Midway of the cross hall which he had entered and which opened into the main lobby he slowed his gait long enough to undo the overcoat and slip out of it. The top button caught fast in its buttonhole, the coat being new and its buttonholes being stiff. He gave a sharp tug at the rebellious cloth, and the button, which probably had been insecurely sewed on in the first place, came away from its thread fastenings and lodged in the fingers of his right hand. Mechanically he dropped it into a side pocket of the overcoat and a moment later, with the garment turned inside out so that only its silk lining showed, and held under his arm, he had come out of the sideway and was in the lobby proper.
He was prepared mentally to find signs of an alarm here—to encounter persons hurrying toward the Thirty-ninth Street side of the building. But nothing of the sort was afoot. A darky orchestra was playing a jazz tune very loudly in the café at the left of the Broadway entrance, so it was not only possible but very likely that the sounds of the shots had not been heard inside the hotel at all. Certainly his eye, sweeping the place, discovered no evidences of any unusual stir. Perhaps half a dozen individuals were traversing the tiled floor, but none of them in any seeming hurry.
With no suggestion of agitation about him anywhere and with nothing furtive or stealthy in his movements, Trencher boldly passed the corner of the desk, crossed the lobby, went along the front of the news stand, where a young woman stood among her wares, and through another set of revolving doors came out upon Broadway. It was that one hour of the night—a quarter of eleven o'clock, while the last acts are still going on and before the theatres give up their audiences—when Broadway's sidewalks are not absolutely overflowing with jostling, pouring currents of people. Numbers were abroad, for numbers always are abroad in this part of the town, be the time of day or of night what it may, but there was no congestion. This was as it should be; it suited this man's purposes exactly.
He issued forth, and a few rods north of the corner saw the person for whom he was seeking; at least he saw a most likely candidate—a ragged darky, in a district where ragged darkies unless they be beggars are not often seen, who with his hands in his pockets and his coat collar turned up was staring into the window of a small clothing shop two doors above the narrow-fronted hotel. Trencher made for him. Remember, all this—from the moment of the shooting until now—had taken much less time than has been required for me to describe it in sequence or for you to read about it.
He tapped the darky on the arm.
"Boy," he said sharply, "want to pick up some easy money quick?"
"Yas, suh, I does!" The negro's eyes shone.
"Listen then: I've got to catch a train—sooner than I expected. My bag's packed and waiting for me up here at my boarding house in West Forty-fifth Street—Number 374 is the address—just west of Broadway—tall brownstone house with a high stoop. Get me? The bag's downstairs in the hall. The hall boy—a coloured fellow named Fred—is watching it for me. If I go in a cab I may not get to the station in time. If you go after it for me at a run I may catch my train. See? Here's a dollar down in advance. Tell Fred Mr. Thompson sent you—that's me, Thompson. He'll give it to you—I told him I'd send for it. I'll be waiting right here. If you get back with it in seven minutes I'll give you another dollar—and if you get back inside of seven minutes I'll make it two dollars more. Got the number in your mind?"
"Yas, suh—three seventy-fo' Wes' Forty-fift', you said."
"Correct. Now run like the very devil up Broadway to Forty-fifth and turn west!"
"Boss," cried the darky, "Ise gone!"
He was, too. His splay feet in their broken shoes fairly spurned the sidewalk as he darted northward, boring his way through the lanes of pedestrians, knocking people aside out of their stride and followed as he went by a wake of curses and grunts and curious glances. On a street where nearly everyone trots but few gallop, the sight of a running man catches the popular interest instantly, the common theory being that the runner has done something wrong and is trying to get away, else he would not run.
The instant the negro turned his back on him, Trencher slid inside the recessed entrance of the clothing store and flattened himself against its door. If chance had timed the occurrence just right he would win the reprieve that he required for what he meant next to undertake. And sure enough, as it turned out, chance had so timed it.
For just as he pressed his bulk into the recess the man hunt manifested itself. Bursting headlong out of the front of Wallinger's Hotel came a policeman—doubtlessly the one already seen by Trencher—and just behind the policeman a roughly dressed bearded man, and with these two, at their heels, a jostling impetuous swarm of other men, to be joined instantly by yet more men, who had run round the corner of the hotel from Thirty-ninth Street, instead of passing through its lobby. For the veriest fraction of time they all slowed down, casting about them with their eyes for a trail to follow.
Trencher, looking slantwise to the south, could see them plainly. The foremost members of the hesitating and uncertain group were not sixty feet from him. He forgot to breathe.
Then, all together, half a dozen pointing arms were flung out to the north.
"There he goes, officer, runnin'! See 'im yonder? See 'im?"
With a forward surge and a great clatter of feet the hunt was renewed. Past Trencher's refuge, with never a look this way or that, the policeman, the bearded man, all the rest of them, went pelting along the sidewalk, giving tongue like beagles. He could have put forth his hand and touched some of them as they sped by him. Numbers of foot travellers joined in the tail of the chase. Those who did not join it faced about to watch. Knowing that for a bit he would practically be free of the danger of close scrutiny, Trencher stepped out upon the sidewalk and looking north caught a glimpse of a bent fleeing figure scuttling up Broadway a block and a half beyond.
By this trick he had broken the trail and sent the pack off on a wrong scent. So far so good. He figured the outlook after this fashion: Set upon earning the double fee promised him the deluded darky, as he could tell, was still going at top speed, unconscious of any pursuit. If he continued to maintain his gait, if none tripped him, the probabilities were he would be round the corner in Forty-fifth Street, trying to find a mythical boarding house and a mythical hall boy named Fred, before the foremost of the runners behind overtook and seized him. Then would follow shouts, yells, a babble of accusations, denials of all wrongful intent by the frightened captive and explanations by him to the policeman of his reason for running so hard.
Following on this the chase would double back on its tracks, and at once policemen in numbers, along with volunteers, would be combing the district for the real fugitive. Still, barring the unforeseen, a few minutes must intervene before this neighbourhood search would be getting under way; and meanwhile the real fugitive, calmly enough, was moving along in the rear of the rearmost of those who ran without knowing why they ran. He did not go far though—he dared not go far. Any second the darky might be tackled and thrown by someone on ahead, and besides there might be individuals close at hand who had not joined in the hue and cry, but who in some way had learned that the man so badly wanted wore such-and-such distinguishing garments.
It was because of this latter contingency that Trencher had not tried to slip back into Thirty-ninth Street. That had been his first impulse, but he discarded the thought as it came to him. His mind peopled the vicinity immediately south and east of him with potential enemies. To the north alone, in the wake of the chase, could he count upon a hope of transient security, and that would last only for so long as the negro kept going. He could not get away from the spot—yet. And still it would be the height of recklessness for him, dressed as he was, to linger there. Temporarily he must bide where he was, and in this swarming, bright-as-day place he must find a hiding place from which he could see without being seen, spy without being spied upon or suspected for what he was. Even as he calculated these obstacles he figured a possible way out of the double-ended dilemma, or at any rate he figured his next step toward safety from detection for the moment, and, with continued luck, toward ultimate escape from a perilous spot where now no measure of immunity could be either long-lived or dependable.
I have said he did not go far to reach sanctuary. To be exact he did not go the length of the block between Thirty-ninth and Fortieth. He went only as far as the Clarenden, newest and smartest, and, for the time being, most popular of typical Broadway cafés, standing three buildings north of the clothing shop, or a total distance from it, let us say, of ninety feet. It was while he traversed those ninety feet that Trencher summed up the contingencies that hedged him in and reached his conclusion.
In front of the Clarenden against the curbing stood a short line of waiting motor vehicles. With one exception they were taxicabs. At the lower end of the queue, though, was a vast gaudy limousine, a bright blue in body colour, with heavy trimmings of brass—and it was empty. The chauffeur, muffled in furs, sat in his place under the overhang of the peaked roof, with the glass slide at his right hand lowered and his head poked out as he peered up Broadway; but the car itself, Trencher saw, contained no occupant.
Trencher, drawing up alongside the limousine, was searching vainly for a monogram, a crest or a name on its varnished flank while he spoke.
"Driver," he said sharply, "whose car is this?"
"Mr. O'Gavin's," the chauffeur answered without turning to look at the person asking the question.
Trencher played a blind lead and yet not such a very blind lead either. Big as New York was there was likely to be but one O'Gavin in it who would have a car such as this one anchored in front of the Clarenden—and that would be the noted bookmaker. Trencher played his card.
"Jerome O'Gavin's, eh?" he inquired casually as though stating a foregone conclusion.
"Yes, sir; it's his car." And now the driver twisted his body and half-faced Trencher. "Say, boss, what's all the row about yonder?"
"Crowd chasing a pickpocket, I imagine," said Trencher indifferently. Then putting a touch of impatience in his voice: "Where is O'Gavin—inside?"
"Yes, sir! Said he'd be ready to go uptown at eleven. Must be near that now."
"Pretty near it. I was to meet him here at eleven myself and I thought I recognised his car."
"You'll find him in the grill, I guess, sir," said the driver, putting into the remark the tone of deference due to someone who was a friend of his employer's. "I understood him to say he had an appointment with some gentleman there. Was it you?"
"No, but I know who the gentleman is," said Trencher. "The other man's not such a very good friend of mine—that's why I'd rather wait outside for Jerome than to go in there." He made a feint at looking at his watch. "Hum, ten minutes more. Tell you what I think I'll do, driver: I think I'll just hop inside the car until O'Gavin comes out—better than loafing on the sidewalk, eh?"
"Just as you say. Make yourself comfortable, sir. Shall I switch on the lights?"
"No, never mind the lights, thank you." Trencher was already taking shelter within the limousine, making himself small on the wide back seat and hauling a thick rug up over his lap. Under the rug one knee was bent upward and the fingers of one hand were swiftly undoing the buttons of one fawn-coloured spat. If the chauffeur had chanced to glance back he would have seen nothing unusual going on. The chauffeur, though, never glanced back. He was staring dead ahead again.
"Say, boss, they've caught the pickpocket—if that's what he was," he cried out excitedly. "They're bringing him back."
"Glad they nailed him," answered Trencher through the glass that was between them. He had one spat off and was now unfastening its mate.
"It looks like a nigger," added the chauffeur, supplying a fresh bulletin as the captive was dragged nearer. "It is a nigger! Had his nerve with him, trying to pull off a trick in this part of town."
Through the right-hand side window Trencher peered out as the mass moved by—in front a panting policeman with his one hand gripped fast in the collar of Trencher's late messenger, and all about the pair and behind them a jostling, curious crowd of men and women.
"De gen'l'man dat sent me fur his bag is right down yere, I keeps tellin' you," Trencher heard the scared darky babbling as he was yanked past Trencher's refuge.
"All right then, show him to me, that's all," the officer was saying impatiently.
The chauffeur twisted about in his place, following the spectacle with his eyes. But Trencher had quit looking that way and was looking another way. The centre of excitement had been moved again—instead of being north of him it was now approximately ninety feet south, and he, thanks to the shift, was once more behind it. Peering through the glass he watched the entrance to the Clarenden.
There he saw what he wanted to see—a tall man in a wide-brimmed soft dark hat and a long dark topcoat going up the short flight of steps that led from the pavement into the building. Trencher wadded the spats together and rammed them down out of sight between the back cushion and the under cushion of the car seat, and with his overcoat inside out on his left arm he opened the door and stepped out of the car. This retreat had served his purpose admirably; it was time to abandon it.
"Changed my mind," he said, in explanation. "If O'Gavin doesn't hurry up we'll be late for an engagement we've got uptown. I'm going in after him."
"Yes; all right, sir," assented the chauffeur with his attention very much elsewhere.
In long steps Trencher crossed the sidewalk and ran up the steps so briskly that he passed through the door at the top of the short flight directly behind and almost touching the tall man in the dark hat and black coat. His heart beat fast; he was risking everything practically on the possibilities of what this other man meant to do.
The other man did exactly what Trencher was hoping he would do. He turned left and made for the Clarenden's famous Chinese lounging room, which in turn opened into the main restaurant. Trencher slipped nimbly by his quarry and so beat him to where two young women in glorified uniforms of serving maids were stationed to receive wraps outside the checking booth; a third girl was inside the booth, her job being to take over checked articles from her sister helpers.
It befell therefore that Trencher surrendered his brown derby and his short tan coat, received a pasteboard check in exchange for them and saw them passed in over a flat shelf to be put on a hook, before the other man had been similarly served. When the other, now revealed as wearing a dinner jacket, came through the Orientalised passageway into the lounge, Trencher was quite ready for him. In his life Trencher had never picked a pocket, but as one thoroughly versed in the professionalism of the crime world, in which he was a distinguished figure, he knew how the trick, which is the highest phase of the art of the pickpocket, is achieved.
The thing was most neatly and most naturally accomplished. As the man in the dinner coat came just opposite him Trencher, swinging inward as though to avoid collision with the end of an upholstered couch, bumped into him, breast to breast.
"I beg your pardon," he said in contrite tones for his seeming awkwardness, and as he said it two darting fingers and the thumb of his right hand found and invaded the little slit of the stranger's waistcoat pocket, whisking out the check which the stranger had but a moment before, with Trencher watching, deposited there.
"Granted—no harm done," said the man who had been jostled, and passed on leaving Trencher still uttering apologetic sounds. Palming the precious pasteboard, which meant so much to him, Trencher stood where he was until he saw the unsuspecting victim pass on through into the café and join two other men, who got up from a table in the far corner near one of the front windows to greet him.
Trencher followed leisurely to where a captain of waiters stood guard at the opening in the dividing partition between the lounge and the restaurant. Before him at his approach this functionary bowed.
"Alone, sir?" he inquired obsequiously.
"Yes and no," replied Trencher; "I'm alone now but I'll be back in half an hour with three others. I want to engage a table for four—not too close to the orchestra." He slipped a dollar bill into the captain's hand.
"Very good, sir. What name, sir?"
"Tracy is the name," said Trencher.
"Quite so, sir."
The captain turned to serve a party of men and women, and Trencher fell back. He idled back through the Chinese room, vigilant to note whether any of the persons scattered about it were regarding him with more than a casual interest or, more important still, whether any there present knew him personally.
Reassured on this point he stepped out of the room and along with a quarter for a tip tendered to one of the maids the check he had just pilfered, meanwhile studying her face closely for any signs that she recalled him as one who had dealt with her within the space of a minute or so. But nothing in her looks betrayed recognition or curiosity as she bestirred herself to reclaim the articles for which the check was a voucher of ownership, and to help him into them.
Ten seconds later Trencher, a personality transformed, stood quite at his ease on the top step of the flight outside the entrance to the Clarenden looking into Broadway. The long dark overcoat which he now wore, a commonplace roomy garment, fitted him as though it had been his own. With its collar turned up about his cheeks it helped admirably to disguise him. The soft black hat was a trifle large for his head. So much the better—it came well down over his face.
The huge illuminated hands of a clock set in the middle of a winking, blinking electric sign a few blocks north, at the triangular gore where Seventh Avenue crosses Broadway, told him the time—six minutes of eleven. To Trencher it seemed almost that hours must have passed since he shot down Sonntag, and yet here was proof that not more than ten minutes—or at the most, twelve—had elapsed. Well, he had worked fast and with results gratifying. The spats that might have betrayed him were safely hidden in one place—yonder between the seat cushions of O'Gavin's car, which stood where he had left it, not thirty feet distant. His telltale overcoat and his derby hat were safely bestowed in the café check room behind him awaiting a claimant who meant never to return. Even if they should be found and identified as having been worn by the slayer of Sonntag, their presence there, he figured, would but serve to confuse the man hunt. Broadway's living tides flowed by, its component atoms seemingly ignorant of the fact that just round the corner below a man had been done to death. Only at the intersection of Thirty-ninth Street was there evidence, in the quick movement of pedestrians out of Broadway into the cross street, that something unusual served to draw foot passengers off their course.
In front of the clothing shop three doors south of him no special congestion of traffic revealed itself; no scrouging knot of citizens was to be seen, and by that Trencher reasoned that the negro had been taken elsewhere by his captors—very probably to where the body would still be lying, hunched up in the shadow before the Jollity's side doors. From the original starting point the hunt doubtlessly was now reorganising. One thing was certain—it had not eddied back this far. The men of the law would be working on a confused basis yet awhile, anyhow. And Trencher meant to twistify the clews still further, for all that he felt safe enough already. For the first time a sense of security exhilarated him. Almost it was a sense of exultation.
He descended the steps and went straight to the nearest of the rank of parked taxicabs. Its driver was nowhere in sight. A carriage starter for the café, in gorgeous livery, understood without being told what the tall muffled-up gentleman desired and blew a shrill blast on a whistle. At that the truant driver appeared, coming at a trot from down the street.
"'Scuse me, mister," he said as he mounted to his seat at the wheel. "Been a shootin' down the street. Guy got croaked, they say, and they can't find the guy that croaked um."
"Never mind the shooting," said Trencher as he climbed into the cab, whose door the starter had opened for him.
"Where to, gent?"
"Harty's Palm Garden," said Trencher, naming a restaurant a mile and a half away, straight up Broadway. His main thought now was to get entirely out of this part of town.
Riding along uptown Trencher explored the pockets of the pilfered overcoat. The search produced a pair of heavy gloves, a wadded handkerchief, two cigars, a box of matches, and, last of all, a triangular brass token inscribed with a number and a firm name. Without the imprint of the name Trencher would have recognised it, from its shape alone. It had come from the check room in the upper-tier waiting room of the Grand Central Station. Discovery of it gave him a new idea—an idea involving no added risk but having in it added possibilities for insuring the ultimate success of his get-away. In any event there could be neither harm nor enhanced danger in putting it into execution.
Therefore, when he had emerged from the cab at Harty's and had paid the fare and had seen the driver swing his vehicle about and start off back downtown, he walked across Columbus Circle to the west curve of it, climbed into another taxicab and was driven by way of Fifty-ninth Street and Fifth Avenue to the Grand Central. Here at the establishment of the luggage-checking concessionaire on the upper level of the big terminal he tendered the brass token to a drowsy-eyed attendant, receiving in exchange a brown-leather suit case with letters stenciled on one end of it, like this:
M. K. P
Stamford, Conn
Waving aside a red-capped negro porter, Trencher, carrying the spoil of his latest coup, departed via one of the Vanderbilt Avenue exits. Diagonally across the avenue was a small drug store still open for business at this hour, as the bright lights within proved. Above its door showed the small blue sign that marked it as containing a telephone pay booth. For Trencher's purposes a closed booth in a small mercantile establishment was infinitely to be preferred to the public exchange in the terminal—less chance that the call could be traced back to its source, less chance, too, that some inquisitive operator, trying to kill time during a dull hour, might listen in on the wire, and so doing overhear things not meant for her ears. He crossed over and entered the drug store.
Except for a sleepy clerk at the rear there was no one visible within the place. Trencher crowded his bulk into the booth, dropped the requisite coin in the slot and very promptly got back the answering hail from a certain number that he had called—a number at a place in the lower fringe of the old Tenderloin.
"Is that the Three Deuces?" asked Trencher. Then: "Who's speaking—you, Monty? . . . Know who this is, at this end? . . . Yes, that's right. Say, is the Kid there—Kid Dineen? . . . Good! Call him to the phone, will you, Monty? And tell him to hurry—it's devilish important."
A short pause followed and when Trencher spoke again he had dropped his voice to a cautious half-whisper, vibrant and tense with urgency. Also now he employed some of the argot of the underworld:
"Hello, Kid, hello! Recognise my voice, don't you? . . . Good! Now listen: I'm in a jam. . . . What? . . . Never mind what it is; you'll know when you see the papers in the morning if you don't know sooner. I've got to lam, and lam quick. Right now I've got the bulls stalled off good and proper, but I can't tell how long they'll stay stalled off. Get me? So I don't want to be showing my map round any ticket windows. So here's what I want you to do. Get some coin off of Monty, if you haven't got enough on you. Then you beat it over to the Pennsylvania Station and buy me a ticket for Pittsburgh and a section in the sleeper on the train that leaves round one-twenty-five to-night. Then go over on Ninth Avenue to Silver's place–What? . . . Yes; sure, that's the place. Wait for me there in the little room upstairs over the bar, on the second floor. They've got to make a bluff of closing up at one, but you know how to get up into the room, don't you? . . . Good! Wait for me till I show up, or if I get there first I'll wait for you. I ought to show inside of an hour from now—maybe in less time than that if things keep on breaking right. Then I'll get the ducats off of you and beat it across through the Hudson Tube to the Manhattan Transfer and grab the rattler over there in Jersey when she comes along from this side. That'll be all. Now hustle!"
From the drug store he went, carrying the brown suit case with him, round into Forty-second Street. He had taken a mental note of the initials on the bag, but to make sure he was right he looked at them again before he entered the big Bellhaven Hotel by its Forty-second-Street door. At sight of him a bell boy ran across the lobby and took from him his burden. The boy followed him, a pace in the rear, to the desk, where a spruce young gentleman awaited their coming. "Can I get a room with bath for the night—a quiet inside room where I'll be able to sleep as late as I please in the morning?" inquired Trencher.
"Certainly, sir." The room clerk appraised Trencher with a practiced eye. "Something for about four dollars?"
"That'll do very well," agreed Trencher, taking the pen which the clerk had dipped in ink and handed over to him.
Bearing in mind the letters and the address on the suit case, Trencher registered as M. K. Potter, Stamford, Conn. Meanwhile the clerk had taken a key from a rack containing a vast number of similar keys.
"I won't leave a call—and I don't want to be disturbed," warned Trencher.
"Very well, sir. Front! Show the gentleman to 1734." Five minutes later Trencher, in an inner room on the seventeenth floor, with the door locked on the inside, had sprung the catch of the brown suit case and was spreading its contents out upon the bed, smiling his satisfaction as he did so. Plainly fortune was favouring him at each new turning.
For here was a somewhat rumpled black suit and along with it a blue-striped shirt, showing slight signs of recent wear, a turndown collar that was barely soiled, and a plain black four-in-hand tie. Trencher went through the pockets of the suit, finding several letters addressed to Marcus K. Parker at an address in Broad Street, down in the financial district. Sewn in the lining of the inner breast pocket of the coat was a tailor's label also bearing the same name. At the sight Trencher grinned. He had not missed it very far. He had registered as Potter, whereas now he knew that the proper owner of the suit case must be named Parker.
Parker, he figured, belonged to the race of commuters; evidently he lived in Stamford and did business in New York. Accepting this as the correct hypothesis the rest of the riddle was easy to read. Mr. Parker, coming to town that morning, had brought with him his dinner rig in a suit case.
Somewhere, probably at his office, he had changed from his everyday garb to the clothes he brought with him, then he had packed his street clothes into the bag and brought it uptown with him and checked it at the Grand Central, intending after keeping his evening engagements to reclaim the baggage before catching a late train for Stamford.
Fine! Results from Trencher's standpoint could hardly have been more pleasing. Exulting inwardly over the present development and working fast, he stripped off his clothing down to his shoes and his undergarments—first, though, emptying his own pockets of the money they contained, both bills and silver, and of sundry personal belongings, such as a small pocketknife, a fountain pen, a condensed railway guide and the slip of pasteboard that represented the hat and coat left behind at the Clarenden. Then he put on the things that had come out of the Stamford man's bag—the shirt, the collar and the tie, and finally the outer garments, incidentally taking care to restore to Parker's coat pocket all of Parker's letters.
This done he studied himself in the glass of the chiffonier and was deeply pleased. Mirrored there he saw a different man from the one who had rented the room. When he quit this hotel, as presently he meant to do, he would not be Trencher, the notorious confidence man who had shot a fellow crook, nor yet would he be the Thompson who had sent a darky for a bag, nor the Tracy who had picked a guest's pocket at a fashionable restaurant, nor yet the Potter who had engaged a room with bath for a night. From overcoat and hat to shoes and undergarments he would be Mr. Marcus K. Parker, a thoroughly respectable gentleman, residing in the godly town of Stamford and engaged in reputable mercantile pursuits in Broad Street—with opened mail in his pocket to prove it.
The rest would be simplicity. He had merely to slip out of the hotel, carrying the key to 1734 with him. Certainly it would be as late as noon the following day before chambermaid or clerk tried to rouse the supposed occupant of the empty room. In all likelihood it would be later than noon. He would have at least twelve hours' start, even though the authorities were nimble-witted enough to join up the smaller mystery of an abandoned suit case belonging to one man and an abandoned outfit of clothing belonging to another, with the greater and seemingly unconnected mystery of the vanishment of the suspect in the Sonntag homicide case. Long before this potential eventuality could by any chance develop, he meant, under another name and in another disguise, to be hidden away at a quiet boarding house that he knew of in a certain obscure factory town on a certain trolley line leading out from Pittsburgh.