Part 15

“We can all act! We can play our parts! Be a gay boulevardier of Paris with the false courage of the green poison in the water of your veins!” She spoke vehemently, and her words were the words of the Gascony peasant.

She turned her gracious smile on the waiter as he appeared with the bouillon and the absinthe for the little man.

“We shall order again presently,” she said, in her perfect English, and the serving-man backed away.

Without touching the folded napkin, she took a sip of the bouillon. Her eyes, pin-points of fire under the shade of the long lashes, watched the man take up the glass of dull-green liquor and drain it at a gulp. The fire died from her eyes as they saw the faint flush of colour come to the yellow skin of the man and the steadiness of the hand that put the empty glass on the cloth.

“Ah,” she murmured, in liquid Spanish, her eyes fixed fondly on the face of the little man. “My Pierre is himself again. Sip of your bouillon, my dear.”

The little man obeyed her meekly. “The gaming-table has played the devil with my nerves,” he growled.

“But they are strong once more. See!” Her fingers lifted the folded napkin and laid it on her knee. The man leaned forward to stare at the white tablecloth it had covered. A gasping whistle of indrawn breath came from his lips. On the white linen beside the woman’s bouillon cup were five smudges of gold; prints of the finger and thumb tips of a right hand.

“The sign of the Gilded Glove!” he choked, and the colour went from his face.

“Cease staring, owl of a man!” she commanded in Italian. “Have you not seen the sign before? Do the wrecked nerves of the _rouge et noir_ table need another franc’s worth of green heart? Summon the waiter.”

With a doglike shake of his body the man threw off the fear that gripped him. He touched his empty glass. The woman gave another order, and the waiter hurried away. Then the man’s eyes were drawn again to the five spots of gold.

“The finger prints of warning, the crushed glove of sentence, the clutched glove of death!” He repeated it as though it were a lesson that, once learned, was never to be forgotten.

“But have they not always been at _my_ side?” she asked quietly. “In Paris, in Constantinople, in Budapest, in St. Petersburg, have I not seen them always by my side? Yet I live! Should I fear in New York, when I have escaped in Europe, where the Long Arm sweeps everything?”

The waiter returned with the absinthe. The little man took the glass up slowly, sipped part of the liquor, and set it down. A glance from the eyes of the woman rewarded him.

“Does my Pierre see any one who might wear the Gilded Glove?” she asked.

His small eyes roved around the dining-room, gazing intently at every face. He shook his head. “They are all Americans; men of wood and women of china. Asses all!” The heavy gutturals of the German he now used made even more incongruous the puniness of his body.

She nodded. “Those who so carefully reserved the table that we might see the sign have gone,” she said, “and other ears cannot follow our talking.”

The man caught a glimpse of some one his eyes had missed before; he moved a trifle to the left, to see behind a great pillar in a far corner of the room.

“Your blind friend is eating his midnight meal of bread and beef-gravy,” he said.

“Mr. Colton?” There was a new tone in the voice now, and the man instantly recognised it.

“A blind man?” There was a sneer in the words.

“I fear him!” she whispered. “He is the only man on earth I have ever feared. He is the only man on earth I know I cannot deceive. All the things I have--my beauty, my nerves of steel, my acting, are to him as nothing. They delude only men of keen eyes! The American secret agents who watch us are fools, but he----.”

“Bah! A blind pig of an American!” he sneered again. It was the man whose nerve was perfect now; it was the woman who was unstrung.

“His blindness makes me afraid!” She was talking passionately in French. “Minds that are closed to all the world are an open book to him. I know it!”

“You think he knows of the plans; of our going away to-morrow?” The voice was sarcastic, but the words came slowly, haltingly, droned in the dialect of the lower Yang-tse-Kiang River.

“I know not!” she whispered, in purest Japanese. “He may; he may not. But no mistake have I ever made in a man!”

“Then hide your fear,” warned the man. “He has emptied his last glass of Célestin, and is coming toward this table.”

The woman’s hand fluttered tremulously toward her throat; but in an instant she was her calm, collected self. As she ate, and talked French commonplaces to the little man, she watched the approach of Thornley Colton from the corner of her eyes. She saw the white hair that curled and waved from the pink scalp; the wonderful paleness of the face that was brought out strikingly by the great round lenses of the smoked-glass library spectacles with their tortoise-shell rims. She knew that the eyes behind them had been sightless from birth; yet the strides of the approaching man through the winding aisle of tables were long and confident. Not a false move did he make, stepping aside at just the proper moment to avoid hurrying waiters, halting a second to let a nimble omnibus pass; never once turning to ask a question of the black-haired, apple-cheeked man who followed at his heels.

At the table he stopped, a smile of pleasure lighting his pale, strong face, as he extended his hand. “A delightful surprise, Madame Gorski!” he said, with quiet enthusiasm. “Sydney told me that you were here, but I could scarcely credit my good fortune. When is the next of your marvellous recitals to be?”

The woman’s smile of joy and surprise as she took his hand had been wonderful in its perfection, and as she answered his last question, no human ear could have detected the lie behind the words: “In a few days, M’seur Colton. You are an inspiration. One seldom finds so appreciative a person. My husband thinks them frightful affairs.”

“But Monsieur Gorski is not blind,” smiled Colton, as he took the hand of the little man. “Music is the only beautiful thing we of the darkness have, you know. Eyes can see God’s wonderful creations and the beautiful things man’s hands have wrought. We can only hear.”

A tender look of genuine sympathy came to the eyes of Madame Gorski. “Won’t you sit down and talk?” she invited.

She saw Thornley Colton’s hand go to his vest-pocket, and she knew that the supersensitive finger-tips were feeling the face of the crystalless watch he carried.

He shook his head. “It is twelve-forty,” he apologised. “I make it my invariable rule to be in bed at one.” He stepped back regretfully. “Pardon me,” he said suddenly, “your napkin has fallen to the floor.” He leaned over quickly, picked it up, and put it on the end of the table. “Au revoir.” He smiled again, and with a nod to the silent Sydney Thames, who had merely bowed to the man and the woman, he started between the tables towards the entrance of the dining-room.

The woman’s eyes followed him. When he had disappeared through the door she turned to her husband. “A wonderful man!” she murmured. “Wonderful!” She expected a sneer, but her husband was staring at the crumpled-up napkin Thornley Colton had picked up.

“You say he is blind!” he hissed, in French.

She nodded, puzzled.

“Then how did he know your napkin had fallen? Can he hear the fall of linen on velvet? Can he?”

She reached toward the napkin, lifted a corner as she pulled it toward her; then withdrew her hand suddenly. In the crumpled-up folds of the linen both had seen the dull glint of gilt; both knew that concealed in the napery was a crushed, gilded glove!

“The sentence!” choked the man.

The woman lifted her eyes to the door through which Thornley Colton had passed a few minutes before. “Can he be one of the sinews of the Long Arm?” she murmured: “A man like that!”

Her fingers toyed with her fork a moment. “Pay the check, Pierre,” she said finally, and there was a note of hopelessness in her voice. “We will go home. I am tired.”

The admiring eyes that had watched the woman enter followed her as she left the room. The face, calm, patrician, was beautiful; and the long lashes hid the look in the deep, brown eyes. In the taxi seat she relaxed; the beautiful face held an expression of utter weariness. The little man’s hand touched her shoulder reverently, caressingly.

“Do not falter now, _ma chère_,” he murmured. “To-morrow we will have the plans of the harbour mines and the hundred thousand dollars they will bring. We will go far away, then, out of reach of the Long Arm and its glove of gilt.”

“To-morrow,” she breathed softly, and she touched his cheek with her lips. She was a woman, was Hedwig Gorski, strange, unreadable. Her heart was a woman’s heart, and grim-lipped men in a hundred cities knew that she loved this little caricature of a man. A smile came to her lips. “Yes,” she whispered, in low-voiced Russian, “to-morrow we will be through with it all.”

At the big hotel where they stopped the woman commanded the same admiration; the man the same derisive smiles. But they did not see. In their apartment on the thirteenth floor, whose door was watched night and day by the floor clerks they had bribed to see that no one entered, the woman sank into a big chair beside the table. The man snapped on the lights in every room, and peered into every corner. “No one has entered,” he announced, when he had seen that every window still held the screws he had driven through the frames the first hour they had occupied the apartments.

“Leave me a few minutes, _mon cher_,” the woman said, and she pulled his head down to kiss him. “I must think--alone.”

Obediently, doglike, he went out into the hall and turned the key in the lock behind him. The woman sighed. She rose and went to the small cabinet, took from it a bottle of wine and a glass. She started to pour the liquor; then shook her head.

“Poison,” she whispered. “That would be their only chance. I can’t risk it.” She went into the bathroom and turned on the hot water, rinsing the glass under the stream until the water was almost boiling. Then she filled the glass to the brim under the cold-water tap, drained it. She walked slowly back to the room, switched off the lights, and seated herself again in the big chair.

The minutes passed. The woman never moved; her eyes stared unwaveringly into the darkness before her. And from out the dark a gilded hand came slowly, certainly. It touched the throat of the woman. Hedwig Gorski did not move. The fingers of gold tightened.

Outside the door came the voice of Gorski: “Do you wish anything, Hedwig, _ma chère_?”

And from the darkness came the voice of his wife: “_Non_, Pierre, _mon cher_.”

But neither the eyes nor the lips of the woman, nor yet the gilded fingers, had moved.

Silence. The man’s voice called again. There was no answer. Shaking, he unlocked the door and entered the room. A curtain that had been pulled to the bottom of the window was up now. A shaft of moonlight shone on the woman’s face--a dead face. At her throat a golden hand seemed clutched. But he came nearer, and saw that it was an empty, gilded glove. And in the air of the room was the faint odour of crushed bananas.

II.

The little French clock had just chimed the hour of three when the tinkling telephone-bell waked Thornley Colton. He reached forth a hand to the crystalless watch on the small table at his bed-side and whistled. The bell jingled again. He threw a bath robe over his shoulders and went into the library.

He answered the inquiring voice instantly: “Good morning, Mr. Ames. Certainly. I will be ready in ten minutes.”

For a minute after he had hung up the receiver he stood in the darkness, his sightless eyes fixed on the mouthpiece of the instrument. Then he went into Sydney Thames’s room and touched him lightly on the shoulder. “Get dressed,” he said quietly, but the apple-cheeked secretary saw the grim, ominous lines that were around the thin lips. “Ames, of the diplomatic secret service, will be here in fifteen minutes. Madame Gorski has been murdered.”

“Murdered!” The emotional, highly-strung Thames echoed the word in horror.

“Yes.” Still that tone of quiet certainty. “An hour or so ago, I should judge. We will probably go down to the hotel. Hustle!” he admonished again, as he hurried from the room.

In less than ten minutes Thornley Colton, fully dressed, and smoking a cigarette, was seated in the library awaiting the coming of the secret agent. The door-bell rang, and he rose to answer it.

He stopped in the hall, when his superkeen ears caught the patter of bare feet on the carpet. “Go back to bed, Shrimp,” he ordered.

“Gee, is it a case, Mister Colton?” The wide-eyed boy, with the fiery-red hair, the multitude of freckles, and the slightly-twisted nose, asked the question eagerly. His hands literally trembled with anticipation as they fumbled with the front of his purple pyjama coat.

“Yes.” Thornley Colton’s lip curved in a slight smile, and he patted the boy’s shoulder fondly. “But you can do nothing to-night. Go back to bed, and to-morrow there may be some real detective work for you to do.”

“Gosh, I hope so!” the boy exclaimed fervently; then his voice became almost wistful: “Gee, Mister Colton. I wisht youh’d let me get in a case where there was real Nick Carter stuff; blackjacks, an’ assaults, an’ stuff like that.”

“You’ve got a long life before you, Shrimp,” smiled the blind man, as he started downstairs to answer the second ring of the bell.

The man who entered had his rain-coat buttoned up to his chin, and the brim of his soft hat came down to the eyes that gleamed from under it.

Colton bowed gravely. “Rather an early-morning call, Mr. Ames.”

The gimlet eyes of the secret agent were fixed on his pale face, seeming to bore and probe into the very soul of the blind man. “Mind telling me how you knew my name?” he asked. “To my knowledge we have never met before.”

“I think we never have.” The grave smile still curved Thornley Colton’s thin lips. “But I never forget a voice I have once heard. I heard yours several years ago, when I was trying to solve the puzzle of the missing Villers code book. The diplomatic service was somewhat interested in that case, I believe.”

“So you’re that man!” There was new respect in the tone, and the eyes of the secret agent gleamed brighter.

“A lucky touch of the fingers found the solution of the case,” explained Colton modestly. “If you will come up to my library we can talk more comfortably.” He turned and ascended the stairs.

Sydney Thames was already in the library, and Thornley Colton introduced him. “My secretary, Mr. Ames.” He seemed to sense the other’s desire for a private conversation, and added: “My eyes, also.”

The secret agent accepted the presence of a third person, and took off his rain-coat. Seated in a big chair, which a gesture of the blind man’s arm had indicated, he asked his first question abruptly, curtly:--

“Mr. Colton, what do you know about Hedwig Gorski?”

A thin ribbon of blue smoke rose from the blind man’s lips. He seemed to watch the smoke waver ceilingward before he answered: “I think she is one of the most remarkable women I have ever met. There is no subject she cannot discuss intelligently. She speaks all languages, apparently, and she is the only woman I ever met who can interpret Grieg properly. In fact, I would consider her the most accomplished and wonderful international spy I ever met.”

Ames straightened in his chair as though he had been suddenly jabbed with a pin. “How did you know that?” he demanded.

“By a process of elimination made necessary by lack of eyes. I sought an introduction to Madame Gorski after I had heard her husband address her in the Cantonese dialect. I spent several years in China, and, naturally, I was interested. And her _musicales_ have been wonderful affairs--wonderful, and food for considerable thought!” he finished musingly.

“You know that she is dead--murdered?”

“Your visit at this hour could mean nothing else. I have known for some time that Madame Gorski feared something. I have known also that she was constantly watched.”

For a minute there was silence in the room. Ames took a cigarette from his case, lighted it, and became absorbed in the spiraling smoke. Sydney Thames, silent, as always, sat back to listen. The secret agent reached his decision and spoke:--

“Mr. Colton, I came here with a different plan of procedure in my mind. I’m going to be frank. For months we have known that negotiations have been going on with a foreign government to obtain possession of the secret naval plans of the harbour mines in New York harbour. When you understand that those planted electrical mines are the only real safeguard against the invasion of the greatest city in America, you will know just what they are worth. We know Hedwig Gorski came to this country to get them--from whom we have never been able to discover. But we have watched every movement, opened every line of mail she has received, and have not been able to find a single clue. For a month my wife and I have occupied an apartment in the hotel directly opposite the Gorski rooms. We have been on guard day and night, as have the floor clerks we learned that she had bribed. This morning at one-twenty-five Hedwig Gorski and her husband returned to their apartment. They went in, lighted every light, and I know they were examining everything to see whether or not the rooms had been entered. In a few minutes Gorski came out, locked the door, and began pacing up and down before it. This was something new, and we watched him curiously. He called. His wife answered cheerily in French. Ten minutes later he called again. There was no answer. He unlocked the door and stumbled in. I was at his heels. Madame Gorski was dead in her chair. At her throat was an empty gilded glove--like a hand of gold that had strangled her.”

“A gilded glove.” Colton repeated it without incredulity or surprise in his voice; merely as the verification of a known fact.

“You know of the Gilded Glove?” asked the secret agent quickly.

“Yes. My world wanderings have taken me to Russia. The glove has always had a peculiar significance. In China two thousand years ago a glove was always given to make legal the transfer of land. The custom was also in vogue among the ancient Egyptians and Phœnicians. In the correct literal translations of the Bible the word ‘glove’ is found instead of ‘shoe’ in the fourth chapter of Ruth, and in the one hundred and eighth Psalm.”

Ames nodded, and the blind man went on: “Twenty years ago a certain Russian order first used the gilded glove as a death sign for traitors to the government. With a love of the significant that only the true Oriental mind has--and the mind of the Russian is all Oriental--the gilded glove was left at the throat of persons who transferred their allegiance for gold.”

“That is right,” corroborated Ames. “Hedwig Gorski and her husband were the greatest spies Russia had. Then, for some unknown reason, they went into the service of another country. And for five years she has laughed at the Gilded Glove and its wearers, who have been constantly on her trail.” Again he smoked in silence for a few minutes, his eyes fixed on the ceiling. “You seem to know a whole lot about this thing, Mr. Colton,” he said frankly. “I’d like you to come with me to the hotel. When I entered the room, Gorski, who is a little rat, and heaven only knows how a woman like Hedwig could love him, was absolutely insane. He moaned and cried without seeing me for several minutes. When he did, he accused _you_ of the murder!”

“Accused----” Sydney Thames half rose in his chair and flopped back into it with a gasp of amazed horror.

Thornley Colton’s face had not a flicker of expression. “Yes?” he said politely.

The gimlet eyes of the secret agent went ceilingward once more. “He muttered something about his wife having always feared you--which is the highest compliment that could possibly come from a woman like Hedwig Gorski. He also babbled something about your not being blind because you had seen his wife’s napkin fall to the floor, and that, when you put it on the table, its folds concealed a crushed gilded glove--the sentence of death. He swears that you couldn’t have heard the napkin fall on the velvet carpet.”

“The napkin had not fallen,” Colton said evenly. “I pulled it from Madame Gorski’s knees as I leaned over to pick up the crushed gilt glove I knew was on the carpet by her chair.” His fingers felt the crystalless watch in his pocket. “If you don’t mind,” he apologised, “I’d like to get down to the hotel as soon as possible. The most valuable clue, I think, will disappear shortly.”

Ames opened his mouth, then closed it. “My taxi is waiting at the door,” he said quietly, as he picked up his rain-coat. “I warned the hotel manager that the police were not to be notified until I gave permission. Even the murder is of secondary importance to finding a clue to the damned traitor who is going to sell those harbour plans!”

“A human life, to me, is a wonderful thing,” murmured Colton, as he slipped into his overcoat and took the thin cane that gave its messages to his supersensitive finger-tips. There was unconscious rebuke in his tone.

It was not until they were in the taxi, well on their way down, that the silence was broken. Then Ames spoke again. “I’ll frankly admit that the murder is a most wonderful piece of work. I went over every inch of the rooms while Gorski was gibbering. The door is absolutely the only entrance, and I know they looked over the apartment pretty thoroughly. Gorski could not have done it, even if he had the nerve. I heard his wife answer him. I couldn’t see a thing!”

In the darkness Colton nodded. “I don’t think this will be a case where eyes will be of much use,” he said quietly.

The taxi stopped at the entrance of the big hotel, and they went through the lobby without exciting comment or receiving a single stare. The news of the murder had not been allowed to get downstairs. But a man lounging, half asleep, in a leather chair, made a slight signal that Ames understood. The secret-service agents had covered the hotel, and were working in a dozen different places.

As the three men entered the Gorski apartment, Monsieur Gorski rose from his chair with a half-suppressed scream of rage. “Murderer!” he hissed, in French. “Murderer!”

A heavy hand forced him back, and an apologetic voice came to the ears of Thornley Colton.

“He’s been ravin’ that way for an hour, Mister Colton,” put in the red-faced man at Gorski’s side.

“Good morning, Joe,” Colton greeted the house detective.

The white-faced manager of the hotel, who had stood back, nervously biting his finger-nails, came forward. “We must notify the police, Mr. Ames,” he protested. “I have obeyed your instructions, but if they ever know----” The manager left unspoken the horrible possibilities, but his whole manner cried them aloud.

“You can notify them in a very few minutes, Mr. Jones,” the blind man’s voice cut in curtly. He went to the side of the dead woman unerringly. A faint flush seemed to mount to his pale cheeks; his thin nostrils quivered like those of a hound on the scent. Almost reverently he touched the cheek of Hedwig Gorski. His fingers, light as wind-blown thistledown, brushed the beautiful cold skin under the eyes, then down to the throat, stopping short before reaching the five finger-marks of gold that were deep in the flesh. The gilded glove was on the table, where it had fallen as soon as Gorski had touched it. The blind man seemed not even aware of its existence.

“Have you a glass, Mr. Ames?” asked the problemist, and there was unintentional curtness in his tone. Thornley Colton’s whole mind was on the case before him; nothing else existed.