Three sevens A detective story
presence of the only friends he had on earth or cared to have. It
made his own breast heave.
Then it was as if the strength of a storm had been confined in
him, had become a mere potentiality of strength, as he turned from
the window, and faced the others. He was sober. He felt a certain
solemnity. He had a strange sense that this was some higher, better
Daniel Craig who had now taken possession of himself--his mind and
his voice.
“I am still Three Sevens,” he said pleasantly.
“You are Daniel Craig,” said Colonel Bird, with a combination of that
pettiness and strength that characterized him.
“I still have a debt to pay,” said Craig.
Here Courtney spoke up, almost as if an accusation had been brought
against him:
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Craig, old man; but if you
refer to--why, confound it--he’s helped us put the scoundrels on the
run; hasn’t he, colonel?”
Craig smiled. His smile took in Joan Gracie without singling her out,
which might have been embarrassing. But of all those there, Joan was
possibly the only one besides Craig who guessed the nature of the
debt to which Craig referred. It was Major Gracie who spoke next:
“You’re Daniel Craig, sir; and I have the honor to tell you so,
officially.”
Craig took time to think. Perhaps he was seeing wrong. Perhaps all
debts were balanced. But there was no conviction in his mind too
great for thought.
“I’ve got to finish what I started out to do,” he said.
“Oh, you mean the plan to trap those crooks!” said Artie.
“Yes.”
“Nothing doing.”
“They got the tip?”
“Not about what you were going to do.”
“But your own tip that Wolf was coming here to kill me?”
“That was because the Wolf was being trailed by a New York detective
and was feeling ugly and thought you might have squealed.”
“But the others?”
“Like the count himself. Captain Fleyenhall,” said Artie, taking the
rest of his audience into his confidence, “learned what Mr. Craig,
and you, Mr. Courtney, and Colonel Bird, were planning to do here
to-night. It was Fleyenhall’s plan to nip your plan by arresting your
men himself, downstairs, and thus turn the tables on you----”
“Clever,” said Courtney.
“But not clever enough,” said Artie. “Fleyenhall couldn’t pull
anything like that. He’s nothing but a big, thick-headed cop. Every
crook in town knew what he was up to the moment he called in his men.”
“And you mean?” said Colonel Bird.
“The crooks have scattered.”
“And our pet plan spoiled,” said the colonel.
“Fleyenhall’s also,” said Courtney. “That’s one satisfaction--in
spoiling our plan--Craig’s plan--they spoiled their own.”
Craig had looked from one to the other. Wasn’t that the spinner in
his skull at work again?
But now Craig was looking altogether at Joan, and she was looking
altogether at him. Let the others think what they would. She
understood. Craig spoke again:
“Not the highest gift of Heaven will do me any good unless I’ve
settled the account in full. Later on, I’ll pay back the money that
Courtney has advanced. There are other small debts here and there
that I’ll have to pay. But there are still these four men of prey at
large--Leamy and Count Wolf, Trick O’Ray and Ben Jarvis. I’ll go and
get them.”
It was not with the voice of the old Craig, but with the voice of
this newer Craig, that he spoke now as he turned to Courtney:
“You’ll have your story, and you’ll have it here!”
“You mean----”
“----that since my men haven’t kept their appointment, I’ll go out
and fetch them.”
“Can you?”
“I will.”
“They may be gone.”
“I know where.”
“It’s now six o’clock.”
“I’ll have the last of them here--by midnight!”
Craig heard himself saying this. What was he promising? It wasn’t a
promise. It was a prophecy.
He turned to Colonel Bird.
“Now that the police aren’t likely to interfere----”
“I’ll put the screws to them if they try it,” said the district
attorney. “What with Artie’s affidavit.”
Craig had a quick smile for Artie. He completed what he had to say to
Colonel Bird:
“You may have your own detectives there in the back room, as we
originally planned----”
All this as if there was some higher intelligence using his voice,
using his brain, as there unquestionably was, but, nevertheless and
always, this higher intelligence his very own.
It was a little vision of Joan as he had last seen her--hands
clasped, a light in her eyes--that stood out in the jumble of other
visions that were with him as he left the room. He comprehended the
emotion of hers, a commingling of fear and faith, of tenderness and
awe. And he comprehended all this as if they were already one--as if
they already had been married--as possibly they had in the alchemy
of souls.
He went down in the elevator and noticed nothing and heard no sound
not necessary to what lay ahead of him. His concentration was
perfect, as in the case of a man possessed. He called a taxi, gave an
address.
CHAPTER XXVI
RIGHT AND LEFT
There had been a shiver and a scamper in that nether world of
which Craig for a period had been the unwilling “Napoleon.” There
was no doubt about that. The word had been passed: “Lay low.”
There was nothing new about this. Every now and then some such
warning went out--following some big crime, preceding some special
investigation, and especially around election time. But to a number
of the denizens of this underworld had the signal come with special
violence--particularly to those who had recently been in touch with
Three Sevens.
Count Wolf, with the nagging New York detectives on his trail, had
suddenly decided to put over his designs of vengeance on the man he
believed had betrayed him. Taylor Leamy suddenly wished he were back
in Cincinnati.
When the district attorney and the police got together for a real
clean-up, the millstones were turning--grinding. It was “Good night!”
to the weevils in the wheat.
Especially disquieting was that report that Three Sevens had been
taken and, in exchange for benefits, present and to come, had decided
to tell all that he knew. No one knew where this rumor originated.
No one knew how much it contained of truth. But there it was, with a
quality about it to furnish a shiver and a scamper even to those who
had believed themselves to be most immune.
It was the very fact that so little was known about Three Sevens,
himself, apart from that amazing delivery he had put over in San
Pedro, that this new rumor concerning Craig assumed the quality it
did. No one knew what he knew and what he didn’t know. A good deal
was taken for granted. Here was a man who could bargain with not only
the police, but the finicky and uncompromising district attorney.
“You can tell it to the whole world,” said Trick O’Ray, “I ain’t
scared of him, nor no other stiff.”
“It ain’t no disgrace to lay low for a while, though, Tricky,”
grinned Jarvis.
Jarvis knew that Trick was talking for the benefit of Violet rather
than for the mere enunciation of pure truth.
“The first chance I gets,” said Trick, “I put him in the morgue.”
Jarvis laughed genially.
He was perfectly willing to have Trick try. He was perfectly willing
to have almost anything happen to Tricky, too. He was, at any time,
especially now, with Violet’s not ungraceful shape occupying so much
of his physical and mental vision.
There was nothing dark and mysterious about this lair of the
well-known pair. It was just an ordinary little flat, far out in the
suburbs. There was even a touch of home about it. There was a red
tablecloth on the table at which the men sat. On this the lighted
lamp shone warmly. In the corner stood the cook stove radiating heat
and sausage smells, and the woman at the side of it might have been
the bride of any well-paid workman. Well-paid workmen were what Trick
and Jarvis might have been--if one didn’t examine their soft hands,
look too long at the inner hardness of their faces.
But, in general, they were very human--Jarvis, the man of the world,
and the superior of the two, listening tolerantly to an inferior whom
he secretly intends to dupe.
“Why didn’t you do it the last time you seen him?” demanded Violet,
with a touch of disdain.
Secretly, she also was dreaming of romance, not of the romance that
was in Ben Jarvis’ thought. Something more splendid by far. Once, not
so long ago, she had thought of forsaking Trick for Ben. But no more!
No, there was another. She thought of him now as she stood there
frying sausages, her thoughts skyrocketing--as they had done more or
less ever since she had met him--Three Sevens himself!
Why not?
She could recall every moment of their meeting, from the first
instant that she had seen him. What a thrill! Had she thrilled him
like that? Two fortune tellers and a trance medium had thus far
assured her that she had. And hadn’t he looked her in the eyes, and
spoken to her as if she were a lady, and held her hand the shred of a
century when they parted?
“I wasn’t born for this,” said Violet to herself as she fried the
sausage for the two thieves at the table, “I was born for something
better. My Gawd, I could love him so!”
She emptied the sausages into a plate and put this on the red
tablecloth. She reached down a loaf of bread from a shelf and added
this to the repast. Her ideas of domestic science were primitive. Her
thoughts were elsewhere.
Trick had taken a knife from his pocket. He opened this, showed he
was housebroken by wiping it on the tablecloth, then cut himself a
hunk of bread. He parted this and thrust a piece of the hot sausage
into the opening with the point of his knife. On his monkeylike face
had come a banquet look.
“Git us some coffee,” he commanded.
“What’s the matter with a can of suds?” Ben asked.
Ben had also helped himself. He had broken off a piece of bread and
folded this over into a sort of tongs with which he secured his meat.
Not like this had Three Sevens eaten, Violet reflected. He had joined
her and Trick and Ben in the rear room of a saloon which was also a
restaurant of sorts, and they had regaled themselves together. She
herself had been scarcely able to eat--pretending she had a headache.
It was so she could watch Three Sevens, be ready to meet his eye
whenever he should chance to look at her. And he had looked at her.
“Sure, a scuttle o’ suds,” said Trick.
Trick was in a quiver of eagerness. His mouth was full. He was eating
with a sort of ferocious delight.
Ben was but little less absorbed, but he had a glance for the girl
as she took a tin bucket from the window sill. She went out of the
little flat without a word.
Neither of them was ever to see her again.
Craig saw her, at the bottom of the dark stairs, three flights down.
He spoke to her.
“Hello, Violet----” the merest whisper.
She suppressed a cry. Then Craig was speaking to her rapidly.
“Keep right on going, but give me the key to the flat. You can give
me the bucket, too, if you want to.”
“Where----” she began, stifled.
“You’ve got a brother in Waukegan.”
“How did you know?”
“I found out.”
“Was it--did you----”
“Think about you? Yes. Go to him. Later, go West.”
“What’s the matter? What are you going to do? Will I----”
“Violet, do what I tell you, now! Agreed?”
He got her affirmative without a word from her. She had passed him a
key. There was a shyness and a confidingness about her, somehow, and
all of a sudden, that made it seem to Craig that he was talking to a
little child--as if, here in this somber and also sinister hall, a
kindly fate had moved the years back for Violet and made her a child
again.
It was in that sort of a spirit that Craig put his hands on Violet’s