The Red Ledger

by Frank L. Packard

  And now the clear sweep of the road lay before them with Parker's Landing some fifteen miles ahead. Behind, still dogging them like a remorseless bloodhound on the trail, followed the red car.

  Rolver rammed the revolver muzzle suddenly into Stranway's ribs.

  "We're clear now!" he said hoarsely. "Speed her up, speed her up, do you hear? And God help you, if you don't get away!"

  Stranway, bending over the wheel, did not answer, except to open his mouth in a sort of frightened gasp and nod his head wildly, as he let the car out. There was something of sardonic irony in this journey of Rolver's to Parker's Landing at the insistent point of Rolver's own revolver held in Rolver's own hand—and to himself Stranway chuckled grimly.

  The car was rocking like a storm-tossed liner in an angry sea. Past them flew fences, telegraph poles and dwellings, like the quick-run film of a cinematograph. Teams were pulled hastily to the side of the road, and for a flashing instant they would catch a glimpse of a horse reared on his hind legs—and then a curve would be taken in a breathless sweep, the off wheels fairly lifted from the ground.

  Stranway's face was stern and set now. The desperate end of his work was still to come—he had to stop—at Parker's Landing. Rolver, with a revolver and his wits about him, would make ugly work; but Rolver, with his attention distracted by a run whose headlong speed threatened disaster every second, would be quite a different antagonist!

  "Take the first side road, and give them the slip!" Rolver shouted now over the thunder of the car.

  Stranway shook his head.

  "Not yet," he yelled back. "No good! We're not far enough ahead. They could see us for miles."

  A roar like the echo from canyon walls was around them. Like speed-maniacs running amuck, they were flying through the main street of a town. Stranway recognised it—the next was Parker's Landing, five miles away.

  They were in the open again. Stranway glanced at his companion. Rolver was clinging desperately to his seat with both hands, his revolver dangling from his little finger where it was crooked in the trigger-guard. The man's face was strained and white now, and the wind, flattening back moustache and beard, gave his face a hollow, cadaverous look.

  The minutes passed—and with them the miles. Imperceptibly, Stranway began to check. They flashed into the upper end of Parker's Landing. Down the street Stranway located the bank, and a little further on—just past the street he wanted—he saw a number of farmers' wagons, massed together and moving slowly, which completely blocked the road. A smile flickered across Stranway's lips. Keen, clever old Charlebois!

  "We can't get by; we'll have to turn up here," he bellowed at Rolver. "Hang on tight!"

  The car swerved around the corner with a hair-lifting skid that brought it toward the right-hand curb of the side street. "Second house up," Charlebois had said. There it was—just ahead! Stranway's lips compressed into a thin line, and, as he suddenly jammed on the brakes, bringing the car to a jarring, grinding halt that almost pitched Rolver from the seat, his right hand shot out and landed a blow on the other's wrist that knocked the revolver to the floor of the car. The next instant he flung himself free of the wheel and grappled with the other.

  Both pitched forward, and, crashing into the windshield, shattered it to splinters. Rolver, aroused now, fought like a wildcat—but the struggle lasted barely a minute. Two men rushed from the house opposite which Stranway had stopped the car, grasped Rolver unceremoniously, and, with Stranway aiding, yanked the man from the car, hustled him across the sidewalk and into the house, where, in what was evidently a doctor's consulting room, Henri Raoul Charlebois, an elderly woman, and a police officer were standing. Rolver, panting and gasping, glared about him wildly.

  "What's the meaning of this?" he blustered. "Eh? What's the meaning of this outrage?"

  "Peter Rolver," said the little old gentleman quietly, "do you recognise this room?"

  "No; I don't!" snarled Rolver. "How should I? I never saw it before."

  "I had hoped you might," murmured Charlebois gently. "I am greatly disappointed. Let me tell you about it, then. This used to be the consulting room of a physician by the name of Doctor Hebron H. Kearn. On a certain night, the eighteenth of October, two years ago, the bank in this town was robbed of nearly two hundred thousand dollars; on the evening following, about nine o'clock, a man, a stranger in the town, called at this office. He wore a checked suit, and so far as his identity could be established, in weight, build and general appearance, it corresponds in every detail with—yourself. It has taken those two years to find you. Of the crime committed that night, of the man who, now under sentence of death, awaits execution to-morrow, I——"

  Rolver, as if moved by some sudden relief, interrupted with a hoarse laugh.

  "So that's it, is it?" he sneered. "That's what all the fuss is about, is it? And supposing I was this man, which I am not, and supposing I was in this town that night, which I was not, a town whose name even now I do not know, what difference would it make and what would it prove? I'll make you smart for this, you doddering, officious old idiot! So you take it upon yourself, do you, to imagine that I'm your precious individual of the mysterious checked suit, eh?"

  Charlebois shook his head.

  "No," he said slowly; "you are wrong. You do me an injustice. I did think so up to two hours ago—but I was mistaken." Charlebois' voice rose suddenly, and rang through the room stern and cold. "No; you are not the stranger of the checked suit—you are a despicable coward-soul who would send an innocent man to a horrible and ignominious death! You are Dr. Hebron H. Kearn himself!"

  "Me—Kearn?" Rolver screamed, trying to free himself from the two men who held him. "Why, you blasted old fool, you're crazy! Curse you, what sort of a game are you trying to play?"

  "Silence!" commanded Charlebois harshly. "You have grown a beard and a moustache. I take it, the natural blond was beginning to show again at the roots, and you deemed it wise to have not only your beard and moustache, but your hair as well re-dyed when you left the boat this morning. Of course, you did not know you were watched. You see your identity was a simple matter then. Mrs. MacPherson"—Charlebois turned to the woman, Dr. Kearn's old housekeeper—"do you recognise the doctor in this man?"

  "I—I do not know," stammered Mrs. MacPherson nervously. "I think so; but—but I am not sure."

  "It doesn't matter what she thinks—or any of the rest of you, either!" yelled Rolver furiously. "I tell you I never even heard of the man!"

  "The matter is very easily settled," said Charlebois coldly. "We have but to send for a barber and have the beard and moustache removed. I think then, even with your hair still black, Mrs. MacPherson will have little trouble in recognising you."

  "You daren't!" shouted Rolver. "I——"

  "Dare!" Charlebois' little form seemed to tower into height, and there was a deadly glitter in the steel-blue eyes. "There is a man, you hound, that because of you sits to-day in a cell in Sing Sing with the death watch at his door. Dare! Do I need tell you that I would——"

  "I hardly think it will be necessary, sir." The officer, the town's chief of police, had stepped forward, and was staring intently into Rolver's face. "He's Dr. Kearn, right enough. I'll take my oath on it."

  "Ah!" said Charlebois sharply. "Then that is enough! Take him into custody, chief! I charge him with the murder of that unknown man who came to this office on the evening following the bank robbery."

  Rolver stared like a hunted man around him; then suddenly, in collapse, he flung out his arms to Charlebois.

  "No, no; not that!" he cried. "Not that—and I'll tell."

  "I thought that would bring you to a clearer light," said Charlebois grimly. "You prefer the charge of bank robbery to that of murder, do you not?"

  The man's face was ghastly in its pallor, his nerve was completely gone, and he twisted his fingers together, locking and unlocking them.

  "I am Dr. Kearn," he said jerkily. "I—I robbed the bank. The next evening that stran
ger came to my office to consult me professionally. It was his heart. He dropped dead on the floor of this room—my consulting room. Then Marlin arrived in the outer office, accusing me of the bank robbery. We quarrelled, and I bluffed it out; but I knew he had me, for, if a search were made, the money would be found. He left. He didn't know what had happened in the consulting room. I went back into the consulting room—and the idea came to me in a sudden flash. I knew Marlin's quarrel with me had been heard from the street, because a man had come to the door to ask what the row was about. The dead man was exactly my height and build, same colour eyes and hair—there was just the face that was different. I—I marred that with a surgical instrument; then I made a wound in his wrist, and bandaged it to correspond with the one I then had on my own; and then I took his clothes, and put mine on him. Then I made an entry in my diary, as of the day previous, intimating that I believed Marlin guilty. I got the stolen money together and turned out the lights. I waited until long after midnight, then stole to Marlin's place, got into the woodshed, and left five thousand dollars there. I took his hammer, which I found there among his other tools, brought it back here, and left it under the desk, after putting some blood stains on it. I didn't dare take a team or any public conveyance out of town—I walked. I hid in the woods the next day. The next night I reached New York, bought new clothes, destroyed the ones I was wearing, and—and that is all."

  "All!" Charlebois' voice quivered with mingled passion, contempt and loathing. "All! You have sounded the depths of human infamy—and that is all!" He turned to the chief of police. "Take him!" he said. "I will notify the Governor, and secure Marlin's release. And you, Mrs. MacPherson, I do not think we shall need to bring you further into this; thank you for coming."

  A moment later, save for Stranway and Charlebois, the room was empty. The little old gentleman walked to the window, and for a time stood silently looking out. When he turned to Stranway again his face was changed—full of a kindly, gentle light, and the steel-blue eyes were soft and tender.

  "In a little cottage not far from here," he said, "there is a brave, grey-haired, broken-hearted, sorrowing woman. Let us go to her, my boy, and make her glad."

  Chapter XIV.

  The Voice on the Wire

  Table of Contents

  "Death and danger. There are debit entries there as well. Powerful men to-day are amongst those whose names are on the debit side, men who strike in the black of night, who fight with unbuttoned foils, who turn like rats at bay to save themselves, and from these, their craft and resources, comes the danger I have warned you of"—Charlebois' words, spoken long ago at their first meeting, were ringing in Stranway's ears as though they were of but yesterday, of but an hour before.

  Henri Raoul Charlebois was gone! For weeks following the arrest of Rolver at Parker's Landing, no untoward event had taken place in Dominic Court, nothing had occurred that seemed in any way related to so dire a climax as this, and yet without warning, without sign or trace of him, the strange little old gentleman of Dominic Court had disappeared.

  Three days had passed since the discovery of Charlebois' disappearance had been made, three days of ceaseless work and anxiety that had brought a grey, haggard look into Stranway's face and black rings under the eyes grown heavy and dulled from lack of rest. But there were still no details, still not a single clue. It was all summed up in the one word—gone.

  It had been early morning when suspicion had first been aroused that something was wrong, and Stranway, summoned hurriedly from his near-by apartment on Sixth Avenue, had acted instantly. Out into the dawn from 1, 1½, 2 and 2½ Dominic Court, from those four quaint, old-fashioned Dutch houses, secluded in their little courtyard yet in the very centre of New York—four separate and distinct dwellings to the profane, one to the initiated—went men and women in the garb of many callings, efficient, faithful, keen of brain, the very flower, indeed, of that marvellous organisation that Charlebois had brought into being. And likewise, following fast on this move, cipher messages had flashed their warnings from the Atlantic to the Pacific coast, from the far north of Canada to the southernmost parts of America, to the capitals of Europe, to the remote places of the earth, to wherever a member, a sworn brother or sister of the organisation was at work. As a general facing a crisis from the enemy's unexpected attack hurls his battalions into the fray, so Stranway had hurled into the breach the mighty force at his command, and, awakening into life a gigantic, latent power, had loosed it upon the issue—and the result had been nothing.

  Nothing! The days had passed and there had been—nothing. Somewhere upon one of the pages of the Red Ledger lay the answer, Stranway knew. But upon which page? Of that mass of accounts, which nowhere had ever known their counterpart, that record of the days when, poor and friendless, some had aided Charlebois and some had crushed him down into blacker depths of misery—which?

  Death and danger? Too well Stranway understood the stark significance of those words; too well he knew their actual, living reality! Too often, to accomplish his ends, to pay his grimmer debts the little old gentleman had jeopardised his life, knowing no obstacle, recognising no difficulty, stern, dogged, determined, pursuing his way with a relentless will, swerving neither to the right nor to the left. "Red is neither warm nor cold"—a grim maxim that of Charlebois! As he paid a debt on the credit side, counting never the cost, bringing happiness and joy into the lives of those who once had brought a ray of sunlight into his own; so, too, on the debit side, he paid as surely and as impartially—at maturity. A queer and seemingly contradictory trait this, when measured against the gentle-souled nature of the man that shone out in acts of quixotic generosity and tenderness! Revenge, vindictiveness, maliciousness, this other side of him? No—it was far from that! Justice, simple and impartial, Charlebois himself had called it—and he had been right. In no case had any act of his brought punishment or retribution that was not merited a thousandfold by deeds and wrong-living subsequent to the original entry on the debit side; an entry that came to stand, indeed, as no more than a compass needle pointing its undeviating course—a course here of crime and murder, and ill-spent, worthless lives.

  And now as, toward evening on the third day since Charlebois' disappearance, Stranway sat at the old mahogany desk in the Red Room of 2½ Dominic Court, where the little old gentleman in red velvet jacket with tassel bobbing from red skull-cap was wont to sit, a dread, cold and numbing, lay heavily upon his heart. Had what he had feared for months come finally to pass? Had Henri Raoul Charlebois, in spite of his master intellect and with almost limitless resources at his command, met his match at last—and his death? Was the last line ruled in the Red Ledger, the pages of that strange volume closed forever? It seemed so; for, with every effort expended, there had been no single return on which to base even a desperate hope.

  Apathetically, listlessly, as he had done a dozen times before in the last two hours, to listen to reports whose fruitless tenor, whose note almost of despair never varied—for those others, too, loved the master for whose life they feared—Stranway lifted the telephone receiver from its hook, as the bell rang, and placed it to his ear. For an instant he listened—then the chair crashed to the floor behind him, as, in his excitement, he sprang to his feet and snatched the instrument up bodily.

  "Say that again!" he shouted wildly into the transmitter.

  Once more a woman's voice in low, calm, even tones came over the wire:

  "The Orchid is speaking. Is that Ewen Stranway?"

  For a moment Stranway could neither control his voice nor the riot of emotion that surged upon him. The Orchid! She, at least, was safe, then! It was her voice! She was safe! During the last three days he had searched for her—something that he had never felt warranted in doing before, much as she had come to mean to him—and he had searched for her during those three days almost as desperately as he had searched for Charlebois. The mystery with which she had surrounded herself and the secret of which only Charlebois knew, had suggested the p
ossible chance that she might hold the key to the little old gentleman's disappearance; and, also, for this very reason, he had been almost as mad with fear on her account as he had been on Charlebois'. If this mystery that linked Charlebois and herself together had anything to do with what had befallen Charlebois, then, since no warning and no word had come from her, it could mean only that she, too, had shared the little old gentleman's fate.

  "You!" he cried now. "Thank God! Thank God! I have been searching for you for the last three days. Every member of the organisation has been searching for you. Charlebois——"

  "Charlebois is safe," she interrupted quickly.

  "Safe! You are sure? You are absolutely sure of what you say?" Stranway's tones were feverishly quick, imperative, hoarse with emotion.

  "Yes, he is safe; quite safe," she reiterated quietly.

  "Then, thank God for that, too!" Stranway gasped in relief. "Where is he? What has happened?"

  "Much," she answered. "Much more than there is time to explain now. Listen! These are his orders, and you will understand enough from them to guide you. The rest you will learn from him later. You are to take all papers pertaining to the case of Dr. Hadley Meers—all, be careful that you take them all; especially the one signed by a man named Peter Minter, which is in the safe—and be at the Hapsburg Rathskeller on the Bowery at seven-thirty to-night. You will see Charlebois there, but you must neither speak to him nor approach him unless he signals to you to do so. When he leaves, follow him wherever he goes, but keep at a safe enough distance so that his companion, who will be Dr. Meers, will have no suspicion he is under surveillance. If Meers for an instant is put upon his guard it will be fatal to Charlebois' plans—and probably to Charlebois himself. Is this perfectly clear? The Hapsburg Rathskeller at seven-thirty—all papers on the Meers case—and do not go near Charlebois, simply keep him in sight. Is this clear?"

  A great load seemed to have been lifted from Stranway's shoulders—and from his mind. Charlebois, too, then, was safe—had been working toward the climax of a case in his own peculiar way—he was safe. And now, anxiety swept suddenly aside, the Orchid claimed for a moment all of Stranway's interest. The last time he had seen her had been that day when she had sat at the next table to him in the dining-room of the Brabant-Lorraine, and he had not been able to say a single word to her; but now, at least, though he could not see her, he could in any event talk to her, plead with her, as a matter of fact, to let down, if only just a little way, the barriers that she——