“That’s what Quint wants; that’s what he’s payin’ for and gettin’ paid for — inside information from the Embassy and Consulates — —”
“What does Quint want of that?” demanded Curfoot, astonished.
“How do I know? Blackmail? Graft? I can’t call the dope. But listen here! Don’t forget that it ain’t Quint who wants it. It’s the big feller behind him who’s backin’ him. It’s some swell guy higher up who’s payin’ Quint. And Quint, he pays us. So where’s the squeal coming?”
“Yes, but — —”
“Where’s the holler?” insisted Stull.
“I ain’t hollerin’, am I? Only this here is new stuff to me — —”
“Listen, Doc. I don’t know what it is, but all these here European kings is settin’ watchin’ one another like toms in a back alley. I think that some foreign political high-upper wants dope on what our people are finding out over here. Like this, he says to himself: ‘I hear this Kink is building ten sooper ferry boats. If that’s right, I oughta know. And I hear that the Queen of Marmora has ordered a million new nifty fifty-shot bean-shooters for the boy scouts! That is indeed serious news!’ So he goes to his broker, who goes to a big feller, who goes to Quint, who goes to us. Flag me?”
“Sure.”
“That’s all. There’s nothing to it, Doc. Says Quint to us: ‘Trim a few guys for me and get their letters,’ says Quint; ‘and there’s somethin’ in it for me and you!’ And that’s the new stuff, Doc.”
“You mean we’re spies?”
“Spies? I don’t know. We’re on a salary. We get a big bonus for every letter we find on the carpet — —” He winked at Curfoot and relighted his cigar.
“Say,” said the latter, “it’s like a creeping joint. It’s a panel game, Ben — —”
“It’s politics like they play ’em in Albany, only it’s ambassadors and kinks we trim, not corporations.”
“We can’t do it! What the hell do we know about kinks and attachés?”
“No; Weishelm, Breslau and Kestner do that. We lay for the attachés or spin or deal or act handy at the bar and buffet with homesick Americans. No; the fine work — the high-up stuff, is done by Breslau and Weishelm. And I guess there’s some fancy skirts somewhere in the game. But they’re silent partners; and anyway Weishelm manages that part.”
Curfoot, one lank knee over the other, swung his foot thoughtfully to and fro, his ratty eyes lost in dreamy revery. Brandes tossed his half-consumed cigar out of the open window and set fire to another. Stull waited for Curfoot to make up his mind. After several minutes the latter looked up from his cunning abstraction:
“Well, Ben, put it any way you like, but we’re just plain political spies. And what the hell do they hand us over here if we’re pinched?”
“I don’t know. What of it?”
“Nothing. If there’s good money in it, I’ll take a chance.”
“There is. Quint backs us. When we get ’em coming — —”
“Ah,” said Doc with a wry face, “that’s all right for the cards or the wheel. But this pocket picking — —”
“Say; that ain’t what I mean. It’s like this: Young Fitznoodle of the Embassy staff gets soused and starts out lookin’ for a quiet game. We furnish the game. We don’t go through his pockets; we just pick up whatever falls out and take shorthand copies. Then back go the letters into Fitznoodle’s pocket — —”
“Yes. Who reads ’em first?”
“Breslau. Or some skirt, maybe.”
“What’s Breslau?”
“Search me. He’s a Dutchman or a Rooshian or some sort of Dodo. What do you care?”
“I don’t. All right, Ben. You’ve got to show me; that’s all.”
“Show you what?”
“Spot cash!”
“You’re in when you handle it?”
“If you show me real money — yes.”
“You’re on. I’ll cash a cheque of Quint’s for you at Monroe’s soon as we hit the asphalt! And when you finish counting out your gold nickels put ’em in your pants and play the game! Is that right?”
“Yes.”
They exchanged a wary handshake; then, one after another, they leaned back in their seats with the air of honest men who had done their day’s work.
Curfoot blinked at Brandes, at his excessively groomed person, at his rings.
“You look prosperous, Eddie.”
“It’s his business to,” remarked Stull.
Brandes yawned:
“It would be a raw deal if there’s a war over here,” he said listlessly.
“Ah,” said Curfoot, “there won’t be none.”
“Why?”
“The Jews and bankers won’t let these kinks mix it.”
“That’s right, too,” nodded Brandes.
But Stull said nothing and his sour, pasty visage turned sourer. It was the one possibility that disturbed him — the only fly in the amber — the only mote that troubled his clairvoyance. Also, he was the only man among the three who didn’t think a thing was certain to happen merely because he wanted it to happen.
There was another matter, too, which troubled him. Brandes was unreliable. And who but little Stull should know how unreliable?
For Brandes had always been that. And now Stull knew him to be more than that — knew him to be treacherous.
Whatever in Brandes had been decent, or had, blindly perhaps, aspired toward decency, was now in abeyance. Something within him had gone to smash since Minna Minti had struck him that night in the frightened presence of Rue Carew.
And from that night, when he had lost the only woman who had ever stirred in him the faintest aspiration to better things, the man had gradually changed. Whatever in his nature had been unreliable became treacherous; his stolidity became sullenness. A slow ferocity burned within him; embers of a rage which no brooding ever quenched slumbered red in his brain until his endless meditation became a monomania. And his monomania was the ruin of this woman who had taken from him in the very moment of consummation all that he had ever really loved in the world — a thin, awkward, freckled, red-haired country girl, in whom, for the first and only time in all his life, he saw the vague and phantom promise of that trinity which he had never known — a wife, a child, and a home.
He sat there by the car window glaring out of his dull green eyes at the pleasant countryside, his thin lips tightening and relaxing on his cigar.
Curfoot, still pondering over the “new stuff” offered him, brooded silently in his corner, watching the others out of his tiny, bright eyes.
“Do anything in London?” inquired Stull.
“No.”
“Who was you working for?”
“A jock and a swell skirt. But Scotland Yard got next and chased the main guy over the water.”
“What was your lay?”
“Same thing. I dealt for the jock and the skirt trimmed the squabs.”
“Anybody holler?”
“Aw — the kind we squeezed was too high up to holler. Them young lords take their medicine like they wanted it. They ain’t like the home bunch that is named after swell hotels.”
After a silence he looked up at Brandes:
“What ever become of Minna Minti?” he asked.
Brandes’ heavy features remained stolid.
“She got her divorce, didn’t she?” insisted Curfoot.
“Yes.”
“Alimony?”
“No. She didn’t ask any.”
“How about Venem?”
Brandes remained silent, but Stull said:
“I guess she chucked him. She wouldn’t stand for that snake. I got to hand it to her; she ain’t that kind.”
“What kind is she?”
“I tell you I got to hand it to her. I can’t complain of her. She acted white all right until Venem stirred her up. Eddie’s got himself to blame; he got in wrong and Venem had him followed and showed him up to Minna.”
“You got tired of her, didn
’t you?” said Curfoot to Brandes. But Stull answered for him again:
“Like any man, Eddie needed a vacation now and then. But no skirt understands.”
Brandes said slowly:
“I’ll live to fix Minna yet.”
“What fixed you,” snapped Stull, “was that there Brookhollow stuff — —”
“Can it!” retorted Brandes, turning a deep red.
“Aw — don’t hand me the true-love stuff, Eddie! If you’d meant it with that little haymaker you’d have respected her — —”
Brandes’ large face became crimson with rage:
“You say another word about her and I’ll push your block off — you little dough-faced kike!”
Stull shrugged and presently whispered to Curfoot:
“That’s the play he always makes. I’ve waited two years, but he won’t ring down on the love stuff. I guess he was hit hard that trip. It took a little red-headed, freckled country girl to stop him. But it was comin’ to Eddie Brandes, and it certainly looks like it was there to stay a while.”
“He’s still stuck on her?”
“I guess she’s still the fly paper,” nodded Stull.
Suddenly Brandes turned on Stull such a look of concentrated hatred that the little gambler’s pallid features stiffened with surprise:
“Ben,” said Brandes in a low voice, which was too indistinct for Neeland to catch, “I’ll tell you something now that you don’t know. I saw Quint alone; I talked with him. Do you know who is handling the big stuff in this deal?”
“Who?” asked Stull, amazed.
“The Turkish Embassy in Paris. And do you know who plays the fine Italian hand for that bunch of Turks?”
“No.”
“Minna!”
“You’re crazy!”
Brandes took no notice, but went on with a sort of hushed ferocity that silenced both Stull and Curfoot:
“That’s why I went in. To get Minna. And I’ll get her if it costs every cent I’ve got or ever hope to get. That’s why I’m in this deal; that’s why I came; that’s why I’m here telling you this. I’m in it to get Minna, not for the money, not for anything in all God’s world except to get the woman who has done what Minna did to me.”
Neeland listened in vain to the murmuring voice; he could not catch a word.
Stull whispered:
“Aw, f’r God’s sake, Eddie, that ain’t the game. Do you want to double-cross Quint?”
“I have double-crossed him.”
“What! Do you mean to sell him out?”
“I have sold him out.”
“Jesus! Who to?”
“To the British Secret Service. And there’s to be one hundred thousand dollars in it, Doc, for you and me to divide. And fifty thousand more when we put the French bulls on to Minna and Breslau. Now, how does one hundred and fifty thousand dollars against five thousand apiece strike you two poor, cheap guys?”
But the magnitude of Brandes’ treachery and the splendour of the deal left the two gamblers stunned.
Only by their expressions could Neeland judge that they were discussing matters of vital importance to themselves and probably to him. He listened; he could not hear what they were whispering. And only at intervals he dared glance over his book in their direction.
“Well,” said Brandes under his breath, “go on. Spit it out. What’s the squeal?”
“My God!” whispered Stull. “Quint will kill you.”
Brandes laughed unpleasantly:
“Not me, Ben. I’ve got that geezer where I want him on a dirty deal he pulled off with the police.”
Curfoot turned his pointed muzzle toward the window and sneered at the sunny landscape.
A few minutes later, far across the rolling plain set with villas and farms, and green with hedgerows, gardens, bouquets of trees and cultivated fields, he caught sight of a fairy structure outlined against the sky. Turning to Brandes:
“There’s the Eiffel Tower,” remarked Curfoot. “Where are we stopping, Eddie?”
“Caffy des Bulgars.”
“Where’s that?”
“It’s where we go to work — Roo Vilna.”
Stull’s smile was ghastly, but Curfoot winked at Brandes.
Neeland listened, his eyes following the printed pages of his book.
CHAPTER XXV
CUP AND LIP
Through the crowded Paris terminal Neeland pushed his way, carrying the olive-wood box in his hand and keeping an eye on his porter, who preceded him carrying the remainder of his luggage and repeating:
“Place, s’il vous plaît, m’sieu’, dames!”
To Neeland it was like a homecoming after many years’ exile; the subtle but perfectly specific odour of Paris assailed his nostrils once again; the rapid, emphatic, lively language of France sounded once more delightfully in his eager ears; vivacity and intelligence sparkled in every eye that met his own. It was a throng of rapid movement, of animated speech, of gesticulation. And, as it was in the beginning when he first arrived there as a student, he fell in love with it at first sight and contact.
All around him moved porters, passengers, railroad officials; the red képis of soldiers dotted the crowd; a priest or two in shovel hat and buckled shoes, a Sister of Charity from the Rue de Bac lent graver accents to the throng; and everywhere were the pretty bourgeois women of the capital gathered to welcome relatives or friends, or themselves starting on some brief summer voyage so dear to those who seldom find it in their hearts to leave Paris for longer than a fortnight at a time.
As he pressed onward he witnessed characteristic reunions between voyagers and friends who awaited them — animated, cordial, gay scenes complicated by many embraces on both cheeks.
And, of a sudden, he noticed the prettiest girl he had ever seen in his life. She was in white, with a black straw hat, and her face and figure were lovely beyond words. Evidently she was awaiting friends; there was a charming expectancy on her fresh young face, a slight forward inclination of her body, as though expectancy and happy impatience alone controlled her.
Her beauty almost took his breath away.
“Lord!” he thought to himself. “If such a girl as that ever stood waiting for me — —”
At the same moment her golden-grey eyes, sweeping the passing crowd, met his; a sharp thrill of amazement passed through him as she held out both gloved hands with a soft exclamation of recognition:
“Jim! Jim Neeland!”
“Rue Carew!” He could scarcely credit his eyesight, where he stood, hat in hand, holding both her little hands in one of his.
No, there was no use in trying to disguise his astonishment. He looked into the face of this tall young girl, searched it for familiar features, recognised a lovely paraphrase of the freckled face and thin figure he remembered, and remained dumb before this radiant reincarnation of that other unhappy, shabby, and meagre child he had known two years ago.
Ruhannah, laughing and flushed, withdrew her hands.
“Have I changed? You haven’t. And I always thought you the most wonderful and ornamental young man on this planet. I knew you at once, Jim Neeland. Would you have passed without recognising me?”
“Perhaps I wouldn’t have passed after seeing you — —”
“Jim Neeland! What a remark!” She laughed. “Anyway, it’s nice to believe myself attractive enough to be noticed. And I’m so glad to see you. Naïa is here, somewhere, watching for you” — turning her pretty, eager head to search for the Princess Mistchenka. “Oh, there she is! She doesn’t see us — —”
They made their way between the passing ranks of passengers and porters; the Princess caught sight of them, came hastily toward them.
“Jim! It’s nice to see you. Thank you for coming! So you, found him, Rue? How are you, Jim? And where is the olive-wood box?”
“I’m well, and there’s that devilish box!” he replied, laughing and lifting it in his hand to exhibit it. “Naïa, the next time you want it, send an escort of artillery
and two battleships!”
“Did you have trouble?”
“Trouble? I had the time of my life. No moving picture can ever again excite me; no best seller. I’ve been both since I had your cable to get this box and bring it to you.”
He laughed as he spoke, but the Princess continued to regard him very seriously, and Rue Carew’s smile came and waned like sunlight in a wood, for she was not quite sure whether he had really encountered any dangers on this mission which he had fulfilled so well.
“Our car is waiting outside,” said the Princess. “Where is your porter, Jim?”
Neeland glanced about him, discovered the porter, made a sign for him to follow, and they moved together toward the entrance to the huge terminal.
“I haven’t decided where to stop yet,” began Neeland, but the Princess checked him with a pretty gesture:
“You stop with us, Jim.”
“Thank you so much, but — —”
“Please. Must I beg of you?”
“Do you really wish it?”
“Certainly,” she replied absently, glancing about her. She added: “I don’t see my car. I don’t see my footman. I told him to wait here. Rue, do you see him anywhere?”
“No, I don’t,” said the girl.
“How annoying!” said the Princess. “He’s a new man. My own footman was set upon and almost killed by Apaches a week ago. So I had to find a substitute. How stupid of him! Where on earth can he be waiting?”
They traversed the court of the terminal. Many automobiles were parked there or just leaving; liveried footmen stood awaiting masters and mistresses; but nowhere was the car of the Princess Mistchenka in sight.
They stood there, Neeland’s porter behind with his suitcase and luggage, not knowing whether to wait longer or summon a taxicab.
“I don’t understand,” repeated the Princess impatiently. “I explained very carefully what I desired. That new groom is stupid. Caron, my chauffeur, would never have made a mistake unless that idiot groom misunderstood his instructions.”
“Let me go and make some inquiries,” said Neeland. “Do you mind waiting here? I’ll not be long — —”
He went off, carrying the olive-wood box, which his grasp never quitted now; and presently the Princess and Ruhannah saw him disappear among the ranks of automobiles and cabs.
Works of Robert W Chambers Page 827