“The arrangement would suit me,” Fischer admitted.
Jake suddenly showed a gleaming set of unexpectedly white teeth. His eyes stared more than ever.
“I’m game! I’m on to this,” he cried fiercely. “You can have all there is coming to me, Sullivan, if I get nabbed, but I’m going to take my risk. I hate this hole! It’s a rat’s den.”
“Then get you back to your cupboard, Jake,” the Irishman enjoined. “I’ve got to talk business to the gent.”
The young man rose to his feet. He took the bottle of whisky under his arm. His face was still ashen, but his tone was steady. He gripped Fischer by the arm.
“I will do your job,” he promised. “I will do it thoroughly.”
He slouched across the floor, entered his cupboard, and disappeared. Fischer was suddenly aware of the moisture upon his forehead. There was something animallike, absolutely inhuman, about this creature with whom he had made his murderous bargain.
“I have no money here, of course,” he reminded his companion.
“Don’t know as I blame you, guv’nor,” the other observed with a grin. “I saw my toughs lay out a guy only the other day for flashing a smaller wad than you’d carry. You know the rules, and I guess I’ll ring up the bank to-morrow morning at eleven o’clock. Does that go?”
“You’ll find the deposit there,” Fischer promised. “You’d better let me know when he’s ready to take the job on.”
The Irishman walked to the foot of the steps with his visitor.
“Give Joe the double knock on the trapdoor,” he directed, “and get out of the saloon as quick as you can. There’s a Dago about there keeps our hands full. Got anything with you?”
Fischer nodded. His hand stole out of his overcoat pocket.
“Better give them one if they look like trouble,” his host advised. “They’ve plenty of spunk, but I can tell you they make tracks for their holes if they hear one of those things bark.”
“They shall hear it fast enough, if they try to hustle me,” Fischer observed grimly.
“You’ve some pluck,” the Irishman declared, as he watched his departing guest ascend the steps. “Sure, this is no place for cowards, anyway. And good night and good luck to you! Jake will do your job slick, if any one could.”
Fischer beat his little tattoo upon the trapdoor, crawled through it and underneath the flap in the counter, out into the saloon. He paused for a moment to look around, on his way to the door. The fight was apparently over, for every one was standing at the counter, drinking with a swarthy-faced man whose cheeks were stained with blood. From a distant corner came the sound of groans. The air seemed heavier than ever with foul tobacco smoke. The man at the piano still thrashed out his unmelodious chords. Some women in a corner were pretending to dance. One or two of them looked curiously at Fischer, but he passed out, unchallenged. Even the air of the slum outside seemed pure and fresh after the heated den he had left. He reached the corner of the street in safety and stepped quickly into his car. He threw both windows wide open and murmured an order to the chauffeur. Then he leaned back and closed his eyes for a moment. He was a man not overburdened with imagination, but it seemed to him just then that he would never be able altogether to forget the face of that ghastly, dehumanised creature, crouching like some terrified wild animal in his fetid refuge.
CHAPTER XXII
Table of Contents
Mrs. Theodore Hastings was forty-eight years old, which her friends said was the reason why her mansion on Fifth Avenue was furnished and lit with the delicate sombreness of an old Italian palace. There was about it none of the garishness, the almost resplendent brilliancy associated with the abodes of many of our neighbours. Although her masseuse confidently assured her that she looked twenty-eight, Mrs. Hastings preferred not to put the matter to the test. She received her carefully selected dinner guests in a great library with cedarwood walls, furnished with almost Victorian sobriety, and illuminated by myriads of hidden lights. Pamela, being a relative, received the special consideration of an affectionately bestowed embrace.
“Pamela, my child, wasn’t it splendid I heard that you were in New York!” she exclaimed. “Quite by accident, too. I think you treat your relatives shamefully.”
Her niece laughed.
“Well, anyhow, you’re the first of them I’ve seen at all, and directly Jim told me he was coming to you, I made him ring up in case you had room for me.”
“Jimmy was a dear,” Mrs. Hastings declared, “and, of course, there couldn’t be a time when there wouldn’t be room for you. Even now, at the last moment, though, I haven’t quite made up my mind where to put you. Choose, dear. Will you have a Western bishop or a rather dull Englishman?”
“What is the name of the Englishman?” Pamela asked, with sudden intuition.
“Lutchester, dear. Quite a nice name, but I know nothing about him. He brought letters to your uncle. Rather a queer time for Englishmen to be travelling about, we thought, but still, there he is. Seems to have found some people he knows—and I declare he is coming towards you!”
“I met him in London,” Pamela whispered, “and I never could get on with bishops.”
The dinner table was large, and arranged with that wonderful simplicity which Mrs. Hastings had adopted as the keynote of her New York parties. She had taken, in fact, simplicity under her wing and made a new thing of it. There were more flowers than silver, and cut glass than heavy plate. There seemed to be an almost ostentatious desire to conceal the fact that Mr. Hastings had robbed the American public of a good many million dollars.
“Of course,” Pamela declared, as they took their places, and she nodded a greeting to some friends around the table, “fate is throwing us together in the most unaccountable manner.”
“I accept its vagaries with resignation,” Lutchester replied. “Besides, it is quite time we met again. You promised to show me New York, and I haven’t seen you for days.”
“I don’t even remember the promise,” Pamela laughed, “but in any case I have changed my mind. I am not sure that you are the nice, simple-minded person you profess to be. I begin to have doubts about you.”
“Interest grows with mystery,” Lutchester remarked complacently. “Let us hope that I am promoted in your mind.”
“Well, I am not at all sure. Of course, I am not an Englishman, so it is of no particular interest to me, but if you really came over here on important affairs, I am not sure that I approve of your playing golf the day after your arrival.”
“That, perhaps, was thoughtless,” he admitted, “but one gets so short of exercise on board ship.”
“Of course,” Pamela observed tentatively, “I’d forgive you even now if you’d only be a little more frank with me.”
“I am prepared to be candour itself,” he assured her.
“Tell me,” she begged, “the whole extent of your mission in America?”
He glanced around.
“If we were alone,” he replied, “I might court indiscretion so far as to tell you.”
“Then we will leave the answer to that question until after dinner,” she said.
She talked to her left-hand neighbour for a few moments, and Lutchester followed suit. They turned to one another again, however, at the first opportunity.
“I have conceived,” she told him, “a great admiration for Mr. Oscar Fischer.”
“A very able man,” Lutchester agreed.
“He is not only that,” Pamela continued, “but he is a man with large principles and great ideas.”
“Principles!” Lutchester murmured.
“Of course, you don’t like him,” Pamela went on, “and I don’t wonder at it. He is thoroughly German, isn’t he?”
“Almost prejudiced, I’m afraid,” Lutchester assented.
“Don’t be silly,” Pamela protested. “Why, he’s German by birth, and although you English people are much too pig-headed to see any good in an enemy, I think you must admit that the way they all h
ang together— Germans, I mean, all over the world—is perfectly wonderful.”
“There have been a few remarks of the same sort,” Lutchester reminded her, “about the inhabitants of the British Empire—Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders, for instance.”
“As a matter of fact,” Pamela admitted generously, “I consider that your Colonials understand the word patriotism better than the ordinary Englishman. With them, as with the Germans, it is almost a passionate impulse. Your hearts may be in the right places, but you always give one the impression of finding the whole thing rather a bore.”
“Well, so it is,” Lutchester insisted. “Who wants to give up a very agreeable profession and enter upon a career of bloodshed, abandon all one’s habits, and lose most of one’s friends? No, we are honest about that, at any rate! Germany may be enjoying this war. We aren’t.”
“What was your profession?” Pamela inquired.
“Diplomacy,” Lutchester confided. “I intended to become an ambassador.”
“Do you think you have the requisite gifts?”
“What are they?”
“Secrecy, subtlety, caution, and highly-developed intelligence,” she replied. “How’s that?”
“All those gifts,” he assured her, “I possess.”
She fanned herself for a moment and looked at him.
“We are not a modest race ourselves,” she said, “but I think you can give us a lead. By the bye, were you playing golf with Senator Hamblin by accident the other afternoon?”
“You mean the old Johnny down at Baltusrol?” he asked coolly. “I picked him up wandering about by the professionals’ shed.”
“Did you talk politics with him?”
“We gassed a bit about the war,” Lutchester admitted cheerfully.
Pamela laughed. She leaned a little forward. The buzz of conversation now was insistent all around them.
“Of you two,” she whispered, “I prefer Fischer.”
Lutchester considered the matter for some time.
“Well, there’s no accounting for tastes,” he said presently. “I shouldn’t have thought him exactly your type.”
“He may not be,” Pamela confessed, “but at least he has the courage to speak what is in his mind.”
Lutchester smiled.
“So Fischer has taken you into his confidence, has he?” he murmured. “Well, now, that seems queer to me. I should have thought your interests would have lain the other way.”
“As an individual?”
“As an American.”
“I am not wholly convinced of that.”
“Come,” he protested, “what is the use of a friend from whom you are separated by an unnegotiable space?”
“What unnegotiable space?”
“The Atlantic.”
“And why is the Atlantic unnegotiable?”
“Because of a little affair called the British fleet,” Lutchester pointed out.
“There is also,” she reminded him drily, “a German fleet, and they haven’t met yet.”
“Ah! I had almost forgotten there was such a thing,” he murmured. “Where do they keep it?”
“You know. You aren’t nearly so stupid as you pretend to be,” she said, a little impatiently. “I should like you so much better if you would be frank with me.”
“What about those qualifications for my ambassadorial career?” he reminded her—“Secrecy, subtlety, caution.”
“The master of these,” she whispered, rising to her feet in response to her hostess’s signal, “knows when to abandon them—”
Lutchester changed his place to a vacant chair by James Van Teyl’s side.
“I was going to ask you, Mr. Van Teyl,” he inquired, “whether your Japanese servant was altogether a success? I think I shall have to get a temporary servant while I am over here.”
“Nikasti was entirely Fischer’s affair,” Van Teyl replied, “and I can’t say much about him as I have given up my share of the apartments at the Plaza. The fellow’s all right, I dare say, but we hadn’t the slightest use for a valet. The man on the floor’s good enough for any one.”
“By the bye,” Lutchester inquired, “is Fischer still in New York?”
“No, he’s in Washington,” Van Teyl replied. “I believe he’s expected back to-morrow…. Say, can I ask you a question?”
Lutchester almost imperceptibly drew his chair a little closer.
“Of course you can,” he assented.
“What I want to know,” Van Teyl continued confidentially, “is how you get that long run on your cleek shots? I saw you play the sixteenth hole, and it looked to me as though the ball were never going to stop.”
Lutchester smiled.
“I have made a special study of that shot,” he confided. “Yes, I can tell you how it’s done, but it needs a lot of practice. It’s done in turning over the wrists sharply just at the moment of impact. You get everything there is to be got into the stroke that way, and you keep the ball low, too.”
“Gee, I must try that!” Van Teyl observed, making spasmodic movements with his wrists. “When could we have a day down at Baltusrol?”
“It will have to be next week, I’m afraid, if you don’t mind,” Lutchester replied. “I’ve a good many appointments in New York, and I may have to go to Washington myself. By the bye, I thought our host lived there.”
“So he does,” Van Teyl assented. “Nowadays, though, it seems to have become the fashion for politicians to own a house up in New York and do some entertaining here. They’re after the financial interest, I suppose.”
“Is your uncle a keen politician?”
“Keen as mustard,” Van Teyl answered. “So’s my aunt. She’d give her soul to have the old man nominated for the Presidency.”
“Any chance of it?”
“Not an earthly! He’ll come a mucker, though, some day, trying. He’d take any outside chance. For a clever man he’s the vainest thing I know.”
Lutchester smiled enigmatically as he followed the example of the others and rose to his feet.
“Even in America, then,” he observed, “your great men have their weaknesses.”
CHAPTER XXIII
Table of Contents
Fischer, exactly one week after his nocturnal visit to Fourteenth Street, hurried out of the train at the Pennsylvania Station, almost tore the newspapers from the news stand, glanced through them one by one and threw them back. The attendant, open-mouthed, ventured upon a mild protest. Fischer threw him a dollar bill, caught up his handbag, and made for the entrance. He was the first passenger from the Washington Limited to reach the street and spring into a taxi.
“The Plaza Hotel,” he ordered. “Get along.”
They arrived at the Plaza in less than ten minutes. Mr. Fischer tipped the driver lavishly, suffered the hall porter to take his bag, returned his greeting mechanically, and walked with swift haste to the tape machine. He held up the strips with shaking fingers, dropped them again, hurried to the lift, and entered his rooms. Nikasti was in the sitting-room, arranging some flowers. Fischer did not even stop to reply to his reverential greeting.
“Where’s Mr. Van Teyl?” he demanded.
“Mr. Van Teyl has gone away, sir,” was the calm reply. “He left here the day before yesterday. There is a letter.”
Fischer took no notice. He was already gripping the telephone receiver.
“982, Wall,” he said—“an urgent call.”
He stood waiting, his face an epitome of breathless suspense. Soon a voice answered him.
“That the office of Neville, Brooks and Van Teyl?” he demanded. “Yes! Put me through to Mr. Van Teyl. Urgent!”
Another few seconds of waiting, then once more he bent over the instrument.
“That you, Van Teyl?… Yes, Fischer speaking. Oh, never mind about that! Listen. What price are Anglo-French?… No, say about what?… Ninety-five?… Sell me a hundred thousand…. What’s that?… What?… Of course it’s a big deal! Never mind th
at. I’m good enough, aren’t I? There’ll be no rise that’ll wipe out half a million dollars. I’ve got that lying in cash at Guggenheimer’s. If you need the money, I’ll bring it you in half an hour. Get out into the market and sell. Damn you, what’s it matter about news! Right! Sorry, Jim. See you later.”
Fischer put down the telephone and wiped his forehead. Notwithstanding the fatigue in his face, there was a glint of triumph there. He laid his hand upon Nikasti’s shoulder.
“My friend,” he said, “there’s big proof coming of what I said to you the other day. You’ll find that letter you carry will mean a different thing now. There’s news in the air.”
“There has been a great battle, perhaps?” Nikasti asked slowly.
“All that is to be known you will hear before evening,” Fischer replied. “Tell some one to send me some coffee. I have come through from Washington. I am tired.”
He sank a little abruptly into an easy-chair, took off his spectacles, and leaned his head back upon the cushions. In the sunlight his face was almost ghastly. A queer sense of weakness had suddenly assailed him. His mind flitted back through a vista of sleepless nights, of strenuous days, of passions held in leash, excitement ground down.
“I am tired,” he said. “Telephone down to the office, Nikasti, for a doctor.”
Nikasti obeyed, and his summons was promptly answered. The doctor who arrived was pleasantly but ominously grave. In the middle of his examination the telephone rang. Fischer, without ceremony, moved to the receiver. It was Van Teyl speaking.
“I’ve sold your hundred thousand Anglo-French,” he announced. “It’s done the whole market in, though—knocked the bottom out of it. They’ve fallen a point and a half. Shall I begin to buy back for you? You’ll make a bit.”
“Not a share,” Fischer answered fiercely. “Wait!”
“Have you any news you’re keeping up your sleeve?” Van Teyl persisted.
“If I have, it’s my own affair,” was the curt reply, “and I don’t tell news over the telephone, anyway. Watch the market, and go on selling where you can.”
21 Greatest Spy Thrillers in One Premium Edition (Mystery & Espionage Series) Page 225