A Forced Acceptance

by Jackson Gregory

 

A Forced

Acceptance

by Jackson Gregory

CHAPTER I.

THE BIGGEST THING IN MONTHS

I WAS going to take a vacation. I had earned it and I needed it. Furthermore, I had made all of the necessary and delightful preparations. Since the one thing which I yearned for just then was to get out of the city, to forget it and the grim, sordid sort of thing with which I rubbed elbows day after day, I was impatient to be off for four weeks in the Canadian Rockies. I wanted nothing in the world but to cleanse my lungs of the atmosphere of crooks, criminals, and courts, and to breathe a little fresh air and whip a stream. I know of for the speckled beauties. That was six months ago. I haven't had my vacation yet; I have sworn not to take it until I have done a certain bit of work, and so God and Tom Reagan know best if I'll ever take it.

I had made all of the arrangements at the New York end of the proposed adventure; my imagination was already busy with the details of the final preparations when I should get down from the Canadian Pacific in the little town of Moose Jaw. I had cleaned and oiled a long-dusty rifle; I had disinterred a rod from the chaos of a basement store-room; in fancy I had chosen saddle horse and pack horse and bought bacon and coffee in Moose Jaw. These and many other wonderful things had I done, and to-morrow, from a speeding observation platform, I was going to blow contemptuous whiffs of smoke back toward Broadway. And then, as I was smiling in slippered content over my ideal camp pitched in the ideal valley upon the ideal stream, the furious ringing of a doorbell heralded a miserable little boy in uniform with a yellow envelope.

“To-morrow,” I remember having thought as I drew out the folded bit of paper, “I'll be scooting for a land where telegrams are not.”

It was from my chief. He was now speeding from Chicago back to New York, and he must see me in the morning, nine o'clock sharp.

I knew what that meant. Ferguson's laconic note had spilled over a bit into the curt statement: “It's the biggest thing in months.” I gave the miserable little boy a quarter and told him that I had a notion to spank him. But I vowed when he had gone about his business and I had gone to bed that, Chief Ferguson or no Chief Ferguson, I was going to take my train to-morrow for Moose Jaw.

At nine o'clock sharp I was in Ferguson's office. It is a square office, furnished principally by a square table and tenanted, as I came in, by a square man. Ferguson is that from his jaw to his fingers, from his shoulders to his character. I saw in his penetrating eyes that he had been waiting for me and that he was very much in earnest about something. He jammed his hands deep down into his pockets, leaned back in his chair until his cigar aimed at the ceiling after his manner when deeply thoughtful, and when I was seated made the blunt statement:

“The Merchants' National Bank of San Franscisco has been looted of a hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars.”

I waited for him to go on, and when he got ready he did.

“You were figuring on some sort of a vacation, weren't you, Steele?”

“Yes,” I answered. And to be sure that he caught my point of view, I added, “I am.”

“I see. Now, listen to this.”

He sketched the details of the robbery. In spite of me I began to feel interested. From start to finish, through all of its details, the job had been engineered by men who knew their business. Many months before, upon the twelfth of December, to be exact, they had made their beginning. That is an old story, and the papers have pretty well worn it out. Suffice to say here that upon the twelfth of December a man had signed a year's lease for a first-floor suite of rooms in the big office building adjoining the Merchant's National Bank. These rooms had been fitted up as real-estate and insurance offices. The man who had negotiated the lease and who at the time posed as the president of the company doing the real-estate stunt, had made his heavy advance payment and hadn't been seen since. One of the two other men who managed the affairs of the office saw to the subsequent payments. So far as could be ascertained now they had been actively engaged in the pursuit which the sign upon their windows informed the public they were occupied with. They had hired three girls for routine work, and their books showed that they had been making money.

They had used three of the four office rooms. The fourth had never opened to the public. The first man from outside to come into it was the bank employee, who, the morning following the robbery, crawled into it through the fifty-foot-long tunnel running underground from the bank vaults,

“They've been patient and they've been careful,” Ferguson admitted. “There was a lot of dirt in the back office, and a lot must have gone out in suit cases. What do you think of it, Steele?”

“Expenses must have been considerable,” I grunted, growing angry with myself for allowing a little filmy mist to rise and obscure my mental vision of the ideal camp. “But a hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars will go a long way. I guess it paid.”

“Expenses must have been considerable,” the chief repeated after me. “It takes capital to go into business that way. Have you got a guess yet?”

No, I hadn't. My interest had been a quick little spurt, flaring up, dying down, dead now, I thought. I thought more longingly than ever of Moose Jaw and what lay beyond. That, I suppose, is the reason that I didn't think of Reagan at all until the chief sprung his little surprise on me. He swung about in his chair, bringing his square-jawed face to bear upon me, his unlighted cigar clamped tight in his big, strong teeth. For a moment he stared at me as he stared that first day, seven years ago, when he put me on his pay roll. Then he drew open a drawer of his table, brought out the red-backed book which I knew so well, and opened it at a place marked with a strip of paper. He passed the book across the table to me, his finger indicating the words I was to read. And then, of course, I remembered Tom Reagan.

The entry, made in Ferguson's fine hand, was as follows:

Merchants' National Bank, San Francisco. Reports that with the morning mail, December 10th, came a typewritten demand for $10,000. Two days given in which to make the payment.

“So,” I said, staring back at Ferguson, “it's 'King' Reagan again?”

“I think so, Billy; I think so.” He rubbed his hands together, and in his eyes I read a glint of Ferguson's sort of pleasurable anticipation. “You note that the bank was given until December 12th to come across? Of course they didn't do any such thing. You'll note again that upon December 12th the offices in the next building were leased. Yes, it looks like our friend King Reagan again. And I guess you'll put off that vacation a little; won't you, billy?”

“You want me to go to San Francisco?” I demanded.

“I have had a long wire from Merivale. He does the Ferguson Detective Agency the honor to hope that we'll be interested. He even went so far,” and Ferguson's eyes twinkled, “as to suggest that the man who sent 'Brooklyn Dave' up the river be given the assignment. Yes, Billy, he mentioned Mr. William Steele. That's one thing, Billy. Another is that I'd like to have you postpone your trip to Canada a little while and take a spin out to San Francisco. Think of the old friends there you haven't laid eyes on for ten years. And then,” as though this were a mere trifle, carelessly spoken, “I really do believe that Reagan has paid out pretty nearly enough rope to hang himself.”

Well, that was the end of my vacation dreaming. I swore then that I'd never take a vacation as long as King Reagan lived and remained outside of jail. If it hadn't been for him I'd be hurrying down Broadway to get the shotgun I'd had my eye on for a month.

I spent a good part of the morning with Ferguson. I was on the verge of leaving the office when the telephone at the chief's elbow rang.

“Mr. Steele?” demanded Ferguson of the mouthpiece. “He's right here.”

I took the instrument, and as a deep, richly musical voice asked, “Mr. Steele?” I knew who it was.

“Before you start for San Francisco,” Reagan was saying over the wire, “I'd like to talk with you. Run in for lunch, will you? I can give you a letter to a man in San Francisco who will be of use to you in the Merchants' National case.”

And while was seeking for words in which to answer, King Reagan's deep, musical laughter made me believe that the man had guessed the expression of my face across a mile of houses.

CHAPTER II.

FINDING MY NICHE.

I KNEW San Francisco as I knew my own hat. I had been born there; I had sold newspapers in the shadow of the Ferry Building at the foot of Market Street when I should have been putting red and green and yellow sticks together in a nice, clean kindergarten with an adored but not necessarily adorable lady teacher endeavoring beautifully to keep my young mind the pure vacuum, which God made it but did not intend it to remain. Later I attended night school at the old Court House School, where I learned that it is vastly surer, though less spectacular, to strike for the point of the jaw than for the nose. I matched nickels with Mike, the dago, down in the bad lands South of Market one day and stood awestruck and breathless the very next week listening to old Judge Hackett sentence him to the reform school up at Waterman. I remember Mike pulling at his forelock and grinning at the compliment when the judge regretted that my friend, the wharf rat, wasn't a few years older so that he could go straight to San Quentin and not tarry on the way to contaminate the comparatively clean souls of the reformatory school boys.

Blood does tell. While poor Mike, the dago, born of a drunken mother and an evil father, went his way to Waterman, graduated into crime, and finally found his predestined niche in the State penitentiary, I got through the grades and into high school. Heaven knows our environment was pretty nearly the same. I, however, had come of clean-lived parents and had an astute old-maid aunt. She has admitted in recent years that she despaired of me constantly, but, grimly set in her purpose, she did much for me. The greatest thing she or any one else ever did for little Billy Steele was to get me interested in reading decent, but never dull, books.

So I suppose I have aunt Harriet as well as my blood to thank for the fact that I hammered away until I reached the campus on the other side of the bay. Here I learned three things that counted: to study, to play poker, and to do the hundred-yard dash in a shadow less than ten flat. The lessons I had learned from poker helped me with the bar exams, and, like many another misguided youth before me, I displayed a gaudy shingle for a brief twelve months upon Market Street. I am glad that I did it; it was such a source of delight to aunt Harriet.

The day my lease expired aunt Harriet had me to lunch with her in her prim, trim old maid's quarters. We had got to her tea and my cigar before she mentioned business,

“Now, William, tell me: How have you done during your first year as a lawyer?”

“Nothing spectacular,” I assured her. “Just what the other fellows of my class are doing.”

“To be explicit,” she insisted, “your receipts?”

“Only three hundred and twenty-five dollars less than my expenses.”

“H'm,” said aunt Harriet, stirring her tea, “What you need is perhaps a larger field, William. How would you like to go to New York?”

She knew that I had been wanting to go East for a long time, and so I waited for her to unburden her mind. Also I appreciated the aunt Harriet style of humor in the remark concerning a larger field.

“I sold my little place out by the park last month,” aunt Harriet continued. “It wasn't paying and was going to ruin. I got five thousand for it. I don't need it, and when I die it would go to you anyway. And I have a curiosity to see what you would do with it.”

I had never suspected aunt Harriet of doing a thing like this, and only after I had stared at her a moment did I try to stammer how good she was. She cut me short by saying that she was no such thing, but that she was rather proud of me. I don't know yet for what, since aunt Harriet had never evinced any great interest in either track meets or poker, but I suppose her emotion was founded upon the fact that I had kept out of jail.

Another year of sitting like a spider in a law office, this time on Broadway instead of Market Street, waiting for the flies which didn't come. Having wooed, won, and espoused the law, I came to look on her as a sorry jade and to yearn for the interlocutory decree. I had looked up “Bunny” Graydon and Pete Anderson, two university classmates, who had come immediately to New York after leaving Berkeley, and spent more time with them running down their stories than in my office. They had both found berths reporting for daily newspapers, and could show me many things and people of interest. Bunny was doing police for the Ledger, and my going around with him helped me to “find myself.” It was the criminal, not criminal law, calling me. Then a first case after a couple of months of free lancing, a lucky day, and my name in the papers connected with the arrest and conviction of a man the police had been after six months. Bunny stood pat with the force, and consequently I got the credit which I really deserved and a little bit more. And then, in due course of time, an interview with Chief Ferguson of Ferguson's Agency and my finding my niche as Mike, the dago, had found his.

Graydon, Pete Anderson, and myself met once or twice a month for dinner in a little café on Park Row. Thus we kept pretty close tab on one another, taking stock of successes and disasters, of times of hard luck and such matters as a raise in salary. In due course of time they gained the proud titles of star men on their respective sheets, and could feel that my chief counted on me a little more than on Danbury and Edmonds, the two older men, who had once been his right and left hands. We were young, we had found the grooves into which we fitted, and I think each one of us, meeting with a success, thereby inspired the others as well as himself to “go it one better.”

Then came Thomas Reagan, already known as King Reagan.

CHAPTER III.

THE HUNTED LOOK.

IT was not by any means the first time I had lunched at King Reagan's well-regulated home. I knew that the door would open for me before I had run up the flight of steps leading from his roses and violet beds. I knew that Nagi, his Japanese servant, would invite me within with a beautiful bow. I knew that I would be shown down the long hall where the temperature was the same upon the first of January as on the Fourth of July, and where there were always fresh violets upon a table. I knew that Nagi, his duty done, would disappear, and that before I had gone ten steps I would be greeted by Havens, Reagan's private secretary, and conducted to the library, where Reagan himself would be waiting for me.

It all happened as it had always happened before, save that when Havens was about to withdraw Reagan called to him to come in a second.

“You'll pardon me a moment, Mr. Steele?” Reagan asked with his unfailing courtesy. “It has been a very busy forenoon with me, and I have not had an opportunity of speaking with Mr. Havens.”

Havens came in then, closing the door behind him, and waiting. Reagan had smiled at me, and now was smiling at his secretary. I wonder if Havens guessed what was coming? It seemed that there was a hint of nervousness in his manner, although it all but passed me at the moment.

“You forgot, didn't you, Havens,” Reagan was saying quietly, “to tell me about everything that happened yesterday?”

Now I know that Havens guessed what was coming. His quick “What do you mean?” gave him away. There was a note almost of challenge in his voice.

“I mean,” smiled Reagan, taking time to shove across the great table a box of my favorite cigarettes, “that you forgot to mention your casual meeting and subsequent conversation with Johnnie Margrave at half-past ten last night in a little room at the Arcade.”

In many ways I have come to look upon Ned Havens as almost as much the man as his employer. His manner was now as gravely placid as Reagan's was carelessly good-humored. And yet, unless this whole thing was some hoax cooked up for me, there were black depths and cruel rocks under the smooth flow of their words. Johnny Margrave I had known intimately for a matter of years. It had been Bunny Graydon who had introduced me to him. Since the organization of the Lippet Detective Agency a couple of years ago, Johnnie had been with them and had made history, along with bringing his agency into prominence, fame, and a lucrative work. And Johnnie had managed an interview with Ned Havens. I wondered then if Johnnie Margrave were on the Merchants' National Bank case. It was certain that I would see him before I left New York.

“There was nothing of importance connected with my talk with Margrave,” Havens answered quietly. “Otherwise I should not have failed in reporting the matter.”

“If I should tell you exactly what was said at the Arcade,” continued Reagan, “which I am not going to do, since you know and I know and Mr. Steele will no doubt learn from Margrave before he buys his tickets for San Francisco. I wonder if you would still maintain that there was nothing of importance said?”

Well, after all Havens was merely almost the man Reagan was, and as the old copybeoks have it, “Almost is but to fail.” The man was frightened and couldn't hide the fact.

“It's the first time I have ever had to speak to you about negligence,” Reagan went on soothingly. “And I know it won't happen again. By the way, I notice that that scar on the back of your hand has almost gone! That's good, Havens.”

No, I never again suspected Havens of being the man Reagan was. Caught unexpectedly as he was by Reagan's remark, he whipped his hand behind him, and a look which men of my profession know so well came into his eyes, the look of the hunted.

“I remember,” went on Reagan as though he had not seen Havens' gesture, “that you have a birthday this week. If you will call at the bank you will find that I have left something there for you. I'll not need you again until evening, Havens.”

Havens jerked out, “Thank you, sir,” and fled. That is the word for the manner of his going. He fled as if a pack of bloodhounds was behind him, that hunted look still in his eyes.

“Now, Mr. Steele,” and King Reagan turned his piercing black eyes upon me and settled his immense frame more comfortably in the soft leather of his chair, “tell me about this little trip of yours to San Francisco.”

Spoken for all the world as though it were the natural thing for him to ask and for me to answer; almost as though he were a superior officer to whom I was to make my report; quite as though he didn't suspect that I knew him for what he was, the cleverest crook in New York—and that means in the world.

I marveled at the man. Had I seen him every day and three times a day I should have marveled at him just the same every time I saw him. You may have seen his picture in a newspaper or perhaps in the columns of a magazine devoted to notable or remarkable men. But the picture was never taken which showed what the man looked like. A portrait painter, an artist like Stephen Blair, might get him down on canvas. I don't know. There was something emanating from the man which you felt rather than saw, which defied analysis, which was like nothing else than an electrical force that gave him his personality. It is possible to look at his picture and fail to understand in a flash why men should call him King Reagan. It is not possible to be in his presence two seconds and fail to understand. I have heard Bunny Graydon call him an oak tree among saplings. Pete Anderson once mentioned him as a lion among jackals. Their impressions are pretty much the same. And yet neither Graydon nor Anderson ever fully appreciated King Reagan.

I have never seen a handsomer man. I have seen him stripped in his little gymnasium. I knew that he was one of the biggest men I had ever seen. A sight of his naked body, the muscles that slipped like Damascus steel under satin skin, made me gasp. I had seen many beautifully built men in old college training quarters, but I had never seen a man like this one. Had I been asked to guess his weight I should have put it around a hundred and eighty. I saw him turn the scales at two hundred and thirty-two pounds. And there wasn't any of it fat, either.

Having one of the biggest bodies I ever saw, King Reagan certainly had the largest hands. And they, like the rest of the man's physique, were nothing short of beautiful. They gave you, just as his eyes did, a sense of power. And after seeing his eyes and his hands I was not surprised that the man loved music and played the violin like a virtuoso. Well, be he whatever else you please, King Reagan is a man. And a man is many-sided.

“Why are you so certain that I am going to San Francisco?” I gave him back for his question.

“Come, come, Steele,” he laughed, “you and I are not the men to bandy words, are we? You leave on the next train, I suppose? I am having lunch early so that you'll have all the time you want.”

“As you said while Havens was in here,” I told him, “I'll probably want a word with Johnnie Margrave first.”

“Knowing that you would have no time to waste, and to recompense you for the hour you give me,” Reagan said, “I have taken the liberty of sending word to Margrave that you'd like to see him. My car is at your disposal; it will bring him here, and the two of you can talk on your way to the station. I am afraid, Mr. Steele,” and he smiled rather deprecatingly, “that I may be laying myself open to a suspicion of wishing to intrude? For my next question is rather personal—under the circumstances! If you don't mind answering it: What do you intend to do when you first get to San Francisco?”

A direct question, and I thought that it merited a direct answer.

“Naturally I shall go straight to the bank to look things over. Then, perhaps, I shall try to locate the man who leased the offices last December.”

“Exactly,” nodded Reagan thoughtfully. “Second question: Do you think that already you can guess who the man is who has really engineered this thing?”

“Yes,” I told him, without hesitation.

“And you think that I am that man?”

“Yes.

“Exactly. I see.” Reagan again nodded thoughtfully. Then, “You are the only man I know of your profession, Steele, that I can ever get any satisfaction out of. You were heart-set on your vacation and now you figure that I have spoiled it. I am sorry, sincerely sorry, that this thing couldn't have been arranged to happen four weeks later.” His eyes met mine kindly, and I believe that his words and the next were sincere. “You have been working too hard, and it shows on you. Well, we mustn't get sentimental. Now, of course you have already seen that you may expect a lot of trouble in locating the man who leased the offices so long ago and who hasn't been seen since?”

“I have tackled harder jobs,” I told him. And yet I was wondering what lay in the depths of his brain, behind the clear frankness of his eyes.

“Oh, you'd do it,” he did me the honor to say. “It might take a month, it might take ten years. But if the man lived, you'd find him. You see, I have a great respect for your ability, Steele. I have followed you with immense interest. If you were only on the other side of the table——” He sighed and broke off, his big, shapely fingers toying with a paper knife on the table. Then, hooking up swiftly, “I promised to give you a letter which would help you, didn't I? Here it is, all ready for you.”

It was lying at his hand in its envelope, and he handed it to me. A glance at the names written with bold legibility in Reagan's strong script and I sat up straight in my chair and stared at the man who so coolly had sprung one of his new surprises on me without having the air of doing any but the most natural thing in the world. The letter was addressed to Anthony Waldron, esquire, alias “Klondike Jim,” alias “Seattle Black,” alias “Knockout Tony.” No street was given, but in the corner was the one word, Reagan.

“So he is alive, after all?” I demanded. “You know that at police headquarters it is thought——”

“That he has been dead six months. A dead body in the river, a bit of careful work on Waldron's part, a bit of blind stupidity on the part of a police officer, and there you are. Yes, he's alive, Steele. So very much alive that I suggest that you have him covered before you present my little note. He's a fine fellow, is Tony Waldron, but given upon occasions to fairly ungovernable flashes of anger.”

I opened the envelope and read the note within. It was a jewel of brevity:

My Dear Mr. Waldron: This will introduce Mr. William Steele, who has my heartiest cooperation in his work upon the Merchants' National Bank case. Faithfully yours, Thomas Reagan.

I slipped the note into my pocket. For a moment I was upon the verge of asking a question. But I thought better of it. Reagan, whose eyes never missed the twitch of a muscle, nodded approvingly.

“Exactly, Steele,” he replied to my thought. “Anything I have to offer will come without questions asked.” He touched an electric button set into the table top and rose. “Remember that I advise that you hand Waldron your letter on the end of the barrel of your automatic. And be sure that your gun is working right.”

Nagi must have been waiting near the door. He came in with a tray and cocktails. Reagan helped me with his own hand and then took up his glass.

“A new cocktail,” he said lightly. “I hope that you'll like it. I am drinking this to your success with Waldron and to a quick and happy return to New York. And I have kept you from your lunch long enough. Your health, Steele.”

“Your health, Reagan.”

We drank gravely, our eyes meeting steadily. And he knew and I knew that between us a struggle was on which could end only with his fall or mine. And then we went in to lunch.

CHAPTER IV.

A TENSE SITUATION.

NEVER did a case shape up for me so beautifully, so swiftly until the very crisis. It was like putting together bits of a puzzle with the right block always just at your hand when you reached out for it. And then the finale staged by a master of his technique. Perhaps I should have foreseen what the curtain would be. But after all my business is not that of a fortune teller.

As Reagan had arranged, I saw Johnnie Margrave before I left New York. All I learned was that Johnnie was not working on the case which was carrying me westward and that, while he had hoped to get something from King Reagan's secretary, he had got nothing as yet. He felt that Ned Havens wanted to talk and was afraid to. I told him of Reagan's casual mention of the scar on Haven's hand, and so Margrave got more from me than I from him. So much for that.

In San Francisco I went immediately to the Merchants' National Bank and was shown into Mr. Merivale's private office. I found him what one expects to find in the personality of a bank president, an astute man disciplined and seasoned in his business, anxious to give what aid he could, and equally anxious not to insist upon forcing his ideas and plans upon me. He opened the conversation calmly, first by asking after the health of my chief, next by concerning himself with my journey across the country, thirdly by suggesting that I ask and he answer questions.

I learned from him that the local police and a local detective agency were working on the case, that the bank had offered a large reward, and that thus far nothing had been done. The real-estate offices in the next building were still open and were doing business as of old. Nothing had come of the very obvious suspicion of the two men conducting this firm's business. They showed that they had subleased the rooms from the original renter, and that their business with him had been done by correspondence. They produced a communication from this man, Archibald Ewald, he had signed, giving them possession of three of the rooms and reserving the one room from which the tunnel to the vaults had been made. This room, they declared, had been locked and they had been told by Mr. Ewald in another letter, which they produced, that he was storing certain personal property there and that in due course of time he would return to claim it and to open the office himself.

The locked room, although the smallest of the suite, might have been entered by any one of three doors. One door opened to one of the front offices, one to the office where Miss Henderson was busied daily with typewriter, telephone, and a mass of routine business, one into the narrow hallway which ran straight through the building. This, it seemed, was a matter of vital importance. Not only did it give investigation forked roads to puzzle over, but evidently for its strategic value had this particular room been chosen in the first place. It was obvious that the men who had driven the tunnel to its golden goal might have entered from Miss Henderson's room, or from Mr. Malley's, or from the basement and through the hallway. If the latter case—so far opinions differed—it was quite possible that the real-estate and insurance firm had had no knowledge of it. For down in the gloomy basement, in a far corner where boxes and packing cases had accumulated during the years, there was a window which opened to the narrow passageway between this building and another, and a man might have come in through this window, up the steps to the hallway above, and from that into the locked room. On the other hand, it was equally obvious that the whole real-estate firm could have been a blind, and that both Mr. Malley and his partner, Mr. Forster, could have gone from Miss Henderson's office directly into the locked room in broad daylight and worked both day and night. The police were busy looking up the records of these two men and of the women employed by them.

My inquiry concerning the night watchman, who had been found unconscious the next morning with a fractured skull, brought the information that the man had died of his injuries. As for Archibald Ewald, the man who had originally leased the four rooms and then soon after had sublet three of them to the real-estate people, no trace of him had been found.

I had a talk that morning with the real-estate people. I found Mr. Malley, Mr. Forster, and Miss Henderson extremely courteous for a time like this, and evidently anxious to do anything in their power to help me in my investigations. Of course what they could tell me, or at least what they did tell me, amounted to nothing. They seemed very frankly and naturally concerned with the shadow of suspicion which they realized fully had fallen upon them, and Mr. Malley informed me that he was adding a thousand dollars from his own pocket to the reward already offered by the bank. I was impressed with the fact that all three of them were either quite guiltless of any criminal complicity or else that they were very clever people. But if they were working with King Reagan they would necessarily be eminently capable. He didn't use dull tools. So I left them wary of coming to any conclusion.

Visiting the locked room, I gathered from it as much as I had from the firm of Malley & Forster. There were piles of fresh, clayey dirt in the corners. There were two picks, two shovels tossed to one side. There was an ordinary Office steel safe in the one corner free of dirt. The safe had been cracked, rifled, and left with a few scattered papers littering the already untidy floor. The papers might give a clew to Archibald Ewald later on; I thought not, however. Even if Ewald were run to earth, I saw at a glance that he had left nothing to incriminate him. Hadn't his own safe been robbed as well as the bank vaults?

That afternoon I spent with aunt Harriet. She sighed over me and shook her head doubtfully. But in the end she admitted, although hesitantly, that since I must mix with the underworld it was better to be hunting bad men down than to be hobnobbing with them. Yes, it was better, aunt Harriet said, but I could see that the dear lady had difficulty in drawing the line between men of my class and the class we hunted.

In the evening I determined to do a very wise or foolish thing. Only the results would show. I was going to Harrigan's bar, way out on Broadway near the shadowy parts of Kearney, and ask for Jimmie Quick. At the last minute King Reagan had told me to do that if I cared to find the man to whom he had given me his letter of introduction. There was no use trying to fathom King Reagan's reasons for doing anything that he did, and I knew it and didn't try.

A telephonic talk with an old friend of the police force assured me that if Tony Waldron, alias Klondike Jim, et cetera, et cetera, were still alive the force didn't know it. Well, if my evening adventure brought nothing but the knowledge that he was alive, it would be worth while.

I took a Kearney Street car and walked the two blocks to Harrigan's bar. I found it the usual thing in this part of the city, a cheap place vending cheap drinks to cheap sports. I thought that the barkeeper looked up at me with a quick flicker of interest as I came in. There were four or five other men in the place, smoking and twirling their glasses upon the varnished pine bar.

“Has Jimmie Quick been in this evening?” I asked of the bartender.

He favored me with a keen scrutiny, for a moment pausing in his application of a damp towel to the near-beer drippings.

“Who wants him?” he demanded.

“Steele,” I told him, “William Steele of New York.”

He grunted, looked sharply at me again, shrugged his shoulders, and, turning a little, called hoarsely:

“Hey, Jimmie! You're wanted.”

Jimmie Quick—I afterward came to know him as Jimmie the Crook—came promptly from a card room at the rear. He was a little man, very thin and pale, his eyes and the spots upon his cheeks giving me the guess that if the law didn't gather him in pretty soon the grim reaper would, I got only a swift glance from under his drooping eyelids; then he passed by me and out upon the street, with me at his heels.

“You're Billy Steele?” he asked indifferently.

“Yes.”

“You've got a letter?”

“Yes.”

“Let's see it.

I showed it to him. He glanced at it very much as he had glanced at me, and then, still evincing no interest whatever, passed it back to me.

“Come ahead,” he said, coughing the words out, and then wiping his lips and glancing, still with no apparent interest, at the bright stain upon his handkerchief.

I “came ahead.” Jimmie the Crook slouched along the street with no spoken or nodded response to the greetings of men who now and then spoke to him, with only a growl in his throat as a passing girl accosted him with a pleasant, “Hello, Jimmie.” Evidently my new acquaintance was in an unusually gloomy frame of mind, or his present errand did not please him. But he went about it steadily enough.

We turned down an ill-lighted alleyway, and brought up behind a row of dingy rooming houses. I had my wits about me and did not for a second forget Reagan's advice to be prepared for anything. But I could not but experience a flicker of wonder as Jimmie paused by a great heap of refuse—rusty cans, broken bottles, and the like—and went down on his knees, putting his hands into the mess. The hands came away presently, filled with loose, fresh dirt.

“Have a look at it,” he said shortly.

Mind you, my first night in San Francisco, and already I had found something which might have a vital bearing upon the case which had brought me here. For now I was prepared to find and did find that this dirt was the same clayey sort of soil as that which littered the floor of the locked room. I stepped near the open door of a restaurant and held the stuff close to my eyes. Then, making no remark to a man who evidently expected none, dropped the clay into my coat pocket.

“We go in here,” Jimmie said colorlessly. He had passed the restaurant door and rapped with his sharp knuckles at the dingy panels just beyond it. I heard the turning of a key, the shooting back of a bolt, and the door snapped open. It was dark within. A rough voice demanded, “Who is it?”

“Me and Steele,” rejoined Jimmie. coughing the words irritably. “Get a move on, will you, Sharkey?”

Sharkey complied wordlessly by standing a little aside, thrusting his face up close to Jimmie's and then to mine, his rank breath sickening my nostrils, and then by closing the door after us and preceding us down the dark, narrow, carpeted hall,

In a moment he had thrown open a door before us and I could look into the saloon at the front of the building. Sharkey called bluntly, “Come ahead, Tom. You and Kelley. Is Kelley there?”

Kelley was, and got up in his flashy splendor from the table where he had been dealing solitaire. Tom, in his white apron, came around from behind the bar and the two men joined us. Again the door closed, but it was no longer dark. Jimmie had found and switched on an electric bulb. I followed the three men, none of whom paid the slightest attention to me now, to a rudely furnished bedroom upon the second floor. And I realized that if King Reagan had gone to all this trouble to put me out of the way the chances were that he had omitted no detail from his planning.

I dragged my chair to one side of the little room and sat down with my back to the wall, my hand ready upon the automatic pistol in my coat pocket. Jimmie threw himself upon the bed, his hands clasped behind his head, a cigarette dangling from his lips, his moody eyes upon the cracked plaster of the ceiling. Sharkey and Tom took chairs and looked from me to Jimmie. Kelley, leaning against the wall, studied himself complacently in the dim blur of a mirror.

“Well?” Tom snapped out after a momentary silence. “Start things, can't you, Jimmie? I gotta get back to the bar.”

Jimmie coughed a curse at him and relapsed into silence. Kelley rubbed his long jaw and smiled an evil, reflective smile at the uncertain image of himself in the looking-glass. In due course of time Jimmie spoke. I knew that in the silent interim he had been fighting to ward off a fit of coughing.

“You fellers got the tip from the old man?” he demanded.

With nods or brief, grunted monosyllables they admitted that they had.

“I'm steerin' this guy around to see Tony,” went on Jimmie. “You are to open your head first, Tom. Shoot it quick. Let's get this deal over with.”

Tom waited no further invitation, but began to speak rapidly. And yet, twisting nervously there upon his chair, lowering his voice now, breaking short off another time at a faint sound somewhere in the building, he gave me the impression of a man fighting with himself and very markedly ill at ease. I think that he was afraid to talk, more afraid not to talk.

“That Merchants' Bank lay was Tony's job,” he jerked out in a voice which was little more than a rasping whisper. “He hid out here days and worked there nights. He was at it six months, anyway. He brought the dirt here in suit cases and things. I got wised up a couple of weeks after he begun. I followed him there one night and watched him go in the basement way. I watched him come out with the suit cases. I watched him dump the dirt outside. He slipped me five hundred to keep my mouth shut. Sometime he swore he'd kill me if I blabbed. Him and Gaudy Kelley worked it together. Kelley here knows where the swag is.”

He had finished and broke off to wipe the sweat from his forehead and to breathe deeply as though he had just run up a hill.

“You'll swear to that in court?” I asked sharply.

“Sure,” he muttered. “I'd swear to that and take my chances. And they'd be damn long chances, too, if Tony got away.”

“Shoot, Sharkey,” commanded Jimmie. “You're next.”

“Me,” said Sharkey heavily. “All I gotta say Tom just said. He split the five hundred fair with me. Me and Tom can show where we banked our money the day Tony come across with it.”

“Shoot, Kelley,” snapped Jimmie. “This here ain't no ice-wagon perade.”

Gaudy Kelley turned his evil leer upon me,

“Tony took me in on the deal at the jump,” he announced with a hint of pride. “It was a two-man job, anyway. It was him that did for the night watch; I wouldn't of stood for that. Sure, I know where the swag is. It's under the floor in Tony's room where he pulled up a board. Five boards from the west side of the room, under a rug.”

“You'll swear to this in court?” I asked incredulously. “You realize what it'll mean for you, Kelley?”

His evil grin that was a writhing of sinister lips from a mouthful of broken, jagged teeth, with no change in the feverish glitter of the beady eyes, was indescribably revolting.

“Sure know, kid,” he spat at me viciously. “But I'd rather take chances with——”

“Shut up,” snarled Jimmie. “Anything else, Steele?” merely turning his eyes toward me under the droop of his lashes. “Or suppose we go look up Tony?”

“By all means,” I assented a little eagerly. “Let us look up Tony,”

“These guys,” as Jimmie slipped from the bed and gestured widely, “will be on the job any time you want 'em. When we round up Tony you can lead the whole outfit to the cooler, if you want. Come ahead.”

Only when his companions had started with him down the narrow hallway did I follow. This thing was beyond belief, and yet I believed it. But still I was taking no chances did not have to take.

We left the three in the saloon, Gaudy Kelley again going to his cards, while Tom returned to the bar and Sharkey poured himself a brimming glass of near-beer. On the street again, the fresh sea air in my lungs, the stars dim through a light, drifting veil of mist above, I found myself frowning and wondering, looking for the hoax under it all. Was I in truth drawing the net about Tony Waldron, before my first twenty-four hours in San Francisco had gone by? And all through the work of King Reagan in New York?

Half a dozen doors down the street we turned in at the most pretentious rooming house in the block. Down a comparatively broad hall, well-lighted Jimmie led the way. Then up a flight of stairs, a dozen paces down a narrower, dingier hall, and to a door where he rapped softly. A voice demanded, “Who is it?” when Jimmie knocked the second time

“Jimmie Quick,” my guide retorted. “In a hurry, Tony.”

Now was surprised when I saw Anthony Waldron for the first time. I suppose that I had expected a type like Sharkey's or Tom's or Gaudy Kelley's. And I found myself looking into the clear, fearless, steady eyes of a gentleman. A crook and worse he may be and is, but Tony Waldron is a thoroughbred.

“Come in,” he said with calm courtesy, his eyes showing neither suspicion nor unfriendliness. “What can I do for you, Jimmie?”

“This is Mr. Steele,” Jimmie said as we entered and Waldron closed the door. “He's from New York and has a letter for you,”

Waldron put out his hand for mine and said the usual thing.

“Have a chair, Mr. Steele,” he said pleasantly. “If there is anything which I can do for you I shall be delighted.”

I handed him Reagan's letter and my hand went back to my coat pocket as I watched him read it. He was a handsome man, almost as handsome in his way as Reagan in his; tall, slender, immaculately dressed, and wearing his clothes after the manner of one born to them. The forehead struck me a being unusually broad, the eyes large and well spaced, the long jaw remarkably strong

He glanced at the envelope before opening it. If this were “Klondike Jim,” long thought dead, then just those names Reagan had written there must have shot a quick start into the man's heart. And yet I, watching his slightest change of expression, saw absolutely nothing but the faint lifting of the fine black brows. If he felt any concern of any kind he did not loosen the grip he had upon himself.

“From Reagan?” he said quite naturally and smoothly, quite as though he had never heard the until now as it fell from his lips. “What Reagan is this, Mr. Steele?”

“Perhaps,” I suggested dryly, “a glance at the letter itself——”

“You are right,” he smiled. “If you will pardon me a moment?”

His strong, white fingers moved slowly but steadily about their work of drawing out the note paper, unfolding it. When his eyes had run back and forth across the page, he refolded it slowly, slowly returned it to its envelope, and turned a deeply thoughtful gaze upon me.

“So,” he said, standing very still save for the gentle tapping of forefinger against the envelope, looking down upon me gravely from his superior height. “You are Billy Steele, of Ferguson's? And you are on the Merchants' Bank case? And you have the support of Tom Reagan? H'm. I see.”

I, too, saw. The man's admirably fitting black coat bulged outward just the merest, almost unnoticeable bit over his right hip, and as he stood now it would require but one lightning instant for his right hand to flash down to the hip pocket. While I would not have been surprised if he had shrugged his shoulders and come along with me at the tacit command in King Reagan's note, neither would I have been surprised if the man, already with the shadow of a noose about his neck, had taken his chance then and there, his gun and strength against mine.

There came a little cough from the side of the room to which Jimmie the Crook had quietly moved.

“I got him covered, Steele,” he grunted. “He's yours if you want him.”

For the first and last time I saw an unmistakable sign of feeling on Tony Waldron's face. He turned toward Jimmie and smiled. The smile, although it partook in no way of the vileness of Gaudy Kelley's grin, struck me as immeasurably more terrible, implacable, deadly.

“I'd kill you just for the fun of it, Jimmie,” he said in a very low, expressionless voice, “were it not so ridiculously unnecessary. Old man Tubeculosis will do the job for me and in a manner considerably more to my liking.”

He seemed then to forget Jimmie. I think that he did forget him as he sat down and faced me, his hands lifted to clasp behind his head.

“Now, Steele,” he spoke pleasantly enough, “let's get down to brass tacks. Just exactly what is it that you want?”

“I want you,” I told him. “For the Merchants' Bank affair.”

“You have the warrant, suppose?” with mild interest.

“I have everything arranged with proper care to the legal technicalities,” I informed him. “Perhaps you have seen a John Doe warrant before now?”

“Oh, yes, indeed! I shan't ask to see it. I suppose that there is nothing I could say that would change your intention now?”

“I don't think so. It is the custom, you know, to do whatever talking is necessary afterward.”

“Quite regular,” he nodded. “You warn me that anything I might say could be used against me, and so forth. May we stretch a point, however? Do you mind telling me how many of Jimmie's estimable companions you have seen?”

Because I wanted to see how the man carried himself I told him. I mentioned Sharkey, Tom, and Gaudy Kelley. And Waldron merely nodded at each name, and when I had finished said coolly, “Thank you.” And for the life of me I could not guess what he was thinking or what he was going to do. And then the thing which, I suppose, I should have looked for all along happened. But Heaven knows had enough to think of here in this tense situation without reckoning upon any one but Tony Waldron and Jimmie Quick. The door opened and King Reagan came in.

CHAPTER V.

THE KING'S LIEUTENANT

“GOOD evening, Steele,” smiled Reagan, closing the door gently behind him. “Hello, Jimmie. Tony, I'm glad to see you.”

I knew then that it was King Reagan's game. But I could not guess whether he was backing my hand or Tony Waldron's.

“Jimmie,” went on Reagan, “you're looking bad. I'm sorry I had to keep you up this way. You can go now. And, Jimmie,” as the little fellow turned to the door, his handkerchief at his mouth, “I have asked Doctor Hall to see you right away. I'll see you myself in the morning. Good night, Jimmie.”

Jimmie went out and Reagan turned to Waldron,

“We've got the drop on you this time, Tony,” he said as gently as he had spoken to the sick man. “But while there's life there's a gambling chance, you know. I'll have to trouble you to move your chair back against the wall there. Thank you. Now, Steele, will you rip up that board, the fifth from the wall?”

For a moment I hesitated, seeing my way confused before me. And then, knowing Tom Reagan, having sense enough to know that he had a death grip on the situation, I did as he said. The board came up with little trouble, Waldron's eyes idly watching me, Reagan's eyes never shifting from Waldron's.

“I'll get you, Reagan, one day for this.” Waldron's eyes had left me and were steady upon Reagan's. “And I'll square the account with Gaudy Kelley.”

Tearing the board away, I came upon a pile of gold and thick pads of green-backs. I did not need to count to hazard the surmise that the greater part of the missing one hundred and twenty-five thousand lay at my finger tips.

“Just leave it there,” commanded Reagan. “It won't get away. Now, Steele, did you tell Tony what Sharkey and Tom and Kelley had to say?”

“Yes.”

“Looks bad, eh, Tony? Well, it's worse than it looks. Steele, open the door. There's a man outside.”

I opened the door and Malley, of Malley & Forster's real-estate and insurance company, came in. He gave no sign of recognizing either Reagan or Waldron.

“Here I am, Mr. Steele,” he said quickly. “I hope that you have discovered something of importance. I came as soon as I got your message.”

“Mr. Steele wants to know,” said Reagan easily, “if you ever saw that man before?”

Malley turned his eyes upon Reagan, then obediently upon Tony Waldron.

“I don't think——” he began slowly. And then with a start: “Yes! He is the man I saw not a month before the robbery! In the basement one day when I went down for an empty packing case I had seen there. He had dirt on his hands——”

“That will do for the the present,” smiled Reagan. “Mr. Steele wants to see Mr. Forster. Has he come yet?”

Malley, with a quick glance which missed nothing in the room, which rested a short hesitant second upon the coin and currency in the floor, stepped out into the hall. His partner, Forster, came in. Forster, like Malley before him, seemed to recognize only me. But, his attention called to Waldron, he admitted that he had seen the man once before. He had seen Waldron in the hallway of the building in which the real-estate offices were. He had almost forgotten the occurrence. It had been a couple of months ago. Waldron had been standing by the door of the locked room which led into the hall. Forster had thought that he had seen him slip a key into his pocket. He had thought nothing——

“That's all Mr. Steele wants to know right now,” nodded Reagan. “Will you step into the hall with Mr. Malley? We shall call you in a moment.”

Forster went out. My eyes and Waldron's went to Reagan's face. And I think there was equal perplexity in our minds,

“Tony Waldron,” said King Reagan, and his tones were the stern tones of a judge, “you have played your hand your way, and you have lost. There lies the money you worked a year for, and it is condemning you now that you have got it. Outside are Jimmie Quick, Tom, Sharkey, Gaudy Kelley, Malley, Forster, ready to go up to the witness stand. Any one of them can hang you now. It won't be hard to do, especially when the police dig up Klondike Jim's record.”

He paused a moment, his eyes very hard. But not harder than Tony Waldron's. Waldron did not speak. His lips may have tightened a little; I am not even sure of that. But certain I am that his face and Reagan's showed less emotion than mine must have done.

“Excepting for me,” went on Reagan with the bold frankness that was characteristic of him, “there is not a stronger man in the world than you, Waldron. But when it's fight between you and me I can break you between a thumb and forefinger.” His enormous hand was lifted, and I saw the muscles cord and knot as his terrible finger and thumb whitened under the pressure he put upon them. “And you know it now if you never knew it before!

“Seven years ago,” Reagan continued, “I did you the honor to ask you to come in with me. In many things, in most things, you are a wise man; in that matter you were an arrogant fool. You had always been master; you could not see when a bigger man than yourself came. I might have let you go your own way; I don't know. But then you dared take this bank case into your own hands, you dared use the same method you knew I was using with other banks! Because the police thought you dead you thought that I would believe it, too. You would hide behind your supposed death and make your pile, and you would do it so that such men as Steele here would think that I had done it! And now,” the big thumb and forefinger parting with an angry snap like a pistol shot, “I can break you like that!”

His death was looking him in the face, and Tony Waldron knew it. But his hand was steady, the color was steady in his face as he took a cigar from the table and lighted it.

“I imagine I can come pretty close to taking you down with me, Tom,” he said quietly. Reagan laughed that deep, softly musical laugh of his.

“Have you thought,” he suggested, “how simple a matter it would be for us to have a little scuffle here? For you to be killed? Don't talk nonsense, Waldron. It's one of two things for you; one of two things.”

Waldron looked up quickly. I heard a deep breath and knew that he understood and that he had decided.

This time it was Reagan who opened the door. Malley, Forster, the man Sharkey, and Gaudy Kelley came in promptly.

“I don't think you ever saw this man before, did you, Malley?” asked Reagan.

Malley looked at Waldron, shook his head, and said “No” positively.

“Nor you, Forster?”

“No,” replied Forster.

“Do you know anything that would connect this man with the robbery of the Merchants' National, Sharkey?”

“No,” said Sharkey.

“You, Kelley?”

“No,” said Kelley.

A moment ago I had had the deadwood on Tony Waldron if I ever knew what the deadwood was. And now—why, a fool could see it all. If ever I wanted to bring a man to justice I longed then for the day when I should see King Reagan go his way behind the bars. Already Tony Waldron was a lesser consideration.

“You see how it is, Waldron,” Reagan spoke quietly, even pleasantly, his anger of a moment ago having left no trace. The men he had summoned had gone out and down the stairs.

“You ask me again to come in?” said Waldron.

“To come in,” smiled Reagan, “or go hang. Literally, go hang, Waldron.”

Yes, Waldron had foreseen and had already made up his mind. His eyes weren't even regretful as they swept from the money in the floor to Reagan again.

You are a bigger man than I am, Reagan,” he said simply. “I'll come in.”

Reagan put out his hand. I saw Waldron take it gravely, I saw the grip harden as the relationship of king and lieutenant was formed. I knew that I had a chance of covering both men and taking them, but I knew to what it would lead. My case had fallen to pieces; Reagan had played his gambit and it had won.

“I'll see you in the morning, Tony,” said Reagan, turning away from his new lieutenant. “Mr. Steele and I have some planning to do. This money must go back to the bank. At least you have accomplished that much, Steele. And, after all, as far as the individual is concerned, the recovery of the stolen goods is more important than capturing the criminal. You understand, don't you, Tony, that I can't use it?”

“I understand,” said Waldron.

“Good night, Tony.”

“Good night, Tom.”

And I let him go.

Reagan came to me and put his hand upon my shoulder.

“It's too bad, Billy,” he said gently. “Too bad for you. But——”

“But,” I told him angrily, shaking off his hand, “just as sure as God made little apples I'm going to get you one of these days.”

He looked at me gravely, almost as a father might look at his son.

“Waldron talked like that a minute ago,” he reminded me. And then, “I like you, Billy. I wish I had you with me. Well,” and breaking off, he did me the honor to sigh. “At least, when my time does come, I give you my word I hope you'll be the man to do the trick. It will be quite a feather in your cap, my boy.”

Yes, he was right. It will be quite a feather in a man's cap.