For two generations San Franciscans had eyed them with envy. Handed down from mother to daughter they had played their part in the social warfare of the city of the Golden Gate for half a century. And Blackie was there to make them his own.
He ran acutely sensitive fingers—sandpapered until the blood showed redly below the skin—over the woodwork, seeking the hidden spring he knew was there—for an incautious servant’s remark had traveled up through the underworld until it reached Blackie, the one in a thousand expert enough to use it. Quickly his questing fingers located the key panel, and the door rolled noiselessly back, disclosing a steel strong-box.
“Ah, neatly arranged!” murmured the safe-cracker in an inaudible and satisfied whisper as he stooped and gently turned the combination-knob. It revolved without perceptible sound, but science is an impartial ally—the ally of able crooks as well as of those who war upon them. Blackie laid a tiny metal disk against the combination. Wires led from it to a transmitter he hooked over his ear. Then he turned the dial-knob again slowly and with infinite care. The audion bulb within the transmitter—science’s newest device for magnifying otherwise imperceptible sound—carried to his ear plainly the faint click of the tumblers within as the dial crossed the numbers of the combination that guarded the jewels. One by one he memorized them, slowly but surely reading the combination that, once his, would enable him to open the safe, take the gems, relock the strong-box and depart without leaving behind the slightest outward evidence that robbery had been done. The cracksman smiled contentedly as he worked. Already he reckoned the Wilmerding collection of jewels as his own.
A faint sound from behind caught his ear. He straightened quickly, dropped the audion bulb into his pocket and slid the panel noiselessly back into place.
“A step on the stair!” he whispered in sudden alarm. “And I was sure the house was empty except for the two servants asleep below-stairs—I counted them out one by one; and yet there’s some one coming down from above. Coming down slowly, stealthily, tool”—as he heard a second cautious step. “Too bad! In another five minutes I’d have been gone.”
He drew his mask higher over his face and stepped backward into the shadow of the drapery before the window he had prepared for a quick exit in an emergency. Then he waited, listening with every sense alert, every muscle rigid.
Again he heard the step, now close to the doorway. Then in the dim firelight a small tousled head appeared—the head of a little child who stood irresolute outside the room.
The boy—a mere baby of four—hesitated on the threshold of the dark room, evidently trying to summon courage to enter. The safe-cracker from his refuge saw and read a conflict between fear and determination in the wide eyes of the little intruder. For a full minute the child hung back; then suddenly with a low cry, half fearful, half courageous, he ran across the room to the window and tumbled straight into the arms of the safecracker, of whose presence he had no inkling.
Blackie, fearing an outcry, spoke quickly, soothingly, but the boy neither screamed nor cried. He stared wonderingly for a moment into the kind eyes that looked down into his, and then with a faint sigh of relief involuntarily nestled closer in the protecting arms that held him—a lonely, frightened child finding comfort and consolation in the unexpected solace of human companionship.
“Who is you?” lisped the little fellow, smiling confidingly up into Blackie’s perplexed face. Then with suddenly increased interest: “You isn’t Santy, is you? No, you isn’t Santy ’cause that on your face is a hanky, not beards.” He had reached up and given the partially disarranged handkerchief mask a gentle, inquiring tug.
Blackie smiled back at him.
“No, I’m not Santa Claus tonight, little man,” he said. “Who are you?”
“I’m Martin Wilmerding, Junior, and I’m four years old,” the boy said proudly.
“You are I Well, well I And where is your mamma and your papa?”
“Papa’s gone away, Mamma says, and Mamma’s gone to a party; and w’en Mamma was gone, then Nursey went out too, and said she’d spank me if I told. John and Emily is downstairs s’eeping, and I woke up an’ it was dark, and I was ’fraid—a little.”
“So they’ve all traipsed off and left you alone for me to entertain, have they!” said Blackie, his eyes narrowing grimly as understanding of the situation came to him. “But what were you coming, downstairs for? Looking for Mamma?”
“Oh, no—Mamma won’t come for ever and ever so long. I was all alone and ’fraid, and I came down for Rex.”
“Rex—who is he?” asked Blackie quickly.
“He’s my doggie, my woolly doggie. See, here he is.”
The boy squirmed out of Blackie’s arms and pattered in bare feet to the window-seat, where he resurrected Rex from beneath a cushion. Then he hurried back to Boston Blackie and climbed to his lap with the toy dog clasped in his arms.
“Rex s’eeps upstairs with me,” the child informed his new-found friend. “But tonight Nursey forgot him, an’ I woked up an’ ’membered where he was, an’ it was so dark an’ I wanted him so bad, so I corned downstairs for him. I isn’t ’fraid when I has Rex, ’cause I can hold him close an’ talk to him, an’ then we bofe goes to s’eep. See, isn’t he a dear little doggie?”
Unconsciously Boston Blackie’s arms tightened around the soft little body nestling contentedly against his breast.
“You poor, abandoned little kiddie!” he said softly. “You poor little orphan! You’re a little man, too, for it took real nerve to come down here after your pal Rex—far more nerve than I had to use to get in here.”
“I likes you. You’re a nice man,” said the boy with childish intuitive understanding that the man in whose arms he lay was a friend.
Blackie looked at his burden in puzzled indecision. He hadn’t the heart to desert his new-found pal, and yet he was a safe-breaker in a strange house, with each passing minute doubling his risk. Even the sound of their voices, low-pitched though they were, was an imminent danger. The boy, quiet and content, cuddled close to him, hugging his precious woolly dog.
“Hadn’t you better run back to bed, Martin?” said Blackie gently at last. “Nursey will be back soon, and she’ll be cross if she finds you down here.”
The child clutched the arms that sheltered him.
“Y-e-s,” he admitted slowly. Then wistfully: “It’s awful dark and quiet upstairs. If you come up and tuck me an’ Rex in bed, we’ll be good and go right to s’eep. P’ease.”
“Of course I will,” said the safe-cracker a bit huskily. “I’d do it if the whole house were full of coppers.”
He rose with the boy still in his arms.
“You must show me the way, Martin,” he said. “And we mustn’t make any noise and wake John and Emily. Now we’ll go.”
They climbed the dark stairway together and, the child directing, came to the open door of a big deserted nursery. A little empty bed revealed the refuge from which Martin Wilmerding, Jr., had begun his perilous adventure in search of Rex and companionship. Blackie laid the boy down and covered him gently as a mother might have done.
“Good-night, little pal,” he said. “I’m glad I happened to be here tonight.”
The boy clutched his hand.
“P’ease stay and hold my hand,” he pleaded. “I’s going right to s’eep if you will. P’ease, ’cause it’s awful dark.”
Boston Blackie sat on the edge of the bed and took a tiny hand in his. The boy with a sigh of perfect contentment nestled snugly in downy comforts.
“Goo’ night,” he said drowsily.
“Good night, little pal,” answered Blackie. Silence descended over the nursery as Blackie with aching throat waited hand in hand with the little Wilmerding heir, who was learning too soon that life’s problems must be mastered alone and unaided.
Five minu
tes passed, and Blackie, looking down, saw the boy was fast asleep with baby lips parted in a peaceful smile, and Rex’s fuzzy head tightly clasped to his breast. The safe-cracker gently withdrew his hand and smoothed the covers.
“Poor little chap!” he said. “Everything in the world that doesn’t count and only one real friend—Rex. Poor, lonely little chap!”
The safe-cracker crept noiselessly down the stairs to the room that contained the purpose of his visit. The fire had died to a few glowing embers. Again he rolled back the paneled door and exposed the safe. Again he adjusted the audion bulb and began anew the task of deciphering the combination. And again with his work but half finished there came a startling interruption—a short and a long blast from an auto-horn that sounded from somewhere out in the fog.
“Mary’s signal I Some one’s coming,” he reflected disgustedly. Quickly he drew a damp cloth from his pocket and mopped off the door of the safe and the woodwork to destroy the possibility of telltale fingerprints, then once more closed the panel. He drew back into the comparatively safe shelter of the window-hangings, and waited.
“I’m going to have those jewels tonight 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 tonight.”
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 tonight: first that I love you; then that I am going away. Marian, I sail for Honolulu tomorrow 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 fated 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 tomorrow 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, today, tonight, I do not love him. That is my answer, Don Lavalle. Tonight 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 feverish 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.”
The Victorian Rogues MEGAPACK ™: 28 Classic Tales Page 46