Chapter 12

"Please hurry," she implored. "You may be too late."

She had risen again in spite of us and was out in the lower hall. We could hear a footstep on the stairs.

"There she goes, the woman who has been hiding up there, Madame--"

Clare cut the words short.

A woman had hastily descended the steps, evidently seeing her opportunity to escape while we were in the back of the house. She had reached the street door, which now was open, and the flaming arc light in front of the house shone brightly on her.

I looked, expecting to see our dark-haired, olive-skinned Marie. I stared in amazement. Instead, this woman was fair, her hair was flaxen, her figure more slim, even her features were different. She was a stranger. I could not recollect ever having seen her.

Again I strained my eyes, thinking it might be Betty Blackwell at last, but this woman bore no resemblance apparently to her. She looked older, more mature.

In my haste I noted that she had a bandage about her face, as if she had been injured recently, for there seemed to be blood on it where it had worked itself loose in her flight. She gave one glance at us, and quickened her pace at seeing us so close. The bandage, already loose, slipped off her face and fell to the floor. Still she did not seem other than a stranger to me, though I had a half-formed notion that I had seen that face somewhere before. She did not stop to pick the bandage up. She had gained the door and was down the front step on the sidewalk before we could stop her.

Taxicabs in droves seemed to have collected, like buzzards over a dead body. They were doing a thriving business carrying away those who sought to escape. Into one by which a man was waiting in the shadow the woman hurried. The man looked for all the world like Dr. Harris. An instant later the chauffeur was gone.

The policeman had the front door of Madame Margot's covered all right, so efficiently that he was neglecting everything else. From the basement now and then a scurrying figure catapulted itself out and was lost in the curious crowd that always collects at any time of day or night on a New York street when there is any excitement.

"It is of no use to expect to capture anyone now," exclaimed Craig, as we hurried back into the dope joint. "I hardly expected to do it. All I panted was to protect Miss Kendall. But we have the evidence against this joint that will close it for good."

He stooped and picked up the bandage.

"I think I'll keep that," he remarked thoughtfully. "I wonder what that blonde woman wore that for?"

"She MUST be up there," reiterated Clare, who had followed us. "I heard them talking, it seemed to me only the moment before I heard you in the hall."

The excitement seemed now to have the effect of quieting her unstrung nerves and carrying her through.

"Let us go upstairs," said Kennedy.

From room to room we hurried in the darkness, lighting the lights. They were all empty, yet each one gave its mute testimony to the character of its use and its former occupants. There were opium lay-outs with pipes, lamps, yen haucks, and other paraphernalia in some. In others had been cocaine snuffers. There seemed to be everything for drug users of every kind.

At last in a small room in front on the top floor we came upon a girl, half insensible from a drug. She was vainly trying to make herself presentable for the street, ramblingly talking to herself in the meantime.

Again my hopes rose that we had found either the mysterious Marie Margot or Betty Blackwell. A second glance caused us all to pause in surprise and disappointment.

It was the Titian-haired girl from the Montmartre office.

Miss Kendall, recovering from the effects of the drugs which she had been compelled to take in her heroic attempt to get at the dope joint, was endeavouring to quiet the girl from the Montmartre, who, now vaguely recollecting us, seemed to realize that something had gone wrong and was trembling and crying pitifully.

"What's the matter with her?" I asked.

"Chloral," replied Miss Kendall in a low voice aside. "I suppose she has had a wild night which she has followed by chloral to quiet her nerves, with little effect. Didn't you ever see them? They will go into a drug store in this part of the city where such things are sold, weak, shaky, nervous wrecks. The clerk will sell them the stuff and they will retire for a moment into the telephone booth. Sometimes they will come out looking as though they had never felt a moment's effect from their wild debauches. But there are other times when they are too weakened to get over it so quickly. That is her case, poor girl."

The soothing hand which she laid on the girl's throbbing head was quite in contrast with the manner in which I recalled her to have spoken of the girl when first we saw her at the Montmartre. She must have seen the look of surprise on my face.

"I can't condemn these girls too strongly when I see them themselves," she remarked. "It would be so easy for them to stop and lead a decent life, if they only would forget the white lights and the gay life that allures them. It is when they are so down and out that I long to give them a hand to help them up again and show them how foolish it is to make slaves of themselves."

"Call a cab, Walter," said Kennedy, who had been observing the girl closely. "There is nothing more that we can expect to accomplish here. Everybody has escaped by this time. But we must get this poor girl in a private hospital or sanitarium where she can recover."

Clare had disappeared. A moment later she returned from the room she had had downstairs with her hat on.

"I'm going with her," she announced simply.

"What--you, Miss Kendall?"

"Yes. If a girl ever needed a friend, it is this girl now. There is nothing I can do for the moment. I will take care of her in my apartment until she is herself again."

The girl seemed to half understand, and to be grateful to Clare. Kennedy watched her hovering over the drug victim without attempting to express the admiration which he felt.

Just as the cab was announced, he drew Miss Kendall aside. "You're a trump," he said frankly. "Most people would pass by on the other side from such as she is."

They talked for a moment as to the best place to go, then decided on a quiet little place uptown where convalescents were taken in.

"I think you can still be working on the case, if you care to do so," suggested Craig as Miss Kendall and her charge were leaving.

"How?" she asked.

"When you get her to this sanitarium, try to be with her as much as you can. I think if anyone can get anything out of her, you can. Remember it is more than this girl's rescue that is at stake. If she can be got to talk she may prove an important link toward piecing together the solution of the mystery of Betty Blackwell. She must know many of the inside secrets of the Montmartre," he added significantly.

They had gone, and Craig and I had started to go also when we came across a negro caretaker who seemed to have stuck by the place during all the excitement.

"Do you know that girl who just went out?" asked Craig.

"No, sah," she replied glibly.

"Look here," demanded Craig, facing her. "You know better than that. She has been here before, and you know it. I've a good mind to have you held for being in charge of this place. If I do, all the Marie Margots and Ike the Droppers can't get you out again."

The negress seemed to understand that this was no ordinary raid.

"Who is she?" demanded Craig.

"I dunno, sah. She come from next door."

"I know she did. She's the girl in the office of the Montmartre. Now, you know her. What is her name?"

The negress seemed to consider a moment, then quickly answered, "Dey always calls her Miss Sybil here, sah, Sybil Seymour, sah."

"Thank you. I knew you had some name for her. Come, Walter. This is over for the present. A raid without arrests, too! It will be all over town in half an hour. If we are going to do anything it must be done quickly."

We called on Carton and lost no time in having the men he could spare placed in watching the railroads and steamship lines to prevent if we could any of the gang from getting out of the city that way. It was a night of hard work with no results. I began to wonder whether they might not have escaped finally after all. There seemed to be no trace. Harris had disappeared, there was no clue to Marie Margot, no trace of the new blonde woman, not a syllable yet about Betty Blackwell.

XVI

THE SANITARIUM

"It seems as if the forces of Dorgan are demoralized," I remarked the afternoon after the raid on Margot's.

"We have them on the run--that's true," agreed Kennedy, "but there's plenty of fight in them, yet. We're not through, by any means."

Still, the lightning swiftness of Carton's attack had taken their breath away, temporarily, at least. Already he had started proceedings to disbar Kahn, as well as to prosecute him in the courts. According to the reports that came to us Murtha himself seemed dazed at the blow that had fallen. Some of our informants asserted that he was drinking heavily; others denied it. Whatever it was, however, Murtha was changed.

As for Dorgan, he was never much in the limelight anyhow and was less so now than ever. He preferred to work through others, while he himself kept in the background. He had never held any but a minor office, and that in the beginning of his career. Interviews and photographs he eschewed as if forbidden by his political religion. Since the discovery of the detectaphone in his suite at Gastron's he had had his rooms thoroughly overhauled, lest by any chance there might be another of the magic little instruments concealed in the very walls, and having satisfied himself that there was not, he instituted a watch of private detectives to prevent a repetition of the unfortunate incident.

Whoever it was who had obtained the Black Book was keeping very quiet about it, and I imagined that it was being held up as a sort of sword of Damocles, dangling over his head, until such time as its possessor chose to strike the final blow. Of course, we did not and could not know what was going on behind the scenes with the Silent Boss, what drama was being enacted between Dorgan and the Wall Street group, headed by Langhorne. Langhorne himself was inscrutable. I had heard that Dorgan had once in an unguarded moment expressed a derogatory opinion of the social leanings of Langhorne. But that was in the days before Dorgan had acquired a country place on Long Island and a taste for golf and expensive motors. Now, in his way, Dorgan was quite as fastidious as any of those he had once affected to despise. It amused Langhorne. But it had not furthered his ambitions of being taken into the inner circle of Dorgan's confidence. Hence, I inferred, this bitter internecine strife within the organization itself.

Whatever was brewing inside the organization, I felt that we should soon know, for this was the day on which Justice Pomeroy had announced he would sentence Dopey Jack.

It was a very different sort of crowd that overflowed the courtroom that morning from that which had so boldly flocked to the trial as if it were to make a Roman holiday of justice.

The very tone was different. There was a tense look on many a face, as if the owner were asking himself the question, "What are we coming to? If this can happen to Dopey Jack, what might not happen to me?"

Even the lawyers were changed. Kahn, as a result of the proceedings that Carton had instituted, had yielded the case to another, perhaps no better than himself, but wiser, after the fact. Instead of demanding anything, as a sort of prescriptive right, the new attorney actually adopted the unheard of measure of appealing to the clemency of the court. The shades of all the previous bosses and gangsters must have turned in disgust at the unwonted sight. But certain it was that no one could see the relaxation of a muscle on the face of Justice Pomeroy as the lawyer proceeded with his specious plea. He heard Carton, also, in the same impassive manner, as in a few brief and pointed sentences he ripped apart the sophistries of his opponent.

The spectators fairly held their breath as the prisoner now stood before the tribune of justice.

"Jack Rubano," he began impressively, "you have been convicted by twelve of your peers--so the law looks on them, although the fact is that any honest man is immeasurably your superior. Even before that, Rubano, the District Attorney having looked into all the facts surrounding this charge had come to the conclusion that the evidence was sufficiently strong to convict you. You were convicted in his mind. In my mind, of course, there could be no prejudgment. But now that a jury has found you guilty, I may say that you have a record that is more than enough to disgrace a man twice your age. True, you have never been punished. But this is not the time or place for me to criticise my colleagues on the bench for letting you off. Others of your associates have served terms in prison for things no whit worse than you have done repeatedly. I shall be glad to meet some of them at this bar in the near future."

The justice paused, then extended a long, lean accusatory finger out from the rostrum at the gangster. "Rubano," he concluded, "your crime is particularly heinous--debauching the very foundations of the state--the elections. I sentence you to not less than three nor more than five years in State's prison, at hard labour."

There was an audible gasp in the big courtroom, as the judge snapped shut his square jaw, bull-dog fashion. It was as though he had snapped the backbone of the System.

The prisoner was hurried from the room before there was a chance for a demonstration. It was unnecessary, however. It seemed as if all the jaunty bravado of the underworld was gone out of it. Slowly the crowd filed out, whispering.

Dopey Jack, Murtha's right-hand man, had been sentenced to State's prison!

Outside the courtroom Carton received an ovation. As quickly as he could, he escaped from the newspapermen, and Kennedy was the first to grasp his hand.

But the most pleasing congratulation came from Miss Ashton, who had dropped in with two or three friends from the Reform League.

"I'm so glad, Mr. Carton--for your sake," she added very prettily, with just a trace of heightened colour in her cheeks and eyes that showed her sincere pleasure at the outcome of the case. "And then, too," she went on, "it may have some bearing on the case of that girl who has disappeared. So far, no one seems to have been able to find a trace of her. She just seems to have dropped out as if she had been spirited away."

"We must find her," returned Carton, thanking her for her good wishes in a manner which he had done to none of the rest of us, and in fact forgetful now that any of us were about. "I shall start right in on Dopey Jack to see if I can get anything out of him, although I don't think he is one that will prove a squealer in any way. I hope we can have something to report soon."

Others were pressing around him and Miss Ashton moved away, although I thought his handshakes were perhaps a little less cordial after she had gone.

I turned once to survey the crowd and down the gallery, near a pillar I saw Langhorne, his eyes turned fixedly in our direction, and a deep scowl on his face. Evidently he had no relish for the proceedings, at least that part in which Carton had just figured, whatever his personal feelings may have been toward the culprit. A moment later he saw me looking at him, turned abruptly and walked toward the stone staircase that led down to the main floor. But I could not get that scowl out of my mind as I watched his tall, erect figure stalking away.

Neither Murtha, nor, of course, Dorgan, were there, though I knew that they had many emissaries present who would report to them every detail of what had happened, down perhaps to the congratulations of Miss Ashton. Somehow, I could not get out of my head a feeling that she would afford them, in some way, a point of attack on Carton and that the unscrupulous organization would stop at nothing in order to save its own life and ruin his.

Carton had not only his work at the District Attorney's office to direct, but some things to clear up at the Reform League headquarters, as well as a campaign speech to make.

"I'm afraid I shan't be able to see much of you, to-day," he apologized to Kennedy, "but you're going to Miss Ashton's suffrage evening and dance, aren't you?"

"I should like to go," temporized Kennedy.

Carton glanced about to see whether there was anyone in earshot. "I think you had better go," he added. "She has secured a promise from Langhorne to be there, as well as several of the organization leaders. It is a thoroughly non-partisan affair--and she can get them all together. You know the organization is being educated. When people of the prominence of the Ashtons take up suffrage and make special requests to have certain persons come to a thing like that, they can hardly refuse. In fact, no one commits himself to anything by being present, whereas, absence might mean hostility, and there are lots of the women in the organization that believe in suffrage, now. Yes, we'd better go. It will be a chance to observe some people we want to watch."

"We'll go," agreed Kennedy. "Can't we all go together?"

"Surely," replied Carton, gratified, I could see, by having succeeded in swelling the crowd that would be present and thus adding to the success of Miss Ashton's affair. "Drop into the office here, and I'll be ready. Good-bye--and thanks for your aid, both of you."

We left the Criminal Courts Building with the crowd that was slowly dispersing, still talking over the unexpected and unprecedented end of the trial.

As we paused on the broad flight of steps that led down to the street on this side, Kennedy jogged my elbow, and, following his eyes, I saw a woman, apparently alone, just stepping into a town car at the curb.

There was something familiar about her, but her face was turned from me and I could not quite place her.

"Mrs. Ogleby," Kennedy remarked. "I didn't see her in the courtroom. She must have been there, though, or perhaps outside in the corridor. Evidently she felt some interest in the outcome of the case."

He had caught just a glimpse of her face and now that he pronounced her name I recognized her, though I should not have otherwise.

The car drove off with the rattle of the changing gears into high speed, before we had a chance to determine whether it was otherwise empty or not.

"Why was she here?" I asked.

Kennedy shook his head, but did not venture a reply to the question that was in his own mind. I felt that it must have something to do with her fears regarding the Black Book. Had she, too, surmised that Murtha had employed his henchman, Dopey Jack, to recover the book from Langhorne? Had she feared that Dopey Jack might in some moment of heat, for revenge, drop some hint of the robbery--whether it had been really successful or not?

It was my turn to call Kennedy's attention to something, now, for standing sidewise as I was, I could see the angles of the building back of him.

"Don't turn--yet," I cautioned, "but just around the corner back of you, Langhorne is standing. Evidently he has been watching Mrs. Ogleby, too."

Kennedy drew a cigarette from his case, tried to light it, let the match go out, and then as if to shield himself from the wind, stepped back and turned.

Langhorne, however, had seen us, and an instant later had disappeared.

Without a word further Kennedy led the way around the corner to the subway and we started uptown, I knew this time, for the laboratory.

He made no comment on the case, but I knew he had in mind some plan or other for the next move and that it would probably involve something at the suffrage meeting at Miss Ashton's that evening.

During the rest of the day, Craig was busy testing and re-testing a peculiar piece of apparatus, while now and then he would despatch me on various errands which I knew were more as an outlet for my excitement than of any practical importance.

The apparatus, as far as I could make it out, consisted of a simple little oaken box, oblong in shape, in the face of which were two square little holes with side walls of cedar, converging pyramid-like in the interior of the box and ending in what looked to be little round black discs.

I had just returned with a hundred feet or so of the best silk-covered flexible wire, when he had evidently completed his work. Two of the boxes were already wrapped up. I started to show him the wire, but after a glance he accepted it as exactly what he had wanted and made it into a smaller package, which he handed to me.

"I think we might be journeying down to Carton's office," he added, looking impatiently at his watch.

It was still early and we did not hurry.

Carton, however, was waiting for us anxiously. "I've called you at the laboratory and the apartment--all over," he cried. "Where have you been?"

"Just on the way down," returned Kennedy. "Why, what has happened?"

"Then you haven't heard it?" asked Carton excitedly, without waiting for Craig's answer. "Murtha has been committed to a sanitarium."

Kennedy and I stared at him.

"Pat Murtha," ejaculated Craig, "in a sanitarium?"

"Exactly. Paresis--they say--absolutely irresponsible."

Coming as it did as a climax to the quick and unexpected succession of events of the past few days, it was no wonder that it seemed impossible.

What did it mean? Was it merely a sham? Or was it a result of his excesses? Or had Carton's relentless pursuit, the raid of Margot's, and the conviction of Dopey Jack, driven the Smiling Boss really insane?

XVII

THE SOCIETY SCANDAL

Nothing else was talked about at the suffrage reception at Miss Ashton's that evening, not even suffrage, as much as the strange fate that seemed to have befallen Murtha.

And, as usual with an event like that, stories of all sorts, even the wildest improbabilities, were current. Some even went so far as to insinuate that Dorgan had purposely quickened the pace of life for Murtha by the dinners at Gastron's in order to get him out of the way, fearing that with his power within the organization Murtha might become a serious rival to himself.

Whether there was any truth in the rumour or not, it was certain that Dorgan was of the stamp that could brook no rivals. In fact, that had been at the bottom of the warfare between himself and Langhorne. Certain also was it that the dinners and conferences at the now famous suite of the Silent Boss were reputed to have been often verging on, if not actually crossing, the line of the scandalous.

Miss Ashton's guests assembled in force, coming from all classes of society, all parties in politics, and all religions. Her object had been to show that, although she personally was working with the Reform League, suffrage itself was a broad general issue. The two or three hundred guests of the evening surely demonstrated it and testified to the popularity of Miss Ashton personally, as well.

She had planned to hold the meeting in the big drawing-room of the Ashton mansion, but the audience overflowed into the library and other rooms. As the people assembled, it was interesting to see how for the moment at least they threw off the bitterness of the political campaign and met each other on what might be called neutral ground. Dorgan himself had been invited, but, in accordance with his custom of never appearing in public if he could help it, did not come. Langhorne was present, however, and I saw him once talking to a group of labour union leaders and later to Justice Pomeroy, an evidence of how successful the meeting was in hiding, if not burying, the hatchet.