Part 17

Ames lifted his eyes from the papers to the impassive face of the blind man. “My God, Mr. Colton!” he cried, and his voice shook with feeling. “Do you realise what you’ve done? Do you understand that in ten minutes you have accomplished a thing that has baulked every secret agent in the country for months? Do you know that you have kept in the hands of this country the greatest naval secret we possess”--his voice choked--“the secret I was about to let slip through my fingers? It means----”

A wave of the problemist’s hand stopped him. “It means that my boy is missing, perhaps dead,” the blind man said dispassionately. “It means that the most wonderful woman I ever knew is dead. That is all.”

A look of pity came to the face of the secret agent. “We will do all we can,” he assured. “We will find the boy just as surely as we will find the traitor who is responsible for these.” He picked up the precious sheets, and put them carefully in his pocket, and buttoned his coat.

“Finding the traitor should be comparatively easy,” Colton told him. “Men who have the knowledge of music composition necessary to put that together are not common in the war department.”

Ames picked up his hat and held out his hand. “Believe me, Mr. Colton, Washington will not forget this work of yours. I will let you know the instant we hear anything. Good day!”

Colton sat quiet while the secret agent and Sydney Thames left the room. There was no hope in his heart. By his showing the government agent the secret of the music he had filled his mind with thoughts of finding the man who was responsible. Every effort of the secret agents would be in that direction now. What was a little, red-headed kid beside a traitor who would betray his country? Nothing--to the men who were paid to guard the secrets of state.

By silence Colton could have kept the trained government-men on the trail of the boy he loved. But he had given all that was in him to solve the puzzle of the music. The secret agents would go on that track now. The police could do nothing against men like those of the Gilded Glove. They had been content to arrest Monsieur Gorski; they had proclaimed in every morning-paper that he was the murderer. They were already lying back on their laurels, smug, complacent. No, there was no one but the blind man to find The Fee!

The long hours of the afternoon passed. Still Thornley Colton sat in the arm-chair, immovable. From time to time Sydney Thames came to the doorway, looked in, and went away. He knew that the problemist did not want to be disturbed. And the blind man’s mind through the hours was the mind of the men who were behind the gilded glove. His mind worked as their minds would work; planning out each step they would take in their next move; leading off into tangents that made necessary the discarding of entire trains of thought. Patiently he would start again at the beginning. Finally his brow cleared; the rigid lip-lines softened.

“It is the only way,” he murmured, and his hand went out to the button on the desk that would summon his automobile any hour of the day or night. Another button brought Sydney on the run.

Colton sensed the unasked question and shook his head. “No,” he anticipated. “I am going out in the machine to get a breath of fresh air--alone.”

“But----” Sydney started to protest.

“Alone,” repeated the blind man. “I shall not be gone more than an hour.”

Sydney Thames went with him to the waiting car, and watched with anxious eyes as the stolid Irish chauffeur whirled him away. It was less than an hour later that the blind man returned.

“Any news?” he asked of Thames, as he threw off his hat and coat.

“Headquarters report that they have gone through every house in the Russian sections.”

“The one place where he would not be likely to be,” sneered the blind man. Then weariness made his voice heavy. “I’m going to bed, Sydney. I don’t want to be disturbed under any circumstances. Good-night.”

He went to the bedroom that adjoined the library, undressed, and in a few minutes was under the covers, sleeping peacefully. Sydney Thames shook his head and went to his own room. It was the first time in years he had known the blind man to miss an evening out.

When the little clock on the mantel chimed twelve, Thornley Colton waked immediately, got up noiselessly, and put on his clothes, all but his collar and tie, coat and vest. From his overcoat-pocket he took the thing he had gone out for in the early evening. It was a small rubber bulb with a long rubber tube that had a curved end of hollow, red glass. He carefully placed the bulb in his right armpit, adjusted the tube down the length of his arm, so that the curved end of red glass was concealed in his half-shut right palm. He drew the coat of his pyjamas over his shirt, and, without even removing his shoes, crawled back under the covers.

The little clock chimed one--two. The calm, even breathing of the blind man came regularly. The superkeen ears caught the faint sound of an opening door. But he did not move. Dead silence. He heard the library-door open, and to his nostrils came the strong odour of banana oil. His regular breathing was the only sound that broke the stillness. The library-door closed. Instantly, noiselessly, he was out of bed. Seemingly with one motion he was in his coat, and vest, and overcoat. His hand touched the loaded automatic in his outside pocket. He did not even wait to put on the smoked glasses his sensitive, sightless eyes needed to protect them from the burning light. He did not wait to pick up the thin, hollow stick that gave its message to his finger-tips. Nor did he pause an instant in the library, where the smell of bananas told him that a crushed glove of gilt had been laid on the desk. Down the stairs he ran with steps that were as silent as the night itself. He flung wide the front door. Down the street he heard an automobile door slam; the engine barked.

“Was I mistaken? Was it all wrong?” ran the bitter thought through his mind. He had staked everything on his ability to anticipate a probable plan of action on the part of the murderers. Then an eager look came to his face.

“Gee, Mister Colton, I’m glad yuh come!” The piping boy’s voice came from his side.

“What is it, Shrimp?” he asked tensely. “Where have you been?”

“I been watchin’ them guys. I follered the one that got in the house, an’ I know where dey hang out. Gee, Mister Colton, dere’s a taxi.”

“Hail it!”

The shrill voice brought the cab to the curb. The chauffeur nodded at the low-voiced instructions. In the darkness Thornley Colton lolled back in the cushions. On his face was a curious look of resolution, content, victory. His wonderfully-keen ears, trained for years to know every sound, every voice and inflection of voice, knew that the person at his side was not Shrimp! He had known from the first that the voice was that of the man whose marvellous mimicry of Hedwig Gorski’s voice had deceived even her husband. He knew that the man beside him was Madame Gorski’s murderer. Blind, helpless but for the automatic pistol in his pocket, he was allowing himself to be taken to the men who had left their death-sentence sign on the desk in his library; to the men who had taken the boy he loved!

One chance in a thousand there had been, and the blind man had grasped it eagerly. He knew that one false move would destroy even that chance. He had realized that hours before. He had not dared give an inkling of his plan to a soul; he had not dared ask for help in the one desperate chance, for he did not know how many keen eyes were watching. He did not know where he was going, and he could not risk having men who would come to his aid shadowing him. No, the one chance in a thousand could only be taken _alone_.

As they rode the voice chattered on, telling of trailing the man who had left the glove-prints to a little house in Harlem; of stealing a basement-door key from a servant. Thornley Colton complimented quietly and often, but his whole mind was fixed on the street-corners the cab turned, calculating distance, remembering directions. And he knew they were not going near Harlem; but were in the dark, winding side-streets of Greenwich Village.

The taxi came to a stop. “The house is three doors down, Mister Colton. We’ll chase dis guy an’ slide up soft.”

Colton took a bill from his pocket, and the hand of the murderer snatched it to pay the driver. “Dis way,” whispered the voice, when the chauffeur had gone. Colton felt a hand lightly touch his elbow to guide him.

Stealthily they went, keeping close to the dark shadows of the houses. With a hiss of warning the hand drew him against the wall of a house, seconds after the blind man had heard the sound of approaching footsteps. A policeman passed, swinging his stick and whistling softly.

“Come on!” The hand pulled him forward and down an area-way. He heard a handle turn and an iron-grille door open rustily. A key in the hand of his guide opened another door, and he felt the carpet of the basement-hall under his feet as the door closed behind him.

“Wait here a minute, Mister Colton,” came the whisper at his side. “I want a scout ’round a little.”

Obediently the blind man stood in the darkness. He heard the light, almost soundless footsteps retreating until they died away somewhere in the depths of the house. Like a flash he whirled to the door. His fingers found the catch, sprung it back. The way to escape was open! Then he crept forward into the darkness, every nerve strained to catch the slightest warning sound. From the floor above came the hoarse murmur of voices, but even his wonderful ears could not distinguish words. Then his lips tautened to a thin, straight line. A moan, faint, quavering, came from the darkness. He knew instantly that it was the voice of the boy he had come to find. He had heard it before, years ago, when the boy had tossed on his bed and dreamed horrid dreams of his murdered mother and his murderer father, from whom Thornley Colton had taken him.

“Only a few minutes more, kiddie,” he breathed, then he darted back to the place his guide had left him. His superkeen ears had warned him.

“Here upstairs playin’ cards an’ half drunk,” whispered the piping voice so like that of Shrimp. “Got a gun?”

Thornley Colton knew that the man was leaning forward, watching him in the darkness, but his hand touched the pocket that contained the heavy pistol, and he nodded. The lips of the blind man set even grimmer as he heard the sharp breath-intake of satisfaction. So the thousandth chance demanded that he lose even the pistol! Well, he would play the game according to their own set rules.

Up the stairs he followed at the heels of his leader, his brain automatically counting the steps and turns, as it had been taught to do years before. The guide stopped. Colton could hear the faint murmur of voices.

“Dere’s where dey are!” whispered the voice. “Get in before dey know where dey’s at.” The blind man’s hand fumbled for the door-handle. He flung the door wide.

The bright lights of the room stung his naked eyeballs like a million swords of living fire; his hands went involuntarily to shield them. Instantly he felt the fingers of the man who had guided him dive toward his pocket, snatch out the pistol.

“Welcome, Herr Colton!” The voice came from in front of him in heavy German, and each word was a sneer. “Fool!” grated the voice. “Into our hands like a baby you come. Three pistols are pointed at your heart! Sit down!”

Colton groped forward blindly, his hand found a chair, his fingers told him that it was set close to a heavy oak table.

“Goot!” grunted the man who had spoken. Colton knew that he was sitting directly in front of him, across the table. The blind man’s ears also informed him that on either side of the voice was another man. Three against one! Three with loaded pistols against an unarmed man who was blind!

The door closed softly, and Colton knew that the man who had led him was gone.

“Where’s my boy?” demanded the problemist suddenly, fiercely. “Where is he!” He leaned across the table, and the heavy voice commanded him to sit back. But Thornley Colton had learned the table’s width; a powerful lift of his knee had told him of its weight. That table was his thousandth chance! He slumped back in his chair, his left hand protecting his burning eyes, his right hand half closed on the arm of his chair.

“You have offended the Gilded Glove,” began the rumbling German voice.

“I understand Russian!” broke in the blind man curtly.

The man at the right drew in his breath sharply. Colton heard the man at the left tilt his chair until its back touched a wall.

“The Gilded Glove has always been sacred to traitors,” the voice went on, and the language was Russian. “But you have learned things that men with eyes would never have learned. We have watched you with Hedwig Gorski, and we knew that you knew. We know that you discovered the secret written in the music. But for you, that secret would have been our secret. The clutching fingers of the Long Arm are always reaching for those who fight the Little Father. You fell into our trap. You are a brave man. Your hands do not shake, nor does your body tremble. Your death will be an easy death.”

“Thanks.” The word came laconically from the blind man, but every nerve, every sense was alert as he mentally pictured the room and its occupants. He knew that the heavy table must be less than three feet from the wall. The tilted chair had told him that. Even the quiet breathing of the men located them for the blind man, who was waiting the thousandth chance.

“This chamber is sound-proof. Its secrets are always secrets,” continued the voice. “We could riddle you with bullets, and the world would be none the wiser. But we will be merciful.”

Colton heard the click of a bottle-neck on a glass, heard the gurgle of the flowing wine, then the glass was pushed across the table.

“Drink!” ordered the harsh voice. “It is the poison that killed Hedwig Gorski; swift, powerful, painless. Drink!”

Thornley Colton drew back, a look of horror on his face.

“That, or the bullets which do not kill painlessly!”

The problemist’s right hand reached blindly for the glass. His palm almost tipped it as it covered the top for an instant; then his fingers lifted it.

“You will not harm my boy?” he asked, and there was a queer chokiness in his voice.

“Drink!”

“You will not harm my boy?” The voice was pleading.

“I shall count three!”

Slowly, his hands shaking so that it required both of them to keep the drink from spilling. Thornley Colton lifted the glass to his lips. Six eyes watched him, but the nervousness seemed to pass as the fire of the wine entered his veins. He set down the empty glass and wiped his lips with his handkerchief. Narrowly the men watched him. A hectic flush seemed to mount the pale cheeks; the lean, cleft jaw was set rigidly. Suddenly Thornley Colton bent forward across the table; his left hand gripping its edge. And his voice came to their ears like the snap of a steel cable.

“For every minute of pain you have caused the boy I will make you suffer hours of agony!” he swore passionately. The voice became dull, then, the words came slowly, haltingly. “Hours--hours--for my boy’s--hours--hours----”

The half-closed right fist dropped to his chair arm; the left hand dropped limply to his side; his body convulsively turned in the chair so that his hip was at the table-edge; the eyes stared straight ahead.

“It has done its work--as always,” whispered the man at the left.

“A pity we could not make of him another Boris!” said the man at the right.

“Put away the needless pistols!” commanded the heavy voice. “Darkness for the sign!” The hand that had held the pistol reached back of him. The fingers pulled a switch, and the lights went out. The door opened softly.

From the darkness a gilded hand came slowly, certainly. The fingers touched the throat of the blind man----

With every ounce of strength in his powerful body, Thornley Colton sent the table crashing on the three men, pinning them like rats in the narrow space their chairs had occupied, knocking the breath from them, half stunning them. So instantaneously that it seemed part of the same lightning movement the blind man’s hand darted out to grasp the invisible arm that held the gilded glove. A snapping jerk, and Madame Gorski’s murderer was on his knees. Colton’s right fist went out; the curved glass tube in his palm that had sucked up the wine to the bulb in his arm-pit while his hands had concealed the wineglass, shattered with the impact, cutting his tender palm in a dozen places. A choking gurgle came from the torn lips of the murderer, and the problemist knew that the sudden movement of his right arm had sent a spurting stream of the poison down the throat of the mimic. He let the lax body slide to the floor. A groan came from one of the pinned-down men. It was only a matter of seconds now.

The steps of a running man sounded in the hall-way. The superkeen ears of the problemist located them in the direction of the basement-stairs, and he realised that the approaching man must have been on the lower floor guarding the boy. That would leave the coast clear! He darted across the room; crouched beside the door. The man who had groaned cursed jerkingly, and one of the heavy chairs creaked as he tried to writhe from under the big table. A hoarse growl came from the doorway. Like a cat, crouching, Thornley Colton spun on the balls of his feet and caught the man around the knees. A wrestler’s twist of his body, and the new comer went down. The problemist pulled the door closed with a slam and jumped into the hall-way.

A shot sounded in the room, and the blind man’s lips curved in a grim smile. The way to escape was clear! In the darkness of the closed room the men of the Gilded Glove would be for precious minutes wholly at sea; in the darkness of the halls, Colton was at home--himself. He knew that he had gained several minutes now, because in the dark and the confusion of returning senses the men would not realise that he had escaped; every suspicious sound made by one of them would mean, to the others’ bewildered brains, the location of the enemy.

Colton ran down the hall noiselessly; every nerve, every faculty alert to warn him of danger before a man with eyes would ever suspect its presence. His brain counted the steps without conscious effort. At the top of the basement-stairs he paused a second. From the room came a crash, and he knew the crushing weight of the table had been lifted. Then another shot. They were fighting among themselves in the darkness! Down the basement-stairs he ran. His wonderful ears told him that no other guard was there.

His hand brushing the wall, as he hurried back into the dark lower hall-way, located the door. He found the bolt and slid it back. From the corner came a faint moan. In a single stride he was across the floor. He leaned over a pile of blankets in the corner, and his hand brushed the face of the boy; his fingers felt the warm stickiness of the hair, and he cursed the men upstairs.

“Shrimp!” he called softly. The boy stirred, and his eyes opened as Thornley Colton picked him up tenderly in his strong arms.

“I fought ’em like--the very dickens!” Shrimp’s voice was scarcely a whisper, but it took every bit of the gameness in the small body to make it even that. “They blackjacked me.” His body went limp.

Colton ran with his burden down the dark hall to the front door. The confusion upstairs had ceased. He heard a door slam; a rumbling Russian curse; running footsteps. The minutes he had counted on had become seconds again! He jerked open the door he had unlatched, swung back the iron grille, and took a great gulp of the cool night air; let the wind fan his still-burning eyeballs. Running footsteps sounded; a dozen of them.

“Colton! My God, Colton!” It was the voice of Ames; and there were men with him.

“In the house with the open basement-door!” gasped Colton, and in his voice was a prayer of thankfulness for the thousandth chance. “The whole crowd!” he finished.

The running footsteps sounded once more. Ames lingered.

“The taxi-driver put us wise,” he jerked out. “He knew the boy, and realised there was something wrong when the man with you imitated his voice. Reported it to the police. I got the tip instantly. Called up your house, and Thames found you gone. I got half a dozen of my men here in taxis.”

“Where are the cabs?” snapped Colton. “I want one. My boy is hurt!”

“Around the corner.” Ames whistled shrilly. “Here comes one. I’ve got to be with my men!” He was gone.

Colton laid the boy gently on the cushions, and, as the taxi started uptown, Shrimp’s eyes fluttered open. “Gee!” he murmured faintly. “I got m’ real detective work--that--time--assaults--blackjacks----” The voice died as unconsciousness came again.

IV.

The afternoon sun came slantingly through the great glass windows, lighting the happy face of the blind man and the pale, smiling face of The Fee, as he lay in bed, his head swathed in bandages, one arm in a sling.

“I was goin’ round, ’cause I couldn’t sleep, an’ I heard somebody open the front door”--Shrimp scowled as his voice became weak, and set his teeth for a moment. “I thought it was you. Then I seen his whole head was covered with a black thing, an’ there was black gloves on his hands, an’ he didn’t wear no shoes.”

Colton nodded. “So that he could not be seen, nor heard, in the darkness. The hood covered everything but his eyes and lips; the latter were left free so that he could mimic a voice.”

“I watched him sneak into the library an’ come out. Then I beat it down the backstairs, an’ when he got in his automobile I was hangin’ on the back. He musta knew I was there all the time, but he never let on. I was scoutin’ ’round the house when three of ’em jumped me. I guess they knocked me out good, for it was a long time ’fore I come round. Then a guy I couldn’t see came in the dark room where I was an’ started knockin’ you. I told him where he stood, all right.”

“It was the mimic,” Colton explained. “He wanted to learn every tone of your voice.”

“The government agents got every one of them,” put in Sydney unnecessarily.

“Yes, and the house has been the scene of many crimes. Ames and his men found a lot of valuable papers, together with the ringleaders of the Gilded Glove. Jones, of the hotel, identified the bearded man who did all the talking as the German husband who had the rooms. The chair arms didn’t protect him very much from the falling table, and his three broken ribs will keep him quiet for a while. The one who posed as his wife, and the third man at the table, have bruises and contusions enough to last them a lifetime. The murderer of Hedwig Gorski”--Thornley Colton paused a minute and went on--“was brought around all right by the ambulance surgeon; only a little of the poison went down his throat; but he told his story. He was a wonderful boy mimic fifteen years ago. Any sound, any voice was as easy for him to learn as names would be to you and me. Then the Gilded Glove got him. What devilish method they used I don’t know, but they made him their tool. Boris Strevelski forgot that he had ever been anything but a dealer of death to traitors; that he was the Hammer of God was the only idea left in his mind. But they taught him all languages, and he picked them up as the average man would remember names.

“He worked for half an hour to get the pane of glass from the window of the Gorski bathroom, and, in a skin-tight suit of black silk that covered everything but his mouth and eyes, he hid behind the coat and dress in the closet after putting the poison in the tap. He had on the same suit at the house. My hands told me that.”

“But how did you know he would come here?” asked Sydney breathlessly.