There was a lively wind whipping that notoriously bad-mannered streak of water known as the English Channel. Possibly, had it been christened the French Channel its manners might have been more polite. But there was now nothing visible about it to justify its sentimental pseudonym of Silver Streak.
It was a dirty colour, ominous of ill-temper beyond the great breakwater to the northward; and it fretted and fumed inshore and made white and ghastly faces from the open sea.
But Neeland, dining from a tray in a portholed pit consecrated to the use of a casual supercargo, rejoiced because he adored the sea, inland lubber that he had been born and where the tides of fate had stranded him. For, to a New Yorker, the sea seems far away — as far as it seems to the Parisian. And only when chance business takes him to the Battery does a New Yorker realise the nearness of the ocean to that vast volume of ceaseless dissonance called New York.
* * * * *
Neeland ate cold meat and bread and cheese, and washed it down with bitters.
He was nearly asleep on his sofa when the packet cast off.
He was sound asleep when, somewhere in the raging darkness of the Channel, he was hurled from the sofa against the bunk opposite — into which he presently crawled and lay, still half asleep, mechanically rubbing a maltreated shin.
Twice more the bad-mannered British Channel was violently rude to him; each time he crawled back to stick like a limpet in the depths of his bunk.
Except when the Channel was too discourteous, he slept as a sea bird sleeps afloat, tossing outside thundering combers which batter basalt rocks.
Even in his deep, refreshing sea sleep, the subtle sense of exhilaration — of well-being — which contact with the sea always brought to him, possessed him. And, deep within him, the drop of Irish seethed and purred as a kettle purrs through the watches of the night over a banked but steady fire.
CHAPTER XXIV
THE ROAD TO PARIS
Over the drenched sea wall gulls whirled and eddied above the spouting spray; the grey breakwater was smothered under exploding combers; quai, docks, white-washed lighthouse, swept with spindrift, appeared and disappeared through the stormy obscurity as the tender from the Channel packet fought its way shoreward with Neeland’s luggage lashed in the cabin, and Neeland himself sticking to the deck like a fly to a frantic mustang, enchanted with the whole business.
For the sea, at last, was satisfying this young man; he savoured now what he had longed for as a little boy, guiding a home-made raft on the waters of Neeland’s mill pond in the teeth of a summer breeze. Before he had ever seen the ocean he wanted all it had to give short of shipwreck and early decease. He had experienced it on the Channel during the night.
There was only one other passenger aboard — a tall, lean, immaculately dressed man with a ghastly pallor, a fox face, and ratty eyes, who looked like an American and who had been dreadfully sick. Not caring for his appearance, Neeland did not speak to him. Besides, he was having too good a time to pay attention to anybody or anything except the sea.
A sailor had lent Neeland some oilskins and a sou’-wester; and he hated to put them off — hated the calmer waters inside the basin where the tender now lay rocking; longed for the gale and the heavy seas again, sorry the crossing was ended.
He cast a last glance of regret at the white fury raging beyond the breakwater as he disembarked among a crowd of porters, gendarmes, soldiers, and assorted officials; then, following his porter to the customs, he prepared to submit to the unvarying indignities incident to luggage examination in France.
He had leisure, while awaiting his turn, to buy a novel, “Les Bizarettes,” of Maurice Bertrand; time, also, to telegraph to the Princess Mistchenka. The fox-faced man, who looked like an American, was now speaking French like one to a perplexed official, inquiring where the Paris train was to be found. Neeland listened to the fluent information on his own account, then returned to the customs bench.
But the unusually minute search among his effects did not trouble him; the papers from the olive-wood box were buttoned in his breast pocket; and after a while the customs officials let him go to the train which stood beside an uncovered concrete platform beyond the quai, and toward which the fox-faced American had preceded him on legs that still wobbled with seasickness.
There were no Pullmans attached to the train, only the usual first, second, and third class carriages with compartments; and a new style corridor car with central aisle and lettered doors to compartments holding four.
Into one of these compartments Neeland stepped, hoping for seclusion, but backed out again, the place being full of artillery officers playing cards.
In vain he bribed the guard, who offered to do his best; but the human contents of a Channel passenger steamer had unwillingly spent the night in the quaint French port, and the Paris-bound train was already full.
The best Neeland could do was to find a seat in a compartment where he interrupted conversation between three men who turned sullen heads to look at him, resenting in silence the intrusion. One of them was the fox-faced man he had already noticed on the packet, tender, and customs dock.
But Neeland, whose sojourn in a raw and mannerless metropolis had not blotted out all memory of gentler cosmopolitan conventions, lifted his hat and smilingly excused his intrusion in the fluent and agreeable French of student days, before he noticed that he had to do with men of his own race.
None of the men returned his salute; one of them merely emitted an irritated grunt; and Neeland recognised that they all must be his own delightful country-men — for even the British are more dignified in their stolidity.
A second glance satisfied him that all three were undoubtedly Americans; the cut of their straw hats and apparel distinguished them as such; the nameless grace of Mart, Haffner and Sharx marked the tailoring of the three; only Honest Werner could have manufactured such headgear; only New York such footwear.
And Neeland looked at them once more and understood that Broadway itself sat there in front of him, pasty, close-shaven, furtive, sullen-eyed, the New York Paris Herald in its seal-ringed fingers; its fancy waistcoat pockets bulging with cigars.
“Sports,” he thought to himself; and decided to maintain incognito and pass as a Frenchman, if necessary, to escape conversation with the three tired-eyed ones.
So he hung up his hat, opened his novel, and settled back to endure the trip through the rain, now beginning to fall from a low-sagging cloud of watery grey.
After a few minutes the train moved. Later the guard passed and accomplished his duties. Neeland inquired politely of him in French whether there was any political news, and the guard replied politely that he knew of none. But he looked very serious when he said it.
Half an hour from the coast the rain dwindled to a rainbow and ceased; and presently a hot sun was gilding wet green fields and hedges and glistening roofs which steamed vapour from every wet tile.
Without asking anybody’s opinion, one of the men opposite raised the window. But Neeland did not object; the rain-washed air was deliciously fragrant; and he leaned his elbow on his chair arm and looked out across the loveliest land in Europe.
“Say, friend,” said an East Side voice at his elbow, “does smoking go?”
He glanced back over his shoulder at the speaker — a little, pallid, sour-faced man with the features of a sick circus clown and eyes like two holes burnt in a lump of dough.
“Pardon, monsieur?” he said politely.
“Can’t you even pick a Frenchman, Ben?” sneered one of the men opposite — a square, smoothly shaven man with slow, heavy-lidded eyes of a greenish tinge.
The fox-faced man said:
“He had me fooled, too, Eddie. If Ben Stull didn’t get his number it don’t surprise me none, becuz he was on the damn boat I crossed in, and I certainly picked him for New York.”
“Aw,” said the pasty-faced little man referred to as Ben Stull, “Eddie knows it all. He never makes no breaks, of course. You make ‘em, Doc, but he doesn�
��t. That’s why me and him and you is travelling here — this minute — because the great Eddie Brandes never makes no breaks — —”
“Go on and smoke and shut up,” said Brandes, with a slow, sidewise glance at Neeland, whose eyes remained fastened on the pages of “Les Bizarettes,” but whose ears were now very wide open.
“Smoke,” repeated Stull, “when this here Frenchman may make a holler?”
“Wait till I ask him,” said the man addressed as Doc, with dignity. And to Neeland:
“Pardong, musseer, permitty vous moi de fumy ung cigar?”
“Mais comment, donc, monsieur! Je vous en prie — —”
“He says politely,” translated Doc, “that we can smoke and be damned to us.”
They lighted three obese cigars; Neeland, his eyes on his page, listened attentively and stole a glance at the man they called Brandes.
So this was the scoundrel who had attempted to deceive the young girl who had come to him that night in his studio, bewildered with what she believed to be her hopeless disgrace!
This was the man — this short, square, round-faced individual with his minutely shaven face and slow greenish eyes, and his hair combed back and still reeking with perfumed tonic — this shiny, scented, and overgroomed sport with rings on his fat, blunt fingers and the silk laces on his tan oxfords as fastidiously tied as though a valet had done it!
Ben Stull began to speak; and presently Neeland discovered that the fox-faced man’s name was Doc Curfoot; that he had just arrived from London on receipt of a telegram from them; and that they themselves had landed the night before from a transatlantic liner to await him here.
Doc Curfoot checked the conversation, which was becoming general now, saying that they’d better be very sure that the man opposite understood no English before they became careless.
“Musseer,” he added suavely to Neeland, who looked up with a polite smile, “parly voo Anglay?”
“Je parle Français, monsieur.”
“I get him,” said Stull, sourly. “I knew it anyway. He’s got the sissy manners of a Frenchy, even if he don’t look the part. No white man tips his lid to nobody except a swell skirt.”
“I seen two dudes do it to each other on Fifth Avenue,” remarked Curfoot, and spat from the window.
Brandes, imperturbable, rolled his cigar into the corner of his mouth and screwed his greenish eyes to narrow slits.
“You got our wire, Doc?”
“Why am I here if I didn’t!”
“Sure. Have an easy passage?”
Doc Curfoot’s foxy visage still wore traces of the greenish pallor; he looked pityingly at Brandes — self-pityingly:
“Say, Eddie, that was the worst I ever seen. A freight boat, too. God! I was that sick I hoped she’d turn turtle! And nab it from me; if you hadn’t wired me S O S, I’d have waited over for the steamer train and the regular boat!”
“Well, it’s S O S all right, Doc. I got a cable from Quint this morning saying our place in Paris is ready, and we’re to be there and open up tonight — —”
“What place?” demanded Curfoot.
“Sure, I forgot. You don’t know anything yet, do you?”
“Eddie,” interrupted Stull, “let me do the talking this time, if you please.”
And, to Curfoot:
“Listen, Doc. We was up against it. You heard. Every little thing has went wrong since Eddie done what he done — every damn thing! Look what’s happened since Maxy Venem got sore and he and Minna started out to get him! Morris Stein takes away the Silhouette Theatre from us and we can’t get no time for ‘Lilith’ on Broadway. We go on the road and bust. All our Saratoga winnings goes, also what we got invested with Parson Smawley when the bulls pulled Quint’s —— !”
“Ah, f’r the lov’ o’ Mike!” began Brandes. “Can that stuff!”
“All right, Eddie. I’m tellin’ Doc, that’s all. I ain’t aiming to be no crape-hanger; I only want you both to listen to me this time. If you’d listened to me before, we’d have been in Saratoga today in our own machines. But no; you done what you done — God! Did anyone ever hear of such a thing! — taking chances with that little rube from Brookhollow — that freckled-faced mill-hand — that yap-skirt! And Minna and Max having you watched all the time! You big boob! No — don’t interrupt! Listen to me! Where are you now? You had good money; you had a theaytre, you had backing! Quint was doing elegant; Doc and Parson and you and me had it all our way and comin’ faster every day. Wait, I tell you! This ain’t a autopsy. This is business. I’m tellin’ you two guys all this becuz I want you to realise that what Eddie done was against my advice. Come on, now; wasn’t it?”
“It sure was,” admitted Curfoot, removing his cigar from his lean, pointed visage of a greyhound, and squinting thoughtfully at the smoke eddying in the draught from the open window.
“Am I right, Eddie?” demanded Stull, fixing his black, smeary eyes on Brandes.
“Well, go on,” returned the latter between thin lips that scarcely moved.
“All right, then. Here’s the situation, Doc. We’re broke. If Quint hadn’t staked us to this here new game we’re playin’, where’d we be, I ask you?
“We got no income now. Quint’s is shut up; Maxy Venem and Minna Minti fixed us at Saratoga so we can’t go back there for a while. They won’t let us touch a card on the liners. Every pug is leery of us since Eddie flimflammed that Battling Smoke; and I told you he’d holler, too! Didn’t I?” turning on Brandes, who merely let his slow eyes rest on him without replying.
“Go on, Ben,” said Curfoot.
“I’m going on. We guys gotta do something — —”
“We ought to have fixed Max Venem,” said Curfoot coolly.
There was a silence; all three men glanced stealthily at Neeland, who quietly turned the page of his book as though absorbed in his story.
“That squealer, Max,” continued Curfoot with placid ferocity blazing in his eyes, “ought to have been put away. Quint and Parson wanted us to have it done. Was it any stunt to get that dirty little shyster in some roadhouse last May?”
Brandes said:
“I’m not mixing with any gunmen after the Rosenthal business.”
“Becuz a lot of squealers done a amateur job like that, does it say that a honest job can’t be pulled?” demanded Curfoot. “Did Quint and me ask you to go to Dopey or Clabber or Pete the Wop, or any of them cheap gangsters?”
“Ah, can the gun-stuff,” said Brandes. “I’m not for it. It’s punk.”
“What’s punk?”
“Gun-play.”
“Didn’t you pull a pop on Maxy Venem the night him and Hyman Adams and Minna beat you up in front of the Knickerbocker?”
“Eddie was stalling,” interrupted Stull, as Brandes’ face turned a dull beef-red. “You talk like a bad actor, Doc. There’s other ways of getting Max in wrong. Guns ain’t what they was once. Gun-play is old stuff. But listen, now. Quint has staked us and we gotta make good. And this is a big thing, though it looks like it was out of our line.”
“Go on; what’s the idea?” inquired Curfoot, interested.
Brandes, the dull red still staining his heavy face, watched the flying landscape from the open window.
Stull leaned forward; Curfoot bent his lean, narrow head nearer; Neeland, staring fixedly at his open book, pricked up his ears.
“Now,” said Stull in a low voice, “I’ll tell you guys all Eddie and I know about this here business of Captain Quint’s. It’s like this, Doc: Some big feller comes to Quint after they close him up — he won’t tell who — and puts up this here proposition: Quint is to open a elegant place in Paris on the Q. T. In fact, it’s ready now. There’ll be all the backing Quint needs. He’s to send over three men he can trust — three men who can shoot at a pinch! He picks us three and stakes us. Get me?”
Doc nodded.
Brandes said in his narrow-eyed, sleepy way:
“There was a time when they called us gunmen — Ben a
nd me. But, so help me God, Doc, we never did any work like that ourselves. We never fired a shot to croak any living guy. Did we, Ben?”
“All right,” said Stull impatiently. And, to Curfoot: “Eddie and I know what we’re to do. If it’s on the cards that we shoot — well, then, we’ll shoot. The place is to be small, select, private, and first class. Doc, you act as capper. You deal, too. Eddie sets ’em up. I deal or spin. All right. We three guys attend to anything American that blows our way. Get that?”
Curfoot nodded.
“Then for the foreigners, there’s to be a guy called Karl Breslau.”
Neeland managed to repress a start, but the blood tingled in his cheeks, and he turned his head a trifle as though seeking better light on the open pages in his hands.
“This here man Breslau,” continued Stull, “speaks all kinds of languages. He is to have two friends with him, a fellow named Kestner and one called Weishelm. They trim the foreigners, they do; and — —”
“Well, I don’t see nothing new about this — —” began Curfoot; but Stull interrupted:
“Wait, can’t you! This ain’t the usual. We run a place for Quint. The place is like Quint’s. We trim guys same as he does — or did. But there’s more to it.”
He let his eyes rest on Neeland, obliquely, for a full minute. The others watched him, too. Presently the young man cut another page of his book with his pen-knife and turned it with eager impatience, as though the story absorbed him.
“Don’t worry about Frenchy,” murmured Brandes with a shrug. “Go ahead, Ben.”
Stull laid one hand on Curfoot’s shoulder, drawing that gentleman a trifle nearer and sinking his voice:
“Here’s the new stuff, Doc,” he said. “And it’s brand new to us, too. There’s big money into it. Quint swore we’d get ours. And as we was on our uppers we went in. It’s like this: We lay for Americans from the Embassy or from any of the Consulates. They are our special game. It ain’t so much that we trim them; we also get next to them; we make ’em talk right out in church. Any political dope they have we try to get. We get it any way we can. If they’ll accelerate we accelerate ‘em; if not, we dope ’em and take their papers. The main idee is to get a holt on ‘em!
Works of Robert W Chambers Page 826