CHAPTER XIV
SEVEN LOST DAYS
Instead of driving up to San Francisco with Worth and Barbara, the next morning, I was headed south at a high rate of speed. Sitting in the Pullman smoker, going over what had happened and what I had made of it, vainly studying a small, blue blotter with some senseless hieroglyphics reversed upon it, I wasn't at all sure that this move of mine was anywhere near the right one. But the thing hit me so quick, had to be decided in a flash, and my snap judgment never was good.
We were all at breakfast there at the Gilbert house when I got the phone that those boobs down in Los Angeles had let Skeels slip through their fingers. I could see no way but to go myself. When I went out to retrieve my hand bag from the roadster, there was Barbara already in the seat. I delayed a minute to explain to her. She was full of eager interest; it seemed to her that Skeels ducking the detectives that way was more than clever – almost worthy of a wonder man.
"Slickest thing I ever knew," I grumbled. "You can gamble I wouldn't be going south after him if Skeels hadn't shown himself too many for the Hicks agency – and they're one of the best in the business."
Worth came out and settled himself at the wheel; he and Edwards exchanged a last, low-toned word; and they were ready to be off. Barbara leaned towards me with shining eyes.
"Perhaps," she said, "Skeels might even be Clayte!" then the roadster whisked her away.
The bulk of Worth Gilbert's fortune was practically tied up in this affair. Even as the Pullman carried me Los Angeles-ward, that boy was getting in to San Francisco, going to the bank, and turning over to them capital that represented not only his wealth but his honor. If we failed to trace this money, he was a discredited fool. Yes, I had done right to come.
So far on that side. Then apprehension began to mutter within me about the situation at Santa Ysobel. How long would that coroner's verdict of suicide satisfy the public? How soon would some seepage of fact indicate that the death was murder and set the whole town to looking for a murderer? The minute this happened, the real criminal would take alarm and destroy evidence I might have gathered if I had stayed by the case. I promised myself that it should be simply "there and back" with me in the Skeels matter.
This is the way it looked to me in the Pullman; then – once in Los Angeles – I allowed myself to get hot telling the Hicks people what I thought of them, explaining how I'd have run the chase, and wound up by giving seven days to it – seven precious, irreclaimable days – while everything lay wide open there in the north, and I couldn't get any satisfactory word from the office, and none of any sort from Worth.
That Skeels trail kept me to it, with my tongue hanging out; again and again I seemed to have him; every time I missed him by an hour or so; and that convinced me that he was straining every nerve, and that he probably had the whole of the loot still with him. At last, I seemed to have him in a perfect trap – Ensenada, on the Peninsula. You get into and out of Ensenada by steamboat only, except back to the mines on foot or donkey. The two days I had to wait over in San Diego for the boat which would follow the one Skeels had taken were a mighty uneasy time. If I'd imagined for a moment that he wasn't on the dodge – that he was there openly – I'd have wired the Mexican authorities, and had him waiting for me in jail. But the Mexican officials are a rotten lot; it seemed to me best to go it alone.
What I found in Ensenada was that Skeels had been there, quite publicly, under his own name; he had come alone and departed with a companion, Hinch Dial, a drill operator from the mines, a transient, a pick-up laborer, seemingly as close-mouthed as Silent Steve himself. Steve had come on one steamer and the two had left on the next. That north-bound boat we passed two hours off Point Loma was carrying Skeels and his pal back to San Diego!
Again two days lost, waiting for the steamer back. And when I got to San Diego, the trail was stone cold. I had sent Worth almost daily reports in care of my office, not wanting them to lie around at Santa Ysobel during the confusion of the funeral and all; but even before I went to Ensenada, telegrams from Roberts had informed me that these reports could not be delivered as Worth had not been at the office, and telephone messages to Santa Ysobel and the Palace Hotel had failed to locate him. When I believed I had Skeels firmly clasped in the jaws of the Ensenada trap, I had sent a complete report of my doings up to that time, and the optimistic outlook then, to Barbara with instructions for her to get it to Worth. She would know where he was.
But she hadn't. Her reply, waiting at San Diego for me, a delicious little note that somehow lightened the bitterness of my disappointment over Skeels, told me that she had seen Worth at the funeral, almost a week ago now, but only for a minute; that she had supposed he had joined me on the Skeels chase; and she would now try to hunt him up and deliver my report. Roberts, too, had a line in one of his reports that Worth had called for the suitcase on the Monday I left and had neither returned it nor been in the office since.
I worried not at all over Worth; if he wanted to play hide and seek with Dykeman's spotters, he was thoroughly capable of looking after himself; but in the Skeels matter, I did then what I should have done in the first place, of course; turned the work over to subordinates and headed straight home.
I reached San Francisco pretty well used up. It was nearly the middle of the forenoon next day when I got to my desk and found it piled high with mail that had accumulated in my absence. Roberts had looked after what he could, and sorted the rest, ready for me. Everything concerning the Clayte case was in one basket. As Roberts handed it to me, he explained.
"The Van Ness bank attorney – Cummings – has been keeping tabs on you tight, Mr. Boyne. Here every day – sometimes twice. Wants to know the minute you're back."
I grunted and dived into the letters. Nothing interesting. Responses acknowledging receipts of my early inquiries. Roberts lingered.
"Well?" I shot at him. He moved uneasily as he asked.
"Did you wire him when you were coming back?"
"Cummings? No. Why?"
"He telephoned in just before you came saying that he'd be right up to see you. I told him you hadn't returned. He laughed and hung up."
"All right, Roberts. Send him in when he comes." I dismissed the secretary. Cummings was keeping tabs on me with a vengeance. What was on his chest?
I didn't need to wait long to find out. In another minute he was at my door greeting me in an off-hand, "Hello, Boyne. Ready to jump into your car and go around with me to see Dykeman?"
"Just got down to the office, Cummings," I watched him, trying to figure out where I stood and where he stood after this week's absence. "Haven't seen Worth Gilbert yet. What's the rush with Dykeman?"
"You'll find out when you get there."
Not very friendly, seeing that Cummings had been Worth's lawyer in the matter, and aside from that queer scene in my office, there'd been no actual break. He stood now, not really grinning at me, but with an amused look under that bristly mustache, and suggested,
"So you haven't seen young Gilbert?"
The tone was so significant that I gave him a quick glance of inquiry as I said,
"No. What about him?"
"Put on your coat and come along. We can talk on the way," he replied, and I went with him to the street, dug little Pete out of the bootblack stand and herded him into the roadster to drive us. Cummings gave the order for North Beach, and as we squirmed through and around congested down-town traffic, headed for the Stockton Street tunnel, I waited for the lawyer to begin. When it came, it was another startling question,
"Didn't find Skeels in the south, eh?"
I hadn't thought they'd carry their watching and trailing of us so far. I answered that question with another,
"When did you see or hear from Worth Gilbert last?"
"Not since the funeral," he said promptly, "the day before the funeral – a week ago to-day, to be exact. I ran down to make my inventory then; as administrator, you know."
He looked at me so significantly that I echoed,
"Yes, I know."
"Do you? How much?" His voice was hard and dry; it didn't sound good to me.
"See here," I put it to him, as my clever little driver dodged in and out through the narrow lanes between Pagoda-like shops of Chinatown, avoiding the steep hill streets by a diagonal through the Italian quarter on Columbus Avenue. "If there's anything you think I ought to be told, put me wise. I suppose you raised that money for Worth – the seventy-two thousand that was lacking, I mean?"
"I did not."
I turned the situation over and over in my mind, and at last asked cautiously,
"Worth did get the money to make up the full amount, didn't he?"
We had swerved again to the north, where the Powell car-line curves into Bay Street, and were headed direct for the wharves. Cummings watched me out of the corners of his eyes, a look that bored in most unpleasantly, while he cross-examined,
"So you don't know where he raised that money – or how – or when? You don't even know that he did raise it? Is that the idea?"
I gave him look for look, but no answer. An indecisive slackening of the machine, and Little Pete asked,
"Where now, sir?"
"You can see it," Cummings pointed. "The tall building. Hit the Embarcadero, then turn to your right; a block to Mason Street."
So close to the dock that ships lay broadside before its doors, moored to the piles by steel cables, the Western Cereal Company plant scattered its mills and warehouses over two city blocks. Freight trains ran through arcades into the buildings to fetch and carry its products; great trucks, some gas driven, some with four- and six-horse teams, loaded sacks or containers that shot in endless streams through well worn chutes, or emptied raw materials that would shortly be breakfast foods into iron conveyors that sucked it up and whined for more. It was a place of aggressive activity among placid surroundings, this plant of Dykeman's, for its setting was the Italian fisherman's home district; little frame shacks, before which they mended their long, brown nets, or stretched them on the sidewalks to dry; Fisherman's Wharf and its lateen rigged, gayly painted hulls, was under the factory windows.
We pulled up before the door of a building separate from any of the mills or warehouses, and I followed Cummings through a corridor, past many doors of private offices, to the large general office. Here a young man at a desk against the rail lent Cummings respectful attention; the lawyer asked something in a low tone, and was answered,
"Yes, sir. Waiting for you. Go right through."
Down the long room with its rattling typewriters, its buzz of clerks and salesmen we went. Cummings was a little ahead of me, when he checked a moment to bow to some one over at a desk. I followed his glance. The girl he had spoken to turned her back almost instantly after she had returned his greeting; but I couldn't be mistaken. There might be more than one figure with that slim, half girlish grace about it, and other hair as lustrously blue-black, but none could be wound around a small head quite so shapely, carried with so blossomlike a toss. It was Barbara Wallace.
So this was where her job was. Strange I had not known this fact of grave importance. I went on past her unconscious back, left her working at her loose-leaf ledgers, beside her adding machine, my mind a whirl of ugly conjecture. Dykeman's employee; that would instantly and very painfully clear up a score of perplexing questions. Dykeman would need no detectives on my trail to tell him of my lack of success in the Skeels chase. Lord! I had sent her as concise a report as I could make – to her, for Worth. I walked on stupidly. In front of the last door in the big room, Cummings halted and spoke low.
"Boyne, you and I are both in the employ of the Van Ness Avenue Bank. We're somewhat similarly situated in another quarter; I'm representing the Gilbert estate, and you've been retained by Worth Gilbert."
I grunted some sort of assent.
"I brought you here to listen to what the bank crowd has to say, but when they get done, I've something to tell you about that young employer of yours. You listen to them – then you listen to me – and you'll know where you stand."
"I'll talk with you as soon as I get through here, Cummings."
"Be sure you do that little thing," significantly, and we went in.
CHAPTER XV
AT DYKEMAN'S OFFICE
We found Whipple with Dykeman. I had always liked the president of the Van Ness Avenue Bank well enough; one of the large, smooth, amiable sort, not built to withstand stress of weather, apt to be rather helpless before it. He seemed now mighty upset and worried. Dykeman looked at me with hard eyes that searched me, but on the whole he was friendly in his greeting and inquiries as to my health.
While I was getting out of my coat and stowing it, making a great deal of the process so as to gain time, I saw Cummings was exchanging low spoken words with the two of them. I tried to keep my mind on these men before me and why I was with them, but all the while it would be running back to the knock-out blow of seeing that girl in Dykeman's place. She was double-crossing Worth! I might have grinned at the idea that I'd let myself be fooled by a pair of big, expressive, wistful, merry black eyes; but I had seen the look in those same eyes when they were turned on my boy; to think she'd look at him like that, and sell him out, was against nature. It was hurting me beyond all reason.
Whipple asked me about my trip south as though it was the most public thing in the world and he knew its every detail, and accepted my reply that I couldn't take one man's pay and report to another, with,
"Just so, Mr. Boyne. But your agency is retained – regularly, year by year – by our bank. And our bank has given over none of its rights – I should say duties – in regard to the Clayte case. We stand ready to assist any one whose behavior seems to us that of a law-abiding citizen. We don't want to advance any criminality. We can't strike hands with outlaws – "
"Tell him about the suitcase, Whipple," Dykeman broke in impatiently, rather spoiling the president's oratorical effect. "Tell him about the suitcase."
The suitcase! Was this one of the things Barbara Wallace had let out to her employer? She could have done so. She knew all about it.
"One moment, please," I snapped. "I've been away for a week, Mr. Whipple. I don't know a thing of what you're talking about. Did Captain Gilbert fail to meet his engagement with you Monday morning?"
Whipple shook his head.
"Mr. Dykeman wants you told about the suitcase," he said. "I'd like to have Knapp here when we go into that."
Dykeman picked up the end of a speaking-tube and barked into it,
"Send those men in." In the moment's delay, we all sat uneasily mute. Knapp came in with Anson. As they nodded to us and settled into chairs, two or three others joined us. Nothing was said about this filling out of the numbers, but to me it meant serious business, with Worth Gilbert its motive.
"Get it over, can't you?" I said, looking about from one to the other of the men, all directors in the bank. "I understand that Captain Gilbert met his engagement with you; was he short of the sum agreed?" Again Whipple shook his head.
"Captain Gilbert walked into the bank at exactly ten o'clock Monday morning. The uh – uh – unusual arrangement – contract, to call it so – that we'd made with him concerning the defalcation would have expired in a few seconds, and I think I may say," he looked around at the others, "that we should not have been sorry to have it do so. But he brought the sum agreed on."
I drew a great sigh of relief. Worth's bargain was complete; he was done with these men, anyhow. I was half out of my chair when Whipple said, sharply for him,
"Sit down, Mr. Boyne." And Dykeman almost drowned it in his,
"Wait, there, Boyne! We're not through with you."
"There's more to tell," Whipple continued. "Captain Gilbert brought that eight hundred thousand cash and securities in a – er – in a very strange way."
"What d'you mean, strange way? airplane or submarine?" I growled.
"He brought it," Whipple's words marched out of him like a solemn procession, "in a brown, sole-leather suitcase."
"With brass trimmings," Dykeman supplemented, and leaned back in his chair with an audible "Ah-h-h!" of satisfaction.
If ever a poor devil was flabbergasted, it was the head of the Boyne agency at that moment. I had a fellow feeling for that Mazeppa party who was tied in his birthday suit to the back of a wild horse. Locoed broncos were more amenable to rein than Worth Gilbert. So that was why he wanted that suitcase – "had a use for it," he'd put it; insisted on an order to be able to get it if I wasn't at my office; wanted it to shove back at these scary bank officials, with his own money for the payment inside. No wonder Whipple called him an "outlaw"!
"Get the idea, do you, Boyne?" Anson lunged at me in his ponderous way. "The rest of us thought 'twas a poor joke, but Knapp and Whipple had both seen that suitcase before – and recognized it."
"Yes," said Knapp quietly. "It chanced I saw it go through the door that last day, when it had nearly a million of our money in it. And here it was – " his voice broke off.
"Certainly startling," Cummings spoke directly at me, "for them to see it come back in Worth Gilbert's hands, with the same kind of filling, less one hundred and eighty seven thousand dollars. Of course, I didn't know the identity of the suitcase until they'd given Gilbert his receipt and he was gone."
"Oh, they accepted his money?" I said, and every man in the room looked sheepish, except Cummings who didn't need to, and Dykeman who was too mad to. He shouted at me,
"Yes, we took it; and you're going to tell us where he got that suitcase."
"What have your own detectives – those you hired on the side – to say about it?" I countered on him, and saw instantly that the Whipple end of the crowd hadn't known of Dykeman's spotters and trailers.
"Well, why not?" Dykeman shrilled. "Why not? Who wouldn't shadow that crook? One hundred and eighty seven thousand dollars! Worked us like suckers – come-ons – !" he choked up and began to cough. Cummings came in where he left off.
"See here, Boyne; we don't want to antagonize you. You've said from the first that this crime was a conspiracy – a big thing – directed by brains on the outside. Clayte was the tool. Whose tool was he? That's what we want to know." And Anson trundled along,
"These men who have been in the war get a contempt for law, there's no doubt about it. Captain Gilbert might – "
"No names!" Whipple's hand went up in protest. "No accusations, gentlemen, please; Mr. Boyne – this is a dreadful thing. But, really, Captain Gilbert's manner was very strange. I might say he – "
"Swaggered," supplied Cummings coolly as the president's voice lapsed.
"Well," Whipple accepted it, "he swaggered in and put it all over us. There he was, a man fresh from the deathbed of a suicide father; that father's funeral yet to occur. I, personally, hadn't the heart to question him or raise objections. I was dazed."
"Dazed," Dykeman snapped up the word and worried it, as a dog worries a bone. "Of course, we were all dazed. It was so open, so shameless – that's why he got by with it. Making use of his position as heir, less than forty eight hours after his father was shot."
"After his father shot himself," Whipple's lowered tone was a plea. "After his father shot himself."
"Huh!" snorted Dykeman. "If a man shoots himself, he's been shot, hasn't he? Hell! What's the use of whipping the devil round the stump that way? Boyne, you can stand with us, or you can fight us."
"Boyne's with us – of course he's with us," Whipple broke in, his words a good deal more confident than his tone or the look of his face.
"Well, then," Dykeman ground out, "when our thief of a teller splits that one hundred and eighty seven thousand with his man Gilbert – shut up, Whipple – shut up! You can't stop me – we're going to know about it. We'll get them both then, and send them across. And we'll recover one hundred and eighty seven thousand dollars that belongs to the Van Ness Avenue bank."
"Good night!" I got to my feet. "This lets me out. I can't deal with men who make a scrap of paper of their contracts as quick as you gentlemen do."
"Stop, Boyne – you haven't got it all," Dykeman ordered me.
"Yes, wait, Mr. Boyne," Whipple came in. "You haven't a full understanding of the enormity of this young man's action. Mr. Cummings has something to tell you which, I think, will – "
"Nothing Mr. Cummings can say," I shut them off, "will alter the fact that I am employed by Captain Worth Gilbert at your recommendation – at your own recommendation – that I have been away more than a week on his business, and have not yet had an opportunity to report to him personally. When I've seen him, I'll be ready to talk to you."
"You'll talk now or never – " Dykeman's shrill threat was interrupted by the shriller bell of the telephone. He yanked the instrument to him, and the "Hello!" he cried into it had the snap of an oath. He looked up and shoved the thing in my direction. "Calling for you, Boyne," he snarled.
There was deathly stillness in the room, so that the whir of the great stones in the mill came to us insistently. I stood there, they all watching me, and spoke into the transmitter.
"This is Boyne."
"Hold the receiver close to your ear so it won't leak words." The warning wasn't needed; I thought I knew the voice. "Press the transmitter close to your chest. Listen – don't talk; don't say a word in reply to me. I'm in the telephone booth outside. I must see you just as soon as I can. I'll be at the Little Italy restaurant – you know, don't you? on Fisherman's Wharf – in ten minutes. If you can come, and alone, find me there. I'll wait an hour. If you can't come now, you must see me this evening after working hours."
"I'll come now," I raised the transmitter to say, and quickly over the wire came the answer,
"I told you not to speak – in there! This is Barbara Wallace."