Three sevens A detective story
shoulders and kissed her on the forehead. It was a fraternal kiss.
That was their leave taking. And that was the sum and climax of
Violet’s romance. After all, many a woman and man has had to be
satisfied with less.
Craig didn’t look back of him. He didn’t have to. He had that species
of omniscience--small and human, but none the less a variety of
omniscience itself--that permitted him to know that Violet had fled
away through the night, to fairer fields and happier, he hoped.
With a thought like that he came to the door of the flat where the
two fugitives gorged and waited for their beer. Craig didn’t need the
key. He had the signal that would have caused them to open. But it
would be easier with the key. He smiled as he fitted the key to the
lock.
He was smiling as he pushed the door open. He was smiling still as
the silence fell. He smiled because he was thinking of Violet, and
then of what old Eddie Yarmouth used to say:
“’Tis a thought that’ll bring you luck.”
Eddie was right. The surprise was perfect. Craig spoke softly.
“How’ll you ride?” he asked. “Taxi--or an ambulance?”
* * * * *
There were a dozen places in any one of which Taylor Leamy might have
sought refuge, and all of these Craig had visited while the night was
still young, as Taylor Leamy himself was to discover. And in each one
of these Craig had left an impression that was at once ensnaring and
disquieting.
Leamy, that night, had eaten his dinner in a quiet little restaurant
back of a brewery. He was almost the only customer in the place. The
quiet had appealed to him. Also, it had given him time to reflect.
Getting a little old, a little fat, a little soft. No, it wouldn’t do
for him to make any more false plays. The idea of prison nauseated
him--the hardness, the violence, the ugliness of everything. He hoped
that Craig would prosper. Perhaps he could get as much as ten--as
much as twenty--thousand dollars out of Craig. For Craig also must
hate prison. But what had been the meaning of that tip he had got
from Bender to lay low, let Craig alone for a while?
Bender was a shyster lawyer. In times past, Leamy had paid Bender
thousands of dollars. Was Bender now giving him a straight tip? Or
had Bender accepted a fee from Craig himself?
The message had come to Leamy at his lodging house, a quiet place,
kept by a respectable widow.
He had taken to living much at night, since his return to Chicago,
sleeping mostly in the daytime. It wouldn’t do for him to stumble
into the wrong sort of person and get recognized. And yet he couldn’t
be too cautious, either. His funds were running low. Now, if he could
only blackmail Craig out of a comfortable sum!
The waiter who had served him hastily approached from the other end
of the hall.
“Beg pardon,” said the waiter. “Are you Mr. Finch?”
It was the name that Leamy had adopted since his return. He was Finch
to Three Sevens.
“Yes,” he said cautiously. “I’m Mr. Finch.”
“Just before you came in,” said the waiter, “a gentleman gave me this
card for you. I almost forgot.”
Leamy took the card. It was a plain card. There was a message written
on it as follows:
Y 630
Report before midnight.
3777
Leamy lingered a little longer picking his teeth. He made of it an
elaborate operation. But all the time that he was doing this he could
feel the blood draining back to his heart and leaving something of a
weight and a coldness there. He remembered that “Y 630.” How well he
remembered it--his own private mark on the books of San Pedro!
He would have to get rid of this feeling. So he told himself when
he was out in the street. He went to a small political club of the
neighborhood where he had been wont to slay a few of his heavy hours
with a game of billiards. And he played there now, indifferently,
albeit with a passion of forced attention, until a certain marker,
just back from an errand, noticed him and handed him a card:
Y 630
Heigh-o! He pocketed the card, put up his cue.
Leamy yawned. All right, he was willing to let it go at that. A man
of his age appreciated a good night’s sleep. He paid his reckoning.
He thought with appreciation of the quiet room that was awaiting him
at the widow’s house.
A little later he let himself in with a pass-key. The hall of the
widow’s house was dimly lighted. Leamy started for the stairs. He
stopped short.
Odd, but there for a moment he was almost certain that the woman who
stood there in front of him was a certain other widow who had once
confronted him, telling him that he had robbed her of her last cent.
Then Leamy pulled himself together. It was no one but his landlady.
“Goodness, Mrs. Travis,” he exclaimed, with a touch of the jocular,
“you almost frightened me.”
“Maybe it was because I was frightened myself,” said Mrs. Travis.
She was a woman who had lost all sense of humor if she had ever
possessed any.
“I should have rung the bell,” said Leamy.
“It wasn’t that,” said she. “It was the gentleman who was just here
looking for you. He was a fine-looking gentleman, but there was
something in his face I can’t forget.”
Leamy felt a thin, fine quiver in his spine.
“To see me? What did he want?”
“He didn’t say. He said you’d know. He said: ‘Tell him Three Sevens
said’--what does that mean?”
“I’m sure I don’t know, Mrs. Travis.”
“But he said you would. He said: ‘Tell him Three Sevens orders him to
come to his office, without fail, before midnight.’”
“Oh, yes,” said Leamy, “I remember, now. It’s something about our
lodge.” And Leamy turned and left the house. He was in need of air.
As a matter of fact he had been in need of air--although he hadn’t
recognized the necessity at once--ever since Mrs. Travis had reminded
him of that other widow.
It was an hour later before Leamy succeeded in getting Bender, the
shyster lawyer, on the telephone. Bender, it appeared, had been
dining with friends and was in a jovial mood.
“What did you mean by that message?” Leamy asked, as soon as he had
established his identity.
“See you to-morrow.”
“Listen,” said Leamy passionately. “I’ve been standing here in the
stuffy telephone booth for an hour----”
“--’s what I’m telling you----”
“Bender, let me see you to-night.”
“See you to-morrow.”
Leamy caught the strain of music.
“Listen, Ike! Three Sevens----”
For the first time since the attempted conversation began, Bender’s
voice came clear and cold. It was a question:
“Did you ever hear of some one listening in?”
There was a rasping click, and Leamy knew that Bender had “hung up.”
“I’ll do what Three Sevens said,” Leamy agreed with himself. “After
all, there was that deal he was going to let me in on. I was to have
seen him at six. Bender steered me off.”
Bender was a shyster. On the other hand it was perfectly true
that Bender had valuable relations with the police and certain
magistrates. And Leamy hesitated after he had signaled the car that
would have carried him past the Courtney Building. For a second the
conductor was frowning at Leamy. Then the conductor jerked his bell
and the car rumbled on.
It was another car he took, and one that went in the opposite
direction an hour or so later, and in that hour the coldness and the
weight about Leamy’s heart had grown like an icicle under a glacial
drip. Two more of those cards had been added to his collection now.
One he had picked up at the Sagamore Buffet, where the bartender was
an old and trusted friend of his, and the bartender had looked at him
with pity. The other he had picked up at the Hotel Columbine.
Leamy rode and rode, until he noticed how a man who stood beside the
motorman kept staring back at him. Then Leamy got off and found that
he was in a part of the city that was unfamiliar to him.
He was near a stream of water. He saw the dancing reflections of
it through blackness. And there came to him a peculiar jolt of
consciousness that there may have been a bit of truth in that
death notice of Taylor Leamy he had read, after all; and that this
shimmering dark water was what he had come to find.
CHAPTER XXVII
TIGERS’ DEN
Just eleven, by the illuminated dial of some obscure factory, when
Leamy raised stricken eyes for a look about him. Still time! But he
was getting old, getting a trifle fat and soft. The water beckoned.
“Just eleven,” said Craig to himself, as he looked at that same dial
from the north. “Still time.”
But his thought was of Count Wolf, and he regretted the time that he
had given to Leamy thus far. Not that he had given very much. After
all, Leamy had been incidental to his search for Wolf. It was Wolf
who was going to require a test of strength. Wolf also he had traced
from lair to lair--tireless, unceasing, with the look and the feel
about him that he had brought away from the office where, in the
presence of all the world he and Joan Gracie had plighted themselves
as surely as if they had written out their troth on white parchment.
The taxi sped. The eleven o’clock dial was left behind. Over the tops
of the houses Craig saw the stars, quiet, reassuring. They recalled
other nights. But this was the night of nights. He breathed deep.
There had been one interruption in Craig’s search for the master
sinner who went by the name of Count Wolf. That was after Craig had
learned that the count was at Madame Marebello’s. A ball, if you
please! That was the count’s style! A ball for the count on the eve
of Waterloo. Or was it Waterloo?
Craig had gone to his hotel and decked himself in his finest--had
shaved himself for the second time this day, manicured himself and
made himself immaculate in every respect, nor counted the precious
minutes lost that he had devoted to this end.
For, all the time that he was doing it he was telling himself that
if, peradventure, he should have to die it would be well to die
clean. It was odd how that thought of death kept beating at the
shutter of his mind, like Poe’s _Raven_. And finally, as had the
poet, so Craig had thrown the shutter open, let the sable bird come
in. For, after all, what was there so terrible about death? He could
imagine a thousand things worse.
Just five minutes after eleven, and the taxi that had brought Craig
from the center of the city into this quiet and eminently respectable
street, had stopped before an imposing house surrounded by an
imposing garden. The house was shuttered. For all except the front
door it was dark. For all except a muted hum of music and laughter it
was silent.
Craig directed his chauffeur into an alleyway at the side of the
garden. He was grateful now for the presence of this man, a detective
lent him by his friend, Colonel Bird.
But no raven was croaking in Craig’s mind as he mounted the Marebello
steps. The power was still in him, plus a certain knowledge that
whatever should happen to him, that thing would not be bad.
He didn’t have to ring the bell. A butler saw him coming, opened the
door. That was a point about this house. No raiding party of police
would ever have to scandalize this neighborhood by chopping down the
outer door. Inside--if it ever came to that--there would have to be
some chopping, perhaps. For, if reports were to be believed, the
stately rooms and cozy alcoves of the Marebello’s house concealed a
labyrinth.
Said the butler:
“Whom shall I announce?”
Said Craig:
“The gentleman from Frisco.”
Craig was glad that he had the password right. They changed the
password rather frequently in houses where Count Wolf was an honored
guest. He heard the door close behind him with a metallic click. The