Boston Blackie

by Jack Boyle

  “I’m going to have those jewels to-night if I have to stay here till morning,” he murmured resolutely. “I wonder who this can be? The nurse who slipped out on her own business and left the poor little kiddie alone, I suppose.”

  The faint purr of a motor stopping before the house reached his ears.

  “That doesn’t sound like a nurse to me,” he thought. “If it’s the mother of that boy, she’ll be here, likely enough, with all the lights on in a minute. Well, anyway, we’ll wait and see what happens. The window’s ready for a quick get-away, and all the coppers in town couldn’t get me once I’m outside in this fog, with Mary and the machine ready. We haven’t lost out yet.”

  The whir of the motor died, and voices sounded outside as steps ascended from the street.

  “Two are coming—a man and a woman,” murmured Blackie. “Matters are growing interesting.”

  The outer door opened and closed softly. In the darkness the safe-cracker sensed two dim forms in the doorway; then an electric button clicked, and the room was flooded with light. Blackie saw a brilliantly handsome woman, cloaked and in evening dress, and an equally handsome man similarly garbed. The woman let her wrap slip to the floor as she turned to her companion.

  “What is it, Don?” she asked apprehensively. “What is troubling you so? Tell me.”

  “The same thing that always troubles me,” he answered, stepping toward her and taking her hands in his. “My love for you, Marian!”

  The man drew her closer to him gently but irresistibly, and his arm dropped to her slender waist.

  “Your own heart tells you all that is in mine—it must,” he added quickly. “Marian, dear, this torture must end to-night.”

  For a second, with his arm around her, she swayed toward him. Then slowly she released herself and drew away.

  “Don’t, Don, please!” she begged tremulously. “You know we agreed not to discuss things that—that can’t be remedied. Is this all you had to tell me? Is this why you have brought me home now from the dance where at least we might have forgotten and been happy for an hour?”

  Her face, as she looked up at him, was a strangely mingled contradiction. There was reproach in her voice; there were tenderness and regret in her eyes, but behind them lay an instinctive womanly shrinking from something to be feared.

  “Yes,” her companion said, studying her face, “that is what I have come to tell you to-night: first that I love you; then that I am going away. Marian, I sail for Honolulu to-morrow morning on the Manchuria.”

  “Oh, no, no!” the woman cried, springing to his side and catching his arm in a movement imploringly detaining. “Oh, Don, you wouldn’t! You couldn’t! Tell me it isn’t so. You say you—you—care; and yet you would leave me to face an empty life here—alone—in this house.”

  To Blackie, watching from within the window embrasure, the sweeping gesture of hate that accompanied her final word was as revealing as a diary. It seemed to picture the luxurious home as a prison in which love and a woman’s illusions had slowly stifled and died. It seemed the signed confession of an unhappy and embittered wife. And also, in its resentful recklessness, the gesture explained the man she called “Don”—the man who now gently drew her into his arms and tilted her head till she faced him squarely.

  “It is true that I am leaving on the Manchuria,” he said, “but it is not true that I am leaving you. Because”—as she stared up at him in breathless wonder—“Marian, dear, you are going with me.”

  A slowly rising flush colored her white cheeks, and for just a second her eyes answered the fire and tenderness in his. Then she laid trembling hands against his breast and slowly pushed him away as she bowed her head.

  “It can’t be, Don,” she said, speaking so low the man stooped to hear her. “What you ask is impossible. I can never do that—never.”

  “And why not?” he answered. “Is it because of what our friends here will say? That for them and their gossip!”—snapping his fingers. “For a week idle tongues will buzz over teacups and cocktail glasses. Well, let them. You and I will not be there to hear. We will be together far out on the Pacific under a warm sun and a blue sky, with heartache forever dead and buried beyond the horizon, and a lifetime of perfect happiness rising before us as you see the islands rise out of the sea. Hawaii is a beautiful land, dearest—a land that has no yesterdays. Are we to miss all that awaits us there, all that makes life worth living, because we fear chattering tongues two thousand miles behind us? No! Dear one, we must both sail on the Manchuria.”

  He stopped, seeking a glimpse of her averted face.

  “Why must you go?” she asked, her head still bowed.

  “There is serious labor-trouble on the sugar plantation. Michaels cabled me this afternoon. It is absolutely imperative for me to return at once, and the Manchuria to-morrow morning is the only steamer this month. I have taken passage, and I can’t—I won’t—leave you behind. Will you go, Marian?”

  Slowly she shook her head.

  “This, then, is the end, Don,” she said. “You know I can’t go and you know, too,”—her voice now was bitterly resentful,—“that life will be a hideously empty thing to me after the Manchuria sails in the morning. But I can’t go. I am tied here with bonds that can’t be broken—by me.”

  “Do you mean that, Marian?”

  She hesitated and brushed a hand quickly across her eyes—then nodded silently.

  “If you do,” he continued, betraying the bitterness of his disappointment, “it proves one of two things. Either you are a coward afraid to risk a momentary sacrifice to buy a lifetime of happiness, or deep in your heart you still love your husband. Which is it? Do you care for Wilmerding? Has my love been no more than a toy to amuse you in idle hours?”

  “How can you ask that, Don?” she answered quickly. “You know it hasn’t; and as for my husband—” She stopped and stood staring down into the fire, her face altering with each of many swiftly changing emotions.

  At last she looked up and into the eyes of the man beside her.

  “I did love Martin Wilmerding once,” she said. “Sometimes I have thought that if the past two years could be blotted out,—forgotten,—I might love him again even yet; but now, to-day, to-night, I do not love him. That is my answer, Don Lavalle. To-night I do not love him.”

  “How long has it been since you thought you might care for him again?” Lavalle demanded jealously.

  “Since you came into my life and taught me to care for you.”

  He stooped over her eagerly.

  “You tell me that, and expect me to leave you here!” he whispered. “Never! In saying you love me, you have decided. Come, Marian, come.”

  For a second their eyes met. His were eager, ardent, passionately tender. To a woman grown reckless through neglect, they pleaded his cause better than words. She crouched by the vanishing fire, weighing her problem. Behind her Lavalle, intuitively avoiding speech, awaited her verdict. From his hiding-place Boston Blackie watched, forgetful for the moment of why he was there.

  Minutes passed—minutes in which Marian Wilmerding, choosing her future at diverging crossroads, relived her life.

  The years behind her flitted one by one through her mind—years she saw as a nightmare of steadily growing disillusionment. She had loved big, handsome, debonair Martin Wilmerding when they were married. As a suitor he had stood out alone among the many men who had asked her hand. They had been very happy at first, were still happy when their boy was born. When and how had the present gulf between them grown? Memory told her. It had begun when she found the romance-haloed suitor she had married, slowly altering into a husband who regarded her love as an irrevocably given possession requiring neither attention nor the refreshing nourishment of tender response. Time widened the breach. She had been morose, petulant; he had not understood and had withdrawn more and more into a cycle of interests in which she had no share. She, hiding her wound, retaliated by plunging into the f
everish gayety of ultra-smart society. For many months they had lived as strangers, never meeting except occasionally at dinner.

  And now she was facing the inevitable result—listening to the plea of a man for whom she had confessed her love, urging her to leave home and husband. What was the answer?

  CHAPTER III

  BOSTON BLACKIE’S CODE

  Her throat tightened in an aching pain as her eye fell on the thin gold band that encircled a slender finger. Martin Wilmerding had stooped to kiss that hand and ring on the day it first was placed there.

  “Dear little wife,” he had said, “that ring is the symbol of a bond that never will be broken by me. Throughout all the years before us, whenever I see it, this hour will return, bringing back all the love and devotion that is in my heart now.”

  Recollection of the long-forgotten words swept her with a sudden revulsion of feeling, and she sprang to her feet. In that instant she realized for the first time why she had come to love Don Lavalle. It was because in his fresh, ardent, impulsive devotion he was so like the Martin Wilmerding who had kissed her hand and ring with a vow of lifetime fealty that had left her clinging to him in tearful ecstasy.

  “Don,” she said, “if you really love me, go—now, now.”

  Lavalle’s arms, eagerly outstretched toward her, dropped to his side. It was not the answer he had awaited so confidently. A vague resentment against her tinged his disappointment with new bitterness. “That is final, is it, Marian?” he asked. “Yes, yes. Don’t make it harder for me. Please go,” she cried almost hysterically. He slipped into his overcoat.

  “Perhaps you will tell me why,” he suggested with increasing asperity.

  “Because of the boy and this,” the woman said brokenly, laying a finger on her wedding-ring.

  “Nonsense,” he cried angrily. “What tie does that ring represent that Martin Wilmerding has not violated a hundred times? You have been faithful to it, we know, even though you admit you care for me. But has he? I have not the pleasure of your husband’s acquaintance, but no man ever neglected a wife like you without a reason.”

  “Go, please, quickly,” she pleaded, shivering.

  “I will,” he said, instinctively avoiding the blunder of combating her decision with argument.

  He caught her in his arms, and stooping quickly, kissed her on the lips. She reeled away from him, sobbing.

  “Our first and last kiss. Good-by, Marian,” he said gently, and left the room.

  She followed, clutching at the walls for support as she watched him from the doorway. He adjusted his muffler and caught up his hat without a backward glance, and she pressed her two hands to her lips to choke back a cry. Then as he opened the outer door, the crushing misery of her loneliness swept over her, overpowering self-restraint and resolution.

  “Don, oh, Don!” she pleaded, stumbling toward him with outstretched arms.

  In a second he was at her side, and she was crying against his breast.

  “I can’t let you go,” she sobbed. “I tried, but I can’t. Take me, Don. I will do as you wish.”

  From his hiding-place Blackie saw them re-enter the room. The woman stopped by the fireplace, drew off her wedding-ring and after holding it a second between shaking fingers, dropped it into the ashes.

  “Dead and gone!” she said. “Dead as the love of the man who put it on my finger.”

  “My ring will replace it,” said Lavalle tenderly, but with triumph in his eyes. “Wilmerding will want a divorce. He shall have it, and then you’ll wear the wedding-ring of the man who loves you and whom you love—the only ring in the world that shouldn’t be broken.”

  “Don, promise me that you will never leave me alone,” she pleaded falteringly. “I don’t ever want a chance to think, to reflect, to regret. I only want to be with you—and forget everything else in the world. Promise me.”

  “Love like mine knows no such word as separation,” he answered. “From this hour we will never be apart. Don’t fear regrets, Marian. There will be none.”

  “My boy,” she suggested, “he will go with us. Poor little Martini I wouldn’t leave him behind fatherless and motherless.”

  “Of course not,” he agreed. “And now you must get a few necessaries together quickly—just the things you will require on the steamer. You can get all you need when we reach Honolulu, but there is no time for anything now, for under the circumstances it is best that we go aboard the steamer before morning. Can you be ready in an hour?”

  “In an hour!” she cried in surprise. “Yes, I can, but—but—how can we go aboard the steamer to-night? We can’t, Don. Your passage is booked, but not mine.”

  “My passage is booked for Don Lavalle and wife,” he informed her smilingly.

  She turned away her head to hide the flush that colored her face.

  “You were so sure as that!” she murmured, with a strangely new sense of disappointment.

  “Yes,” Lavalle answered, “for I knew love like mine could not fail to win yours. Will you pack a single trunk while I run back to my hotel and get my own things together? I can be back in an hour or less. Will you be ready?”

  “Yes, I will be ready,” she promised wearily. “I will only take a few things. I want nothing that my—husband ever gave me. I shall only take a few of my own things and the jewels in the safe that were in Mother’s collection. They are my own, and they’re very valuable, Don. It will not be safe to risk packing them in my baggage. I’ll get them now and give them to you to keep until we can leave them in the purser’s safe to-morrow. Be very careful of them, Don. They couldn’t be replaced for a fortune.”

  Boston Blackie saw her hurry to the wall—saw the sliding door roll back; with a quickly indrawn breath, he watched the woman fumble nervously with the combination-dial. The safe-door swung open, and she rapidly sorted out a half-dozen jewel-cases and reclosed the safe.

  “Here they are, Don,” she said, handing the gems to Lavalle. “I have taken only those that came from my own people. And now you must leave me. I must pack, and I can’t call the servants under these circumstances. I must get the boy up and ready; and also,”—she hesitated a second and then added,—“I must write a note to Mr. Wilmerding telling him what I have done and why.”

  “Don’t mail it until we are at the dock,” warned the man. “Where is he—at his club or out of town?”

  “He’s at the Del Monte Hotel near Monterey—or was,” she answered. “The letter won’t reach him till to-morrow night.”

  “And to-morrow night we will be far out of sight of land,” Lavelle cried. “That is as it should be. I am glad I never met him, for now I need never do so.”

  He stuffed the jewel-cases into his overcoat.

  “I’ll be back in my car in an hour,” he warned. “Hurry, Marian, my love. Each minute until I am with you again will be a day.”

  He caught up his hat and ran down the steps to the street, where his car stood at the curbstone.

  As the door closed behind him, Marian Wilmerding sank into a chair and clutched her throat to stifle choking sobs. Intuitive womanly fear of what she was to do paralyzed her. For many minutes she lay shaking convulsively as she tried to overcome the dread that chilled her heart. Then the dismal atmosphere of the masterless home began to oppress her with a sense of wretched loneliness.

  She rose and with hard, reckless eyes shining hotly from behind wet lashes, ran upstairs to pack.

  As Donald Lavalle threw open the door of his empty car, a man who had slipped behind him around the corner of the Wilmerding residence stepped to his side.

  “I’m sorry to have to trouble you for my wife’s jewels, Lavalle,” he said.

  The triumphant smile on Lavalle’s face faded, and he shrank back in speechless consternation.

  “Your wife’s jewels!” he ejaculated, trying to recover from the shock of the utterly unexpected interruption. “You are—”

  “Yes, I am Martin Wilmerding; and the h
appy chance that brought me home to-night also gave me the pleasure of listening from the window-seat of the living-room to your interesting tete-a-tete with my wife.”

  A gun flashed into Boston Blackie’s hand and was jabbed sharply into Lavalle’s ribs.

  “Give me Marian’s jewels,” the pseudo-husband cried. “Hand them over before I blow your heart out. That’s what I ought to do—and I may, anyway.”

  Lavalle handed over the cases that contained the Wilmerding collection of gems.

  “Now,” continued his captor, “I want a word with you.”

  A gun was thrust so savagely into Lavalle’s face that it left a long red bruise.

  “I have heard all you said to-night. I know all your plans for stealing away my wife,” the inexorable voice continued, “and I’ve just a word of warning for you. You are dealing with a man, not a woman, from now on; and if you phone, write, telegraph or ever again communicate in any way with Marian, I’ll blow your worthless brains out if I have to follow you round the world to do it. Do you get that, Mr. Don Lavalle?”

  “I understand you,” said Lavalle helplessly.

  Again the gun-muzzle bruised the flesh of his cheek.

  “And as a last and kindly warning, Lavalle,” Blackie continued, “I suggest that you take extreme precautions to see that you do not miss the Manchuria when she sails in the morning; because if you are not on board, you won’t live to see another sunset if I have to kill you in your own club. Will you sail or die?”

  “I’ll sail,” said Lavalle.

  “Very well. That’s about all that requires words between us, I believe. Go, and remember your life is in your own hands. One word of any kind to Marian, and you forfeit it. I don’t know why I don’t kill you now. I would if it were not for the scandal all this would cause when it came out before the jury that would acquit me. Now go.”