttering at the engine raised his head. It was Norton, and Florence waved her hand vigorously.

"A coaching party," he murmured; "and your Uncle James was not invited! Oh, very well!" He laughed, and suddenly grew serious. It would not hurt to find out where that coach was going.

He set to work savagely, located the trouble, righted it, and set off for the Hargreave home. He found Susan and bombarded