Room 13
“No, I’m not expecting anybody… only I wondered…”
“Mr. Jeffrey got married to-day, I hear, sir? I’m sure all the staff
wish him joy.”
All the staff did not wish Mr. Jeffrey Legge joy, for neither he nor
his father were greatly popular, even in the tolerant society of the
Highlow, and moreover, strange as it may appear, very few people knew
him by sight.
“That’s very good of you, very good indeed,” murmured Emanuel
absently.
“Are you dining here, sir?”
“No, no, I’m not dining here. I just looked in, that is all.”
He stepped back into the elevator, and the porter watched it drop with
pleasure. It was half-past eight; the glow was dying in the sky, and
the lights were beginning to twinkle in the streets, as Emanuel walked
steadily toward Shaftesbury Avenue.
Providentially, he was at the corner of a side street when he saw
Peter Kane. He was near enough to note that under his thin overcoat
Peter was in evening dress. Slipping into the doorway, he watched the
man pass. Peter was absorbed in thought; his eyes were on the ground,
and he had no interest for anything but the tremendous problem which
occupied his mind.
Legge came back to the corner of the street and watched him furtively.
Opposite the club, Peter stopped, looked up for a while, and passed
on. The watcher laughed to himself. That club could have no pleasant
memories for Peter Kane that night; it was in the Highlow that he had
met the “young Canadian officer” and had “rescued” him, as he had
thought, from his dangerous surroundings. There had Peter been
trapped, for the introduction of Jeff Legge was most skilfully
arranged. Going into the club one night, Peter saw, as he thought, a
young, good-looking soldier boy in the hands of a gang of
cardsharpers, and the “rescued officer” had been most grateful, and
had called upon Peter at the earliest opportunity. So simple, so very
simple, to catch Peter. It would be a more difficult matter, thought
Emanuel, for Peter to catch _him_.
He waited until the figure had disappeared in the gloom of the
evening, and then walked back to the Avenue. This comedy over, there
remained the knowledge of stark tragedy, of danger to his boy, and the
upsetting of all his plans, and, the most dreadful of all
possibilities, the snaring of the Big Printer. This night would the
battle be fought, this night of nights would victory or defeat be in
his hands. Reeder--Johnny--Peter Kane--all opposed him, innocent of
their co-operation, and in his hands a hostage beyond price--the body
and soul of Marney Legge.
He had scarcely disappeared when another person known to him came
quickly along the quiet street, turned into the club entrance, and,
despite the expostulations of the elevator man, insisted upon being
taken up. The porter had heard the warning bell and stood waiting to
receive her when the door of the elevator opened.
“Where’s Emanuel?” she asked.
“Just gone,” said the porter.
“That’s a lie. I should have seen him if he’d just gone.”
She was obviously labouring under some emotion, and the porter, an
expert on all stages of feminine emotionalism, shrewdly diagnosed the
reason for her wildness of manner and speech.
“Been a wedding to-day, hasn’t there?” he asked with heavy jocularity.
“Now, Lila, what’s the good of kicking up a fuss? You know you
oughtn’t to come here. Mr. Legge gave orders you weren’t to be
admitted whilst you were at Kane’s.”
“Where is Emanuel?” she asked.
“I tell you he’s just gone out,” said the porter in a tone of
ponderous despair. “What a woman you are! You don’t believe anything!”
“Has he gone back to his hotel?”
“That’s just where he has gone. Now be wise, girl, and beat it.
Anybody might be coming here--Johnny Gray was in last night, and he’s
a pal of Peter’s.”
“Johnny knows all about me,” she said impatiently. “Besides, I’ve left
Peter’s house.”
She stood undecidedly at the entrance of the open elevator, and then,
when the porter was preparing some of his finest arguments for her
rapid disappearance, she stepped into the lift and was taken down.
The Highlow was a curious club, for it had no common room. Fourteen
private dining-rooms and a large and elegantly furnished card-room
constituted the premises. Meals were served from the restaurant below,
being brought up by service lift to a small pantry. The members of the
club had not the club feeling in the best sense of the word. They
included men and women, but the chief reason for the club’s existence
was that it afforded a safe and not unpleasant meeting-place for
members of the common class, and gave necessary seclusion for the
slaughter of such innocents as came within the influence of its more
dexterous members. How well its inner secrets were kept is best
illustrated by the fact that Peter Kane had been a member for twenty
years without knowing that his sometime companion in crime had any
official connection with its control. Nor was it ever hinted to him
that the man who was directing the club’s activities during Emanuel’s
enforced absence, was his son.
Peter was a very infrequent visitor to the Highlow; and indeed, on the
occasion of his first meeting with the spurious Major Floyd, he had
been tricked into coming, though this he did not know.
The porter was busy until half-past nine. Little parties came, were
checked off in the book, and then--he looked at his watch.
“Twenty-five to ten,” he said, and pushed a bell button.
A waiter appeared from the side passage.
“Put a bottle of wine in No. 13,” he said.
The waiter looked at him surprised.
“No. 13?” he said, as if he could not believe his ears.
“I said it,” confirmed the porter.
* * * * *
Jeffrey ate a solitary dinner. The humour of the situation did not
appeal to him. On his honeymoon, he and his wife were dining, a locked
door between them. But he could wait.
Again he tried the queer-shaped pliers upon the key of the second
bedroom. The key turned readily. He put the tool into his pocket with
a sense of power. The clatter of a table being cleared came to him
from the other room, and presently he heard the outer door close and a
click of the key turning. He lit his fourth cigar and stepped out on
to the balcony, surveying the crowded street with a dispassionate
interest. It was theatre time. Cars were rolling up to the Haymarket;
the long queue that he had seen waiting at the doors of the cheaper
parts of the house had disappeared; a restaurant immediately opposite
was blazing with lights; and on a corner of the street a band of
ex-soldiers were playing the overture of “Lohengrin.”
Glancing down into the street, he distinguished one of the “minders”
his father had put there for his protection, and grinned. Peter could
not know; he would have been here before. As to Johnny…? Emanuel had
been very confident that Johnny presented no danger, and it rather
looked as though Emanuel’s view was right. But if Peter knew, why
hadn’t he come?
He strolled back to the room, looked at the girl’s door and walked
toward it.
“Marney!” he called softly.
There was no answer. He knocked on the panel.
“Marney, come along. I want to talk to you. You needn’t open the door.
I just wanted to ask you something.”
Still there was no answer. He tried the door: it was locked.
“Are you there?” he called sharply, but she did not reply.
He pulled the pliers from his pocket, and, pushing the narrow nose
into the keyhole, gripped the end of the key and turned it. Then,
flinging open the door, he rushed in.
The room was empty, and the big bathroom that led out of the suite was
empty also. He ran to the passage door: it was locked--locked from the
outside. In a sweat of fear he flew through the saloon into the
corridor, and the first person he saw was the floor waiter.
“Madam, sir? Yes, she went out a little time ago.”
“Went out, you fool? Where?” stormed Jeff.
“I don’t know, sir. She just went out. I saw her going along the
corridor.”
Jeff seized his hat and went down the stairs three at a time. The
reception clerk had not seen the girl, nor had any of the pages, or
the porter on the door. Oblivious to any immediate danger, he dashed
out into the street, and, looking up and down, saw the minder and
called him.
“She hasn’t come out this entrance. There’s another in Pall Mall,” he
explained. “Jimmy Low’s there.”
But the second man on the Pall Mall entrance had not seen her either.
Jeff went back to interview the manager.
“There is no other way out, sir, unless she went down the service
stairs.”
“It was that cursed maid, the Welsh woman,” snarled Jeffrey. “Who is
she? Can I see her?”
“She went off duty this afternoon, sir,” said the manager. “Is there
anything I can do? Perhaps the lady has gone out for a little walk?
Does she know London?”
Jeff did not stop to reply: he fled up the stairs, back to the room,
and made a quick search. The girl’s dressing-case, which he knew had
been taken into the bedroom, was gone. Something on the floor
attracted his attention. He picked it up, and read the few scribbled
lines, torn from a notebook; and as he read, a light came into his
eyes. Very carefully he folded the crumpled sheet and put it into his
pocket. Then he went back to his sitting-room, and sat for a long time
in the big arm-chair, his legs thrust out before him, his hands deep
in his trousers pockets, and his thoughts were not wholly unpleasant.
The light was now nearly gone, and he got up.
“Room thirteen,” he said. “Room thirteen is going to hold a few
surprises to-night!”
CHAPTER XIII
To Parker, the valet, as he laid out Johnny’s dress clothes, there
was a misfortune and a tragedy deeper than any to which Johnny had
been a spectator. Johnny, loafing into his bedroom, a long, black,
ebonite cigarette-holder between his teeth, found his man profoundly
agitated.
“The buckle of your white dress waistcoat has in some unaccountable
way disappeared,” he said in a hushed voice. “I’m extremely sorry,
sir, because this is the only white dress waistcoat you have.”
“Be cheerful,” said Johnny. “Take a happier view of life. You can tie
the tapes behind. You could even sew me together, Parker. Are you an
expert needle-worker, or do you crochet?”
“My needlework has been admired, sir,” said Parker complacently. “I
think yours is an excellent suggestion. Otherwise, the waistcoat will
not sit as it should. Especially in the case of a gentleman with your
figure.”
“Parker,” said Johnny, as he began to dress leisurely, “have you ever
killed a man?”
“No, sir, I have never killed a man,” said Parker gravely. “When I was
a young man, I once ran over a cat--I was a great cyclist in my
youth.”
“But you never killed a man? And, what is more, you’ve never even
wanted to kill a man?”
“No, sir, I can’t say that I ever have,” said Parker after a few
moments’ consideration, as though it were possible that some
experience had been his which had been overlooked in the hurry of his
answering.
“It is quite a nice feeling, Parker. Is there a hip pocket to
these--yes, there is,” he said, patting his trousers.
“I’m sorry there is,” said Parker, “very sorry indeed. Gentlemen get
into the habit of carrying their cigarette cases in the hip pocket,
with the result that the coat tail is thrown out of shape. That is
where the dinner jacket has its advantages--the Tuxedo, as an American
gentleman once called it, though I’ve never understood why a dinner
jacket should be named after a Scottish town.”
“Tuxedo is in Dixie,” said Johnny humorously, “and Dixie is America’s
lost Atlantis. Don’t worry about the set of my tail coat. I am not
carrying my cigarette case there.”
“Anything more bulky would of course be worse, sir,” said Parker, and
Johnny did not carry the discussion any farther.