by Harold Lamb
Hollis laughed, realizing that the thing was absurd. Except for some toilet things and clothing, there was only the yellow elephant in the bag. And why should anyone, woman or Oriental, want to steal a yellow elephant, price fourteen dollars and fifty cents? He had exhibited the elephant he had purchased in the Pullman. Either the woman or the Oriental might have seen it there. But why should they immediately covet it?
He wondered if the Oriental was known by his first name, also, to the police. Or if he knew the woman. In that case, the man had not seemed disturbed by her removal—had gone about calmly investigating Hollis’s bag. Unnoticed by him, the train had slowed to a halt at one of the towns on the outskirts of Boston. Hollis jumped out of the smoker into the passageway. He stumbled through the sleeper, looking for the Chinaman. He did not want the man to leave the train before he could question him.
But the train was already in motion again. The newspaperman halted in one of the vestibules, staring out through the glass door. On the platform of the station he saw in the gray light of early morning his companion of the smoking compartment standing, satchel in hand. As their glances met the other turned quickly and walked back into the station.
CHAPTER III
A Piece of News
“My goodness! Andy Hollis, you look as if your food in the city didn’t agree with you!”
Mrs. Emma Hollis surveyed her nephew from a pair of bright eyes—the only thing visible in a medley of fur coat, muffler, and cap—as he climbed into the runabout beside her.
“I expect it will, for the next few days,” grinned the newspaperman, sniffing the keen air with its scent of burning pine appreciatively. His aunt started the car with a practiced hand over the packed snow of the road into the mountains.
“Yes, I guess it will,” she said brightly. “Ruth was putting a pan of biscuits into the oven when I left. She says she’s going to make you some real, Southern waffles which will go fine with our maple syrup.”
Hollis grunted. It was bad enough to have a strange girl on the place without her trying to cook things which he would have to eat. He had slept little on the trail and his temper had suffered accordingly. When he had put the runabout in the barn he took his suitcase to the room that had always been his, being careful to avoid the kitchen of the farmhouse, whence came sounds of voices and clatter of dishes.
He halted on the threshold of the room with an exclamation of disgust. A girl coat and fur cap were on the bed. An array of mysterious articles was on a new lace cover upon the bureau. A subtle perfume assailed his senses, very different from the accustomed smell of camphor and linen that pervaded his room.
“Oh, Andy”—the voice of his am floated up to him—“I didn’t tell you that Ruth had your room! You have the spare room with Uncle Henry’s portrait.”
Hollis picked up his bag and sought his unaccustomed quarters with a scowl which had not entirely worn off when he descended to the dining-room with the ivory elephant under his arm. He found Aunt Emma seated at the table with his new cousin. He felt himself the target for a pair of warm, brown eyes.
Ruth Carruthers, he told himself with relief, was not a pretty girl. Later, he was not so sure of this point. She was pale, with a mass of heavy, dark hair, a fine pair of eyes. She wore a simple waist with heavy skirt and a pair of stout outing shoes.
“Why, Andy Hollis?” cried his aunt. “Whatever have you got—”
“Your birthday present,” he explained. “A Chinese curio, aunty. It’s—it’s an antique elephant.”
With a swift motion the mistress of the house seized on the article.
“My goodness! It’s a treasure, Andy. Why, look, Ruth, it’s the finest ivory. And such carving. It must have cost a mint of money.”
Hollis nodded with some embarrassment. Now that his aunt had estimated the value of the thing, he thought, he could not very well tell her that he had actually bought an imitation. Uncle Henry had been a merchant skipper in the Pacific, and had brought home a collection of trophies from the Orient. Hence Mrs. Hollis’s discrimination. She placed the elephant on its stand and eyed it with profound satisfaction.
“Why, yes, the thing has some value,” he admitted. “Coming up on the train a car-thief went through my bag after it.”
“A thief!” Ruth’s eyes widened.
“Yes,” announced Hollis, not unconscious of the effect of his words on his cousin; “and also, perhaps, the woman who was in my berth.”
Aunt Emma paused in the act of handing him a plate of warm biscuits.
“In your berth?”
“Oh, I had to give it up to her!” Hollis hastened to add. “Just before some cops from the big town pulled her off at New Haven. Seems that she was wanted. These are fine biscuits, aunty.”
“I’m so glad you like them, Mr. Hollis,” his cousin smiled. “I was afraid to try to make them, but your aunt insisted.”
“Oh, are they yours?” Hollis was surprised. He did not see the girl flush at his tone. He was afraid that she would come into the sitting room with him when he retired, as of hallowed custom, to smoke his pipe, with the morning paper. But Miss Carruthers vanished upstairs. He scanned the pages indifferently between puffs of Mrs. Hollis’s excellent tobacco. Suddenly he sat up alertly.
The account of an accident in the maelstrom of New York business had caught his eye.
CHINESE ART DEALER SHOT.
Wong Li, Proprietor of Fifth Avenue Curio
Shop, Victim of Unknown
Marauder’s Bullet.
After the manner of a newspaper story, the time, the place, and the motive of the shooting were prominently set forth. At five minutes of six, the evening before, pedestrians on Fifth Avenue had heard a shot in the Chinese shop at Forty-Third Street. Wong Li had been found lying on the floor with a bullet wound in his head. His condition was serious. No others were found in the shop. The wounded man would make no statement as to the identity of the assassin.
The police declared, the story concluded, a man with a suitcase had been seen to run from the door of the store. This man had vanished down Forty-Second Street. As usual, the police announced that they had a clue to the person in question.
Hollis let the paper fall with a low whistle. Five minutes to six was approximately the time he had left Wong Li’s place. But the proprietor had been in sound health, to the best of his knowledge. The shooting must have been immediately after his departure.
But, by whom? Events had transpired swiftly, he thought, for not only had Wong Li fallen by another’s bullet during those eventful few moments just before six o’clock yesterday, but the curio he purchased had become an object of interest to others.
Hollis told himself that trouble seemed to follow the elephant. He reflected with a grim smile that it was the same that now reposed on his aunt’s immaculate what-not. The smile faded as he read over the incident of the vanishing man with the suitcase. The description tallied too well with his own.
Aunt Emma entered the room.
“Get your snow-shoes, Andy. They’re in the attic,” she said brightly. “Ruth is going for a tramp in the woods with hers. It will do you good.”
“I prefer the house!” grunted Hollis. “You know girls bore me! Just because I come to visit you, Aunt Emma, I don’t have to play tag with a schoolgirl cousin—”
“Ruth isn’t a schoolgirl,” corrected the woman briskly. “She’s a splendid little thing. You have no right to be so rude to her. And you must get used to her, Andy,” she added mischievously, “because we two lone women are going to visit New York, and we expect to be taken care of by the man of our family. We are going back with you, and you must take us to all the good, new shows, and all the sights.”
“Good Lord!” groaned Hollis.
“And,” continued Aunt Emma thoughtfully, “I think we will stay at your rooms. They are attractive and neat. You can go to a hotel for a while. You see, Ruth may take some course at Morningside College—she has a letter of introduction to Professor de Bacourt, th
e Orientologist, an acquaintance of her French relatives in New Orleans.”
Hollis made a feeble protest, which his aunt instantly overruled, knowing his fondness for her. Her heart was set on it, she said decisively. And Ruth had never been in New York.
“I suppose she will want to ride in the rubberneck bus!” suggested Hollis miserably.
“Of course. And we’ll see the Aquarium.”
CHAPTER IV
Two—Not Always Company
The next morning, when he came downstairs, after a good night’s sleep, the newspaperman found his cousin from New Orleans studying the ivory elephant curiously. A glint of sunlight through window curtains glowed on the girl’s mass of bronze hair, and a delicate flush showed in her cheeks.
Hollis felt disconcertingly that if she was not pretty there was something about her decidedly attractive. Moreover, he found her silence discomposing. She was not at all as he had imagined her.
Hollis went to the window and looked out at the snow-carpeted lawn. He was conscious that the girl’s gaze was on his back, and he swung around, squaring his shoulders.
“How do you like the yellow elephant?” he asked defiantly, feeling his cheeks warm unexpectedly.
Ruth’s fine eyes went impartially from him to the curio.
“I adore puzzles,” she observed calmly, “and this is a splendid one.”
“Puzzles?”
“Yes. Don’t you know that Chinese curios have lots of secret cubbyholes and things? Why, Chinese invisible boxes are famous. I spend hours in working them out. Mrs. Hollis has some right cute ones in her collection. But your elephant is really delicious.”
Hollis stepped to her side and took up the animal in question, tapping it tentatively.
“Do you mean to say, Miss Carruthers,” he demanded, “that there is an—er—compartment in this beast that escapes the eye?”
“More than one, Mr. Hollis.” Something like a dimple appeared at the corners of his cousin’s mouth. “It took me ages to find them.”
Vague suspicion flooded upon Hollis. He recalled the curiosity of the Oriental in the smoker. Was it possible that the elephant housed valuables which were known to others, but not to himself? He examined every inch of the ivory surface attentively. He shook it, tapped it again, turned it over—with no result. Apparently there was no blemish on its smooth surface. Certainly it sounded solid.
“You don’t seem to know where to look, Mr. Hollis,” said the girl in a curious tone. She accented the mister as if unaccustomed to formality.
Hollis scowled and renewed his search fruitlessly.
“The thing’s solid,” he announced finally. “No mistake about that.’’
“Yes and no. Didn’t the dealer tell you about the hidden compartments when you bought it? It’s such a costly thing, isn’t it?—I should think he would have explained all about it?”
Intent on his search, Hollis did not note her quickened interest.
“Costly? No, I paid only fifteen dollars for it.”
Her brows wrinkled in a pretty frown.
“Don’t you think it was a great bargain, Mr. Hollis?”
“Well, it looked just like a Ming antique worth hundreds,” he said bruskly.
His cousin looked up quickly and the frown disappeared.
“I don’t think you’re as good at Chinese puzzles as I am,” she laughed.
Hollis shrugged his shoulders rather irritably. “This is one I’ll leave to you and Aunt Emma. Maybe the Oriental thief of the train was fond of puzzles, too. I confess I am not interested in them.”
“Aren’t you, Mr. Hollis?” Ruth stared at the yellow elephant meditatively. “Because Aunt Emma says this is really precious. She was wondering how you could afford to buy it.”
“If you are good at puzzles, Miss Carruthers—” Hollis assured himself that the girl’s curiosity was annoying; already she seemed to hint that he had practiced a deception on his aunt—“suppose you tell me why anyone should go to the trouble to rob my bag for this fifteen-dollar near-beauty. Also, why Aunt Emma thinks this is the real thing in ivory, when it’s imitation. And what you found in these invisible chambers.”
By way of answer the girl took up the elephant. With a slender forefinger she pressed in one of the animal’s jeweled eyes, then the other. Hollis heard a faint click. To his surprise one of the ivory feet came off at the girl’s deft touch.
He saw that the break was cleverly concealed by lines in the carving. Not one but four of the elephant’s feet separated from the legs. Turning the animal upon its back, his cousin triumphantly pointed out four hollow chambers lined with velvet in the legs. Her forefinger, inserted in the opening, went as far as the second joint.
“The body is solid,” she explained. “I suspected that the feet came off like in the toy dogs filled with candy we used to buy when we were children. But it took me hours to find the springs in the eyes.”
“Did you find anything in it?” Hollis demanded eagerly.
“I found all there was to find.”
“Meaning—”
“Four secret compartments with velvet lining.”
The girl’s dark eyes met his frankly. Hollis felt suddenly impatient at his excitement. An elephant with hollow legs. Nothing extraordinary about that. Why should Miss Carruthers look at him so queerly? He had told her he knew nothing about the beast. Yet he read a challenge in her gaze.
“It’s really quite a puzzle, Mr. Hollis,” observed Ruth absently. “Did you see in the paper that Wong Li had been shot?”
In spite of himself he started. What could Miss Carruthers know about Wong Li? Or, rather, how could she connect the curio dealer with the ivory elephant?
The girl picked up the ebony stand by the elephant and turned it over with a half-smile. On the bottom Hollis saw a square paster bearing the legend: Wong Li, Chinese Art, with a cabalistic trademark.
“Well, what do you make out of the puzzle, Miss Carruthers?” he said resentfully. The girl behaved as if she had him on the witness-stand.
“Nothing,” his cousin smiled, “but I’d love to work it out, and I do think you’re mean not to help me.”
She left him with a rankling sense of injury. He had come to New Hampshire to have an enjoyable outing. Not, he assured himself, to be pestered by the curiosity of a New Orleans cousin. The clatter of dishes and the laughter of Ruth and his aunt in the kitchen did not tend to soothe him. He was doomed to play chaperon and guide-of-all-work for his cousin on his return to New York. She would even take his rooms. When Mrs. Hollis looked into the room he met her with a dark scowl.
“Ruth’s gettin’ on her things to go down to the village for some groceries, Andy,” his aunt remarked. “I told her you’d take her down in the car. It’ll be a fine chance for you two to get to know each other—” Hollis had a vision of a renewal of Miss Carruthers’s cross-questioning, and got to his feet purposefully.
“You know, Aunt Emma,” he declared, “I wanted to go for a hike in the woods with my gun this morning. Ruth doesn’t need a chauffeur—”
“Why, Andy? Someone ought to go with her for company!”
“Company!” Hollis’s irritation reached the bursting point. “Aunt Emma, I thought you were a good sport. Now I see that you’re a matchmaker, like the other women. Ten to one you want me to be the goat and marry Ruth! Did I ever apply for the post of gentleman-companion to—to one of our poor relations?”
The phrase escaped him before he knew just what he had said. A startled change in his aunt’s face silenced him. Too late, he was aware of Miss Carruthers standing in the doorway. The girl’s head was high, and her cheeks were flushed.
“I don’t want to spoil Mr. Hollis’s outing, Aunt Emma,” she said quietly. “I reckon I’ll go to the village alone.”
CHAPTER V
Feathering a Nest
Tom Lemoire, self-christened in this fashion for the time being, placed his gray doeskin and patent-leather-shod feet upon the near-mahogany of the center
table in the Lemoire apartment on Riverside Drive and flicked the ash from his cigarette under a gilt chair.
“Gladys,” he remarked in a cloud of smoke, “as a sister, you’re a gold-edge investment on the installment plan; but as a getaway artist, you class with last year’s song-hit—you aren’t there!”
A blond young woman of ample figure, with more than a suspicion of makeup around the eyes, stared at him sardonically.
“The other way around, Tom,” she smiled indifferently, “I’m here. How was I to know the plain-clothes gang wanted to see me so bad? Who tipped ’em that I was going to take the Boston express Friday?”
“Not I, sister, not I! Don’t forget them gentlemen of the ‘office’ are wise to your ten thousand-dollar face and figure! I ain’t accusing them of brains, but you got no call to hop the joint just when we’re wanted bad. Of course they was lookin’ for you Friday. And when they pulled you off the sleeper, what happens?”
Gladys Lemoire, known to sundry detective-sergeants of New York by other nomenclature, shrugged a pair of classic shoulders and gazed out over the Hudson from eyes of deepest blue.
“I asked you, what happens?” her brother resumed. “Why, they pinches you—see? Likewise they comes up here and goes through our joint like it was a classy fence. Of course, you was wise that they was goin’ to. So was I. That was why you hopped, havin’ no brains. Did I do the same? Not Brother Tom. The bulls found me here—monarch of me domains—outraged at the intrusion on me privacy. Yeah, that’s me—the innocent householder stall. When they don’t find anything here, they can’t pull me in. This apartment was a good buy!”
“They didn’t find anything?”
“Not a thing. And why? Brother Tom again—soft music with spotlight, please—and his never-failin’ head-piece! No, the cops didn’t lamp the Hoffman sapphires! They didn’t get a chance. The sapphires weren’t here.”
The woman of the yellow coiffure nodded absently and her eyes narrowed shrewdly. She faced her brother, chin on clasped hands.
“And that’s the point. We got to worry about that. The bulls ain’t got the Hoffman jewels. All right. But I ain’t got them, either.”