CHAPTER VII
THE PANAMA GOLD CHESTS
It is one of life's little ironies, I suppose, that man's surest escapefrom misery should be through the contemplation of people moremiserable than himself. Such, however, happens to be the case. Andprompted by this genial cross between a stoic and a cynic philosophy, Ihad formed the habit of periodically submerging myself in a bath ofcleansing depravity.
The hopelessness of my fellow-beings, I found, seemed to give mesomething to live for. Collision with lives so putrescently abominablethat my own by contrast seemed enviable, had a tendency to make meforget my troubles. And this developed me into a sort of calamitychaser. It still carried me, on those nights when sleep seemed beyondmy reach, to many devious and astounding corners of the city, tounsavory cellars where lemon-steerers and slough-beaters foregathered,to ill-lit rooms where anarchists nightly ate the fire of their ownineffectual oratory, to heavy-fumed drinking-places wherepocket-slashers and till-tappers and dummy-chuckers and dips forgottheir more arduous hours.
But more and more often I found my steps unconsciously directed towardthat particular den of subterranean iniquities known as _The Cafe ofFailures_. For it was in this new-world _Cabaret du Neant_ that I hadfirst heard of that engaging butler known to his confederates as "SirHenry." And I still had hopes of recovering my stolen great-coat.
Night by night I went back to that dimly lit den of life's discards,the same as a bewildered beagle goes back to its last trace of aniseed.I grew inured to its bad air, unobservant of its scorbutic waiters,undisturbed by its ominous-looking warren of private rooms, andapathetic before its meretricious blondes.
Yet at no time was I one of the circle about me. At no time was Ianything more than a spectator of their ever-shifting andever-mystifying dramas. And this not unnatural secretiveness on theirpart, combined with a not unnatural curiosity of my own, finallycompelled me to a method of espionage in which I grew to take somelittle pride.
This method, for all its ingenuity, was simple enough to any one ofeven ordinary scientific attainments. When I found, for example, thatthe more select of those underworld conferences invariably took placein one of that tier of wood-partitioned drinking-rooms which lined thecafe's east side, I perceived that if I could not invade those rooms inbody I might at least be there in another form. So with the help of myfriend Durkin, the reformed wire-tapper, I acquired a piece ofmachinery for the projection of the spirit into unwelcome corners.
This instrument, in fact, was little more than an enlargement of theordinary telephone transmitter. It was made by attaching to an oblongof glass, constituting of course, an insulated base, two carbonsupports, with cavities, and four cross-pieces, also of carbon, withpointed ends, fitting loosely into the cavities placed along the sideof the two supports. The result was, this carbon being whatelectricians call "a high resistance" and the loose contact-pointswhere the laterals rested making resistance still higher, that allvibration, however minute, jarred the points against their supports andvaried resistance in proportion to the vibration itself. This, ofcourse, produced a changing current in the "primary" of the inductioncoil, and was in turn reproduced, greatly magnified, in the "secondary"where with the help of a small watch-case receiver it could be easilyheard.
In other words, I acquired a mechanical sound-magnifier, a microphone,an instrument, of late called the dictaphone, which translates thelightest tap of a pencil-end into something which reached the ear withthe force of a hammer-blow. And the whole thing, battery, coil,insulated wire, carbon bars and glass base, could be carried in itsleather case or thrust under my coat as easily as a folded opera hat.
It was equally easy, I found, to let it hang flat against the side wallof that rancid little _chambre particuliere_ which stood next to theroom where most of those star-chamber conspiracies seemed to takeplace. My method of adjusting the microphone was quite simple.
From the painted wooden partition I lifted down the gilt-framed pictureof a bacchanalian lady whose semi-nudity disseminated the virtues of achampagne which I knew to be made from the refuse of the humbleapple-evaporator. At the top-most edge of the square of dust wherethis picture had stood, I carefully screwed two L-hooks and on thesehooks hung my microphone-base. Then I rehung the picture, leaving itthere to screen my apparatus. My cloth-covered wires, which ran fromthis picture to the back of the worn leather couch against the wall, Ivery nicely concealed by pinning close under a stretch of gas pipe andpoking in under the edge of the tattered brown linoleum.
Yet it was only on the third evening of my mildly exhilaratingoccupation in that stuffy little _camera obscura_ that certain thingsoccurred to rob my espionage of its impersonal and half-heartedexcitement. I had ordered a bottle of _Chianti_ and gone into thatroom to all intents and purposes a diffident and maundering_bon-vivant_ looking for nothing more than a quiet corner wherein todoze.
Yet for one long hour I had sat in that secret auditorium, with mywatch-case receiver at my ear, while a garrulous quartette ofstrike-breakers enlarged on the beatitude of beating up a "cop" who hadill-used one of their number.
It must have been a full half hour after they had gone before I againlifted the phone to my ear. What I heard this time was another man'svoice, alert, eager, a little high-pitched with excitement.
"I tell you, Chuck," this thin eager voice was declaring, "the thing'sa pipe! I got it worked out like a game o' checkers. But Redney 'ndme can't do a thing unless you stake us to a boat and a batch o' tools!"
"What kind o' tools?" asked a deep and cavernous bass voice. In thatvoice I could feel caution and stolidity, even an overtone ofautocratic indifference.
"Ten bones'd get the whole outfit," was the other's answer.
"But what kind o' tools?" insisted the unperturbed bass voice.
There was a second or two of silence.
"That's spielin' the whole song," demurred the other.
"Well, the whole song's what I want to know," was the calm andcavernous answer. "You'll recall that three weeks ago I staked youboys for that expresswagon job--and I ain't seen nothing from it yet!"
"Aw, that was a frame-up," protested the first speaker. "Some squealerwas layin' for us!"
It was a new voice that spoke next, a husky and quavering voice, asthough it came from an alkaline throat not infrequently irrigated withfusel-oil whisky.
"Tony, we got to let Chuck in on this. We got to!"
"Why've we got to?"
"Two men can't work it alone," complained the latest speaker. "Youknow that. We can't take chances--and Gawd knows there's enough forthree in this haul!"
Again there was a brief silence.
"You make me sick!" suddenly exploded the treble-voiced youth who hadfirst spoken. "You'd think it was _me_ who's been singin' aboutkeepin' this thing so quiet!"
"What're you boys beefin' about, anyway?" interposed the placid bassvoice.
"I ain't beefin' about you. I ain't kickin' against lettin' you in.But what I want to know is how're we goin' to split when you _are_ in?Who follied this thing up from the first? Who did the dirty work onit? Who nosed round that pier and measured her off, and got a bead onthe whole lay-out?"
"Then what'd you take _me_ in for?" demanded the worthy called Redney."Why didn't you go ahead and hog the whole thing, without havin' metrailin' round?"
"Cut that out. You know I've got to have help," was the treble-notedretort. "You know it's too big for one guy to handle."
"And it's so big you've got to have a boat and outfit," suggested thebass-voiced man. "And I'll bet you and Redney can't raise two bitsbetween you."
"But _you_ get me a tub with a kicker in, and two or three tools, andthen you've got the nerve to hold me up for a third rakeoff!"
"I don't see as I'm holdin' anybody up," retorted the deep-voiced man."You came to me, and I told you I was ready to talk business. You saidyou wanted help. Well, if you want help you've got to pay for it, sameas I pay for those cigars."
; "I'm willin' to pay for it," answered the high-voiced youth, with aquietness not altogether divorced from sulkiness.
"Then what're we wastin' good time over?" inquired the man known asRedney. "This ain't a case o' milkin' coffee-bags from a slip-lighter.This haul's big enough for three."
"Well, what _is_ your haul?" demanded the bass voice.
Again there was a silence of several seconds.
"Cough it up," prompted Redney. The silence that ensued seemed toimply that the younger man was slowly and reluctantly arriving at achange of front. There was a sound of a chair being pushed back, of amatch being struck, of a glass being put down on a table-top.
"Chuck," said the treble-voiced youth, with a slow and impressivesolemnity that was strangely in contrast to his earlier speech, "Chuck,we're up against the biggest stunt that was ever pulled off in thisburg of two-bone pikers!"
"So you've been insinuatin'," was the answer that came out of thesilence. "But I've been sittin' here half an hour waitin' to get aline on what you're chewin' about."
"Chuck," said the treble voice, "you read the papers, don't you?"
"Now and then," acknowledged the diffident bass voice.
"Well, did you see yesterday morning where the steamer _Finance_ wasrammed by the White Star _Georgic_? Where she went down in the LowerBay before she got started on her way south?"
"I sure did."
"Well, did you read about her carryin' six hundred and ten thousanddollars in gold--in gold taken from the Sub-Treasury here and done upin wooden boxes and consigned for that Panama Construction Comp'ny."
"I sure did."
"And did your eye fall on the item that all day yesterday the diversfrom the wreckin' comp'ny were workin' on that steamer, workin' likeniggers gettin' that gold out of her strong room?"
"Sure!"
"And do you happen to know where that gold is now?" was the oratoricalchallenge flung at the other man.
"Just wait a minute," remarked that other man in his heavy guttural."Is _that_ your coup?"
"That's my coup!" was the confident retort.
"Well, you've picked a lemon," the big man calmly announced. "There'snothin' doin', kiddo, nothin' doin'!"
"Not on your life," was the tense retort. "I know what I'm talkin'about. And Redney knows."
"And _I_ know that gold went south on the steamer _Advance_,"proclaimed the bass voice. "I happen to know they re-shipped the wholebunch o' metal on their second steamer."
"Where'd you find that out?" demanded the scoffing treble voice.
"Not bein' in the Sub-Treasury this season, I had to fall back on thepapers for the news."
"And that's where you and the papers is in dead wrong! That's howthey're foolin' you and ev'ry other guy not in the know. I'll tell youwhere that gold is. I'll tell you where it lies, to the foot, at thisminute!"
"Well?"
"She's lyin' in the store-room in a pile o' wooden boxes, on thatPanama Comp'ny's pier down at the foot o' Twenty-eight' Street!"
"You're dreamin', Tony, dreamin'. No sane folks leave gold lyin' roundloose that way. No, sir; that's what they've got a nice stoneSub-Treasury for."
"Look a' here, Chuck," went on the tense treble voice. "Jus' figureout what day this is. And find out when them wreckers got that goldout o' the _Finance's_ strong room. And what d'you get? Theylightered them boxes up the North River at one o'clock Saturdayafternoon. They swung in next to the _Advance_ and put a half-a-dozencases o' lead paint aboard. Then they tarpaulined them boxes o' goldand swung into the Panama Comp'ny's slip and unloaded that cargo _attwo o'clock Saturday afternoon_!"
"Well, s'pose they did?"
"Don't you tumble? Saturday afternoon there's no Sub-Treasury open.And to-day's Sunday, ain't it? And they won't get into thatSub-Treasury until to-morrow morning. And as sure as I know I'msittin' in this chair I know that gold's lyin' out there on thatTwenty-eight' Street pier!"
No one in that little room seemed to stir. They seemed to be sittingin silent tableau. Then I could hear the man with the bass voiceslowly and meditatively intone his low-life expletive.
"Well, I'll be damned!"
The youngest of the trio spoke again, in a lowered but none the lesstense voice.
"In gold, Chuck, pure gold! In fine yellow gold lyin' there waitin' tobe rolled over and looked after! Talk about treasure-huntin'! Talkabout Spanish Mains and pirate ships! My Gawd, Chuck, we don't need totravel down to no Mosquito Coast to dig up our doubloons! We got 'emright here at our back door!"
Some one struck a match.
"But how're we goin' to pick 'em?" placidly inquired the man calledChuck. It was as apparent that he already counted himself one of theparty as it was that their intention had not quite carried him off hisfeet.
"Look here," broke in the more fiery-minded youth known as Tony, andfrom the sound and the short interludes of silence he seemed to bedrawing a map on a slip of paper. "Here's your pier. And here's yourstore-room. And here's where your gold lies. And here's the firstdoor. And here's the second. We don't need to count on the doors.They've got a watchman somewhere about here. And they've put two oftheir special guards here at the land end of the pier. The store-roomitself is empty. They've got it double-locked, and a closed-circuitalarm system to cinch the thing. But what t'ell use is all that whenwe can eat right straight up into the bowels o' that room withouttouchin' a lock or a burglar alarm, without makin' a sound!"
"How?" inquired the bass voice.
"Here's your pier bottom. Here's the river slip. We row into thatslip without showin' a light, and with the kicker shut off, naturally.We slide in under without makin' a sound. Then we get ourmeasurements. Then we make fast to this pile, and throw out a line tothis one, and a second to this one, to hold us steady against the tideand the ferry wash. Then we find our right plank. We can do that bypokin' a flashlight up against 'em where it'll never be seen. Then wetake a brace and bit and run a row of holes across that plank, the tworows about thirty inches apart, each hole touchin' the other. Don'tyou see, with a good sharp extension bit we can cut out that square inhalf an hour or so, without makin' any more noise than you'd makescratchin' a match on your pants leg!"
"And when you get your square?"
"Then Redney and me climbs through. Redney'll be the stall. Hewatches the door from the inside. You stay in the boat, with an eyepeeled below. I pass you the gold. We cut loose and slip off with thetide. When we're out o' hearin' we throw on the kicker and go kitin'down to that Bath Beach joint o' yours where we'll have that sixhundred and ten thousand in gold melted down and weighed out beforethey get that store-room door unlocked in the morning!"
"Not so loud, Tony; not so loud!" cautioned the conspirator calledRedney. There was a moment of silence.
In that silence, and without the aid of my microphone, I heard thesound of steps as they approached my door and came to a stop.
"Listen!" suddenly whispered one of the men in the other room.
As I sat there, listening as intently as my neighbors, the knob of mydoor turned. Then the door itself was impatiently shaken.
That sound brought me to my feet with a start of alarm. Accident hadenmeshed me in a movement that was too gigantic to be overlooked. Theone thing I could not afford, at such a time, was discovery.
Three silent steps took me across the room to my microphone. Onemovement lifted that telltale instrument from its hooks, and a secondmovement jerked free the wires pinned in close along the gas pipe.Another movement or two saw my apparatus slipped into its case and thecase dropped down behind the worn leather-couch back. Then I sank intothe chair beside the table, knowing there was nothing to betray me.Yet as I lounged there over my bottle of _Chianti_ I could feel theexcitement of the moment accelerate my pulse. I made an effort to getmy feelings under control as second by second slipped away and nothingof importance took place. It was, I decided, my wall-eyed waiterfriend, doubtlessly bearing a message that more lucrative pa
trons weredesiring my fetid-aired cubby-hole.
Then, of a sudden, I became aware of the fact that voices werewhispering close outside my door. The next moment I heard the crunchof wood subjected to pressure, and before I could move or realize thefull meaning of that sound, the door had been forced open and three menwere staring in at me.
I looked up at them with a start--with a start, however, which I hadthe inspired foresight to translate into a hiccough. That hiccough, inturn, reminded me that I had a role to sustain, a role of care-free andirresponsible intoxication.
So, opprobrious as the whole farce seemed to me, I pushed my hat backon my head and blinkingly stared at the three intruders as theysauntered nonchalantly into the room. Yet as I winked up at them, withall the sleepy unconcern at my command, I could plainly enough see thateach one of that trio was very much on the alert. It was the youngestof the three who turned to me.
"Kiddo," he said, and he spoke with an oily suavity not at all to myliking, "I kind o' thought I smelt gas leakin' in here."
He had the effrontery to turn and stare about at the four walls of theroom. Then he moved easily across the floor to where the champagnepicture hung. What he saw, or did not see there, I had no means ofdetermining. For to turn and look after him would be to betray my part.
"That leak ain't in this room," admitted the second of the trio, aswarthy and loose-lipped land pirate with a sweep of carroty bang whichcovered his left eyebrow. I knew, even before he spoke, that he wasthe man called Redney, just as I knew the first speaker was the youththey had addressed as Tony. About the third man, who towered above theother two in his giant-like stature, there was a sense of calm andsolidity that seemed almost pachydermatous. Yet this same solidity insome way warned me that he might be the most dangerous of them all.
"'Sssh all righ'!" I loosely condoned, with a sleepy lurch of the body.How much my acting was convincing to them was a matter of vast concernto me. The man named Tony, who had continued to study the woodenpartition against which my microphone had hung, turned back to thetable and calmly seated himself beside me. My heart went down like anelevator with a broken cable when I noticed the nervous sweat which hadcome out on his forehead.
"Say, Sister, this puts the drinks on us," he declared, with anairiness which I felt to be as unreal as my own inebriacy. I saw himmotion for the other two to seat themselves.
They did so, a little mystified, each man keeping his eyes fixed on theyouth called Tony. The latter laughed, for no reason that I couldunderstand, and over his shoulder bawled out the one word, "Shimmey!"
Shimmey, I remembered, was my friend the wall-eyed waiter. And thiswaiter it was who stepped trailingly into the room.
"Shimmey," said the voluble youth at my side. "We introoded on thisgen'lmun. And we got to square ourselves. So what's it goin' to be?"
"Nothin'!" I protested, with a repugnant wave of the hand.
"You mean we ain't good enough for you to drink with?" demanded theyouth called Tony. I could see what he wanted. I could feel what wascoming. He was looking for some reason, however tenuous, to starttrouble. Without fail he would find it in time. But my one desire wasto defer that outcome as long as possible. So I grinned back at him,rather idiotically, I'm afraid.
"All righ'," I weakly agreed, blinking about at my tormentors. "Bringme a bran'y an' soda."
The other three men looked at the waiter. The waiter, in turn, lookedat them. Then he studied my face. There was something decidedlyunpleasant in his coldly speculative eyes.
"Shimmey, d'you understand? This gen'lmun wants a brandy and soda."
The waiter, still studying me, said "Sure!" Then he turned on his heeland walked out of the room.
I knew, in my prophetic bones, that there was some form of troublebrewing in that odoriferous little room. But I was determined toside-step it, to avoid it, to the last extremity. And I was stillnodding amiably about when the waiter returned with his tray of glasses.
"Well, here's how," said the youth, and we all lifted our glasses.
That brandy and soda, I knew, would not be the best of its kind. Ialso clearly saw that it would be unwise to decline it. So I swallowedthe stuff as a child swallows medicine.
I downed it in a gulp or two, and put the glass back on the table.Then I proceeded to wipe my mouth with the back of my hand, after theapproved fashion of my environment.
It was fortunate, at that moment, that my hand was well up in front ofmy face. For as the truth of the whole thing came home to me, as sharpand quick as an electric spark, there must have been a second or twowhen my role slipped away from me.
I had, it is true, inwardly fortified myself against a draught thatwould prove highly unpalatable. But the taste which I now detected,the acrid, unmistakable, over-familiar taste, was too much for mystartled nerves. I hid my sudden body-movement only by means of asimulated hiccough. The thing I had unmistakably tasted was chloralhydrate. They had given me knock-out drops.
The idea, of a sudden, struck me as being so ludicrous that I laughed.The mere thought of any such maneuver was too much for me--the foolishhope that a homeopathic little pill of chloral would put me under thetable, like any shopgirl lured from a dance-hall! They were trying todrug me. Drug _me_, who had taken double and triple doses night afternight as I fought for sleep!
They were trying to drug me, me who on my bad nights had even known thenarcotic to be forcibly wrested from my clutch by those who stoodappalled at the quantities that my too-immured system demanded, andknew only too well that in time it meant madness!
But I remembered, as I saw the three men staring at me, that I stillhad a role to sustain. I knew it would be unwise to let those sweetworthies know just how the land lay. I enjoyed an advantage much tooexceptional and much too valuable to be lightly surrendered.
So to all outward signs and appearances I let the drug do its work. Icarefully acted out my pretended lapse into somnolent indifference. Ilost the power to coordinate; my speech grew inarticulate; my shouldersdrooped forward across the table edge. I wilted down like a cutdock-weed, until my face lay flat against the beer-stained wood.
"He's off," murmured the man called Chuck. He rose to his feet as hespoke.
"Then we got to beat it," declared the youth named Tony, already on hisfeet. I could hear him take a deep breath as he stood there. "And thenext long nose who gives me heart disease like this is goin' to getfive inches o' cold steel!"
He knelt before me as he spoke, pulled back my feet, and ran a knifeedge along the shoe laces. Then he promptly pulled the shoes from myfeet. These shoes, apparently, he kept in his hand. "That'll helpanchor 'im, I guess," I heard him remark.
"Let's get on the job," suggested the big man, obviously impatient atthe delay. "If there's nothin' but five inches o' plank between us andthat gold, let's get busy!"
I sat there, with my head on that table top so redolent of the souredbeverages of other days, and listened to them as they moved across theroom. I listened as they passed out and swung the door shut behindthem. I waited there for another minute or two, without moving,knowing only too well what a second discovery would entail.
My head was still bent over that unclean table top when I heard thebroken-latched door once more pushed slowly open, and steps slowlycross the floor to where I sat.
Some one, I knew, was staring down at me. I felt four distendedfinger-tips push inquisitively at my head, rolling it a little to oneside. Then the figure bending above me shifted its position. A handfelt cautiously about my body. It strayed lower, until it reached mywatch pocket.
I could see nothing of my enemy's face, and nothing of his figure. AllI got a glimpse of was a patch of extremely soiled linen. But thatglimpse was sufficient. It was my friend, the wall-eyed waiter,resolutely deciding to make hay while the sun shone. And that decidedme.
With one movement I rose from the chair and wheeled about so as to facehim. That quick body-twist spun his own figure half-way
around.
My fist caught him on the foreward side of the relaxed jawbone. Hestruck the worn leather couch as he fell, and then rolled completelyover, as inert as a sack of bran.
I looked down at him for a moment or two as he lay face upward on thefloor. Then I dropped on one knee beside him, unlaced his well-wornand square-toed shoes, and calmly but quietly adjusted them to my ownfeet.
Once out in the street I quickened my steps and rounded the firstcorner. Then I hurried on, turning still another, and still another,making doubly sure I was leaving no chance to be trailed. Then I swungaboard a cross-town car, alighting again at a corner flashing with thevulgar brilliance of an all-night drug store.
I went straight to the telephone booth of that drug store, and there Ipromptly called up police headquarters. I felt, as I asked forLieutenant Belton, a person of some importance. Then I waited whilethe precious moments flew by.
Lieutenant Belton, I was finally informed, was at his room in the HotelYork, on Seventh Avenue. So I rang up the Hotel York, only to beinformed that the lieutenant was not in.
I slammed the receiver down on its hook and ended that foolishcolloquy. I first thought of Patrolman McCooey. Then I thought ofDoyle, and then of Creegan, my old detective friend. Then with ajaw-grip of determination I caught that receiver up again, ordered ataxicab, paid for my calls, consulted my watch, and paced up and downlike a caged hyena, waiting for my cab.
Another precious ten minutes slipped away before I got to Creegan'sdoor in Forty-third Street. Then I punched the bell-button above themail-box, and stood there with my finger on it for exactly a minute anda half.
I suddenly remembered that the clicking door latch beside me impliedthat my entrance was being automatically solicited. I stepped into thedimly lighted hall and made my way determinedly up the narrow carpetedstairs, knowing I would get face to face with Creegan if I had to crawlthrough a fanlight and pound in his bedroom door.
But it was Creegan himself who confronted me as I swung about thebanister turn of that shadowy second landing.
"You wake those kids up," he solemnly informed me, "and I'll kill you!"
"Creegan," I cried, and it seemed foolish that I should have toinveigle and coax him into a crusade which meant infinitely more to himthan to me, "I'm going to make you famous!"
"How soon?" he diffidently inquired.
"Inside of two hours' time," was my answer.
"Don't _wake_ those _kids_!" he commanded, looking back over hisshoulder.
I caught him by the sleeve, and held him there, for some vaguepremonition of a sudden withdrawal and a bolted door made me desperate.And time, I knew, was getting short.
"For heaven's sake, listen to me," I said as I held him. And as hestood there under the singing gas-jet, with his hurriedly lit andskeptically tilted stogie in one corner of his mouth, I told him in asfew words as I could what had happened that night.
"Come in while I get me boots on," he quietly remarked, leading me intoan unlighted hallway and from that into a bedroom about the size of aship's cabin. "And speak low," he said, with a nod toward the rear endof the hall. Then as he sat on the edge of the bed pulling on hisshoes he made me recount everything for the second time, stopping mewith an occasional question, fixing me occasionally with a cogitativeeye.
"But we haven't a minute to lose," I warned him, for the second time,as he slipped away into a remoter cubby-hole of a room to see, as heput it, "if the kids were keeping covered."
He rejoined me at the stairhead, with the softest of Irish smiles stillon his face. By the time we had reached the street and stepped intothe waiting taxi, that smile had disappeared. He merely smoked anotherstogie as we made our way toward the end of Twenty-eighth Street.
At Tenth Avenue, he suddenly decided it was better for us to go onfoot. So he threw away his stogie end, a little ruefully, and led medown a street as narrow and empty as a river bed. He led me into apart of New York that I had never before known. It was a district ofbald brick walls, of rough flag and cobble-stone underfoot, of lonelystreet lamps, of shipping platforms and unbroken warehouse sides, ofstorage yards and milk depots, with railway tracks bisecting streets asempty as though they were the streets of a dead city. No one appearedbefore us. Nothing gave signs of being alive in that area of desolateugliness which seemed like the back yard of all the world concentratedin a few huddled squares.
We were almost on West Street itself before I was conscious of theperiodic sound of boat whistles complaining through the night. Theair, I noticed, took on a fresher and cleaner smell. Creegan, withoutspeaking, drew me in close to a wall-end, at the corner, and togetherwe stood staring out toward the Hudson.
Directly in front of us, beyond a forest of barrels which stippled theasphalt, a veritable city of barrels that looked like the stumpage of aburned-over Douglas-pine woodland, stood the facade of the PanamaCompany's pier structure. It looked substantial and solemn enough,under its sober sheeting of corrugated iron. And two equally solemnfigures, somber and silent in their dark overcoats, stood impassivelyon guard before its closed doors.
"Come on," Creegan finally whispered, walking quickly south to the endof Twenty-seventh Street. He suddenly stopped and caught at my arm toarrest my own steps. We stood there, listening. Out of the silence,apparently from mid-river, sounded the quick staccato coughing of agasoline motor. It sounded for a moment or two, and then it grewsilent.
We stood there without moving. Then the figure at my side seemed stunginto sudden madness. Without a word of warning or explanation, mycompanion clucked down and went dodging in and out between the huddledclumps of barrels, threading a circuitous path toward the slip edge. Isaw him drop down on all fours and peer over the string-piece. Then Isaw him draw back, rise to his feet, and run northward toward the pierdoor where the two watchmen stood.
What he said to those watchmen I had no means of knowing. One of them,however, swung about and tattooed on the door with a night-stick beforeCreegan could catch at his arm and stop him. Before I could join them,some one from within had thrown open the door. I saw Creegan and thefirst man dive into the chill-aired, high-vaulted building, with itsexotic odors of spice and coffee and mysterious tropical bales. Iheard somebody call out to turn on the lights, and then Creegan'sdisgustedly warning voice call back for him to shut up. Then somewherein the gloom inside a further colloquy took place, a tangle of voices,a call for quietness, followed by a sibilant hiss of caution.
Creegan appeared in the doorway again. I could see that he wasmotioning for me.
"Come on," he whispered. And I tiptoed in after him, under thatechoing vaulted roof where the outline of a wheeled gangway lookedoddly like the skeleton of some great dinosaur, and the pungent spicyodors took me at one breath two thousand miles southward into theTropics.
"Take off those shoes," quietly commanded Creegan. And I droppedbeside him on the bare pier planks and slipped my feet out of Shimmey'sungainly toed shoes.
A man moved aside from a door as we stepped silently up to it. Creeganturned to whisper a word or two in his ear. Then he opened the doorand led me by the sleeve into the utter darkness within, closing andlocking the door after him.
I was startled by the sudden contact of Creegan's groping fingers. Irealized that he was thrusting a short cylindrical object up against mybody.
"Take this," he whispered.
"What is it?" I demanded in an answering whisper.
"It's a flashlight. Press here--see! And throw it on when I say so!"
I took the flashlight, pressed as he told me, and saw a feeble glow oflight from its glass-globed end. About this end he had swathed acotton pocket handkerchief. More actual illumination would have comefrom a tallow candle. But it seemed sufficient for Creegan's purpose.I could see him peer about, step across to a pile of stout woodenboxes, count them, test one as to its weight, squint once moresearchingly about the room, and then drop full length on the plankflooring and press his ear to the wood. r />
He writhed and crawled about there, from one quarter of the room toanother, every minute or so pressing an ear against the boards underhim, for all the world like a physician sounding a patient's lungs. Hekept returning, I noticed, to one area in the center of the room, notmore than a yard away from the pile of wooden boxes. Then he leanedforward on his knees, his hands supporting his body in a grotesquebear-like posture. He continued to kneel there, intently watching theoak plank directly in front of him.
I saw one hand suddenly move forward and feel along an inch or two ofthis plank, come to a stop, and then suddenly raise and wave in theair. I did not realize, at that moment, that the signal was for me.
"Put her out," he whispered. And as I lifted my thumb from the contactpoint the room was again plunged into utter darkness. Yet through thatdarkness I could hear a distinct sound, a minute yet unmistakable noiseof splintering wood, followed by an even louder sound, as though anauger were being withdrawn from a hole in the planking at my feet.
Then up from the floor on which Creegan knelt a thin ray of lightflickered and wavered and disappeared. A rumble of guarded voicescrept to my ears, and again I could detect that faint yet pregnantgnawing sound as the busy auger once more ate into the oak planking onwhich we stood.
I suddenly felt Creegan's hand grope against my knee. He rose to hisfeet beside me.
"It's all right," he whispered, with a calmness which left me a littleashamed of my own excitement. "You stay here until I come back."
I stood there listening to the slight noise of the door as he opened itand closed it after him. I stood there as I once more heard thetelltale splintering of wood, indicating that the auger had completedits second hole through the planking. Then came the sound of itswithdrawal, and again the wavering pencil of light as the men under thepier examined their work and adjusted their auger-end for its nextperforation.
A new anxiety began to weigh on me. I began to wonder what could bekeeping Creegan so long. I grew terrified at the thought that he mightbe too late. Vague contingencies on which I had failed to reckon beganto present themselves to me. I realized that those three desperatemen, once they saw I was again coming between them and their ends,would be satisfied with no half measure.
Then occurred a movement which nearly brought a cry from my startledlips. A hand, reaching slowly out through the darkness, came incontact with my knee, and clutched it. That contact, coming as it didwithout warning, without reason, sent a horripilating chill through allmy body. The wonder was that I did not kick out, like a frightenedcolt, or start to flail about me with my flashlight. All I did,however, was to twist and swing away. Yet before I could get to myfeet, the hand had clutched the side of my coat. And as thoseclutching fingers held there, I heard a voice whisper out of thedarkness:
"Here, take this," and the moment I heard it I was able to breatheagain, for I knew it was Creegan. "You may need it."
He was holding what I took to be a policeman's night-stick up in frontof me. I took it from him, marveling how he could have re-entered thatroom without my hearing him.
"There's a light-switch against the wall there, they say," was his nextwhispered message to me. "Find it. Keep back there and throw it on ifI give the word."
I felt and pawed and padded about the wall for an uncertain moment ortwo. "Got it?" came Creegan's whispering voice across the darkness.
"Yes," I whispered back.
He did not speak again, for a newer sound fell on both his ears andmine. It was a sound of prodding and prying, as though the men belowwere jimmying at their loosened square of planking.
I leaned forward, listening, for I could hear the squeak and grate ofthe shifting timber block. I did not hear it actually fall away. ButI was suddenly conscious of a breath of cooler air in the room where Istood and the persistent ripple of water against pile-sides.
Then I heard a treble voice say, "A little higher."
The speaker seemed so close that I felt I could have stooped down andtouched his body. I knew, even before I saw the spurt of flame wherehe struck a match along the floor, that the man was already half-way upthrough the hole. I could see the dirt-covered, claw-like hand as itheld the match, nursing the tiny flame, patiently waiting for it togrow. It was not until this hand held the flaring match up before hisvery face that Creegan moved.
That movement was as simple as it was unexpected. I had no distinctvision of it, but I knew what it meant. I knew, the moment I heard thedull and sickening impact of seasoned wood against a human skull-bone.
There was just one blow. But it was so well placed that a secondseemed unnecessary. Then, as far as I could judge, Creegan took holdof the stunned man and drew him bodily up through the hole in the floor.
A moment later a voice was saying, "Here, pull!" And I knew that thesecond man was on his way up into the room.
What prevented Creegan from repeating his maneuver with the night-stickI could not tell. But I knew the second attack was not the clean-cutjob of the first, for even as Creegan seized the body half-way upthrough the opening, the struggle must have begun.
The consciousness that that struggle was not to be promptly decided,that a third factor might at any moment appear in the fight, stung meinto the necessity of some sort of blind action on my own part. Iremembered the first man, and that he would surely be armed. I ran outtoward the center of the room, stumbled over the boxes of gold, andfell sprawling along the floor. Without so much as getting on my feetagain I groped about until I found the prostrate body. It took me onlya moment to feel about that limp mass, discover the revolver, and drawit from its pocket. I was still on my knees when I heard Creegan callout through the darkness.
"The light!" he gasped. "Turn on the light!"
I swung recklessly about at the note of alarm in his voice and tried togrope my way toward him. Only some last extremity could have wrungthat call from him. It was only too plain that his position was now aperilous one. But what that peril was I could not decipher.
"Where are you?" I gasped, feeling that wherever he lay he needed help,that the quickest service I could render him would be to reach his side.
"The light, you fool!" he cried out. "The light!"
I dodged and groped back to the wall where I felt the light-switch tobe. I had my fingers actually on the switch when an arm like the armof a derrick itself swung about through the darkness, and at one strokeknocked the breath out of my body and flattened me against the wall.Before I could recover my breath, a second movement spun me half aroundand lifted me clear off my feet. By this time the great arm was closeabout me, pinning my hands down to my side.
Before I could cry out or make an effort to escape, the great hulkholding me had shifted his grip, bringing me about directly in front ofhim and holding me there with such a powerful grasp that it madebreathing a thing of torture. And as he held me there, he reached outand turned on the light with his own hand. I knew, even before Iactually saw him, that it was the third man.
I also knew, even before that light came on, what his purpose was. Hewas holding me there as a shield in front of him. This much I realizedeven before I saw the revolver with which he was menacing the enemy infront of him. What held my blinking and bewildered eyes was the factthat Creegan himself, on the far side of the room, was holding thestruggling and twisting body of the man called Redney in precisely thesame position.
But what disheartened me was the discovery that Creegan held nothingbut a night-stick in his left hand. All the strength of his righthand, I could see, was needed to hold his man. And his revolver wasstill in his pocket.
I had the presence of mind to remember my own revolver. And mypredicament made me desperate. That gang had sown their dragon teeth,I decided, and now they could reap their harvest.
I made a pretense of struggling away from my captor's clutch, but allthe while I was working one elbow back, farther and farther back, sothat a hand could be thrust into my coat pocket. I reached the
pocketwithout being noticed. My fingers closed about the butt of therevolver. And still my purpose had not been discovered.
As I lifted that firearm from my pocket I was no longer a reasoninghuman being. At the same time I felt this red flash of rage through mybody, I also felt the clutch about my waist relax. The big man behindme was ejaculating a single word. It was "_Creegan!_"
Why that one shout should have the debilitating effect on Creegan whichit did, I had no means of knowing. But I saw the sweat-stained andblood-marked face of my colleague suddenly change. His eyes staredstupidly, his jaw fell, and he stood there, panting and open-mouthed,as though the last drop of courage had been driven out of his body.
I felt that he was giving up, that he was surrendering, even before Isaw him let the man he had been holding fall away from him. But Iremembered the revolver in my hand and the ignominies I had suffered.And again I felt that wave of something stronger than my own will, andI knew that my moment had come.
I had the revolver at half-arm, with its muzzle in against the bodycrushing mine, when Creegan's voice, sharp and short as a bark,arrested that impending finger-twitch.
"Stop!" he cried, and the horror of his voice puzzled me.
"Why?" I demanded in a new and terrible calm. But I did not lower myrevolver.
"Stop that!" he shouted, and his newer note, more of anger than fear,bewildered me a bit.
"Why?"
But Creegan, as he caught at the coat collar of the man called Redney,did not answer my repeated question. Instead, he stared at the manbeside me.
"Well, I'll be damned!" he finally murmured.
"What t' hell are _you_ doin' here?" cut in the big man as he pushed myrevolver-end away and dropped his own gun into his pocket. "I've beentrailin' these guys for five weeks--and I want to know why you'requeerin' my job!"
Creegan, who had been feeling his front teeth between an investigatorythumb and forefinger, blinked up at the big man. Then he turnedangrily on me.
"Put down that gun!" he howled. He took a deep breath. Then helaughed, mirthlessly, disgustedly. "You can't shoot _him_!"
"Why can't I?"
"He's a stool pigeon! A singed cat!"
"And what's a stool pigeon?" I demanded. "And what's a singed cat?"
Creegan laughed for the second time as he wiped his mouth with the backof his hand.
"He's a Headquarters gink who stays on the fence, and tries to huntwith the hounds the same time he's runnin' with the hares--and gener'lygoes round queerin' an honest officer's work. And I guess he's queeredours. So about the only thing for us to do, 's far as I can see, isfor us to crawl off home and go to bed!"