The Victorian Rogues MEGAPACK ™: 28 Classic Tales

by Maurice Leblanc

  “You—you are Florence Gibbons!” gasped Constance as with a rush there came over her the recollection of a famous unsolved mystery of several months before.

  The girl did not look up as Constance bent over and put her arms about her.

  “Who was he?” she asked persuasively.

  “Preston—Lansing Preston,” she sobbed bitterly. “Only the other day I read of his engagement to a girl in Chicago—beautiful, in society. Oh—I could kill him,” she cried, throwing out her arms passionately. “Think of it. He—rich, powerful, respected. I—poor, almost crazy—an outcast.”

  Constance did not interfere until the tempest had passed.

  “What name did you give at the tea room?” asked Constance.

  “Viola Cole,” answered Florence.

  “Rest here,” soothed Constance. “Here at least you are safe. I have an idea. I shall be back soon.”

  The Betsy Ross was still open after the rush of tired shoppers and later of business women to whom this was not only a restaurant but a club. Constance entered and sat down.

  “Is the manager in?” she asked of the waitress.

  “Mrs. Palmer? No. But, if you care to wait, I think she’ll be back directly.”

  As Constance sat toying absently with some food at one of the snowy white tables, a man entered. A man in a tea room is an anomaly. For the tea room is a woman’s institution, run by women for women. Men enter with diffidence, and seldom alone. This man was quite evidently looking for some one.

  His eye fell on Constance. Her heart gave a leap. It was her old enemy, Drummond, the detective. For a moment he hesitated, then bowed, and came over to her table.

  “Peculiar places, these tea rooms,” observed Drummond.

  Constance was doing some quick thinking. Could this be the detective Florence Gibbons had mentioned?

  “The only thing lacking to make them complete,” he rattled on, “is a license. Now, take those places that have a ladies’ bar—that do openly what tea rooms do covertly. They don’t reckon with the attitude of women. This is New York—not Paris. Such things are years off. I don’t say they’ll not come or that women won’t use them—but not by that name—not yet.”

  Constance wondered what his cynical inconsequentialities masked.

  “I think it adds to the interest,” she observed, watching him furtively, “this evasion of the laws.”

  Drummond was casting about for something to do and, naturally, to a mind like his, a drink was the solution. Evidently, however, there were degrees of brazenness, even in tea rooms. The Betsy Ross not only would not produce a labeled bottle and an obvious glass but stoutly denied their ability to fill such an order, even whispered.

  “Russian tea?” suggested Drummond cryptically.

  “How will you have it—with Scotch or rye?” asked the waitress.

  “Bourbon,” hazarded Drummond.

  When the “Russian tea” arrived it was in a neat little pot with two others, the first containing real tea and the second hot water. It was served virtuously in tea cups, so opaquely concealed that no one but the clandestine drinker could know what sort of poison was being served.

  Mrs. Palmer was evidently later than expected. Drummond fidgeted after the manner of a man out of his accustomed habitat. And yet he did not seem to be interested really in Constance, or even in Mrs. Palmer. For after a few moments, he rose and excused himself.

  “How did he come here?” Constance asked herself over and over.

  As far as she could reason it out, there could be only one reason. Drummond was clearly up with Florence. Did he also know that Constance was shielding her?

  The more she thought of it, the more she shuddered at the tactless way in which the detective would perform the act of “charity” by discovering the lost girl—and pocketing the reward.

  If her family only knew, how eagerly they might let her come back in her own way. She looked up the address of Everett Gibbons while she was waiting, a half-formed plan taking definite shape in her mind.

  What—she did must be done quickly. Here at the tea room at least Florence, or rather Viola, was known. Perhaps the best way, after all, was to let her be discovered here. They could not deny that she had been working for them acceptably for some time.

  Half an hour later, Mrs. Palmer, a bustling business woman, came in and the waitress pointed her out to Constance.

  “Did you have a waitress here named Viola Cole?” began Constance, watching keenly the effect of her inquiry.

  “Yes,” replied Mrs. Palmer in a tone of interest that reassured Constance that, if there were any connection between Drummond’s presence and Mrs. Palmer, it was wholly on his seeking. “But she disappeared last night. A most peculiar girl—but a splendid worker.”

  “She has been ill,” Constance hastened to explain. “I am a friend of hers. I have a business downtown and could not come around until to-night to tell you that she will be back to-morrow if you will take her back.”

  “Of course I’ll take her back. I’m sorry she’s ill,” and Mrs. Palmer bustled out into the kitchen, not unfeelingly but merely because that was her manner.

  Constance paid her check and left the tea room. So far she had succeeded. The next thing she had planned was a visit to Mr. Gibbons. That need not take long, for she was not going to tell anything. Her idea was merely to pave the way.

  The Gibbons she found, lived in a large house on one of the numerous side streets from the Park, in a neighborhood that was in fact something more than merely well-to-do.

  Fortunately she found Everett Gibbons in and was ushered into his study, where he sat poring over some papers and enjoying an after-dinner cigar.

  “Mr. Gibbons,” began Constance, “I believe there is a one thousand dollar reward for news of the whereabouts of your daughter, Florence.”

  “Yes,” he said in a colorless tone that betrayed the hopelessness of the long search. “But we have traced down so many false clues that we have given up hope. Since the day she went away, we have never been able to get the slightest trace of her. Still, we welcome outside aid.”

  “Of detectives?” she asked.

  “Official and private—paid and volunteer—anybody,” he answered. “I myself have come to the belief that she is dead, for that is the only explanation I can think of for her long silence.”

  “She is not dead,” replied Constance in a low tone.

  “Not dead?” he repeated eagerly, catching at even such a straw as an unknown woman might cast out. “Then you know—”

  “No,” she interrupted positively, “I cannot tell you any more. You must call off all other searchers. I will let you know.”

  “When?”

  “To-morrow, perhaps the next day. I will call you on the telephone.”

  She rose and made a hasty adieu before the man who had been prematurely aged might overwhelm her with questions and break down her resolution to carry the thing through as she had seen best.

  Cheerily, Constance turned the key in the lock of her door.

  There was no light and somehow the silence smote on her ominously.

  “Florence!” she called.

  There was no answer.

  Not a sign indicated her presence. There was the divan with the pillows disarranged as they had been when she left. The furniture was in the same position as before. Hastily she went from one room to another. Florence had disappeared!

  She went to the door again. All seemed right there. If any one had entered, it must have been because he was admitted, for there were no marks to indicate that the lock had been forced.

  She called up the tea room. Mrs. Palmer was very sympathetic, but there had been no trace of “Viola Cole” there yet.

  “You will let me know if you get any word?” asked
Constance anxiously.

  “Surely,” came back Mrs. Palmer’s cordial reply.

  A hundred dire possibilities crowded through her mind. Might Florence be held somewhere as a “white slave”—not by physical force but by circumstances, ignorant of her rights, afraid to break away again?

  Or was it suicide, as she had threatened? She could not believe it. Nothing could have happened in such a short time to change her resolution about revenge.

  The recollection of all the stories she had read recently crossed her mind. Could it be a case of drugs? The girl had given no evidence of being a “dope” fiend.

  Perhaps some one had entered, after all.

  She thought of the so-called “poisoned needle” cases. Might she not have been spirited off in that way? Constance had doubted the stories. She knew that almost any doctor would say that it was impossible to inject a narcotic by a sudden jab of a hypodermic syringe. That was rather a slow, careful and deliberate operation, to be submitted to with patience.

  Yet Florence was gone!

  Suddenly it flashed over Constance that Drummond might not be seeking the reward primarily, after all. His first object might be shielding Preston. She recollected that Mr. Gibbons had said nothing about Drummond, either one way or the other. And if he were both shielding Preston and working for the reward, he would care little how much Florence suffered. He might be playing both ends to serve himself.

  She rang the elevator bell.

  “Has anybody called at my apartment while I was out?” she asked.

  “Yes’m. A man came here.”

  “And you let him up?”

  “I didn’t know you were out. You see I had just come on. He said he was to meet some one at your apartment. And when he pressed the buzzer, the door opened, and I ran the elevator down again. I thought it was all right, ma’am.”

  “And then what?” inquired Constance breathlessly.

  “Well, in about five minutes my bell rang. I ran the elevator up again, and, waiting, was this man with a girl I had never seen before. You understand—I thought it was all right—he told me he was going to meet some one.”

  “Yes—yes. I understand. Oh, my God, if I had only thought to leave word not to let her go. How did she look?”

  “Her clothes, you mean, Ma’am?”

  “No—her face, her eyes!”

  “Beggin’ your pardon, I thought she was—well, er,—acted queer—scared—dazed-like.”

  “You didn’t notice which way they went, I suppose!”

  “No ma’am, I didn’t.”

  Constance turned back again into her empty apartment, heart-sick. In spite of all she had planned and done, she was defeated—worse than defeated. Where was Florence! What might not happen to her! She could have sat down and cried. Instead she passed a feverishly restless night.

  All the next day passed, and still not a word. She felt her own helplessness. She could not appeal to the police. That might defeat the very end she sought. She was single-handed. For all she knew, she was fighting the almost limitless power of brains and money of Preston. Inquiry developed the fact that Preston himself was reported to be in Chicago with his fiancee. Time and again she was on the point of making the journey to let him know that some one at least was watching him. But, she reflected, if she did that she might miss the one call from Florence for help.

  Then she thought bitterly of the false hopes she had raised in the despairing father of Florence Gibbons. It was maddening.

  Several times during the day Constance dropped into the Betsy Ross, without finding any word.

  Late that night the buzzer on her door sounded. It was Mrs. Palmer herself, with a letter at last, written on rough paper in pencil with a trembling hand.

  Constance almost literally pounced on it.

  “Will you tell the lady who was so kind to me that while she was out seeing you at the tea room, there was a call at her door? I didn’t like to open it, but when I asked who was there, a man said it was the steam-fitter she had asked to call about the heat.

  “I opened the door. From that moment when I saw his face until I came to myself here I remember nothing. I would write to her, only I don’t know where she lives. One of the bell-boys here is kind enough to smuggle this note out for me addressed to the Betsy Boss.

  “Tell her please, that I am at a place in Brooklyn, I think, called Lustgarten’s—she can recognize it because it is at a railroad crossing—steam railroads, not trolleys or elevateds.

  “I know you think me crazy, Mrs. Palmer, but the other lady can tell you about it. Oh, it was the same horrible feeling that came over me that night as before. It isn’t a dream; it’s more like a trance. It comes in a second—usually when I am frightened. I suddenly feel nervous and shaky. I can’t tell what is going on around me. I lose my hearing. Part of the time it is as though, I had a paralytic stroke of the tongue. The next day, perhaps, it is gone. But while it lasts it is terrifying. It’s like walking into a new world, with everybody, everything strange about me.”

  The note ended with a most pathetic appeal.

  Constance was already nervously putting on her hat.

  “You are going to go there?” asked Mrs. Palmer.

  “If I can locate the place,” she answered.

  “Aren’t you afraid?” inquired the other.

  Constance did not reply. She ostentatiously slipped a little ivory-handled revolver into her handbag.

  “It’s a new one,” she explained finally, “like nothing you ever heard of before, I guess. I bought it only the other day after a friend of mine told me about it.”

  Mrs. Palmer was watching her closely.

  “You—you are a wonderful woman,” she burst out finally. “It isn’t good business, it isn’t good sense.”

  Constance stopped short in her preparations for the search. “What are business and sense compared to the—the life of—”

  She checked herself on the very point of revealing the girl’s real name.

  “Nothing,” replied Mrs. Palmer. “I had already made up my mind to go with you before I spoke—if you will let me.”

  In a moment the two understood each other better than after years of casual acquaintance.

  Back and forth through the mazes of streets and car lines of the city across the river the two women traveled, asking veiled questions of every wearer of a uniform, until at last they found such a place as Florence had described in her note.

  There, it seemed, had sprung up a little center of vice. While reformers were trying to clamp down tight the “lid” in New York, all the vicious elements were prying it up here. Crushed in one place, they rose again in another.

  There was the electric sign—“Lustgarten.” Even a cursory glance told them that it included a saloon on the first floor, with a sort of dance hall and second-rate cabaret. Above that was a hotel. The windows were darkened, with awnings pulled down, even on what must have been in the daytime the shady side.

  “Shall we go in? Are you game?” asked Constance of her companion.

  “I haven’t gone so far without considering that,” replied Mrs. Palmer, somewhat reproachfully.

  Without a word Constance entered the door down the street followed by her companion.

  A negro at the little cubby hole of an office pushed out a register at them. Constance signed the first names that came into her head, and a moment later they were on their way up to a big double room on the third floor, led by another, younger negro.

  “Will you send the bell-boy up?” asked Constance as they entered the room.

  “I’m the bell-boy ma’am,” was his disconcerting reply.

  “I mean the other one,” replied Constance, hazarding, “the one who is here in the day time.”

  “There ain’t no other boy,
ma’am. There ain’t no—”

  “Could you deliver a note for me at a tea room in New York to-morrow?” interrupted Constance, striking while the iron seemed hot.

  The boy turned around abruptly from his busy occupation of doing something useless that would elicit a tip. He quietly shut the door, and wheeled about with his hand still on the knob.

  “Do you want to know what room she’s in?” he asked.

  Constance opened her handbag. Mrs. Palmer suppressed a little scream. She had expected that ivory-handled thing to appear. Instead there was a treasury note of a size that caused the white part of the boy’s eyes to expand beyond all the laws of optics.

  “Yes,” she said, pressing it into his hand.

  “Forty-two-down the hall, around the turn, on the other side,” whispered the boy. “And for God’s sake, ma’am, don’t tell nobody I told you.”

  His shuffle down the hall had scarcely ceased before the two women were stealthily creeping in the opposite direction, looking eagerly at the numbers.

  Constance had stopped abruptly around the turn. Through a transom of one of the rooms they could hear voices but could see no light.

  “Well, go back then,” growled a gruff voice. “Your family will never believe your story, never believe that you came again and stayed at Lustgarten’s against your will. Why,” the voice taunted with a harsh laugh, “if they knew the truth, they would turn you from the door, instead of offering a reward.”

  There was a moment of silence. Then a woman’s voice, strangely familiar to Constance, spoke.

  “The truth!” she exclaimed bitterly. “He knew it was a case of a girl who liked a good time, liked pretty clothes, a ride in an automobile, theaters, excitement, bright lights, night life—a girl with a romantic disposition in whom all that was repressed at home. He knew it,” she repeated, raising the tone to an almost hysterical pitch, “led me on, made me love him because he could give them all to me. And when I began to show the strain of the pace-they all show it more than the men—he cast me aside like a squeezed-out lemon.”