The Hand of Peril/Part 6/Chapter 1
I
Kestner, crossed to his hotel window and looked out. It was spring,—and spring in Rome. Yet his heart was heavy.
The City of the Seven Hills lay before him, bathed in a golden mist. Beyond the soft tones of grey and yellow he could see the dark squares of ilex and cypress and orange, where old gardens stood amid close-huddled roofs and walls. Off towards Monte Gianicala, where the shadowy valleys were already touched with their purple mists, a stately row of stone-pines reminded Kestner that he was indeed back in the city of his youth.
But he had no eye for its beauty. He crossed to the writing-table where his mail of the past month awaited him. He sat down before that pile of duly assorted letters and telegrams, regarded them for a meditative moment or two, and then began his task of going through them. He did so slowly and methodically. But his heart sank when he came to the end. He was still without a clue.
It had been the same thing over and over again, for months, the same wandering from place to place, the same fruitless search, the same patiently put questions. And the answer had always been the same. Maura Lambert had escaped him.
A recurring sense of desolation crept over Kestner as he unfolded his pocket-atlas of Europe and traced his course from city to city. He had journeyed half way around the world in search of a woman, and he seemed no nearer her than seven long months ago when, after the death of Lambert, he had taken up the trail.
He had first gone over New York, every nook and cranny. He had questioned and cross-questioned every person who had been in touch with Lambert and his little band. He had canvassed taxicab drivers and ticket sellers and station guards. He had interviewed pier officials and booking offices. He had studied hotel registers and Pullman reservation lists. He had sent out wires to every city worth soliciting, calling on friends, both official and unofficial, for any hint that might fall into their hands.
The first inkling of hope had come in a night-letter from Cody of the American Customs at Montreal. A woman answering the description had been seen alighting from a New York sleeper at Windsor Station. A "news-butcher" had pointed her out to an idle porter as being "some queen." She wore a heavy veil, and she was travelling alone. The porter had helped her with her bags, two of them. But she had no other luggage. That was as much as either Cody or Chamberlain, the Chief of the Canadian Pacific Criminal Investigation Department, had been able to find out. But the wire was enough to take Kestner to Canada by the next train.
There the hunt began over again. The porter in time was found. But he had no knowledge of what hotel the "queen" in question had gone to. He had merely helped her to a cab. Then followed a round of the cab-drivers. On the third day a chauffeur was found who vaguely remembered such a woman. He had driven her to an English pension known as Beaver Hall Chambers, on Beaver Hall Hill.
It did not take Kestner long to authenticate this. But the lady, who called herself Miss Farr, had left Beaver Hall Chambers weeks before. She had paid a full week's rent, yet she had stayed only three days. The one hint worth while was that given by a chamber maid, who remembered the lady telephoning about painting on ivory.
Kestner promptly looked up every miniature painter in the city. He eventually unearthed the artist to whom Miss Farr had applied for work. She had painted for a week in this Philips Square studio, and had proved herself clever enough. But she had met a Devonshire woman, an invalid, on her way to Banff, and had caught at the chance of going West, as a companion. So Kestner went on to Banff.
She had been in Banff for weeks. There was no doubt of that. The little mountain town was full of impressions of her. She and the eccentric-minded English patient had lived much in the open air, had ridden and fished and golfed and had once motored down to Calgary. She had also been seen sketching at Devil's Lake, and a local hotel had even bought a couple of her water-colours.
By this time Kestner knew the trail was genuine.
He followed that trail up to Victoria. There Maura Lambert and her patient had parted company, the invalid being joined by her son and going on to Japan, the companion for some unknown reason striking eastward again as far as Winnipeg. From Winnipeg she had gone to Chicago. There, Kestner found, she had engaged to accompany two girl students to Paris, sailing from Boston on a ten day steamer. Then Paris, for causes that could not be ascertained, had become suddenly undesirable to her. She had moved on to Munich. And at Munich the trail ended.
Kestner sat absently contemplating his atlas. Then he stared as absently out over the roofs and gardens and hills of Rome. Then he suddenly wheeled about in his chair, his trained ear advising him that some one was opening the door of his hotel room.
The next moment his heart was in his mouth, for he saw a young woman step quickly inside and as quickly close the door behind her. For one brief second he thought it was Maura Lambert herself. But that foolish flutter of hope did not survive his quick stare of inquiry.
He found himself confronted by a figure more pertly audacious, more casually intimate, than that of Lambert's one-time etcher on steel.
They regarded each other for a silent moment or two. Then the girl spoke.
"Some time since we met!" she tentatively chirped.
Kestner studied her. It was Sadie Wimpel resplendent in vernal raiment, raiment plainly from the rue de la Paix.
"Yes, it's some time," he agreed, not without a touch of bitterness, remembering the past.
"You've quit the Service," she continued.
"And how did you know that?" Kestner inquired.
She laughed as she tucked her veil up about her modish little hat.
"Hully gee, there's things we've gotta know!"
"So I surmise!"
"An' I was wise to you droppin' out, or I wouldn't be here!"
"Then why are you here?" demanded Kestner.
Sadie Wimpel stepped to the middle of the room. She eyed him as she advanced, as though some dregs of her former fear of him still troubled her mind. Her face had grown quite sober, touched with a determination which Kestner had never before seen on it.
"I'm lookin' for a life line!" she calmly announced.
Kestner motioned her into a chair.
"In trouble?" he queried.
"Do I look it?" she demanded, with an appreciative glance down her own shimmering façade.
"Not altogether!" he acknowledged with the ghost of a smile. "But what's the line for?"
"For some one you've gotta help!"
"But who?"
Sadie, with a rustle of silk, condescended to seat herself.
"You've been trailin' Maura Lambert f'r the last six or seven mont's," she reminded him.
"How do you know that?" promptly inquired Kestner. But his pulse quickened at the mere mention of the name.
"Oh, I'm hep to that, an' consid'r'ble more. But before I switch to that I wantta put you wise to the fact I'm runnin' straight these days. I'm a Art Importer now. Me an' Cambridge Charlie 've doubled up. I'm a canvas runner between here an' London."
"And what's a canvas runner?"
Sadie studied her eyebrows in the mirror of her vanity-bag.
"These Eyetalians don't allow an ol' master to be taken out o' the country. We've got a Dago named Muselli gatherin' up what he can. Then I've tied down one o' the best copyists in Rome here, doin' dooplicates of the gallery pictures. We take the copy, scaled up or down to the size we order, an' frame it. But before we frame it we fit our ol' master canvas under the gallery copy, an' about once a month I skip over to London wit' the goods. Then we fake a story about findin' a new Roobens, or a Raphael Madonna bein' dug out o' some moth-eaten English collection. Then we re-ship to our New York agent, payin' full duty, mind you, an' divvyin' on the rake-off. Ain't that square enough? "
"Nothing could be more honest!"
Sadie disregarded the ironic note in Kestner's remark.
"It's a darned sight more genteel'n the sable game I stuck to for more'n a month," she argued.
"The sable game?"
"Yep! High-Collar Connors rigged me out wit' a seven-hundred dollar set o' sables—stole from a Milwaukee theatre-box. I'd blow into a high-class hotel, register, an' leave me furs in the room. High-Collar'd watch me leave the room, an' then slip in an' pinch the furs. Then I'd make a big noise t' the office, an' they'd gener'ly compromise on a couple o' hundred, to stop my squeal. But that kept you on the move, an' lacked class. This picture runnin' business is on a dif'rent plane. An' it ain't so hard on the noives."
"While keeping you intimately and actively in touch with Art," suggested Kestner.
"An' kept me in touch wit' more'n Art," Sadie stoutly maintained. "D'you happen to know jus' who's been doin' our gallery copyin' for the last two mont's? "
"I haven't the remotest idea."
"Of course you haven't or you wouldn't be sittin' there givin' me the glassy eye," pursued the unperturbed Sadie. Then she moved her chair a little closer to the table where Kestner sat before his atlas.
"It's the woman you've been fine-combin' that map for," she announced. "It's Maura Lambert."