Three sevens A detective story
butler was helping him off with his coat. A few moments later he was
saluting his hostess.
She was a tall woman, very dark, very richly colored--with a color
that was all her own. Craig smiled at her. But his smile was of the
lips only.
“This is indeed a pleasure,” said the Marebello.
Her voice was a rich and vibrant contralto, very soft, very musical.
It had a caressing touch about it like the hand that the lady placed
on Craig’s arm.
“The pleasure is mine,” said Craig.
It was easier to lie when the time-worn old phrases of polite speech
were used.
“I was afraid that you had forgotten me.”
“No man could ever forget you,” said Craig truthfully, this time.
“You are very beautiful.”
It was a phrase that the Marebello must have heard ten thousand
times, but there was a soberness about Craig as he said it that gave
the familiar words a quality of freshness.
“You’re a charming boy,” she retorted meltingly.
“You are so beautiful,” said Craig softly, “that I’m going to tell
you something right now before I fall under your spell.”
“You almost frighten me.”
“You may well be frightened,” said Craig, with that odd sobriety of
his, “but not of me.”
They had been standing in the broad hall. From an adjacent room there
came the sound of an orchestra creeping and strumming into the first
bars of an exotic, voluptuous dance, a babble of voices, the popping
of a champagne cork.
“What do you mean?” the woman asked, with an accent of alarm, genuine
this time, even if it was subdued.
Craig whispered the rest:
“It’s what I say--or murder!”
He made it brutal. He knew where he was. He was a trainer in the
tiger den. He had shown the red-hot iron.
The woman didn’t flinch. She had an excellent nerve. No one perhaps
had a wider experience with the varieties of passion. In her world
the raw and the primitive were never covered with more than a thin
veneer. She knew the value of keeping her head. On the other hand,
she must have known that here was a crisis where there was no time
to be lost. And, in a way, she was prepared for meeting violence
with violence. That butler who had helped Craig off with his coat
was a heavyweight slugger. There were other servants in the house
like that. There were a number of guests who would have been equally
efficient in putting a man to sleep.
“You forget where you are,” she said.
“Listen closely,” said Craig pleasantly and softly. “For you, it’s
peace or war.”
“What do you want?”
“I’ve come to get Count Wolf.”
“Can’t you wait ’til he leaves?”
“No.”
“You will ruin me.”
“No, I won’t. I’ll tell him to come away with me.”
“He’ll kill you.”
“Do you know who I am?”
She gave him a melting look, still tried to argue. “Be a nice boy.
Why can’t we all be friends?”
“All I ask of you,” said Craig steadily, “is no interference--from
your servants or your guests. The D. A.’s office and the police know
where I am. They’re waiting for me. Got that?”
“Yes.”
“And they’re waiting for Wolf.”
Craig was alone as he strolled into the big room where the
dancers were. There were a dozen couples on the floor. There were
other couples and groups about the walls. It was an ornate room,
brilliantly lighted. There was nothing much to differentiate it
from any private ballroom; nor, for that matter, was there anything
superficial to differentiate these guests from the guests, say, at
some large but intimate house party. The girls were attractive. Most
of the men were quiet.
Men only interested Craig as he looked about him. He saw the one man
he was looking for. Count Wolf stood with a small party, men and
women, almost opposite the broad double doors by which Craig entered.
Almost at the same instant Count Wolf must have seen Craig.
Craig was fair. The count was dark. Craig was shaven to the tinted
marble of his face. The count wore the pointed black beard that had
become his treasure and his pride, as well as his principal disguise,
since quitting San Pedro. Both Craig and the count were supple,
straight, and strong. If it came to a physical encounter, all other
things equal, it would be a pretty guess as to which might win.
But Craig, from the first, had resolved that there should be no
physical encounter--not if he could help it--not in the usual sense.
He was still in the tiger den. He knew that. It would be folly to
take his chances with fang and claw.
His entrance had attracted notice. He was aware of this. It was the
great Three Sevens who stepped across the room.
Craig never wavered. He stepped up to Count Wolf and squared himself
in front of the count. Craig said:
“So there you are, you cur!”
He lifted his open hand. He gave the count a smart slap--not very
hard, but swift.
The count let out a snarl. But the attack had been so swift, so
surprising, so completely devoid of anything like fear or hesitation,
that the count was defeated while Craig’s fingers were still against
his cheek.
Craig had something in him that the count didn’t understand, that
was as much a mystery to him as the power of an animal trainer is
mysterious to a slinking, but deadly, black panther. Perhaps the
black panther says to itself in its own way: “I am deadly. I can
kill. But here is one creature who ignores that fact. What has he got
that is greater?” Had there been a thought like that in the count’s
mind, as there was, most likely, Craig could have made a satisfactory
answer.
Right then and there, Craig was answering some such problem for
himself. He had all the power of civilization back of him. The count
didn’t.
There had been a swift recoil, a tensing of nerves and muscles. It
was a tension not only of the count, but of those who had been with
him--a youth with a snout like a boar, a man of uncertain age who in
the passing fancy of the moment might have been a polar bear. The
women were drawn back--coiling, one would have said, like cobras and
pythons.
There came an added touch to the scene.
The orchestra was not very far away. A moment ago the orchestra
had been playing its music for this human menagerie. There was a
jangling succession of discords. The music stopped.
“You talk of killing me,” said Craig. His voice was so cold and thin
he could hardly recognize it as his own. He looked about him, and
took his time about it, but not too much time. “I’ve come to get this
man,” he explained. He snapped his eyes back on the count. “Come on
with me. Get out of here. Or I’ll kick you out.”
“You’ll answer for this,” said the count.
But his threat was a mockery. He knew it was a mockery. The trouble
was that the count couldn’t think--couldn’t think at all except about
that thing that Craig had that the count himself couldn’t understand.
After all, it’s the mystery that counts--mystery that has always
frightened both animals and men, and made the old kings and gods what
they were.
“Outside,” said Craig, and he stood aside.
The count was like a man in a vacuum, only it was not mere air that
had been pumped away from him; it was that finer thing that all men
breathe when in the society of their fellows--sympathy, accord. The
count was aware that this crowd, suddenly, was not “with him.” He was
a man who had just had his face slapped. And the crowd also was in
the presence of this something that it couldn’t understand--a greater
strength, a greater skill, a greater fame.
The count drew himself up. He made a last play for dignity.
“We’ll settle this outside,” he said, and started for the door.
But Craig was watchful. His eyes, including the third eye in the top
of his head, were everywhere. He was as strong and yet as delicate as
a seismograph, ready to note the slightest vibration of the unsettled
world about him.
He was watchful in the hall, while that heavy-shouldered,
light-handed butler was helping the count into his things, then Craig
himself. In the midst of it all, Craig caught an impression of the
Marebello smiling at him tropically, from the shadow of the stairs,
whereupon he thanked God that he was putting this place back of him
forever.
And then, the moment that he and the count were on the steps, and
the door clanging back of them like the bronze gates of hell,
Craig seized the count in such a crushing grip that the count
believed--must have believed--that his end was at hand.
CHAPTER XXVIII
TWELVE
But all Craig wanted to do was to get a hold on the count that the
count couldn’t break. Then he was running his prisoner off through
the dark garden in the direction of the alley where the taxi was
waiting. There Craig and the chauffeur searched the count, not as
thoroughly as they should have done, and handcuffed him, not as
carefully as they should have done.
There was a dial on the front of the cab--eleven thirty. The
chauffeur was speeding. Craig, with the black mass of the count at
his side, watched the dial, watched the count, watched the flickering
lights and shadows. He was like a man who had been under water, was
under water still, but who feels himself rushing up to air and safety.
He sought to disregard that recurrent whisper:
“Not yet! Not yet!”
It was a whisper that must have been making itself heard back there
in the offices of the Courtney Building whither Craig had already
sped with two other prisoners, Trick O’Ray and Ben Jarvis. They were
still there, guarded by half a dozen detectives from Colonel Bird’s
office.
It was in the front office where the whisper must have been heard.
There Colonel Bird himself sat in apparently complacent converse with
his friend, Major Gracie, the volunteer warden of San Pedro. Richard
Courtney was with them. At Courtney’s orders, the first edition of a
great newspaper had gone to press with no hint of the big story that
would yet startle the world on the following morning.
“The story’s big enough to make a sensation now,” said Courtney,
satisfied.
And he used his unusual powers to make himself agreeable to Major
Gracie’s daughter, chiefly on Craig’s account. For Courtney felt
grateful to Craig, as a man feels grateful to any one who has come up
to personal expectations after years of disillusionment.
“He’s a great man,” said Courtney softly. “He’ll make his mark in the
world.”
Joan smiled.
From the window where she stood she also watched a dial--a lighted
dial that rode like a yellow moon over the roofs of some adjacent
buildings. The dial read eleven thirty. From the street--far, far
down--there came the tinkle and roar of traffic. Somewhere in this
human tide there was a swimmer battling for his life. His life was
her own. So Joan Gracie felt.
She could smile. She could talk a little. She could act as if nothing
mattered very much, as if she were possessed of a pleasant assurance.
Then, through her reverie, she heard an announcement:
“He’s drowned!”
There filmed a blackness across her eyes. It seemed an age before
she got the rest of the message. No, it wasn’t her own swimmer who
was drowned. Far over in another part of the city a night watchman
had seen a man throw himself from a bridge. This was the man who was
drowned. The news had been telephoned in to Courtney from a precinct
station by one of his own reporters.
The drowned man was Taylor Leamy. There followed an odd detail about
certain cards that had been found in Leamy’s possession:
Y 630
Report before midnight
3777
Major Gracie could interpret that. He knew what those numbers
signified. Then they all knew the purport of the message contained
in the rest of the writing. It was Craig who had ordered Leamy to
report. Leamy had preferred to report to his Maker instead.