Works of Robert W Chambers

by Robert W. Chambers

  Twice the one-eyed man flung her to her knees on the pavement, but she was up again and clinging to him before he could tear free of her.

  “My letter!” she gasped. “I shall kill you, I tell you — unless you return it!”

  His solitary yellow eye began to glare and glitter as he wrenched and dragged at her wrists and arms about him.

  “Schweinstück!” he panted. “Let los, mioche de malheur! Eh! Los! — or I strike! No? Also! Attrape! — sale gallopin! — —”

  His blow knocked her reeling across the hall. Against the whitewashed wall she collapsed to her knees, got up half stunned, the clang of the outer grille ringing in her very brain.

  With dazed eyes she gazed at the remnants of the torn letter, still crushed in her rigid fingers. Bright drops of blood from her mouth dripped slowly to the tessellated pavement.

  Reeling still from the shock of the blow, she managed to reach the outer door, and stood swaying there, striving to pierce with confused eyes the lamplit darkness of the street. There was no sign of the one-eyed man. Then she turned and made her way back to the desk, supporting herself with a hand along the wall.

  Waiting a few moments to control her breathing and her shaky limbs, she contrived finally to detach the receiver and call Barres. Over the wire she could hear the gramophone playing again in the studio.

  “Please may I come up?” she whispered.

  “Has the last mail come? Is there a letter for me?” he asked.

  “Yes ... I’ll bring you w-what there is — if you’ll let me?”

  “Thanks, Sweetness! Come right up!” And she heard him say: “It’s probably your letter, Thessa. Dulcie is bringing it up.”

  Her limbs and body were still quivering, and she felt very weak and tearful as she climbed the stairway to the corridor above.

  The nearer door of his apartment was open. Through it the music of the gramophone came gaily; and she went toward it and entered the brilliantly illuminated studio.

  Soane, who still lay flat on the roof overhead, peeping through the ventilator, saw her enter, all dishevelled, grasping in one hand the fragments of a letter. And the sight instantly sobered him. He tucked his shoes under one arm, got to his stockinged feet, made nimbly for the scuttle, and from there, descending by the service stair, ran through the courtyard into the empty hall.

  “Be gorry,” he muttered, “thot dommed Dootchman has done it now!” And he pulled on his shoes, crammed his hat over his ears, and started east, on a run, for Grogan’s.

  Grogan’s was still the name of the Third Avenue saloon, though Grogan had been dead some years, and one Franz Lehr now presided within that palace of cherrywood, brass and pretzels.

  Into the family entrance fled Soane, down a dim hallway past several doors, from behind which sounded voices joining in guttural song; and came into a rear room.

  The one-eyed man sat there at a small table, piecing together fragments of a letter.

  “Arrah, then,” cried Soane, “phwat th’ devil did ye do, Max?”

  The man barely glanced at him.

  “Vy iss it,” he enquired tranquilly, “you don’d vatch Nihla Quellen by dot wentilator some more?”

  “I axe ye,” shouted Soane, “what t’hell ye done to Dulcie!”

  “Vat I haff done already yet?” queried the one-eyed man, not looking up, and continuing to piece together the torn letter. “Vell, I tell you, Soane; dot kid she keep dot letter in her handt, und I haff to grab it. Sacré saligaud de malheur! Dot letter she tear herself in two. Pas de chance! Your kid she iss mad like tigers! Voici — all zat rests me de la sacré-nom-de sacrèminton de lettre — —”

  “Ah, shut up, y’r Dootch head-cheese! — wid y’r gillipin’ gallopin’ gabble!” cut in Soane wrathfully. “D’ye mind phwat ye done? It’s not petty larceny, ye omadhoun! — it’s highway robbery ye done — bad cess to ye!”

  The one-eyed man shrugged:

  “Pourtant, I must haff dot letter — —” he observed, undisturbed by Soane’s anger; but Soane cut him short again fiercely:

  “You an’ y’r dommed letter! Phwat do you care if I’m fired f’r this night’s wurruk? Y’r letter, is it? An’ what about highway robbery, me bucko! An’ me off me post! How’ll I be explaining that? Ah, ye sicken me entirely, ye Dootch square-head! Now, phwat’ll I say to them? Tell me that, Max Freund! Phwat’ll I tell th’ aygent whin he comes runnin’? Phwat’ll I tell th’ po-lice? Arrah, phwat’t’hell do you care, anyway?” he shouted. “I’ve a mind f’r to knock the block off ye — —”

  “You shall say to dot agent you haff gone out to smell,” remarked Max Freund placidly.

  “Smell, is it? Smell what, ye dom — —”

  “You smell some smoke. You haff fear of fire. You go out to see. Das iss so simble, ach! Take shame, you Irish Sinn Fein! You behave like rabbits!” He pointed to his arrangement of the torn letter on the table: “Here iss sufficient already — regardez! Look once!” He laid one long, soiled and bony finger on the fragments: “Read it vat iss written!”

  “G’wan, now!”

  “I tell you, read!”

  Soane, still cursing under his breath, bent over the table, reading as Freund’s soiled finger moved:

  “Fein plots,” he read. “German agents ... disloyal propa ... explo ... bomb fac ... shipping munitions to ... arms for Ireland can be ... destruction of interned German li ... disloyal newspapers which ... controlled by us in Pari ... Ferez Bey ... bankers are duped.... I need your advi ... hounded day and ni ... d’Eblis or Govern ... not afraid of death but indignant ... Sinn Fei — —”

  Soane’s scowl had altered, and a deeper red stained his brow and neck.

  “Well, by God!” he muttered, jerking up a chair from behind him and seating himself at the table, but never taking his fascinated eyes off the torn bits of written paper.

  Presently Freund got up and went out. He returned in a few moments with a large sheet of wrapping paper and a pot of mucilage. On this paper, with great care, he arranged the pieces of the torn letter, neatly gumming each bit and leaving a space between it and the next fragment.

  “To fill in iss the job of Louis Sendelbeck,” remarked Freund, pasting away industriously. “Is it not time we learn how much she knows — this Nihla Quellen? Iss she sly like mice? I ask it.”

  Soane scratched his curly head.

  “Be gorry,” he said, “av that purty girrl is a Frinch spy she don’t look the parrt, Max.”

  Freund waved one unclean hand:

  “Vas iss it to look like somedings? Nodding! Also, you Sinn Fein Irish talk too much. Why iss it in Belfast you march mit drums und music? To hold our tongues und vatch vat iss we Germans learn already first! Also! Sendelbeck shall haff his letter.”

  “An’ phwat d’ye mean to do with that girrl, Max?”

  “Vatch her! Vy you don’d go back by dot wentilator already?”

  “Me? Faith, I’m done f’r th’ evenin’, an’ I thank God I wasn’t pinched on the leads!”

  “Vait I catch dot Nihla somevares,” muttered Freund, regarding his handiwork.

  “Ye’ll do no dirty thrick to her? Th’ Sinn Fein will shtand f’r no burkin’, mind that!”

  “Ach, wass!” grunted Freund; “iss it your business vat iss done to somebody by Ferez? If you Irish vant your rifles und machine guns, leaf it to us Germans und dond speak nonsense aboud nodding!” He leaned over and pushed a greasy electric button: “Now ve drink a glass bier. Und after, you go home und vatch dot girl some more.”

  “Av Misther Barres an’ th’ yoong lady makes a holler, they’ll fire me f’r this,” snarled Soane.

  “Sei ruhig, mon vieux! Nihla Quellen keeps like a mouse quiet! Und she keeps dot yoong man quiet! You see! No, no! Not for Nihla to make some foolishness und publicity. French agents iss vatching for her too — l’affaire du Mot d’Ordre. She iss vat you say, ‘in Dutch’! Iss she, vielleicht, a German spy? In France they believe it. Iss she a French spy? Ach! Possibly some day; not
yet! And it iss for us Germans to know always vat she iss about. Dot iss my affair, not yours, Soane.”

  A heavy jowled man in a soiled apron brought two big mugs of beer and retired on felt-slippered feet.

  “Hoch!” grunted Freund, burying his nose in his frothing mug.

  Soane, wasting no words, drank thirstily. After a long pull he shoved aside his sloppy stein, rose, cautiously unlatched the shutter of a tiny peep-hole in the wall, and applied one eye to it.

  “Bad luck!” he muttered, “there do be wan av thim secret service lads drinkin’ at the bar! I’ll not go home yet, Max.”

  “Dot big vone?” inquired Freund, mildly interested.

  “That’s the buck! Him wid th’ phony whiskers an’ th’ Dootch get-up!”

  “Vell, vot off it? Can he do somedings?”

  “And how should I know phwat that lad can do to th’ likes o’ me, or phwat the divil brings him here at all, at all! Sure, he’s been around these three nights running — —”

  Freund laughed his contempt for all things American, including police and secret service, and wiped his chin with the back of his hand.

  “Look, once, Soane! Do these Yankees know vat it iss a police, a gendarme, a military intelligence? Vat they call secret service, wass iss it? I ask it? Schweinerei! Dummheit? Fantoches! Imbeciles! Of the Treasury they haff a secret service; of the Justice Department also another; and another of the Army, and yet another of the Posts! Vot kind of foolish system iss it? — mitout no minister, no chef, no centre, no head, no organisation — und everybody interfering in vot efferybody iss doing und nobody knowing vot nobody is doing — ach wass! Je m’en moque — I make mock myself at dot secret service which iss too dam dumm!” He yawned. “Trop bête,” he added indistinctly.

  Soane, reassured, lowered the shutter, came back to the table, and finished his beer with loud gulps.

  “Lave us go up to the lodge till he goes out,” he suggested. “Maybe th’ boys have news o’ thim rifles.”

  Freund yawned again, nodded, and rose, and they went out to an unlighted and ill-smelling back stairway. It was so narrow that they had to ascend in single file.

  Half way up they set off a hidden bell, by treading on some concealed button under foot; and a man, dressed only in undershirt and trousers, appeared at the top of the stairs, silhouetted against a bright light burning on the wall behind him.

  “Oh, all right,” he said, recognising them, and turned on his heel carelessly, pocketing a black-jack.

  They followed to a closed door, which was made out of iron and painted like quartered oak. In the wall on their right a small shutter slid back noiselessly, then was closed without a sound; and the iron door opened very gently in their faces.

  The room they entered was stifling — all windows being closed — in spite of a pair of electric fans whirling and droning on shelves. Some perspiring Germans were playing skat over in a corner. One or two other men lounged about a centre table, reading Irish and German newspapers published in New York, Chicago, and Milwaukee. There were also on file there copies of the Evening Mail, the Evening Post, a Chicago paper, and a pile of magazines, including numbers of Pearson’s, The Fatherland, The Masses, and similar publications.

  Two lithograph portraits hung side by side over the fireplace — Robert Emmet and Kaiser Wilhelm II. Otherwise, the art gallery included photographs of Von Hindenburg, Von Bissing, and the King of Greece.

  A large map, on which the battle-line in Europe had been pricked out in red pins, hung on the wall. Also a map of New York City, on a very large scale; another map of New York State; and a map of Ireland. A dumb-waiter, on duty and astonishingly noiseless, slid into sight, carrying half a dozen steins of beer and some cheese sandwiches, just as Soane and Freund entered the room, and the silent iron door closed behind them of its own accord and without any audible click.

  The man who had met them on the stairs, in undershirt and trousers, went over to the dumb-waiter, scribbled something on a slate which hung inside the shelf, set the beer and sandwiches beside the skat players, and returned to seat himself at the table to which Freund and Soane had pulled up cane-bottomed chairs.

  “Well,” he said, in rather a pleasant voice, “did you get that letter, Max?”

  Freund nodded and leisurely sketched in the episode at Dragon Court.

  The man, whose name was Franz Lehr, and who had been born in New York of German parents, listened with lively interest to the narrative. But he whistled softly when it ended:

  “You took a few chances, Max,” he remarked. “It’s all right, of course, because you got away with it, but — —” He whistled again, thoughtfully.

  “Sendelbeck must haff his letter. Yess? Also!”

  “Certainly. I guess that was the only way — if she was really going to take it up to young Barres. And I guess you’re right when you conclude that Nihla won’t make any noise about it and won’t let her friend, Barres, either.”

  “Sure, I’m right,” grunted Freund. “We got the goots on her now. You bet she’s scared. You tell Ferez — yess?”

  “Don’t worry; he’ll hear it all. You got that letter on you?”

  Freund nodded.

  “Hand it to Hochstein” — he half turned on his rickety chair and addressed a squat, bushy-haired man with very black eyebrows and large, angry blue eyes— “Louis, Max got that letter you saw Nihla writing in the Hotel Astor. Here it is — —” taking the pasted fragments from Freund and passing them over to Hochstein. “Give it to Sendelbeck, along with the blotter you swiped after she left the writing room. Dave Sendelbeck ought to fix it up all right for Ferez Bey.”

  Hochstein nodded, shoved the folded brown paper into his pocket, and resumed his cards.

  “Is thim rifles — —” began Soane; but Lehr laid a hand on his shoulder:

  “Now, listen! They’re on the way to Ireland now. I told you that. When I hear they’re landed I’ll let you know. You Sinn Feiners don’t understand how to wait. If things don’t happen the way you want and when you want, you all go up in the air!”

  “An’ how manny hundred years would ye have us wait f’r to free th’ ould sod!” retorted Soane.

  “You’ll not free it with your mouth,” retorted Lehr. “No, nor by drilling with banners and arms in Cork and Belfast, and parading all over the place!”

  “Is — that — so!”

  “You bet it’s so! The way to make England sick is to stick her in the back, not make faces at her across the Irish Channel. If your friends in the Clan-na-Gael, and your poets and professors who call themselves Sinn Feiners, will quit their childish circus playing and trust us, we’ll show you how to make the Lion yowl.”

  “Ah, bombs an’ fires an’ shtrikes is all right, too. An’ proppygandy is fine as far as it goes. But the Clan-na-Gael is all afire f’r to start the shindy in Ireland — —”

  “You start it,” interrupted Lehr, “before you’re really ready, and you’ll see where it lands the Clan-na-Gael and the Sinn Fein! I tell you to leave it to Berlin!”

  “An’ I tell ye lave it to the Clan-na-Gael!” retorted Soane, excitedly. “Musha — —”

  “For why you yell?” yawned Freund, displaying a very yellow fang. “Dot big secret service slob, he iss in the bar hinunter. Perhaps he hear you if like a pig you push forth cries.”

  Lehr raised his eyebrows; then, carelessly:

  “He’s only a State agent. Johnny Klein is keeping an eye on him. What does that big piece of cheese expect to get by hanging out in my bar?”

  Freund yawned again, appallingly; Soane said:

  “I wonder is that purty Frinch girrl agin us Irish?”

  “What does she care about the Irish?” replied Lehr. “Her danger to us lies in the fact that she may blab about Ferez to some Frenchman, and that he may believe her in spite of all the proof they have in Paris against her. Max,” he added, turning to Freund, “it’s funny that Ferez doesn’t do something to her.”

  “I haff no ord
ers.”

  “Maybe you’ll get ’em when Ferez reads that letter. He’s certainly not going to let that girl go about blabbing and writing letters — —”

  Soane struck the table with doubled fist:

  “Ye’ll do no vi’lence to anny wan!” he cut in. “The Sinn Fein will shtand for no dirrty wurruk in America! Av you set fires an’ blow up plants, an’ kidnap ladies, an’ do murther, g’wan, ye Dootch scuts! — it’s your business, God help us! — not ours.

  “All we axe of ye is machine-goons, an’ rifles, an’ ships to land them; an’ av ye don’t like it, phway th’ divil d’ye come botherin’ th’ likes of us Irish wid y’r proppygandy! Sorra the day,” he added, “I tuk up wid anny Dootchman at all at all — —”

  Lehr and Freund exchanged expressionless glances. The former dropped a propitiating hand on Soane’s shoulder.

  “Can it,” he said good-humouredly. “We’re trying to help you Irish to what you want. You want Irish independence, don’t you? All right. We’re going to help you get it — —”

  A bell rang; Lehr sprang to his feet and hastened out through the iron door, drawing his black-jack from his hip pocket as he went.

  He returned in a few moments, followed by a very good-looking but pallid man in rather careless evening dress, who had the dark eyes of a dreamer and the delicate features of a youthful acolyte.

  He saluted the company with a peculiarly graceful gesture, which recognition even the gross creatures at the skat table returned with visible respect.

  Soane, always deeply impressed by the presence of Murtagh Skeel, offered his chair and drew another one to the table.

  Skeel accepted with a gently preoccupied smile, and seated himself gracefully. All that is chivalrous, romantic, courteous, and brave in an Irishman seemed to be visibly embodied in this pale man.

  “I have just come,” he said, “from a dinner at Sherry’s. A common hatred of England brought together the dozen odd men with whom I have been in conference. Ferez Bey was there, the military attachés of the German, Austrian, and Turkish embassies, one or two bankers, officials of certain steamship lines, and a United States senator.”