CHAPTER VII.--A KEY WITH A BROKEN STEM.

The lights were burning low in a bachelor flat on a noisy street corner in the city of San Francisco, and a man of perhaps thirty lay on a couch with his eyes closed. There were in this sitting room, which faced one of the noisy streets, a grand piano, a costly music cabinet, a walnut bookcase filled with expensively bound volumes, numerous lazy chairs of leather, and the rug on the polished floor was rich and soft. The occupant of the flat evidently enjoyed luxurious things and had the money to pay for them.

When a clock in a distant steeple struck midnight there came a knock at the locked door in the main corridor which connected with the private hallway on which the flat opened. A Japanese servant, small, obsequious, keen-eyed, opened the door, after the hesitation of a moment, and peeked out. He would have closed it again instantly, seeing a stranger there, only Ned Nestor, who had anticipated some action of the kind, thrust a shoe into the opening, and, reaching in, unfastened the chain.

"I wish to see Mr. Albert Lemon," he said.

The Jap tried to force the door back and lock it, but was unsuccessful.

"No savvy!" he cried, as Ned brushed past him and stood in the private hall.

Ned paid no further attention to him, but entered the sitting room and at once advanced to the couch where the man lay. The figure on the couch did not move, but the Jap forced himself in the boy's way with his cry of "no savvy!"

"Opium?" Ned asked, pointing down to the man.

"No savvy!"

"Hit the pipe?" he asked, putting the question in a new way.

"No savvy! No savvy!"

"Dope, then?" Ned went on. "Tell me if this man has been doping himself into unconsciousness. Dope, eh?"

Ned lifted his voice, half hoping that the man on the couch would show some signs of life, but there was no movement of the eyelids.

"No savvy!" grunted the Jap.

Ned took the servant by his shoulders, pushed him gently out of the room, and closed and locked the door, the key being in the lock on the inside.

"No savvy! No savvy!"

The words came through the thin panel of the door in quick succession for a minute and then silence. Again Ned advanced to the side of the couch and looked down upon the semi-unconscious man.

It was clear to the boy that the fellow sensed what was taking place, but was too well satisfied with the drugged condition in which he lay to disturb his poise of mind by taking note of anything whatever. The figure of the fellow was dressed in expensive clothes of latest cut, but they were soiled, and even torn in places.

The disreputable condition of the garments reminded Ned of a suit in which he had once been hauled through a briar patch and pulled into a pond at the hands, or horns, rather, of a village cow, assisted by a rope. His clothes, it is true, had not been expensive ones at the time of the occurrence, but the looks of the clothes the drugged man wore reminded him of the damage his cheaper ones had sustained.

The face of the man on the couch was deadly pale, with the drawn look about the skin which comes of much familiarity with the drug made of the poppy. It was still an attractive face, even in its degradation, and the forehead was that of a capable man.

Ned drew a chair to the side of the couch and sat down. Even if he should at that time succeed in attracting the attention of the man, the fellow was in no condition to answer the important questions he was there to ask.

Presently the Jap, or some one else, came and rapped lightly on the door, and Ned opened it a trifle and looked out.

"No savvy!" cried the Jap, repeating the words like a parrot, standing in the hall with many signs of fright on his yellow face.

"All right!" Ned said, shutting the door in his face, "you don't have to."

"I can't blame him for thinking this a cheeky invasion," Ned smiled, as he returned to his chair at the side of the couch. "It isn't exactly the thing to walk into a man's private room in this manner."

Ned had decided to sit by the side of the half conscious man until he returned to his full mentality. Questions now might produce only pipe dreams, for the imagination is rather too active under such circumstances.

Five days before Ned had left the boys in a cup on the western slope of the Rocky Mountains, not far from the summit, after explaining to them that he was going to the city to investigate a clue connected with the murder of the man who had been found in the cavern. Leaving the aeroplane safely hidden at Missoula, he had traveled by rail to San Francisco.

In his handbag on this trip were two seemingly unimportant articles--a piece of tape cut from the inner side of the collar of the dead man's coat, and a small, odd-shaped key with the stem broken off so that it was only about an inch in length. The key had been the only article found in the dead man's pockets. The strip of tape bore the name of a San Francisco tailor.

The directory had assisted him in finding the tailor, and the tailor had informed him that the coat had been made for one Albert Lemon, whose address he gave. So here he was, in Lemon's apartment, seeking information concerning the dead man, while Lemon, supposedly Lemon, lay in an opium daze on the couch.

But Ned's time, waiting for the man to come back to consciousness, was not all wasted. Moving carefully about the room, he found that the broken key fitted a writing desk which stood between two windows. The lock which it fitted, however, was not in good condition, for the bolt had been pried back, damaging the polished edge of the casing which held the socket. The desk contained nothing of importance, and Ned left it as he found it.

Sitting there in the soft light of the room, he did not know whether the man on the couch was Albert Lemon or whether the man who had died in the cavern was Albert Lemon. He believed, however, that the outlaws he had encountered in the mountains, had murdered the man, and felt that the surest way to trace the crime to them was to find out why the man had joined them--why he was there in the tunnel back of the cupboard. This would be likely to bring out a motive for the deed.

He did not, of course, know whether the dead man had stood as an enemy to the outlaws, or whether he had stood as a friend. But that could make no difference with the quest he was on. He believed that the outlaws were the men he had been instructed to hunt down, and knew that proof could be obtained only by an intimate knowledge of their associations, their ways, their motives. The friends of the dead man he thought, would know something about them, perhaps be able to place them in the circle in which they lived when not in the hills.

In work of this kind it is the first task of an investigator to "place" the man he is pursuing. The burglar is as good as taken when he is traced back to those he associates with in his hours of leisure. In the absence of a clue pointing to a person, the investigator busies himself in finding a motive. Ned believed that he now had the personal clue. The motive would place the proof in his hands.

So his Secret Service work for the government was leading him into the investigation of a murder mystery. He smiled as he held up the key and wondered if the facts when discovered would bear out the suspicions in his mind. Again he asked himself the question:

"Is this Albert Lemon, or was the dead man Albert Lemon?"

After a long time the man on the couch opened his eyes and looked about the room. His glance rested for an instant on the figure in the chair at his side, but the fact of its being there did not appear to surprise him in the least.

"Jap!" he called faintly.

There was a sound at the door, but it was still locked, and the servant was unable to obey the summons.

"Bring me a pipe!" were the next words.

The Jap clamored at the door, but did not gain admission. The racket seemed to disturb the man not at all.

"I think," Ned said, "that you have had all the dope you need to-night. Besides, I want you to answer a few questions."

"Perhaps I have," the man said, "but, supposing that to be the case, where do you come in? You are a new one on me, and I hope you won't flop out of a window or go up through the roof, as some of the others have done. I want to have congenial company to-night. Who are you?"

"Ned Nestor," was the quiet reply.

"So," said the man on the couch. "I've heard of you--read about you and the Canal Zone in the newspapers. But you're only a kid. What about that?"

"I can't help being young," laughed Ned. "Anyway, that is a fault I'll soon get over. We all have it at first."

"And get over it too quickly," said the other, with a sigh. "Well, what do you want here?"

"Are you Albert Lemon?" asked Ned abruptly.

"Yes," was the reply, "I'm Albert Lemon. What about it?"

The man was gaining mental strength every moment now, and seemed to sense the strange situation.

"Stiles is your tailor?" the boy went on.

"Look here," said the other, rising to a sitting position and passing a shaking hand across his brow, as if to brush away the fancies of the poppy, "when you convince me that you have a laudable interest in my personal affairs I'll be glad to answer your questions."

Ned took the strip of tape from his pocket and held it out to the man on the couch.

"Do you recognize that?" he asked.

Lemon nodded coolly, but a look of wonder and alarm was growing in his bloodshot eyes, and his jaw dropped a trifle.

"I still lack the proof of laudable interest," he said, with a twisting of the face intended for a smile.

"Answer the question," Ned replied, "and I'll inform you of my interest in this article--and in you."

"Yes, I recognize it as the private mark of Stiles, my tailor," Lemon answered, in a moment. "Where did you get it? If you insist on asking personal questions I must insist on the right to do the same thing."

"I cut this private mark," Ned said, "from the collar of a coat found on the back of a dead man in Montana, somewhere near the main divide of the Rocky Mountains. Do you know how it came there?"

"Yes and no," was the reply.

"Kindly answer the affirmative proposition first," Ned said, with a smile.

"Well," said the other, "about three months ago an old college friend of mine, one Felix Emory, came to me from Boston. He was in bad with his people, and was out of money. I took him in here and tried to brace him up. I couldn't do it. His moral stamina was gone."

Lemon paused a moment, and, with a deprecatory smile, pointed to an opium pipe which lay on the rug near the couch.

"I understand," Ned said.

"I fed him, and clothed him, and introduced him at the club, and gave him every chance in the world to get a brace, but he fought me off. All he cared for was a pipe and a pill and a place to sleep it off."

"And so you gave him up as a bad proposition?" asked Ned.

"Not exactly. He wanted to go to the mountains on a hunting trip. Well, I thought it would benefit his health, so I rigged up an outfit for his use and let him go. You say the man was dead?"

"Quite dead," Ned replied.

"Too much poppy, I presume?" Lemon asked with an ashamed smile.

"Too much steel," Ned answered, sharply.

Lemon stared at the boy for an instant, his eyes more anxious than ever, and arose shakingly to his feet.

"Do you mean that he was murdered?" he asked.

Ned nodded.

"Where?" was the next question.

"I found the body in a cavern on the western slope of the Rockies," was the reply. "He had been dead only a few hours."

Albert Lemon maintained a thoughtful silence for a time, during which Ned eyed his changing expression keenly.

"And what do you wish me to do about it?" he then asked.

"A crime has been committed," Ned replied, "and it seems to me that you ought to do all in your power to assist in bringing the criminal to punishment."

"Granted, sir. Tell me what to do."

"First, tell me about the men your friend went away with."

"That brings me to the negative proposition," the other answered. "I have told you how Felix came by my coat, but I can't tell you whether the man the coat was found on was Felix. You must see that for yourself. He might have given the garment away, or he might have sold it in the city to get money for opium. In short, the coat might have been on the body of a man I never saw."

"Then you can't tell me who Emory went away with?" asked Ned.

"Certainly not," was the reply. "I don't know whether he went away at all or not."

This was disappointing, but Ned had one more lever with which the man's indifference might be lifted, he thought. Before speaking again Lemon arose and turned the key in the lock of the door, against which the servant was still pounding. The Jap entered and stood by the door, looking intently at Ned.

"When you gave him the suit of clothes he went away in," the boy went on, shifting his position so that both men would be under his eyes, "what articles, if any, remained in the pockets?"

"Not a thing," was the reply. "I looked out for that."

"Then anything discovered in the pockets of the dead man," Ned said, taking the key from his pocket and toying carelessly with it, "must have belonged to him?"

Ned saw Lemon give a quick start at sight of the key. The Jap advanced a step as if to get a closer view of it. Then both men turned their eyes for an instant to the broken lock of the writing desk. Ned had gained his point. The men recognized the key.

"Where is the body you speak of?" Lemon asked, presently.

"Buried near the cavern in the mountains," was the reply.

"Perhaps you can give me a description of the body," Lemon said. "I might be able to say, then, whether the man was Felix."

"Look in the mirror," Ned replied, "and you will see there a fairly good representation of the dead man. About the same in height, in size, and, yes, in feature."

"Then it must have been Felix," the other said. "His remarkable resemblance to myself has often been remarked. Poor fellow! I'm sorry that his end should come in so ghastly a form."

There was a short silence, during which Lemon's eyes flitted from the key in Ned's fingers to the writing desk.

"I said a moment ago," he observed then, "that I searched the pockets of the clothes before I gave them to him, or words to that effect. I remember now that I ordered Jap to do it. Did you obey orders?" he asked, turning to the servant.

Ned saw the Jap give a quick start, then regain control of himself. Lemon, too, looked crestfallen for a moment, then addressed the Jap in another tongue.

"I was talking in English," he said, "and forgot for the moment that he would not understand me."

There followed a short conversation between the two, and then Lemon announced that the Jap had forgotten to look in the pockets of the clothes. Ned ignored the explanation and put the key in his pocket. He knew now that the Jap could understand English, and also that the key belonged to Albert Lemon, alive or dead.

Lemon arose and, going to a table, secured a tobacco pouch and a book of cigaret papers. As he rolled a cigaret Ned observed that the middle finger of his left hand carried, just below the nail, a blue spot, as if he had been using a typewriter since cleaning his hands. Ned noticed it particularly, as he himself used a double keyboard machine and usually smutted that finger on the ribbon when he rolled the platen.

"Well," Lemon said, "I'll have to ask you to excuse me now. I've been off on a long country tramp. You see how mussed up I am. I think I crawled through briar patches and wire fences and fell into cow ponds."

Ned turned away without a word, with plenty of food for thought in his mind.