The Premier Danseuse

by Arthur Somers Roche

 

An Idol of the Stage Enters Into a Triangular Battle of Wits, as Gray Ghost Is Found.

The Premier Danseuse

BY
ARTHUR SOMERS ROCHE

JIMMY PELHAM folded the newspaper, propped it precariously against the coffeepot and read again the article that had attracted his attention.

“FAMOUS DETECTIVES SEVER RELATIONS.

“James Pelham, one-time millionaire and amateur detective, but more recently a declared professional opponent of crime, and former Police Lieutenant Jerry Tryon, head of the private detective agency which bears his name, have formally announced their separation.

“Police circles will be interested in the news, as will the general public and the Gray Ghost, the arch-criminal who for years has avoided the dutches of the police of all the world, will probably be elated. No reason is given for the. withdrawal of Mr. Pelham front the Tryon agency. Mr. Tryon refused to be interviewed yesterday. and Mr. Pelham could not be located.

“There was another rumor in circulation around the city hall which intimated that his honor is contemplating asking for the resignation of the commissioner and will offer the place to Mr. Pelham. Politicians maintain that this would be a wise move.

Dickenson, the former Maine guide who was now Pelham's confidential man of all work, entered the room.

“Read the Star, Dickenson,” Pelham said, handing the editorial to the lean woodsman.

Dickenson read it slowly. Bewildered. he stared at his employer. “It ain't true, is it?” he demanded.

“That I'm to be police commissioner? The job hasn't been offered me,” replied Pelham.

“I mean about you and Mr. Tryon not doing business together,” said Dickenson.

“Oh, that.” Pelham's voice was bitter. “Yes; I've quit the Tryon agency.”

State of Maine people do not make good servants. They maintain an independence of spirit that sometimes irks their employers. “I think you're makin' a fool play.” declared Dickinson.

Pelham's face hardened, but the ringing of the telephone postponed the reply to impertinence. Dickenson crossef the room and answered the call. “It's for you, Mr. Pelham,” he said. “Mr. Tryon talking.”

Pelham almost snatched the receiver from the hand of the surprised Dickenson, and his voice breathed fire as he said into the telephone; “Well, what do you want?”

****

DICKENSON had become devoted to his master. But he also liked and admired Jerry Tryon. And it grieved him that these two men should be blind to their own best interests and quarrel.

And they were quarreling. Jimmy Pelham was using a tone of voice that would have Justified Tryon in striking him had the ex-lieutenant been present in person. Of course, the Maine guide could not hear Tryon's speech, but after a moment's pause, Pelham spoke again;

“You say that's your last word. Well, you listen to mine. She's of age, her own boss and she likes me. I'm not going to marry her, and fifty uncles couldn't make me. She's not a child, and neither am I. You speak to me again this way and I'll thrash you within an inch of your life!”

He jammed the receiver upon the hook and turned to Dickenson. “What were you saying a while ago?” he demanded.

“I said you was making a fool play,” answered Dickenson with spirit. “Now I ain't sure, after listenin' to you, that it ain't a skunk play.”

Slim, alert. Pelham stared at the sinewy figure of his servant. Fire flashed in his eyes. Then he turned on his heel. “You're fired, Dickinson,” he declared.

”The —— I am! I resign,” said the servant.

Pelham smiled contemptuously. “Call it what you will, but see that you're out of here by tomorrow.”

“Suits me,” said the other. But there were reluctant tears in his shrewd gray eyes as he cleared away the breakfast things. He'd fished with Mr. Pelham, and found him a good sportsman. He'd slept beneath the same blankets, and had drunk out of the same cup. Dickenson thought he knew men. He had set Jimmy Pelham down as the finest gentleman that he had ever known. Darn women! Tney'd ruin any man.

****

PELHAM did not visit the offices of the Tryon agency this day. He left his rooms shortly after breakfast, lunched at his club, spent the afternoon playing bridge, dined there, played some more bridge, and at about a quarter to 11 stepped into a taxi ordered for him by the doorman and drove to the Regal Theater.

The last of the audience had just left the building when Pelham arrived. He walked down the alley that led to the stage door. The door-tender recognized him and permitted him to enter. Pelham mounted the circular iron staircase and on the first landing knocked upon the door of the dressing room of Miss Stacy Legendre, the petite and vivacious premiere danseuse of “The Nightingale,” the extremely successful attraction at the Regal.

A mulatto maid opened the door a trifle and peered through the crack, then threw open the door.

Within the dressing room a pert-faced young lady shifted a pair of remarkably attractive black eyes from the mirror above her dressing table to the presentable young-old visitor. She extended a white hand. “Well, old thing, you're late this evening. Usually you're here, battering at my door, before the audience has departed. it seems to me that your love's grown cold.”

“On the contrary,” grinned Pelham, “it grows more torrid every day. Doesn't it embolden me to defy your silly old uncle?”

The girl cast a quick glance at her maid. But the maid, busied with putting away costumes, apparently was paying no attention. “What does Uncle Jerry say today?” the dancer asked.

”The usual thing,” replied Pelham. His tone was hard. “He'll find himself in a lot of trouble If he isn't careful.”

“Now, listen, Jimmy,” said the girl quickly. “I won't have you fighting with him.”

Pelham shrugged. “I don't want to quarrel with the old man, Stacy; but, after all, one has one's limits.”

“Don't let them become limitations, Jimmy,” advised the dancer. Her face serious for a moment, relaxed almost instantly into its usual expression of merriment. She rose and permitted the mulatto maid to place a cloak about her shoulders. Pelham gently put the maid aside and fastened the cloak himself. Also, he furtively embraced the dancer's lithe waist. The maid saw the caress, and her white teeth gleamed.

****

PELHAM, for a man who had just severed a business relation that had been extremely profitable, seemed quite unconcerned. And, for a man mentioned by rumor as a possible commissioner of police, he seemed quite careless of public opinion, not that there was anything particularly unconventional in supping at a fashionable after-theater dancing place.

Until a reluctant management dismissed Its guests, Miss Legendre and Pelham remained. Then they departed, riding in a taxi to the dancer's home on West 60th street. Pelham dismissed the chauffeur and accompanied the young woman to her apartment. Leaving the elevator at the fourth floor, the dancer handed Pelham a key. He unlocked the door of her apartment, reached a hand into the hall, pressed an electric-light switch, and stepped aside for her to precede him.

Thus it was that she saw first the stocky figure of her uncle, standing in the center of her tiny drawing room. “Uncle Jerry!” she screamed.

Pelham, closing the door, wheeled and brushed by her. Ten feet apart, the two men glared at each other.

“I warned you,” said Tryon thickly. From her bedroom at the far end of the hall, the dancer's cook, alarmed by her mistress' scream, came running. dressed only in a nightgown and a blanket thrown across her shoulders.

Standing in the doorway that led from the entrance hall to the little drawing room, her hands gripping the sides of the door frame, the dancer glanced over her shoulder at the servant. “I'm afraid,” she whispered.

The buxom cook peered into the room.

“I know you warned me,” Pelham was saying, “and I also warned you. I've had enough of this nonsense.”

“And I've had enough of your tricks,” growled Tryon. “If my niece hasn't sense enough to protect her reputation, I'll protect it for her. You get out of this room, out of this apartment, out of this building!”

Pelham's thin lips curled in a sneer. “And if I don't?”

“I'll throw you out,” snarled Tryon.

Pelham looked at the dancer. “Sorry. Stacey,” he told her. “But I think we've stood enough——”

“Don't,” she pleaded.

Pelham turned lo Tryon, “For your niece's sake. I'll treat you better than you deserve. If you'll leave quietly——”

“You puppy,” cried Tryon.

He leaped forward as he spoke. The dancer screamed; the fat cook drew the blanket across her eyes. There was a moment of struggle in the drawing room; then Pelham went down.

He fired from the floor. For a minute Tryon stared stupidly down at his former friend; his hand went waveringly to his breast and came away stained. He looked at the hand for a moment, then slumped to the floor. Stacy Legendre rushed to his aide.

And as Tryon fell, Pelham leaped to his feet. He was through the door and past the cook before she could make any effort to stop him. He ran down four flights of stairs to the lobby, and thence to the street....

****

THE Tryon-Pelham shooting affair occurred after the editions of the morning papers had gone to press, but the evening papers carried the story. It made a most sensational feature.

Probably more than a million people read the afternoon editions, and probably the most interested reader was the man to whom reference was made in every other paragraph of every story.

Thin almost to the point of emaciation, the Gray Ghost seemed, at first glance, like one upon the threshold of death. Gray-skinned, gray-haired, and even dressed in gray, that impression of neutrality, of having no further concern with life, was banished once one looked fairly into the smoldering depths of the sunken gray eyes.

Despite his evident age and his apparent weakness, here was force, unlimited and unrepressed.

He sat now, on the evening of this day whose dawn had witnessed the tragic termination of the long alliance between Pelham and Tryon, studying each edition of the newspapers as they were brought to him, seeming to read between the lines to gather from the printed page more than was printed.

He sat in the solidly furnished library on the second floor of a house on Waverley Place. Aside from the malevolent fires in his eyes, he seemed like some feeble old gentleman, rspectably placed, comfortably well off, who kept up an interest in the doings of a world from which age had retired him.

The manservant who poked the logs in the fireplace evoked thoughts of ancient manor houses in England. His very sideburns were guarantees of respectability.

He was a criminal, differing only in degree from his master, yet he adhered to the fiction of master and servant even when there was no other person present.

The master, having read the last of the newspapers, ordered the servant to admit a man who waited outside. The Gray Ghost forced an unwilling smile to his thin lips. “Well, Beagle?” he said.

Beagle nodded in the direction of the newspaper which the Gray Ghost had put aside upon the entrance of his follower. “It's all straight,” he announced. “Tell me what you know.” ordered the Gray Ghost.

Beagle looked at his master. “We've kept a watch on both Tryon and Pelham every minute of the day and night.”

The Gray Ghost gestured impatiently. “I know that; I ordered you to.”

Something of the natural man in Beagle, usually subordinated to his awe of his master, crept through his mask of reserve. “And we've had a dozen chances to bump them both off,” he said aggrievedly.

The Gray Ghost smiled coldly. “You don't respect our friends as much as I do,” he said. “I don't doubt that as many opportunities have presented themselves, but you would not have accepted them.”

“I'm not a killer,” muttered Beagle.

“Exactly,” said the Gray Ghost. “We have no difficulty in finding men who, in the course of business, will kill. But the only sort who will start out deliberately to murder are men of so violent natures that they are untrustworthy

“We've had men commit suicide rather than be captured and give us away,” declared Beagle.

“You have no understanding,” said the Gray Ghost. “That is true; those men preferred death to imprisonment. Had I asked one of those men to commit a deliberate killing he would have refused. Killing to avoid capture, self-destruction for the same reason, killing to insure success of one of our plans—they are all different from deliberate murder. Not only can I not hire such men and have any assurance of their discretion, but I do not wish to. I am no gangster, Beagle. I am a gentleman.”

“Just the same, if we'd taken a chance and nicked Pelham and Tryon a few months ago, we'd be a million to the good,” argued Beagle.

****

THE Gray Ghost smiled once more. “You have my permission to attend to Tryon whenever you choose. As for Pelham—go on,” he ordered peremptorily.

”Well, he was followed to the apartment of Stacy Legendre last night. Also Tryon was followed there. He arrived before Pelham and the girl. About ten minutes after Pelham arrived he beat it from the house in a hurry. He went home, but he came out again in five minutes, carrying a suit case. He took a taxi to the Grand Central; he paid his driver, went into the station, and came out a little later in another car. He drove to the Burchard Hotel, registered under the name of Thomas Wentworth of Boston, went to a room, changed his clothes, and slipped out half an hour later. He went to a public telephone booth in an all-night drug store. We don't know what number he called, but from his excited manner, Hendry, who was following him at that moment, now surmises that he telephoned Miss Legendre's apartment”.

“No surmises, please,” said the Gray Ghost.

Beagle flushed. “He went from there to a lunchroom, ate a break fast, and then took a ride in the subway. He spent over two hours riding around underground, apparently just killing time. At about 7 o'clock He went to a cheap clothing store on 3d avenue, and bought a few things. He'd left his bag at the Burchard. At a drug store he bought a toothbrush and other incidentals. Carrying his purchases with him. he went to a rooming house on 8th street. Evidently he went to bed and stayed there until late this afternoon. Then he went out, had dinner in a restaurant on 6th avenue and went back to the rooming house. He's there now, or was there fifteen minuted ago.”

“Very good work,” said the Gray Ghost. “What else?”

“You telephoned me at 8 this morning,” said Beagle. “You told me that Kernan had learned that there was a general alarm out for Pelham. I got half a dozen men on the job at once. By the way, sir, I think Kernan is pretty reckless. He ought not to telephone you from police headquarters. If one hint ever got out that you had a man in the detective bureau——”

“Kernan didn't telephone from there. Go on,” said the Gray Ghost.

“I sent Zensler out to round up the maid of Miss Legendre,” Beagle continued. “Zensler posed as a reporter. The maid was loyal to her mistress until he flashed a century note. Then she loosened up. She said that she had overhead Tryon scolding her mistress for accepting Pelham's attentions. In the dressing room last night the maid heard Pelham say that Tryon would get into trouble if he wasn't careful.

“I sent Elsie Landon to call on Dr. Wetherby. You see, I'd had Ferguson go to Miss Legendre's apartment house. He couldn't get to the cook—the police were there—but he got in touch with the night telephone operator and learned that Wetherby had been sent for immediately after the shooting.

“Elsie acquired an obscure ailment that necessitated a long examination. She found out that Tryon was shot through the left lung, and probably will die.

“I went myself to Pelham's apartment. I pretended to be an insurance solicitor. I found that two plain-clothes men were there. I couldn't get to Dickenson, his servant.”

****

THE Gray Ghost nodded. “That's all right. Kernan sent word that Pelham and Tryon had quarreled over the telephone. The police got that out of Dickenson. Had a lot of trouble making that fellow talk, too. Go on.”

“I went to Pelham's bank. I recognized plain-clothes men there. Of course they might have been there for some other reason.”

The Gray Ghost nodded. “Probably not. Trying to stop him from drawing funds. What else?”

Beagle shook his head. “Why, I couldn't think of anything else——”

The Gray Ghost laughed mockingly. “Couldn't think of anything else, eh? Overlooked the most important thing of all, eh? Well, I've attended to the matter myself.”

“Well, I don't see how there could be anything else. I don't understand why you had us do all this, anyway,” grumbled Beagle.

“Of course you don't; it probably would never occur to you that Mr. James Pelham is an extraordinarily brilliant man,” said the Gray Ghost.

“What's his brilliance got to do with his shooting his partner in a row over a girl?” demanded Beagle.

The Gray Ghost tilted his head back as though he were some hound upon the scent. “That, Beagle, is exactly the question that I have been asking myself since early this morning.”

His manner changed, from something akin to ennui to alertness. “Get Pelham,” he ordered. “Bring him here. If you've been able to trace him, there's no reason why the police should not be able to do the same thing.”

He pulled his chair nearer to his table and reached for some papers. Beagle accepted his dismissal reluctantly. “Suppose he won't come?”

“Tell him that you will inform the nearest policeman where James Pelham may be found,” said the chief.

Beagle was soon at the 8th street rooming house where Pelham had taken refuge.

It was a shabby place, run by a suspicious-seeming woman. Beagle showed the woman a badge upon his waistcoat.

“I'm from the detective bureau. You let a room this morning to a thin, partly bald man, who wore a blue suit and a gray felt hat. Show me to his room.”

“Go there yourself,” snapped the landlady. “Second floor back.”

Beagle mounted the stairs and knocked upon Pelham's door. “Come in,” said, Pelham.

Beagle entered. “Mr. Pelham?” he asked.

He found himself looking into the muzzle of a pistol, the same one that Pelham had fired earlier that day.

“Step right inside, close the door, stand against that wall, and don't open your mouth,” snapped Pelham.

Beagle obeyed the first two injunctions, and then smiled at Pelham. “I'm not from headquarters. I'm from the Gray Ghost,” he said.

S1owly Pelham lowered the muzzle of his pistol. “What does he want with me?” he demanded harshly.

Beagle shrugged. “How do I know? But he said that if you didn't come to tell you that there would be a policeman here in five minutes.”

“Who's going to get him? Do you think I'm going to let you go?” cried Pelham.

”I have a car outside. The chauffeur will summon a policeman in just two minutes. What are you going to do?” countered Beagle.

For thirty seconds Pelham stared at him. “I'm going with you,” he said. His air of resignation, of despair, would have surprised the people who knew him only as a jaunty optimist.

Beagle held out his hand. “Give me the gun,” he said.

Pelham hesitated a second; then he surrendered his weapon, picked up his hat from the dingy bed on which it lay, and followed Beagle to the street. He entered the car with the Gray Ghost's emissary. Once inside. Beagle adjusted metal blinds that covered tightly all the windows, so that no view of the street through which they passed could be obtained. Nor did he encourage talk in the hour's ride that followed, a ride that covered twenty miles of the city's streets, and yet finally deposited the passengers less than half a mile from their starting point. As a further precaution, Beagle insisted upon blindfolding Pelham before they left the car. The bandage was not removed until Pelham was standing in the library of the Gray Ghost's home.

****

THE lights dazzled his eyes for a moment, and he shut them quickly. When he reopened them he was able to see more clearly. Then he saw distinctly. And he looked upon the features of the man whom he had sworn to capture.

“We meet again, Mr. Pelham,” said the Gray Ghost. “After ten years, we meet again.”

He was older, infinitely older, than he had been on that day, years ago, when he had, as Mr. Peter Ballantyne, chartered the yacht which Pelham then possessed. This, of course, Pelham did not know. He was looking upon the Gray Ghost for the first time. But. though he had never seen him before, he had heard him described and from the description knew the man.

“We never met before,” he replied.

The Gray Ghost's lips curled. “In the flesh neve, but in the spirit many times. You have been a source of great trouble to me, Mr. Pelham.”

”I hoped to send you to jail—to the electric chair,” growled Pelham.

“And now you may go to one or both places yourself,” said the Gray Ghost.

Pelham started. “You didn't bring me here for that.”

“No? Then why?” asked the Gray Ghost.

“How do I know? To gratify a cheap desire for triumph, perhaps. Or perhaps—but that's silly.”

”What's silly?” asked the Gray Ghost.

Pelham passed a hand over his haggard features. “To make terms. Only I'm not in a position to make terms. Not since last night. That's what's silly—my forgetting.”

“Still, I must have had a reason,” said the Gray Ghost. “And you do not belittle me in your thought by crediting me with a cheap desire for triumph. Not really.”

“Well, what do you want.”

The Gray Ghost leaned forward. “I want you, Mr. Pelham. I never hoped to enlist a gentleman. I must do with such cattle as Beagle, here.” He looked scornfully at his chief lieutenant. “I want a man of imagination, of genius such as you have shown you possess. I need such a man, Mr. Pelham. Your rash infatuation for a girl has ruined you. Your world can know you no longer. Will you come to my world?”

“Turn criminal?” Pelham stared at him. “You're mad,” he cried.

“Think of prison; think of the electric chair. And then think of freedom; think of life. What do you say, Mr. Pelham?”

“I say no,” replied Pelham.

“Yet you came here with Beagle. Why? I'll tell you why: because you were desperate. But you are still desprate. I alone can protect you, can hide you, can save you. Will you pay the price of safety? Of course you say no now, but tomorrow—let us wait until tomorrow, Mr. Pelham. Unless you are certain you will not change and wish me to send for the police now.”

Pelham stared at him. “Let me—think it over,” he said slowly.

****

OVER the Gray Ghost's wrinkled features spread a smile of triumph. It vanished as his butler knocked upon the door and entered, carrying a telegram. He laid it upon the Gray Ghost's table and departed. The Gray Ghost picked it up and read it. The smile that had been interrupted returned to his lips, with malevolent cruelty added. He spoke to Beagle:

“Beagle, I told you that you had overlooked the most important thing of all. And you ask me what Mr. Pelham's brilliance had to do with his shooting of his partner in a quarrel over a girl. Beagle, Miss Stacy Legendre was born, as any newspaper file would inform you, in Suntown, Mo. Suntown is not far from St. Louis, and I have agents there. The young lady lived there until she was eighteen. Let me read you this telegram;

“'Young woman you mention of French-Canadian descent; only living relatives mother and grandmother; both residing here. They state she has no uncle in New York.'

”That's the important thing you overlooked, Beagle. The other thing, your question—watch him Beagle!”

But Beagle did not need the warning; a revolver had appeared in his hand before the Gray Ghost had finished reading the telegram, and Pelham knew better than to move.

The Gray Ghost smiled malevolently. “Beagle wanted to know, Mr. Pelham—but you heard me repeat his question. Here's the answer: only a brilliant man would have conceived the idea of pretending to become a criminal himself in order to win his way to me. At least, only an extraordinarily brilliant man would have conceived this particular plan. I congratulate you, Mr. Pelham, and I regret that the association for which I had hoped can never be realized. But no falsehood can successfully impersonate a truth for long. You had a weak spot in your plan, Mr. Pelham.”

Pelham stared at him. He wondered if ever any one would succeed in mastering the genius of crime who sneered at him now. His elaborate pretense of a love affair with Stacy Legendre, who had been persuaded through promises of great publicity to pose as Tryon's niece; his realistic quarrel with Tryon; his planting evidence of the bad feeling between Tryon and himself with servants; the engaging of doctors and hospital authorities and certain police officials to assist in the pretense of a murderous assault; the realism with which the police had undertaken the task of searching for him; all these had failed. The Gray Ghost's penetrating intelligence had reached evidence and seen the truth. And now he, Jimmy Pelham, was in the Gray Ghost's power.

Unless Jerry, whose men had followed him to the rooming house, in the hope that the Gray Ghost would do exactly as he had done, had been able to keep pace with the limousine which had conveyed Pelham here. He edged near the table. If he could hurl a book, an inkstand, a paper weight through the window and warn Jerry's men, who must be outside, of his danger ... But as he moved something crashed against the street door. It must be Jerry; it must be!

The Gray Ghost leaped to his feet; he glared at Pelham.

“You are a genius, Mr. Pelham. So you had yourself followed here and——”

Pelham leaped across the table. The Gray Ghost, agile despite his years and apparent feebleness, moved to one side. Beagle fired as his master moved.

****

"NO fake about this wound. Mr. Pelham,” said Jerry Tryon the next day. He was sitting on the edge of Pelham's bed—a bed which held a white-faced man whose scalp was cowered with a bandage. “An inch lower and he'd got you.”

Pelham sighed. “And to think that he did just what we'd agreed he'd do—investigate, be deceived and send for me. To think that, having been able to fool his followers who have been shadowing me for weeks we couldn't fool him!”

“Quit worrying,” said Jerry, with gruff kindliness. “So long as you're alive I ain't got a kick in the world. Why, Mr. Pelham, when I heard that shot it seemed to me—aw, you know what I mean. If I'd only had sense enough to watch the whole block of houses so he couldn't slip away ... We'll get him yet.”

”I hope so,” said Pelham. But his tone was none too confident. The Gray Ghost would not be so easily deceived again. He had been found this once; time alone could tell whether or not he would be found again.

(Copyright, 1923.)