CHAPTER XXVII

THE CREAKING STAIRS

The cackling of geese saved Rome. A spider by his patience once gave the immortal Bruce the courage needed to win a great victory. Even a mouse may cause a deal of disturbance; Joyce Mills was to discover this on the very night that Johnny and Curlie sat planning their flight.

That night she visited the camp of the Bolsheviks. In spite of all that Johnny had said, she still believed that these radicals who were bent on destroying the present form of government in America had robbed the Air Mail.

“They are shrewd people,” she told herself. “They have members, yes, and spies, in every corner of our land. They were expecting the package. The American Secret Service men learned of its arrival. They had planned to seize it the moment it arrived in this city. What was to hinder the radical spies from finding out that the Secret Service men were after their Russian Crown jewels? What more natural than that they make a bold attempt to re-take the jewels before it was too late?”

Thus she reasoned as she made her way alone down the city street that led to the radical center.

As she neared the place she shuddered a little. She had attended many of these meetings, and yet the thought of them always affected her in the same way. “As if I had seen a snake in the grass,” she told herself.

The building occupied by this radical group was long and low. A one-storied structure, it ran the length of the block, but extended back from the street only about sixty feet.

During a great fair there had been many small shops there. After the fair, the store-rooms had been transformed into cheap studios. Here musicians of a sort and artists who painted futuristic daubs and other strange distortions of art lived.

In one of these buildings lived Brother Krosky. It was in his studio that the brethren of his set met.

His studio was divided into two rooms, a large front room and a very secret back room. Besides these, there was a cubbyhole of a place where one prepared a meal.

Many times Joyce Mills had been admitted to the front room. There, in uncomfortable chairs, over very weak tea, all sorts of people, young students with bright, simple faces, old artists with long hair, middle-aged women with clicking false teeth, and many others mouthed big words and looking wise as owls proceeded to solve all the problems of a great nation at a single sitting.

They had interested Joyce a little and had often amused her. But now she was in deadly earnest. She had never been in that secret back room. To-night, whether invited or not, she meant to go in. For to this room, she knew right well, a certain little group of dark and gloomy-faced individuals including Brother Krosky retired at a rather late hour to discuss matters of weight and importance. The subjects talked of so freely in the outer room were of a general nature, the discussions rather vague. She guessed that in the back room all high sounding talk ceased and the brethren “got down to brass tacks.”

“If the package of jewels is still missing from their treasure house, there is sure to be some discussion regarding it. And that is exactly what I want to hear,” she told herself.

So, when the hour had grown late and the tea very thin indeed, she seized upon a moment when a certain brother held the others spellbound with his eloquent discussion of the rights of the proletariat, to slip through the door into the secret chamber. She was more than a little frightened at first. The place was completely dark. How was she to find a place of hiding?

Fortune favored her, for almost at once her hand came into contact with a long davenport. At once she dropped on her knees to feel beneath.

“Just room,” she breathed. “Glad I’m thin as a rail.”

Ten seconds later found her flat on her stomach beneath that davenport, waiting patiently for secret matters to transpire.

* * * * * * * *

At this same hour a plainly dressed youth was preparing to enter a dingy brick building in an unlovely section of the great city. With his hand on the knob, he glanced right and left. As if apprehensive of being followed, he lingered on the threshold.

Seeing no one, he disappeared quickly within. At once there came the sound of a key being turned in a lock.

This ceremony performed, he proceeded in a leisurely manner up seven flights of grimy, unscrubbed wooden stairs to a small room beneath the eaves.

This youth was none other than the one of the burning eyes—the one who, having been introduced to Johnny Thompson by “The Ferret,” had taken him for an eight mile walk with no apparent reason except that he wished Johnny to know that hundreds of thousands of honest people lived in the city. To-night his eyes appeared to shine in the dark.

That he had reason for apprehension on this particular night might easily have been discovered by anyone who chanced to linger near that street doorway. Hardly had the boy’s footsteps died away than a short, dark individual, whose features were all but hidden by a turned-up collar and a pulled down cap, moved stealthily toward the same door.

Having applied an ear to the keyhole, he remained motionless for the space of sixty seconds. After that he tried the door. Finding it locked, he produced a prodigious bunch of keys. He studied them critically for a moment, and then selecting three, applied the first of them to the keyhole.

With a grunt of disapproval, he discarded this to try the second. No better result. The third did the trick. The lock clicked, the door swung open. More silent than a mouse, the man slipped inside.

“Always,” he whispered, “it is the third one.”

Sitting down on the first step he removed his shoes. Having tied the strings together, he threw them over his shoulder. After that, with no sound at all save the occasional creak of a board that roused him to silent profanity, he ascended the seven flights of stairs.

Arrived at the last landing, he paused to listen. Like those of certain wild animals, his ears appeared to rise to the sound that came from within.

Some one was talking; yet, when the youth had entered he had found no one there. The room had no other entrance. No words could be distinguished. Still, by the manner in which the speaker went steadily, endlessly on and on, one might have judged that he was deeply in earnest.

The “Spy”—for such was the name given to him long ago by the underworld—listened at the keyhole but for a single moment. Then, cocking his head on one side, he twisted his face into a smile that was a horrible thing to see and uttered a sound half aloud:

“Uh huh! Uh huh!”

The sound coming through his nose resembled nothing quite so much as the grunt of a satisfied pig. He repeated it once again:

“Uh huh!”

Then, turning, he crept noiselessly down the stairs.

At the first landing he paused to rub his hands and mutter aloud:

“Five grand! Five thousand dollars. And so easy. So easy!”

As if the thing pleased him immensely, he paused at each landing to repeat this little ceremony, which in the darkness resembled an obeisance to some ancient god of evil.

The “Spy” belonged to the underworld. He was by nature a spy. Never in his whole life had he committed a crime, as we think of crimes. He had never snatched a purse, robbed a safe, nor held a man up on the street. Yet he had assisted in many such events, and always for pay. The “Spy” had but one god. That was money. He had but one talent; that was for spying. He never sold his services to the city or the State. All his life he had worked for evil doers. When a bank was to be robbed, the “Spy” looked into all such matters as burglar alarms, late working clerks and watchmen. It was the same with a payroll holdup. He smoothed the way. And always, as I have said, for pay.

The creatures of the underworld did not love him. They hated and despised him; yet, because of his art of spying, they used him. The officers of the law feared and hated him. Gladly would they have flung him into jail. But until now they had found no charge against him.

Now, as it would seem, he was embarked upon an enterprise of no inconsiderable importance. His fee was to be five thousand dollars. A tidy sum. A year’s pay for a bright and capable man. Yet, by the mere climbing of seven flights of stairs he considered it earned.

There are times when that which seems earned is not really earned at all. By labor and pain man earns his bread. In this case, as we shall see, the pain outweighed the labor.