The seventh shot A detective story
windows of Kitty Legaye’s taxicab.
Her charming, white-skinned face framed in its short black veil and
black ruff, lighted to intense interest as she caught sight of them.
“Have you any news?” she cried, in carefully subdued excitement.
Barrison could not bring himself to tell her that the police had caught
up with her sister, and that she was on her way back to face her
accusers. Kitty saw his hesitation, and thought it might be because
Clay was present.
“Let me give you a lift!” she said impulsively.
Barrison accepted, after a second’s cogitation. “Go on to my rooms,
Tony,” he said. “I’ll be there shortly.”
He got into the machine with Miss Legaye, and said to her gravely, as
they began to move again:
“Tell me, please, Miss Legaye, you had no intercourse with your sister
since she came to New York—I mean until you sent her the money, and she
answered you?”
“None!” she said quickly and frankly.
“Did your letter come by mail or by a messenger boy?”
She started, and looked at him in surprise. “By mail,” she replied.
“Why?”
“Perfect nonsense,” he said, really feeling that the impulse which had
made him speak was an idle one. “I’ve found a boy who did a lot of
errands for her, and I wondered if you could identify him, that’s all.”
She shook her head; though it was getting dusk, he could see her dark
eyes staring at him.
“I don’t know anything about that,” she said. “What sort of a boy, and
what do you expect to prove by him?”
“He’s merely a witness,” Barrison hastened to explain. “You see,
the—the letter you let me have corresponds exactly in writing to the
letters that came to Mortimer, threatening him. We think this is the
boy who carried Mrs. Blankley’s messages while she was in New York.
That’s all. You see, though it’s a small link, it is one that we can’t
entirely overlook.”
“Have you seen him?” she asked.
“No; I am to see him to-night,” said Barrison. “And—Miss Legaye, I
must tell you”—he hesitated, for he was a kind-hearted fellow—“I ought
to warn you that you may have an unpleasant ordeal ahead of you. Your
sister and her husband are—coming back to New York.”
She was silent for half a minute.
“Thank you,” she said. “You have been very good to—warn me. I don’t
think you will ever know how glad I am to have met you this afternoon,
Mr. Barrison.”
He did not pretend to understand her. As they had gone several blocks,
he said good night with more warmth and consideration than he had ever
expected to feel for Kitty Legaye, and, alighting from the taxi, made
his way directly to his rooms.
He found Willie Coster awaiting him there, with his hair standing on
end, and an expression of blank and rather appalled astonishment on his
mild countenance.
“Say!” he cried, as Jim entered. “I went to call on the gov’nor this
afternoon, and—he’s sailed for London to put on three or four plays!
And I’m out of a job! Now, what do you think of that?”
Barrison stood still in the center of the room and nodded his head
slowly. So Dukane had heard the warnings in the air, and had slipped
away! Well, it was only a matter of time! They had nothing criminal
against him, but—the story would not make a pleasant one, as noised
abroad about the greatest theatrical manager of America. Eventually,
it would come out. However, meanwhile he had gone. He was sorry for
Willie; sorry for the hundreds of actors and other employees who would
suffer. It looked from what Willie had to tell that Dukane’s exit had
been a complete and clean-cut one. He had closed up his office, put his
road companies in subordinate hands, and—cleared out.
“And I—who have been with him all these years—don’t even get a
company!” complained poor Willie.
Barrison remembered what Dukane had said to him about not being able to
afford to consider any man personally. For some reason he had chosen to
forget Willie Coster, and, true to form, he had forgotten him!
Tony Clay came in then. It was half past seven, nearly an hour later,
when Tara reminded them politely of dinner.
“We’ll go out somewhere,” said Jim, rising and stretching himself.
“You two shall be my guests. I feel that this case is practically over,
and when I’m through with a case I feel like Willie after a first
night—I want to relax. I don’t want—at least not necessarily—to get
drunk, but I do want to——”
Oddly enough, it was Tony Clay who interrupted him in a queer, abrupt
sort of voice. He sounded like a man who hated to speak, but who was
driven to it in spite of himself.
“Look here, you fellows,” he said, “don’t let’s go out for dinner
to-night.”
“Why not?” demanded Barrison, in astonishment. “I thought you were
always on the first call for a feed, Tony!”
“Oh, well, maybe I am. And—I know you think me an awful duffer in lots
of ways, Jim, but—I have a hunch that perhaps——”
“That what?” demanded Jim, as he paused.
“That something is going to happen!” declared Tony defiantly. “Now call
me a fool if you like! I shan’t mind a bit, because I dare say I am
one. But that’s my hunch, and I’m going to stick to it. I don’t know
whether it’s something good or something darned bad, but—if something
doesn’t turn up before another hour’s out, I miss my guess!”
They laughed at him, but they stayed.
“Tony,” said Barrison, after the lights were lighted and Tara had gone
to prepare dinner, “you have something more than a hunch to go on.
What is it? Out with it!”
“Well,” said Tony unwillingly, “maybe I have something, but it’s too
vague for me to explain, yet. Only—I’d be just as pleased if we three
stuck together to-night. That’s all.”
The boy spoke earnestly, and Barrison looked at him in real wonder.
“Tony,” he said, “if you really know anything——”
The bell rang, and Tara brought in a telegram.
Barrison tore it open and read:
Am in danger. Come to me, Ferrati’s road house, two miles beyond
Claremont, before nine. Come, for Heaven’s sake, and mine.
G. T.
Barrison gazed at the words in dazed stillness for a moment; then
seized his hat.
“Stop, Jim!” cried Tony urgently. “You must tell us—you must tell
me—what is the matter?”
Barrison shook his head as he dashed to the door.
“I can’t tell any one anything!” he cried, as he went. “I am needed.
Isn’t that enough for any man?”
He was gone, and the door had slammed after him.
Tony quickly picked up the telegram which had fluttered to the floor.
“Didn’t I warn him?” he muttered.
CHAPTER XXIX
THROUGH THE NIGHT
On—on through the blue dusk of the September evening.
Now that he found himself actually in the touring car that he had so
impetuously engaged, Jim Barrison found his chaotic thoughts settling
into some sort of approximate order, if not of repose. He began to
analyze himself and this strange ride through the night.
He knew that suddenly he had forgotten the habit and the prompting
of years; the caution that usually made him project himself into a
possible future and meet it intelligently; the restraint and sensible
skepticism which had always made him consider risks and appraise them,
even while being quite as willing to take them as any other brave man.
He knew that he had in a single moment forgotten all the training and
the custom of his mature lifetime, because a woman had asked him to
come to her!
A woman? That would not have been enough, he knew, in any other case.
He was as chivalrous and as plucky as most men—a gallant gentleman in
all ways; but his discretion would have aided his valor in any ordinary
enterprise. As it was—he had been deaf and blind to any and all
promptings save those that pounded in his ardent pulse. And all because
a woman had sent for him! A woman? Say, rather, the woman! The one
woman in the world who could so move him, change him, separate him from
himself!
For the first time, but with characteristic honesty and thoroughness,
Jim Barrison acknowledged to his own heart that he loved Grace
Templeton.
He loved her, and he was going to her. The fact that she wanted him was
enough. It was strange—some day when he was sane, perhaps, he would see
how strange.
The chauffeur slowed up and turned to say over his shoulder:
“I guess it’s here, sir. There’s a sign that says Fer—something, and
that’s a road house in there, all right! Shall I drive in, sir?”
“Yes; go ahead.”
The big car crept in slowly around the curving drive toward the low
row of not too brilliant lights, for this road house was set far back
from prying eyes. There were a few trees in front, too, which further
enhanced the illusion of privacy. Barrison could not help noticing
that, unlike most road houses, this one seemed bare of patrons for the
nonce. There was not another automobile to be seen anywhere about.
He had heard of Ferrati’s before. It was one of those discreet little
out-of-town places, far away from the main road, hidden by trees,
vines, and shrubbery, and known only to a certain selection among
the elect. Whatever its true character, it masqueraded as modestly
as a courtesan behind a cap and veil. Proper to the last degree was
Ferrati’s; any one could go there. The tone was scrupulously correct—if
you frequented its main rooms. And the authorities saw nothing wrong
with it. Ferrati himself saw to that!
But there were stories—Barrison had heard a few of them—which suggested
that the resort, like some people, had a side not generally known to
the public. It was even said that it was a headquarters for a certain
blackmailing concern much wanted by the police; that all manner of
underworld celebrities could be sure of a haven there in off hours, and
that the bartender was nearly as skillful at knock-out drops as he was
at mixed drinks.
How, Jim asked himself, had Grace Templeton ever got into these
surroundings? Of course he sensed something queer about it all, and he
could not help wondering despairingly whether that unquenchable thirst
for adventure to which she had borne witness had been the means of
bringing her inadvertently into such an unsavory neighborhood.
He did not dismiss the car, but told the man to wait, and, running
up the short flight of steps at the front door, asked the rather
seedy-looking maître d’hôtel, or whatever he was, for Miss Templeton.
The man did not seem to understand him, but a second individual, who
was clearly his superior in position, made his appearance, and greeted
Barrison politely and with some air of authority.
“Is your name Ferrati?”
“Giovanni Ferrati, if the signor pleases.” He bowed, but Barrison had
the impression that the man was watching him. He was dark and foreign
looking, with a face like a rat.
“The signor wished——”
“I am to meet Miss Templeton here,” said Barrison shortly.
The rat-faced one’s expression cleared from a dubious look to delighted
relief. So far as he was able, he beamed upon the newcomer.
“Ah, that is well! If the signor would come this way——”
Jim followed where he led, with an unaccountable sense of distrust and
discomfort gaining place in his breast. For the first time, a genuine
doubt assailed him. Suppose it were a trick, a trap? Nothing since he
had first entered this “joint,” as he savagely termed it to himself,
had put him in any way at his ease. And at last he was conscious of a
well-developed instinct of suspicion. It was not only what he had known
before—that Grace was in trouble; it was a conviction that the whole
situation was an impossible one—false, dangerous, utterly unlike what
he had been expecting. Suppose—he hardly dared to put his thoughts into
words. He only knew that he found his environment singularly menacing.
He could not tell what it was that was in the air, but it was something