The Victorian Rogues MEGAPACK ™: 28 Classic Tales

by Maurice Leblanc

  Two days passed and she was able to guard the secret, as well as to act as though nothing had happened. Santos had left a short note for the Junta telling them that he would be away for a short time putting the finishing touches on the purchase of the arms. The arrival of a cartload of cases at the Junta, which Constance arranged for herself, bore out the letter. Still, she waited anxiously for word from him.

  The day set for the sailing of the Arroyo arrived and with it at last a telegram: “Buy corn, oats, wheat. Sell cotton.”

  It was the code, telling of the safe arrival of the rifles, cartridges and the counterfeiting plant in New Orleans, a little late, but safe. “Sell cotton,” meant “I sail to-night.”

  On the way over to the Junta, she had noticed one of Drummond’s shadows dogging her. She must do anything to keep the secret until that night.

  She hurried into the dusty ship chandlery. There was Gordon.

  “Good morning, Mrs. Dunlap,” he cried. “You are just the person I am looking for. Where is Santos? Has the plan been changed?”

  Constance thought she detected a shade of jealousy in the tone. At any rate, Gordon was more attentive than ever.

  “I think he is in Bridgeport,” she replied as casually as she could. “Your ship, you know, sails to-night. He has sent word to me to give orders that all the goods here at the Junta be ready to cart over by truck to Brooklyn. There has been no change. The papers are to be signed during the day and she is to be scheduled to sail late in the afternoon with the tide. Only, as you know, some pretext must delay you. You will hold her at the pier for us. He trusts all that to you as a master hand at framing such excuses that seem plausible.”

  Gordon leaned over closer to her. He was positively revolting to her in the role of admirer. But she must not offend him—yet.

  “And my answer!” he asked.

  There was something about him that made Constance almost draw away involuntarily.

  “To-night—at the pier,” she murmured forcing a smile.

  Shortly after dark the teams started their lumbering way across the city and the bridge. Messengers, stationed on the way, were to report the safe progress of the trucks to Brooklyn.

  Constance slipped away from the boardinghouse, down through the deserted streets to the waterfront, leaving word at home that any message was to be sent by a trusty boy to the pier.

  It was a foggy and misty night on the water, an ideal night for the gun-runner. She was relieved to learn that there had been not a hitch so far. Still, she reasoned, that was natural. Drummond, even if he had not been outwitted, would scarcely have spoiled the game until the last moment.

  On the Arroyo every one was chafing. Below decks, the engineer and his assistants were seeing that the machinery was in perfect order. Men in the streets were posted to give Gordon warning of any danger.

  In the river a tug was watching for a possible police boat. On the wharf the only footfalls were those of Gordon himself and an assistant from the Junta. It was dreary waiting, and Constance drew her coat more closely around her, as she shivered in the night wind and tried to brace herself against the unexpected.

  At last the welcome muffled rumble of heavily laden carts disturbed the midnight silence of the street leading to the river.

  At once a score of men sprang from the hold of the ship, as if by magic. One by one the cases were loaded. The men were working feverishly by the light of battle lanterns—big lamps with reflectors so placed as to throw the light exactly where it was needed and nowhere else. They were taking aboard the Arroyo dozens of coffin-like wooden cases, and bags and boxes, smaller and even heavier. Silently and swiftly they toiled.

  It was risky work, too, at night and in the tense haste. There was a muttered exclamation—a heavy case had dropped! a man had gone down with a broken leg.

  It was a common thing with the gun-runners. The crew of the Arroyo had expected it. The victim of such an accident could not be sent to a hospital ashore. He was carried, as gently as the rough hands could carry anything, to one side, where he lay silently waiting for the ship’s surgeon who had been engaged for just such an emergency. Constance bent over and made the poor fellow as comfortable as she could. There was never a whimper from him, but he looked his gratitude.

  Scarcely a fraction of a minute had been lost. The last cases were now being loaded. The tug crawled up and made fast. Already the empty trucks were vanishing in the misty darkness, one by one, as muffled as they came.

  Suddenly lights flashed through the fog on the river.

  There was a hurried tread of feet on the land from around the corner of a bleak, forbidding black warehouse.

  They were surrounded. On one side was the police boat Patrol. On the other was Drummond. With both was the Secret Service. The surprise was complete.

  Constance turned to Gordon. He was gone.

  Before she could move, some one seized her.

  “Where’s Santos?” demanded a hoarse voice in her ear. She looked up to see Drummond.

  She shut her lips tightly, secure in the secret that Ramon was at the moment or soon would be on the Gulf, out of reach.

  Across in the fog she strained her eyes. Was that the familiar figure of Gordon moving in the dim light?

  There he was, now,—with Drummond, the police, and the Secret Service. It was exactly as she had suspected to herself, and a smile played over her face.

  All was excitement, shouts, muttered imprecations. Constance was the calmest in the crowd—deaf to even Drummond’s “third degree.”

  They had begun to break open the boxes marked “salt” and “corn.”

  A loud exclamation above the sharp crunching of the axes escaped Gordon. “Damn them! They’ve put one across on us!”

  The boxes of “salt” and “corn” contained—salt and corn.

  Not a stock of a rifle, not a barrel, not a cartridge was in any of them as the axes crashed in one case after another.

  A boy with a telegram emerged indiscreetly from the misty shadows. Drummond seized it, tore it open, and read, “Buy cotton.”

  It was the code: “I am off safely.”

  The double cross had worked. Constance was thinking, as she smiled to herself, of the money, her share, which she had hidden. There was not a scrap of tangible evidence against her, except what Santos had carried with him in the filibustering expedition already off from New Orleans. Her word would stand against that of all of the victims combined before any jury that could be empaneled.

  “You thought I needed a warning,” she cried, facing Drummond with eyes that flashed scorn at the skulking figure of Gordon behind him. “But the next time you employ a stool-pigeon to make love,” she added, “reckon in that thing you detectives scorn—a woman’s intuition.”

  CHAPTER IV

  THE GAMBLERS

  “Won’t you come over to see me to-night? Just a friendly little game, my dear—our own crowd, you know.”

  There was something in the purring tone of the invitation of the woman across the hall from Constance Dunlap’s apartment that aroused her curiosity.

  “Thank you. I believe I will,” answered Constance. “It’s lonely in a big city without friends.”

  “Indeed it is,” agreed Bella LeMar. “I’ve been watching you for some time and wondering how you stand it. Now be sure to come, won’t you?”

  “I shall be glad to do so,” assured Constance, as they reached their floor and parted at the elevator door.

  She had been watching the other woman, too, although she had said nothing about it.

  “A friendly little game,” repeated Constance to herself. “That sounds as if it had the tang of an adventure in it. I’ll go.”

  The Mayfair Arms, in which she had taken a modest suite of rooms, was a rather recherche apartment, and one of her chie
f delights since she had been there had been in watching the other occupants.

  There had been much to interest her in the menage across the hall. Mrs. Bella LeMar, as she called herself, was of a type rather common in the city, an attractive widow on the safe side of forty, well-groomed, often daringly gowned. Her brown eyes snapped vivacity, and the pert little nose and racy expression of the mouth confirmed the general impression that Mrs. LeMar liked the good things of life.

  Quite naturally, Constance observed, her neighbor had hosts of friends who often came early and stayed late, friends who seemed to exude, as it were, an air of prosperity and high living. Clearly, she was a woman to cultivate. Constance felt even more interest in her, now that Mrs. LeMar had pursued a bowing acquaintance to the point of an unsolicited invitation.

  “A friendly little game,” she speculated. “What is the game?”

  That night found Constance at the buzzer beside the heavy mahogany door across the hall. She wore a new evening gown of warm red. Her face glowed with heightened color, and her nerves were on the qui vive for the unlocking at last of the mystery of the fascinating Mrs. LeMar.

  “So glad to see you, my dear,” smiled Bella, holding out her hand engagingly. “You are just in time.”

  Already several of the guests had arrived. There was an air of bonhomie as Bella presented them to Constance—a stocky, red-faced man with a wide chest and narrow waist, Ross Watson; a tall, sloping-shouldered man who inclined his head forward earnestly when he talked to a lady and spoke with animation, Haddon Halsey; and a fair-haired, baby-blue eyed little woman gowned in becoming pink, Mrs. Lansing Noble.

  “Now we’re all here—just enough for a game,” remarked Bella in a business-like tone. “Oh, I beg pardon—you play, Mrs. Dunlap?” she added to Constance.

  “Oh, yes,” Constance replied. “Almost anything—a little bit.”

  She had already noted that the chief object in the room, after all, appeared to be a round table. About it the guests seemed naturally to take their places.

  “What shall it be to-night—bridge?” asked Watson, nonchalantly fingering a little pack of gilt-edged cards which Bella had produced.

  “Oh, no,” cried Mrs. Noble. “Bridge is such a bore.”

  “Rum?”

  “No—no. The regular game—poker.”

  “A dollar limit?”

  “Oh, make it five,” drawled Halsey impatiently.

  Watson said nothing, but Bella patted Halsey’s hand in approval, as if all were on very good terms indeed. “I think that will make a nice little game,” she cut in, opening a drawer from which she took out a box of blue, red and white chips of real ivory. Watson seemed naturally to assume the role of banker.

  “Aren’t you going to join us?” asked Constance.

  “Oh, I seldom play. You know, I’m too busy entertaining you people,” excused Bella, as she bustled out of the room, reappearing a few minutes later with the maid and a tray of slender hollow-stemmed glasses with a bottle wrapped in a white napkin in a pail of ice.

  Mrs. Noble shuffled the cards with practiced hand and Watson kept a calculating eye on every face. Luck was not with Constance on the first deal and she dropped out.

  Mrs. Noble and Halsey were betting eagerly. Watson was coolly following along until the show-down—which he won.

  “Of all things,” exclaimed the little woman in pink, plainly betraying her vexation at losing. “Will luck never turn?”

  Halsey said nothing.

  Constance watched in amazement. This was no “friendly little game.” The faces were too tense, too hectic. The play was too high, and the desire to win too great. Mrs. LeMar was something more than a gracious hostess in her solicitude for her guests.

  All the time the pile of chips in front of Watson kept building up. At each new deal a white chip was placed in a little box—the kitty—for the “cards and refreshments.”

  It was in reality one of the new style gambling joints for men and women.

  The gay parties of callers on Mrs. LeMar were nothing other than gamblers. The old gambling dens of the icebox doors and steel gratings, of white-coated servants and free food and drink, had passed away with “reform.” Here was a remarkable new phase of sporting life which had gradually taken its place.

  Constance had been looking about curiously in the meantime. On a table she saw copies of the newspapers which published full accounts of the races, something that looked like a racing sheet, and a telephone conveniently located near writing materials. It was a poolroom, too, then, in the daytime, she reasoned.

  Surely, in the next room, when the light was on, she saw what looked like a miniature roulette wheel, not one of the elaborate affairs of bright metal and ebony, but one of those that can almost be packed into a suitcase and carried about easily.

  That was the secret of the flashily dressed men and women who called on Bella LeMar. They were risking everything, perhaps even honor itself, on a turn of a wheel, the fall of a card, a guess on a horse.

  Why had Bella LeMar invited her here? she asked herself.

  At first Constance was a little bit afraid that she might have plunged into too deep water. She made up her mind to quit when her losses reached a certain nominal point. But they did not reach it. Perhaps the gamblers were too clever. But Constance seemed always to keep just a little bit ahead of the game.

  One person in particular in the group interested her as she endeavored intuitively to take their measure. It was Haddon Halsey, immaculately garbed, with all those little touches of smartness which women like to see.

  Once she caught Halsey looking intently at her. Was it he who was letting her win at his expense! Or was his attention to her causing him to neglect his own game and play it poorly?

  She decided to quit. She was a few dollars ahead. For excuse she pleaded a headache.

  Bella accepted the excuse with a cordial nod and a kind inquiry whether she might not like to lie down.

  “No, thank you,” murmured Constance. “But the cards make me nervous to-night. Just let me sit here. I’ll be all right in a minute.”

  As she lolled back on a divan near the players Constance noted, or thought she noted, now and then exchanges of looks between Bella and Watson. What was the bond of intimacy between them? She noted on Mrs. Noble’s part that she was keenly alive to everything that Halsey did. It was a peculiar quadrangle.

  Halsey was losing heavily in his efforts to retrieve his fortunes. He said nothing, but accepted the losses grimly. Mrs. Noble, however, after each successive loss seemed more and more nervous.

  At last, with a hasty look at her wrist watch, she gave a little suppressed scream.

  “How the time flies!” she cried. “Who would have thought it as late as that? Really I must go. I expect my husband back from a director’s meeting at ten, and it’s much easier to be home than to have to think up an excuse. No, Haddon, don’t disturb yourself. I shall get a cab at the door. Let me see—two hundred and twenty-eight dollars.” She paused as if the loss staggered her. “I’ll have to sign another I O U for it, Bella. There!”

  She left in a flutter, as if some one had winked out the light by which she, poor little butterfly, had singed her wings, and there was nothing for her but to fly away alone in the darkness with her secret.

  Halsey accompanied her to the door. For a moment she raised a questioning face to his, and shot a half covert glance at Constance. Then, as if with an effort, adhering to her first resolution to go alone, she whispered earnestly, “I hope you win. Luck must turn.”

  Halsey plunged back into the game, now with Bella holding a hand. He played recklessly, then conservatively. It made no difference. The cards seemed always against him. Constance began really to feel alarmed at his manner.

  Once, however, he chanced to look up at her. Somethin
g in her face must have impressed him. Turning, he flung down the cards in disgust. “That’s enough for to-night,” he exclaimed, rising and draining another glass on the tray.

  “Luck will come your way soon again,” urged Bella. “It all averages up in the end, you know. It has to.”

  “How did you enjoy the evening!” insinuated Bella.

  “Very much,” replied Constance enthusiastically. “It is so exciting, you know.”

  “You must come again when more of my friends are here.”

  “I should like to. But to-night was very nice.”

  Halsey looked at her contemplatively. She had risen to go. As she took a step or two toward the door, still facing them, she found Halsey at her side.

  “Shall we go over to Jack’s for a bite to eat?” he whispered.

  There was as much of appeal in his undertone as of invitation.

  “Thank you. I shall be glad to go,” Constance assented quickly.

  There was something about Haddon Halsey that interested her. Perhaps Bella and Watson exchanged a knowing glance as she crossed the hall for her wraps. Whatever it was, Constance determined to see the thing through to a finish, confident that she was quite able to take care of herself.

  Outside the raw night air smote dankly on their fevered faces. As they walked along briskly, too glad to get into the open to summon a car, Constance happened to turn. She had an uncomfortable feeling. She could have sworn some one was following them. She said nothing about a figure a few feet behind them.

  The lively, all-night restaurant was thronged. Halsey seemed to throw himself into the gayety with reckless abandon, ordering about twice as much as they could eat and drink. But in spite of the fascination of the scene, Constance could not forget the dark figure skulking behind them in the shadow of the street.

  Once she looked up. At another table she could just catch a glimpse of Drummond, of the Burr Detective Agency, alone, oblivious.

  Never did he look at them. There was nothing to indicate that he was even interested. But Constance knew that that was the method of his shadowing. Never for a moment, she knew, did he permit himself to look into the eyes of his quarry, even for the most fleeting glance.