Part 7
The plan of the two was quickly formed. In their clumsy way they concluded it would be best for all concerned if the revolver should be placed in the girl’s hand to indicate suicide. Martin placed it there, while Marie laboured with the hysterical mother, trying to instil in her mind, in which the entire terrible scene was a whirl, the idea that Elvira had, in fact, committed suicide.
As for the confession:
“I feel I was to blame in a way, sir,” concluded Martin, wiping his eyes. “After all I would have been a jailbird anyway if she hadn’t saved me, most like. I thought I could protect her, too, sir, by confessing. I supposed if I said I committed the murder that would settle it.”
Lanagan glanced at his watch. It was half-past one.
“There’s one more move yet, Chief,” he said, “and I go to press in thirty minutes.”
In a moment or two they had all reached the Hemingway home again, surprised to find it brilliantly lighted. Servants were running about frantically. An excited voice was at the telephone as the quartet walked through the door. It was the butler.
“Hurry! Hurry!” he was crying. “Hemingway’s! Pacific Avenue! For God’s sake hurry!”
“What is it?” demanded Lanagan.
“Carbolic, I think,” replied the butler. “She escaped from the nurse and got to the bathroom. She had been raving for an hour entirely out of her head crying to Elvira to forgive her--that she--” he stopped suddenly, his lips coming together in a taut line. “Another loyal family retainer,” thought Lanagan as he and the chief exchanged quick glances. “Only this one can keep his secret for all of me.”
They hurried to render first aid, but one look convinced the reporter and the policeman, used to deaths in violent form, that the troubled and frightfully burdened mother’s soul had gone to a higher court for judgment.
Lanagan raced back downstairs for the telephone. It was five minutes to two. By the accident of being on the ground he would have at least that tremendous exclusive of the mother’s suicide.
And that--good story as it was--was all the _Enquirer_ printed, for it was all that I finally got from Lanagan just before the clock struck two.
Leslie, standing by the telephone, said, tentatively and curiously, when the receiver was hung up:
“What about the real story? Saving that for to-morrow?”
“No, Chief,” drawled Lanagan, full brother in the Fourth Estate. “No, Chief, that’s _all_ the story. She’s dead, isn’t she? They have had about enough trouble, this family.”
V
THE AMBASSADOR’S STICK-PIN
V
THE AMBASSADOR’S STICK-PIN
The manner of Lanagan’s acquiring the Ambassador’s stick-pin is nearly, if not quite, as interesting as the matter of his losing it. His possession of the pin was simple enough when one understands the chromatic ways of a police reporter’s daily routine: and Jack Lanagan was the “star” police reporter of the city. The surrender of the pin is as easily understood, when one comes to learn something of the devious paths the police reporter is sometimes called on to follow, and the curious and startling situations into which they sometimes lead.
Thus, when Lanagan, drifting indolently with the matinée throngs down Powell street, stopped to hold confab with “Kid” Monahan, that now retired King of the pickpockets, it was natural enough that he should remark on a stick-pin of odd design that replaced the accustomed three-carat in the “King’s” silk cravat. Gentry who lived by their wits and other people’s wealth, affect stones of much size. Some policemen wear them, too.
It was natural enough, that the “King,” proverbially generous, noticing the glance of interest, should say, “Here, wear it,” and with a motion as quick and as deft as a hummingbird’s flit, transfer the pin from his tie to that of the newspaper man.
It was then for Lanagan to observe, dryly:
“Your title is certainly earned,” as he extracted the pin and offered it back. “But this being a pin of very unusual design, I am afraid I might not be able to wear it as gracefully while awaiting the possible appearance of its owner, as can you. Further, that little exhibition of refined ‘touch’ you just gave, excites some grave suspicions that you are back at your old tricks.”
The one-time King knew Lanagan’s outspoken ways. Further he knew perfectly that, while the police accepted his declaration, since his last time out, of fealty to the law, he was a two-timer. The police were using him, or thought they were, as a “stool;” Lanagan did not think so.
“If it hadn’t been for what Lombroso classified as the ‘criminal lobe,’ I might really believe you had reformed,” Lanagan had told him once. “But in view of the lynx-like quality of your ears to be all top and no bottom, I am afraid the stamp of an extremely low moral resistance is indelibly upon you.”
And Monahan had only grinned then as now, in his ingenuous way, uncomprehending, and exalted Lanagan a notch or two. For some minor favour in times gone past, Lanagan had earned and held steadfastly the King’s unswerving loyalty; not an insignificant asset for a police reporter.
“Jack,” said the King in pained sincerity, “I’m not passing you no chance. Got it down at Small’s. Was shoved for a finner and I took it out of curiosity. Funny sticker, ain’t it? If anybody does make you though, why of course, hand it over. I like my old spark better anyhow.”
Small, be it said, was probably the thriftiest and crookedest fence inside the county, with the headquarters men on the pawnbroker detail taking orders--and percentages--from him, as faithfully as they reported to their captain of detectives. With another of those flits, the King placed back in his own necktie his customary brilliant, taken from his vest pocket. Before Lanagan could offer the other pin back the second time, his companion had left. Lanagan examined the pin critically.
It was a “funny sticker,” round, of gold and the size and thickness of a quarter. The back was plain, fitted with a patent clasp. On the face was a delicate relief of two eagles, heads out. An eye, a ruby for an iris, was in the exact centre. Below the eye were two clasped hands and above, two crossed swords. Woven around the entire design was what he at first took to be a snake, but discovered, on closer scrutiny, to be a rope. It was a delicate and unusual product of the goldsmith’s art.
Lanagan puzzled over it for an hour and then concluded:
“Russian, from the eagles; emblem of a secret order, evidently, from the eye; the clasped hands to signify that an oath has been taken and the axe or the rope is the headsman, or the hangman, for a breach of faith. That sounds plausible. But what particular society does it represent?”
He placed it in his tie and was recalling what he had read about Russian secret societies, when he was bumped violently by a short, swarthy individual who had, unknown to him, been following. As Lanagan straightened up he caught a quick flash, as of a message of tacit understanding, in the other’s eyes, as he gazed straight at the pin. In another moment a black flat wallet, thin and oblong, had been slipped adroitly into his inside coat pocket; a word which sounded like “scoraya” had been whispered in his ear, and the singular stranger had departed to the street to jump aboard a passing car, and disappear toward the ferry.
Lanagan made it a rule to be surprised at nothing, to accept nothing as coincidence not proved so, and to ignore no trifles. He was interested; highly interested, and he wanted to know what “scoraya” meant. That there was a connection between the pin and the wallet was, to him, clear. Possibly “scoraya” might help him.
In Fogarty’s back room, hard by police headquarters, he found Petroff, Russian interpreter in the police courts.
“What does a word that sounds like ‘scoraya’ mean?” he asked.
“It means ‘hurry,’ ‘at once,’ or any such meaning. It is what you Americans say, ‘get a move on,’” said Petroff.
Sitting apart Lanagan unfastened the black sealskin wallet and drew out a single sheet of paper, encased in a protection of oiled skin. There were written on the paper in a bold, strong hand, an even dozen words; words that sent his breath whistling through his teeth. It was in English, plain, clear, and signed by a name that gave even the imperturbable Lanagan a mighty start.
“Undoubtedly,” mused Lanagan, “they either have a system believed infallible, or they are mighty reckless of State secrets--and they are not reckless. Therefore the system has slipped a cog, and I am the anointed bearer of the message of His Serene Majesty, Nicholas. I appear to be on the knees of the gods,” he went on, as he wandered the streets, perplexed. “It’s possible, barely possible, that I am tangled in some monumental hoax. But I don’t believe it. If I don’t miss my guess I will be giving the austere Mr. Sampson, damned of all men of my tribe, the biggest exclusive his sweat-shop paper has turned out in this generation. But--I need more coincidences. I am plainly stumped.”
He had stopped by Lotta’s Fountain where the traffic patrolman was endeavouring to untangle a jam of trucks and automobiles.
Out of the very air, as though in wierd solution to his perplexity, it came again:
“Scoraya!”
Lanagan wheeled to find the voice. He had thought he must turn directly upon the man. There was no one near him save the occupant of a limousine, two feet away. The passenger was apparently engrossed in the evening paper. The window, though, was open. Lanagan watched him covertly from the corner of his eye.
“Humph! This is getting interesting. Here am I, a live newspaper sprout, in the dead centre of a bustling and work-a-day American city, caught as sure as the sun shines, in the mysteries of a diplomatic maze between two great nations, and probably three, that is as twisted as a mediæval intrigue. At this moment, the whereabouts of little me and my message, are probably of as much importance as the comings and goings of the Czar, the Mikado, or the First Gentleman himself. But the next gay cat that tries any scoraying on me, will get the third degree right in Fogarty’s back room.”
The limousine, the traffic jam relieved, pulled slowly ahead, but Lanagan could have sworn that the benign gentleman within, just before it did, turned fully upon him with a scrutiny of deliberate coolness. It was a casual thing, such as might have happened to anyone; but it appeared to Lanagan that there was a look of secret understanding in the other’s eyes, as they dropped twice to the stick-pin and returned to Lanagan’s face, as though in inquiry. Lanagan took the number of the car, 89,776, and then returned to headquarters. He wanted to see from the police register to whom machine 89,776 belonged.
When he ran through the pages to the number, the ragtime air he was whistling--very incorrectly--quickened in tempo.
“89,776--owner--Boris Koshloff--2224 Pacific Avenue, San Francisco.”
“Aha! Either I am hearing scorayas in my mind, and either everybody that looks at me excites my suspicions, or else the Russian Mr. Koshloff is a link in the very plain chain that is stretching from me and my pin to His Majesty Nicholas, at St. Petersburg on one end, and the President in Washington at the other. Frankly, it looks preposterous that if Koshloff is on the job, he would use his own machine. Then again--what if that is the method chosen to point my path to me? If this message is to anyone in San Francisco, they must know by this time that it has gone astray. Barring my own coincidence in bungling into State secrets via ‘Kid’ Monahan’s touch, and his taste for the really distinctive in jewelry, it appears that everything is working out on a very remarkable and finished system. I shall pay Mr. Koshloff a visit. He has been too much of a figure of mystery in this city anyway.”
Boris Koshloff, a wealthy Russian portrait painter, had dropped into San Francisco with introductions, some months before. He had earned a high repute for the elegance of the soirées given at his house, and had figured in the public prints, moreover, in other ways. On one occasion, a burglar, found prowling within the Koshloff’s drawing room, had been shot and killed by Koshloff, who thereupon was lionised to a considerable extent by the neurotic and sentimental elements of his circle. He had figured again, when a household servant had fallen from his second story window, receiving frightful injuries. Although during his raving in delirium the servant had cried frequently “spare me! spare me!” and had led some cynical reporters on the hospital beat to suspect foul play, nothing was ever proved in face of Koshloff’s explanation that the servant fell in cleaning windows. After the man recovered sufficiently, he was removed by Koshloff to a private hospital, and there he passed from the scope of the newsgatherers and hence from public attention.
Now, it might be well to say here, and before the reader is too far carried away by the story, that the curious chronicles of the happenings about to be recorded must rest for all time, for their authentication, in five quarters: the Russian government, the American Department of State, Jack Lanagan, “King” Monahan, and myself.
It is not probable that either the Russian or American governments would affirm the truth of the facts recorded. As for the rest--the extraordinary series of complications following the receipts of the stick-pin, the use of such a device as the stick-pin, as the connecting link in a grave international crisis, the use of the personal courier rather than cipher-code--they must all be accepted on my word, the word of Lanagan, or the word of “King” Monahan, who first received the pin. To such as are unwilling to accept that proof, the story must be read solely as a bit of fiction.
Lanagan strolled back to the _Enquirer_. I had just finished several yards of real estate junk for the business office, and was as grouchy as the brother of the tribe always is, when assigned to do business office write-ups.
“Fine line for an able-bodied reporter,” said Lanagan cynically, looking over my shoulder. “Turn that rot in and come with me and be a real reporter. I’ll give you a story that will make the A. P. wires hum to the four corners of the earth--provided my hunch don’t go altogether wrong.”
He spoke to Sampson, telling him that there was a bare chance of something turning up on the Russo-Japanese situation, and asked for me to be detailed to accompany him.
“Good,” replied Sampson, “get after it. We haven’t broken a story on that yet. The eastern papers are having a lot of stuff on the Secretary of State, though. He has dropped out of sight; the A. P. is bringing in a story broken by the _Sun_, that his supposed sickness was the bunk, and that as a matter of fact he has been out of Washington for a week. Supposed to be in New York on some confab with the Russian Ambassador who is at the Waldorf-Astoria. The Ambassador denies any such conference. It’s a hot yarn. Try to turn up an end on it out here.”
Lanagan suggested supper and as we lingered over our coffee and cigars, he briefly outlined the situation. I read the astounding message and must confess that I was stirred to a very unprofessional pitch of excitement. Before taking a car for Pacific Avenue, we dropped in at police headquarters where Lanagan met Chief Leslie, that shrewd thief-taker, and they were in earnest talk for ten minutes. In his police reporting Lanagan had the superlative advantage of Leslie’s confidence. That famous chief had indeed as high a regard for Lanagan’s work as for that of his own men. Leslie stood many a “roast” from the opposition papers for his habit of programming with Lanagan, and for turning over his men to the service of the newspaper man more than once.
As we rode to our destination Lanagan instructed me to take a position, well concealed, opposite the Koshloff house, wait until midnight, and then if he did not appear, telephone to headquarters where Brady and Wilson, two of Leslie’s best men, would be in readiness with the police automobile. We were to force the house.
“For it’s just possible,” said Lanagan lightly, “that I can’t escape delivering my packet. If they once drop to me, it may be interesting. That ‘burglar’ shot by Koshloff takes on rather a new importance. Likewise that foreigner, who was all broken up in an accidental fall from Koshloff’s second story window. I rather look forward to a run in with this gentleman of mystery and his retinue of ‘scorayers.’ But don’t wait after midnight. Brady will have a search warrant on some ’phony charge or other, and you can tear right in.”
We parted company several blocks from the Koshloff mansion. It was nearing nine-thirty. I found a hiding-place almost directly opposite, slipped in, and in a few moments saw Lanagan walk briskly up the stairs of the Russian’s house. He was whistling a bit of ragtime; as usual off key. His insouciance cheered me. Frankly, I was nervous; a weakness I cannot seem to overcome. I have never failed Lanagan yet at a crisis, and I suppose, on results, am as brave as he. But in my own heart I know I am not. Possibly gifted with a little more imagination than he, I can see further; picture the slab at the morgue, the gang in the police reporter’s room chipping in for a floral piece while somebody tries to relieve the strain by saying something funny; Johnny O’Grady or Jim Bradley, or some of the others of the old guard delegated to the pleasant detail of carrying the news home; it was always the same. I always had that faculty, as Hamlet says, of thinking too precisely on the event.
The door opened to Lanagan’s ring, and he passed from my sight to be ushered along the main hall, down a flight of steps, through another long hall, carpeted richly, with niches here and there holding exquisite statuary, to a billiard-room panelled in richest mahogany. From the conduct of his guide it was apparent that he was expected. In the billiard-room two smooth-shaven, trim, keen-eyed men were playing a desultory game. Surmise was bulking large within Lanagan’s breast. He had seen that same type before. Secret service was stamped as indelibly upon them as his vocation is stamped upon the upper office man.
A light tattoo on a panelling, an answering tattoo, another staccato and the panel slid back and the odour of black cigars was heavy on the air as Lanagan stepped into a small compartment, the panel slipping noiselessly shut behind him as his guide disappeared. At a table were seated two men, facing him.
One of the two he recognised: Koshloff. But the other! Lanagan looked hard. There could be no mistake; those features had been looming from the front pages of the papers too frequently for any mistake. Lanagan stood without speaking, but before his mind’s eye was dancing the front page of to-morrow’s _Enquirer_. He would lay a seven column lead across that page that would carry around the world.
It was Koshloff who spoke.
“You have the packet? Yes? Would you present it?”
Then, in a low voice to the other, as Lanagan calmly placed the sealskin wallet upon the table, Koshloff murmured:
“Assuredly my superiors must know their business. But I cannot comprehend the disappearance of Carlos and the transfer of the pin and packet to the stranger. It must be in order, however. Our system has never failed.”
He turned a shrewd gaze upon Lanagan, studying him intently.
“When do you return?” he asked finally.
“Just as soon as I am permitted to,” replied Lanagan with perfect truth.
“Strange,” muttered Koshloff in the other’s ear. “Peculiar. It is the answer. We have no choice. It must be in order.”
Without more ado the packet was opened and Koshloff presented the slip in silence to his companion. That man, of massive, intellectual forehead and deep set, penetrating eyes, scanned it carefully and pondered long, Koshloff watching him with half closed but eager eyes.
“Tell your Imperial Master,” said the other, turning sharply upon Lanagan and speaking with clean incisiveness, “that you met the Secretary of State in person, and that the Secretary, speaking for his excellency the President, says, that the answer of the President is--yes.”
The Secretary of State, ten days disappeared from Washington, out here on the western fringe of the continent, pledging the attitude of the United States in the threatened Russo-Japanese conflict and not a line in any paper in the world to indicate the whereabouts of the Secretary, his business, or the definite attitude of the United States in the impending conflict!
It was the story of a newspaper man’s lifetime.
“Carry the verbal message, or transmit it to your relief,” instructed Koshloff. “Conditions may not make packets safe by the time you reach the Orient. You may go. You have funds? Your pin is safe?”
“I have,” said Lanagan, who, with two days to go to pay day, had about sixty-five cents. He indicated the pin with a gesture and turned on his heel for the panel, to be stopped by a sudden muffled uproar from the billiard-room, a sound of excited, shrill cries, of scuffling.
Neither the Secretary nor Koshloff moved a muscle; neither did Lanagan. He was thoroughly in possession of himself. Two panels swiftly and noiselessly slid open at the farther wall of the room, and two smooth-shaven, trim, keen-eyed men stepped into the room alertly and took their places beside the Secretary’s chair.
“Mr. Secretary travels with the entire secret service bureau,” Lanagan found time to comment to himself.
There came a tattoo on the panel from the billiard-room. The Secretary held up his hand for silence and motioned one of the secret service agents, who stepped noiselessly to the panel and listened. The tapping came again.
“Answer,” commanded the Secretary. “It is over, whatever it was.”
The panel slid open. Through the aperture came one of the billiard players, flashing a quick, steely glance upon Lanagan.
“Balked, by the eternal!” shot through Lanagan’s mind. “The owner of that pin has shown up. It’s now or never.” He stepped casually to the panel; it was a fine chance. Once through there, he could make a fight for the front door,--and the seven column exclusive in the _Enquirer_.
Directly before him, fairly filling the space of the panel, was the other billiard player. It was quick action. Lanagan shot out his right for the man’s jaw; but his arm got about half way. A grip like an iron clamp had him just above the elbow. He was whirled face about, a secret service man on either side.
As though nothing had happened, the man who had first entered through the panel door spoke:
“There is a person outside somewhat excited who wishes to speak to Mr. Koshloff. He said to say it was Carlos.”
Koshloff leaped for the doorway and in a moment more had dragged fairly by the hair of his head, a wild-eyed, dark-visaged person who, when he straightened up, perceived the pin in Lanagan’s tie and made a tigerish spring for him, a dirk gleaming in a half arc as he leaped. But the right fist of one of the secret agents met him en route, and the frenzied Carlos was disarmed. He staggered to his feet, striving vainly to get at Lanagan.
“Thief! Robber! Death to him! Death to him who dares rob the messenger of His Imperial Majesty, Nicholas!”
“The gentleman appears to be teething,” remarked Lanagan.
Koshloff pressed a button and two swart giants appeared. He indicated Carlos with a nod. “He wore the pin, but he has failed in his obligation. He must receive discipline.” The miserable wretch fell to his knees with upraised hands, supplicating.
“Ah, no, Sire! My wife! My babies! Ten minutes too late, or I would have had it back and this sneak thief’s life!”