Ives took out a little black book and wrote down the description of the Black Doctor and the man who had impersonated the waiter. He asked for more information. Val referred him to Washington. Ives gave up with a shrug.
“I don’t know what it’s all about,” he confessed. “You evidently know what you’re doing. I’ll call headquarters and they can let the commissioner decide what to do.”
“Tell him to get in touch with Washington at once,” Val ordered. “We’ve got work to do. Later on we can return for testimony.”
“It’s unusual,” Ives warned.
“Washington will settle it.”
* * *
—
And Washington did settle it in a bit less than an hour, such was the power of that secret arm of the government which Nancy Fraser and Val Easton represented.
Neither of them knew exactly what had flashed back and forth over the wires; but Ives himself, still at the hotel, answered a telephone call, and told Val with a wry grin: “I guess you two have got something on the ball all right. Orders from the commissioner himself are to let you go and forget about you for the time being. So long—and luck to you.”
“We’ll probably need it,” Val said.
* * *
—
Val regarded the penciled message which he had obtained from the manager of the telegraph office. It had taken pressure to get a look at it against all rules of the company. But it told him what he wanted to know.
J. B. Tillson,
Oakridge Manor,
Hartsville, Virginia.
Party arriving tomorrow.
Signed, Ramey.
So Galbraith had intended to meet Ramey at Oakridge. Hartsville, Virginia, was close to Washington. The answer to everything must center there.
He returned to the hotel and looked in at Nancy Fraser’s room on the way to his own.
“Pack up,” he said with a grin. “There’s just time to catch the next plane to Washington.”
Norah Beamish shifted her ample form on the edge of the bed and said tartly: “Nancy needs a good night’s rest. She’s been through an ordeal, young man.”
“That’s right,” Val said contritely. “Get your rest then and I’ll run along.”
Nancy had just been powdering her nose when Val stepped in, and a nice nose it was too, he noted. She tossed the powder puff on the dresser and stretched slender arms over her head, yawning luxuriously like a lazy cat.
“Nonsense,” she said cheerfully. “I’m just getting warmed up. You must stay here and get the rest and we’ll run on.”
Norah Beamish charged to her feet like a formidable battle cruiser getting under way.
“Leave me here?” she snorted. “My great aunt’s transformation you will! Do I look like an old grandma who needs to be parked in the corner? The idea! I won’t have it! Where’re those bags, Nancy? Get packed, young man! We’ll be ready!”
Though Nancy had disavowed fatigue, when the wide-winged monoplane swept off the lighted landing field with a roaring rush, climbed high, and swiftly dropped the blazing panorama of lights that were New York back over the horizon, she promptly closed her eyes.
Norah Beamish sat behind her with a defiant tilt to her chin. When Val looked at her he received a visible sniff. Plainly Norah held him responsible for the suggestion that she be left behind to take her ease.
Val grinned, and then glanced across the aisle at the smooth curve of Nancy’s throat. Her eyelids lifted and she smiled lazily at him, and then they closed and she seemed to doze.
What a girl, Val thought. Nerves like steel, inexhaustible energy, ready to tackle anything. She had come through an ordeal that would have reduced most women to nervous hysteria. And now, knowing that they were pitting their wits against Carl Zaken, the dreaded Black Doctor, she was dozing as peacefully as an untroubled child.
He felt a slight tightening of his throat as he remembered again that heart-stopping moment when death had grazed her wrist. And hard on the heels of that Val felt a cold chill as he wondered what lay ahead for her before this business was done.
The Black Doctor had not earned his reputation without cause; and somewhere at this very moment he was moving craftily through the mystifying web he was spinning about them.
CHAPTER SIX
MYSTERY AT OAKRIDGE MANOR
By fast passenger plane the service from New York to Washington is a matter of less than two hours air time. Considerably less. And if a long-distance telephone call has been made from the New York airport, resulting in a speedy automobile waiting at the Washington airport, the time elapsed from Central Park to upper Pennsylvania Avenue is phenomenally low.
It lacked five minutes to midnight when Val, Nancy Fraser, and Nora Beamish stepped into that sedan and were gruffly greeted by the heavy-set, saturine man behind the wheel. It was Gregg himself, as unknown and overlooked by the world as were the actions of that subtle force which he controlled.
“You people are playing hob with my sleep!” Gregg snarled as he sent the car through the gears with a rush and they whirled off the air field. “One would think I had nothing to do but stay up nights and nurse a lot of agents joyriding around the world. Let’s have the straight of all this. I couldn’t make heads or tails of your gabble over long distance a while ago, Easton.”
That was Gregg’s way, and no one who took his orders paid any attention to it for very long. Behind it Gregg was fanatically on the job, as witness his presence here tonight, when he could have remained in bed and sent any of a score of men in his place. His presence too, was testimony of the importance he placed on the curt reference to the Black Doctor that Val had made over long distance.
Val sketched what had happened as they rolled swiftly toward the heart of the city, with the slim white-lighted shaft of the Washington Monument spearing the heavens to their left, and the flood-lighted dome of the Capitol ballooning toward the sky off to their right.
Gregg sucked a cigar and listened closely, grunting to himself now and then. At the end he blew his horn viciously at another car that seemed about to pass in front of them, flicked cigar ash out the car window, and spoke.
“Carl Zaken, eh? I’d give my liver to get him. He’s caused me trouble before. Get this—there’ll be hell and furies over this business. Two English citizens murdered, one on a ship flying the United States flag, and the other in New York. We can’t pretend to know much about it or the fact that we’ve been watching one of their men will be known. Can’t have that. If they catch on we’re suspicions of this chap who called himself Galbraith, they’ll start hunting for the source of our information. It’ll be embarrassing. Blast it!”
“What was Galbraith after?” Val asked bluntly.
“Don’t know,” Gregg said equally bluntly. “We got a tip that something unusual was in the air, and a man was being sent over here sub rosa empowered to spend as high as a million pounds for something. That’s a hell of a lot of money, if you’ll excuse my English, ladies.”
“Hmmmph!” Norah snapped from the back seat beside Nancy. “I can do better than that, Jim Gregg, as you well know. Go right ahead.”
Val grinned in the darkness, remembering that Nancy had said Norah Beamish had once been Gregg’s private secretary.
“Huh? Er—all right,” said Gregg, thrown off his stride for a moment. “As I was saying, I cabled Miss Fraser to pick this man up and see what he did. And all this other has broken out of a clear sky. It’s hard to tell what to make of it.”
“I’d do a lot for a million pounds,” Norah observed acidly. “Doubtless this Zaken would do the same. Has that occurred to you?”
“Galbraith didn’t have a million pounds on him!” Gregg snapped. “He was only empowered to offer it.”
“If you were to offer me a million pounds—” Nor
ah said, undaunted.
“I wouldn’t,” Gregg growled. “But I’ll offer you a suggestion. Let Easton give me his views on the matter.”
“Well, I like that!” Norah commented indignantly. “Ouch, Nancy, stop poking me with your elbow.”
The silence was thick for a moment as Gregg restrained himself with an effort. “Norah Beamish,” he said ominously, “pipe down.”
“Oh, all, right,” Norah said sulkily.
* * *
—
A match flare lighted Val’s red face as he held the flame to a cigarette. “Zaken is after that money,” he stated, tossing the match out the window. “If it’s worth that to someone else, it’s worth it to him. He can cash in on it.”
“If he gets it you’re all fired,” Gregg said calmly. “This thing is getting out of hand. I want Zaken in custody before he gets a chance to do any more harm, and I want to know what Galbraith was after over here. Those two murders will go unsolved until we have all that. There’ll be complications. You say you haven’t the slightest idea what happened to Zaken?”
“He vanished out of the room,” Val said slowly. “His man had the room directly above that. By the time I could do anything it was too late. Both were gone.”
Val paused and looked out of the window.
“Yes?” Gregg urged.
“I don’t know what Zaken was after in Galbraith’s room,” Val admitted, looking at him. “Or why he killed Galbraith. But I’ve got a good hunch that wherever Galbraith was heading for, we can expect Zaken to appear, sooner or later. He gained no money immediately by killing Galbraith. And, from everything I’ve ever heard about the fellow, he never kills unless there’s a good reason for it.”
“Where does that get you?” Gregg countered impatiently.
“I know where Galbraith was going.”
“Ahhhh—you do?” Gregg suddenly chuckled and laid an approving hand on Val’s arm. “I knew you wouldn’t let them run you out on the end of a limb and saw it off. Now, let’s have the rest of it.”
Val remembered Norah Beamish sitting quietly in the back seat and letting him talk. “This isn’t really my case,” he reminded. “Miss Fraser may like to handle it her own way.”
“Ridiculous!” Nancy jeered. “The thing had gotten out of my hands. Where would I be if you hadn’t barged into Galbraith’s room just in time? I’m helping you now, and bother all the modesty.”
“She’s right. Let’s have it,” Gregg agreed.
“I don’t know where this Ramey comes in, with his dodging around New York, or what to think of the couple he talked to,” Val admitted. “But the next move seems to be at Oakridge Manor. I came down here tonight as quick as possible to do that. If Zaken shows up there we’ll collar him and get the truth.”
“Why all the rush, if you’re going out there tomorrow?” Gregg queried irritably. “You could have let me sleep.”
“Going out tonight,” Val told him. “It’s only about an hour’s drive. We’ll stage an auto breakdown and go up to the house in search of a telephone. Or I’ll say that Galbraith was found dead in New York with that address in his pocket, and pass as a newspaperman asking for information. And in the morning you can post men around the place, working with the information I get tonight.”
Gregg considered. “Good enough,” he decided. “But don’t mention Galbraith. Let them expect him. Just look around the place and play dumb. It ought to work. They’ll know nothing about what happened in New York tonight, of course.”
They had traversed the long length of Pennsylvania Avenue as they talked. Gregg turned in to the curb at Fourteenth and the Avenue, opened the door and stepped out.
“You might as well take this car,” he said. “I’ll taxi home and get some sleep. I’ll take you with me, Norah. You’re probably tired out.”
“You will not, Jim Gregg,” Norah said defiantly. “Don’t think because you O.K. my pay check you can order me around all the time. I’m going out there with Nancy. If there’re any car breakdowns and shenanigans I’ll fit right into the picture as the helpless mother—what are you laughing at?”
“At the idea of anyone thinking of you as helpless!” Gregg choked. “God, help the people at the Manor! They don’t know what’s landing on their doorstep. And I warn you, Norah, if you bungle anything you’ll come back in the office and take dictation. Good night.” And Gregg departed hastily, still shaking with laughter.
“The old hyena!” Norah said heatedly, glaring out the window. “I’ll make him sweat for that.”
* * *
—
Hartsville was a small suburban town south of Washington, some thirty minutes of fast driving. Houses were dark and wanly lighted streets deserted. But a gas station and a drugstore were still open for business. In the drugstore Val asked casually as he bought a package of cigarettes: “Know of a place around here called Oakridge Manor?”
“Sure,” was the prompt reply. “That’s the old Mason place out on the river road. Fellow by the name of Long bought it a few years back and tacked that name on it.”
“What’s he like?”
“Don’t see much of him,” said the druggist as he rang up the sale. “Queer sort of man, I hear. Don’t welcome visitors. And when people want to be let alone around here, folks most generally let ’em alone.”
“How do you get there?”
“Six miles out on the highway, and you turn to the left. It’s about three miles down the river road, I reckon. Kind of lonesome country back in there, although the road is used a heap. Long’s land backs up clear to the Potomac. You’ll see a sign over his gate.”
Val thanked the man and went back to the car. As soon as they got away from the little village it became apparent that the druggist had not been wrong when he had described the country as lonesome.
Mist was rising off the river, swirling across the stabbing headlight beams in ghostly streamers. The damp smell of the river bottoms off to the left of the road poured in through the car windows. Great oaks and poplars grew alongside the road, and they passed many stretches of scrub-pine woodland. Now and then a small house was visible behind a whitewashed picket fence, but for the most part the country seemed deserted.
Norah Beamish said flatly: “I don’t like this country. It gives me the creeps. I didn’t know you could get this wild so close to Washington.”
“You should have stayed in the city and gone to sleep,” said Val.
It was the wrong thing to say. “Young man, I know my business!” Norah crushed him. “I may have the creeps, but I’m as good as any man we’ll find in this section. Nancy, give me a cigarette.”
A match flared; and Norah Beamish had taken perhaps half a dozen puffs from her cigarette when a stout wire fence on the left of the road suddenly gave way to massive stone gate posts with a wooden arch between them. A lettered sign hanging from the arch said: OAKRIDGE MANOR.
Val cut the ignition and brought the car to a stop at the side of the road.
“Here we are,” he said. In the sudden silence which wrapped them his voice sounded with startling clarity.
Nancy chuckled softly. “Broken down and everything. And where is the house?”
The fog was thicker, if anything, rolling its damp breath through the open car window at Val’s side, swirling through the yellow glare of the headlights like endless tenuous tentacles. The distant boom of frogs pulsed dismally on the night. It was a lonely, deserted spot.
Norah Beamish said with conviction: “Anyone who would park himself out in a place like this for very long must be a trifle addled. If anybody had told me this morning on the ship that I’d be here tonight, I’d have hooted them down.”
Nevertheless she followed Nancy with alacrity when Val stepped out and opened the rear door.
“You can wait in the car,” Va
l told her.
“Young man,” Norah answered majestically, “if Jim Gregg can’t tell me what to do, it’s useless for you to try. I came here to play a helpless old mother and I’m going to hobble up to that house and play her. Save your breath.”
“Hobble on,” Val surrendered. “Let’s go. I can’t see the house, but it must be back there somewhere.”
“Are you taking a gun?” Nancy questioned.
“Hardly need one,” Val assured her. “After all, we can’t possibly be suspected. And with—er—a helpless mother along, we’ll fit the part perfectly.”
“Nancy shan’t stir one step from this car without a gun in the party,” Norah said firmly. “She’s a helpless girl—and I don’t like the looks of this place. It gives me the creeps.”
“A gun it’ll be then,” Val agreed cheerfully. He leaned in the car, pulled his bag out from their luggage, and slipped his automatic in his pocket. On second thought he added the flashlight he always carried somewhere in his effects.
* * *
—
They walked back to the gate and headed along the driveway into the fog. The hoarse booming of the frogs gradually grew louder, and by that Val knew they were approaching the river. Huge old trees lined the driveway, stretching heavy branches out over their heads. Once the fog parted briefly and he caught sight of a gibbous moon hanging high in the sky. But for the most part they walked blindly in the mist, which blotted and enfeebled the beam of his flashlight.
And the walk seemed endless.
“I don’t believe there’s a house around here,” Norah panted finally. And then said something not entirely ladylike as her heel turned on a stone and she lurched against Val. “Drat it!” she grumbled. “I should have put on hunting boots!”
Val himself was beginning to wonder how much farther they would have to walk. This estate of Oakridge Manor seemed to be endless. The drive made several turns, seeming to run almost in the shape of a sprawling “S.” He judged the house was invisible from the road. And then without warning a dark automobile appeared before them; and beyond it the lighted windows of a large house emitted a sickly glow through the mist.
The Big Book of Espionage Page 95