# The Ribbon of Fate

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A quite prescient story written 30 years before Pearl Harbor “... No, no; there’s no such thing as burying a secret like that in your own heart. This thing, if true, means that on the very eve of war some high official is planning to deliver Pearl Harbor, and with it Hawaii, to the enemy for a staggering price. It means national catastrophe. ...”
Chapters: II — III — IV — V — VI — VII — VIII
The Ribbon of Fate
By George Allan England
“WHAT?” gasped the assistant secretary of the navy.
Had one of the prospective enemy’s maximite bombs let go under his swivel-chair the shock could have been no greater.
“What? What’s that you say?” he blurted, starting up. He leaned across the broad mahogany desk, staring. One of his great hands, fingers wide-spread, plowed through the sheaves of paper there. His black eyes widened with horror. Reddening dully, then all at once going a trifle gray about the chin, he stood there staring at young Darrow, who quietly returned the gaze.
“You—you mean to tell me this?” exclaimed the secretary. “You, a mere oil-checker in the lighthouse establishment? You dare—dare hint this to me? To me? About a—a—”
He suddenly stammered and became quite inarticulate. Darrow marveled at the stupendous effect his few simple words had produced. Yet, after all, why should they have not? On the eve of war the mere mention of such a contingency was enough to have convulsed the nation.
The secretary turned, walked over to the window, and for a moment stood there, looking out over the budding greenery of Lafayette Square. His tall, square-shouldered figure seemed to fill the space. Darrow peered at him with eyes which burned eagerly in his thin, flushed face. Astride the clerk’s hawk-nose, a pair of round, black-rimmed glasses gave him an owlish look.
The secretary wheeled about. Calmer he seemed now—much calmer. His evidently was a nerve of steel.
“What proofs have you got?” snapped he. “Whom do you suspect, if anybody?”
“Proofs?” repeated Darrow, his lips trembling a little as he tried to moisten them with a dry tongue. “Proofs? Well, sir, to be frank, I haven't got much yet. Just a scrap or two of torn paper, and one or two actions I’ve noticed the past few days. But—”
“Paper? Where is it? Got it? If so, give it to me at once.”
“Can’t, sir,” the clerk replied, shaking his head. “Sorry, but it’s not here. It’s in my desk, down in the lighthouse office.”
“I must have it. Where did you find it?”
“Well, sir—that’s telling.”
The secretary squinted at him a second. Then he stepped to the door that led into the outer office and quietly opened it. He peered through. Nobody there. The desks, chairs, and typewriters all stood deserted, for the hour was four-thirty.
Back came the secretary, having closed the door, a strange, inscrutable expression on his rather heavy features.
“You mean to say you won't tell?” snapped he, still unnaturally pale.
“Why, sir, it’s this way. If I tell you where I found this paper, and show it to you, and let you have it, I might be doing the ad—that is, I might be working an injustice on a high official, such as could never be undone. I'd be letting this thing get out of my hands even before I was sure of it myself. Pardon me for saying it, sir, but it will be impossible for anybody to extort either the information or the data from me until I know a little more.”
The secretary frowned blackly.
“Do you know what you’re saying?” exclaimed he. “This is a matter for the secret service, not for underclerks or civilians. Do you realize anything of the risk you’re running in thus assuming a rôle outside your own activities?”
“Yes, sir, I do. But I’ve got to do it, just the same. Any true American would. I wouldn’t be risking my position, my whole future in the department to have—well, butted in here and told you what I have, sir, if I hadn’t felt there was something serious in it. I’m not courting martyrdom. But at a time like this—you understand.”
“Of course—of course,” the secretary hastened to reply. He jerked out his handkerchief; and now, a little recovered from his first emotion, wiped his bald brow. “But do you, can you realize the danger of all this to you? Even to have your name breathed in connection with an affair like this, now—an affair such as you claim to have grounds for suspecting is shaping up in your department—”
“Pardon me, sir, I never said it was in my department. I named no one.”
“No, but I can read you better than you know. In your department, I repeat. Even to be an innocent participant in such an affair may be fatal. High treason with a war impending is no joke. It’s—it’s death.”
His voice sank almost to a whisper. Straight in Darrow’s blinking eyes he peered. The young clerk felt a deadly, sinking sensation. In a flash he realized what manner of thing he had done even to breathe his suspicions to this man high in authority.
For a moment he seemed to behold Captain Dreyfus, the perjured witnesses, Devil’s Island; to realize how unspeakably perilous it was even to become entangled in the remotest outer tentacles of such a case. But now retreat was too late. He had spoken; he must go on. Nor could he let those precious scraps of paper, idly picked up in the corridor outside Admiral Burke’s door—just little charred bits, hidden in a dark corner, as though they had been blown there by the spring wind—nor could he let these now pass from his hands.
His only safety now lay in retaining them, in learning more, in clinching the case. Retreat meant ruin. He must go ahead.
“Do you realize what you're doing?” asked the secretary again, his voice incisive as a blade.
“Yes, sir. But—well, I can’t help it.”
“You speak of papers? Where do you think they came from?”
“I don’t know. If somebody had torn up something of that sort and thrown it into an open fire, fragments might possibly have gone up the chimney and been blown about.”
“Are there open fireplaces in your department offices?”
“Of course, sir.”
“In the chief’s office?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Do you wish to state now that in your opinion—”
“Excuse me, sir, but I state nothing.”
The secretary’s black eyes shot sudden rage. Here evidently was a hard nut in the person of this young and obstinate oil-checker. True, the clerk could be annihilated by virtue of the secretary’s superior power, but what would that profit? Clearly the secretary understood that to force the issue now would involve publicity and unforeseen complications. So, with a grumble of anger, a vow of vengeance, he exclaimed:
“Listen, now!”
“Yes, sir.”
“If you are determined not to put this into my hands, or—that is, not to make any accusations I can work on till you have some further facts—why have you come to me with it at all?”
“I wanted to put you, too, on the lookout, sir, so that from your office here another line of investigation could be going on. Then, when I—”
“Oh, very well. You mean to dictate to me, what?” And the secretary’s face grew hard as adamant. “Now, then, here are my terms. You've got to prove this.”
“Prove—prove it?”
“Yes, and quickly, too.”
“But—”
“No if, and, or but about it. You’ve begun; you’ve got to finish. With a suspicion like this horrible one corroding your mind, sooner or later, voluntarily or not, you’re bound to let it slip. No, no; there’s no such thing as burying a secret like that in your own heart. This thing, if true, means that on the very eve of war some high official is planning to deliver Pearl Harbor, and with it Hawaii, to the enemy for a staggering price. It means national catastrophe. What? And you, once engaged in this suspicion, now want to withdraw from the search? Impossible.”
“But, sir,” stammered Darrow, “my idea is merely to work; this thing out a little more, and then submit it to you to be handled by the secret service. I—I’m no detective. How can I prove anything like this?”
“No, no, you can’t evade the issue that way,” the secretary headed him off. “This is no matter to be let out into other channels where perhaps we cannot circumscribe it. Here you come to me, you, an unknown clerk, with a wild-goose tale such as on the face of it is perfectly preposterous.
“All based on what? A few scraps of paper, a few trifling indications such as might mean a thousand other things than this. Heaven alone knows how much damage your suspicions may not have done already. If, as is quite possible,” and the secretary fixed keen, unfriendly eyes upon him, “if you have mentioned this to anybody else than me—”
“Not a word, sir. Not a-word. And I swear it.”
“Very well, that remains to be seen. You'd better not, that’s all I say to you. Remember! Even so, if this proves false, this suspicion of yours; if you have chosen in mere idle curiosity to spy and peek and magnify these trifles; if you have vainly sought to question the integrity of some superior as yet unidentified—then, sir, you will regret it. Mark my words. You will regret it, if you can’t prove it.”
At Darrow he shook a menacing finger as he sat down ponderously at the great desk. The clerk paled still more.
“You—you mean, sir,” he began, “that I’ve got to—to furnish absolute proof? To identify the suspect?”
“Just that. And soon! Hark, now! This is no matter susceptible of delays. Inside of twenty-four hours you bring me proof, proof, do you understand? Or by the eternal you'll discover what it means to impugn the honor and the integrity of the service.”
“But— Listen, sir—”
“Not another word.” Again the secretary smote his desk. A mere civilian underling. Darrow knew only too well the futility of argument.
“Go!” cried the secretary. “And remember I give you twenty-four hours, not one minute longer. If by then you can’t substantiate these accusations—well, Heaven help you, that’s all! Now, go!”
SICK terror numbing his very soul, his mind a daze, the lighthouse board clerk heard the door of the naval secretary’s office boom shut behind him like the crack of doom.
Too stunned even to realize the unexpected turn of events, the crushing menace that now overhung him, too beaten down for a thorough understanding of just what he must do to save himself, he stumbled down the hallway, hat in hand.
Subconsciously he felt a tiny spark of gratitude for the lateness of the hour, which spared him the probability of meeting anybody in the corridors. Yet how infinitesimal a comfort this compared with the catastrophe that had smitten him. For a moment he paused at one of the half-open windows to catch his breath, a little to compose himself, before returning to his office.
A glint of gray-green from the Potomac, shimmering under the late afternoon sun, caught his eye. The tall, accusing finger of the monument set him shuddering.
“Can’t I get away from it anywhere?” he rebelled. “Must everything remind me of lighthouses, and—and that? Good Heavens, what a fool I’ve been! If I hadn’t seen beyond my routine reports, checkings, filings, and entries; if I hadn’t thought of anything but so many cases of such-and-such test oil at so much per case, I wouldn’t ha’ got into this.”
Then, shaking his head, weak with sickening apprehension, he started slowly toward the lighthouse offices once more.
As he went, he mentally reviewed the evidence.
“First,” thought he, “those scraps of paper. After all, what do they prove? Mere jottings. Even the character or two on the back—do they constitute proof? And next, the fact that Burke has been at the office three evenings in the last ten days, is that anything? Mightn’t a rear-admiral in charge of the Twelfth District, which contains Hawaii, have extra work on his hands without that necessarily being in any way connected with those scraps of typewriting? What real grounds have I for suspecting what I do?
“True enough, Burke’s been hard hit the last year by that Carnegie Trust Company smash-up and by his son’s losses. I suppose a father would do about anything to keep a young fellow like that from behind bars. But—wouldn’t all this have made him extra careful? Inasmuch as everybody knows his salary’s only about a tenth of what he needs, wouldn’t that put him on his guard against even the suspicion of evil? The more so as he does have charge of the Pearl Harbor district? Hanged if I can see my way clear, one way or the other. Can’t make head or tail out of it, worse luck. Fool that I was, not to have chucked the whole infernal business and forgotten it. Fool to have sprung it, half cocked, on the secretary, and now be forced to make good inside a single day, or—or—get ruined.”
Thus moodily thinking, with keen anxiety preying on his distressed mind, he stood there pondering.
Ten minutes later he was at his desk again. Save for himself and old Danny Hayes, the negro sweeper, the long, many-windowed room was empty. Dan, busy with brush and sawdust and obnoxious clouds of official dust, paid no heed to the clerk, other than to glance at him with a kind of mild, bovine astonishment. Clerks who came back after hours were rare.
Darrow unlocked his desk-top and slid it up. Then suddenly he uttered a cry of sharp surprise.
The desk had been hastily searched. One glance showed him the disorder, the eager raffling-over of his papers, the displacement of all his things.
“What?” cried he. Then, quickly realizing the necessity for strategy, he grew outwardly calm again.
“Oh, Dan! I say, Dan, there!” he cried.
“Wha’? Wha’ yo’-all want, Mist’ Darrer?” answered the black, pausing in his task.
“What d’you mean by trying to straighten up my things this way? How many times d’you need to be told I don’t want it and won’t have it? Well?”
“Me, sah? Ah ain’t tetch nothin’.”
“Now, now! Don’t tell me that, you!” the clerk retorted angrily. “How could anybody else but you do it? Who else would have a pass-key?”
Dan, the whites showing all the way around his eyes, flapped slowly down the room, dragging his brush behind him.
“Deed I dunno, sah!” he protested. “’Tain’t me, nohow!”
“You been here all the time since closing?”
“Yassah. Heah an’ in de odder room. De a’miral, he had me sweep in dere, a few minutes. Say de dus’ done make his asthma wuss.”
“The admiral? Was he in here?”
“Why, yassah. Heah, an’ in his office, sah.”
“Is he there now?”
“Ah dunno, sah. Why?”
“How long were you in the other room?”
“Oh, mebbe five minutes, sah. Mebbe ten. Ah ain’t know ’zackly. Whaffor you-all wanter know?”
“Oh, nothing, Dan, but I’m kind of fussy. Thought somebody’d been borrowing my fountain-pen ink again, that’s all. Well, go along now, get busy! I’ve got some work to finish. Don’t stand there staring at me like a joss!”
“All—all right, sah! Ah shorely is sorry ef yo’ ink am gone, but Ah ain’t know one blessed t’ing about it, no sah, not one blessed t’ing!”
Darrow ignored him, and the aged negro, grumbling, took himself back to his sawdust-pile.
Picking up a Commerce and Labor report, the clerk walked down the room to the admiral’s private office. He knocked.
No answer.
He tried the door. It was locked.
“Dan! Dan!”
“Yas, boss?”
“Just let me in here, a minute. I forgot to leave something for the chief. Something he may need, to-night, if he comes down.”
“All right, sah!” And Dan, shaking his woolly old head with irritation, hobbled to do the young man’s bidding.
Once in the inner office, Darrow laid the report in a disused corner of the book-shelf, where out-of-date matter was stored and where it would attract no attention. Then he came out, and Dan once more locked the door behind him. But in that brief moment he had seen and smelled a good deal.
“Chief hasn’t been gone more than five minutes, I reckon,” thought Darrow. “And what’s more, he went out through the hall door, not through the outer office.”
Then, smiling a little to himself, he went back to his desk. “Whoever it was that searched my desk, I don’t know,” thought he, “but they got left a-plenty, anyhow!”
When Dan was out of sight again, Darrow opened his little pencil drawer. He removed it entirely. Then, reaching far into the little hiding-place, he extracted a yellow official envelope.
“Lucky I didn’t leave that lying ’round loose!” said he to himself, as he ripped it open and peeked inside. “Yes, they’re all safe and sound. Safe as can be!”
Out on the desk he shook them—three small, charred bits of a thin sleazy paper.
As he arranged them side by side, certain letters became visible. These letters, typewritten with blue ink and in a script font, seemed to spell nothing but the most baffling nonsense.
Several of the fragments of words were not even English in appearance. But Darrow seemed to guess a little of their significance. And quickly he placed them in what he judged to have been something like their original position, before the sheet on which they had been written had been torn to bits, and—so it seemed—flung into a fire of some sort.
“Lots of open fireplaces in all these buildings,” mused Darrow, as he worked. “That proves nothing. But if I get these things into proper shape maybe I can figure ’em out, in time. Maybe? Got to!”
He took up one of the fragments.
“Now this,” he commented, “evidently goes at the left hand side. The bit of margin, here, proves that all right enough.”
Quickly he affixed the bits of this stupendously important puzzle to a sheet of fresh white paper. They read:
Part of the third fragment he left ungummed, so that it could be turned back like a flap.
“Got to be sure and have this free to show,” he judged, as he made sure that on the back of the free portion the little pot-hooks of India ink were quite visible—the marks which had first excited his suspicions and which, in all probability, could have originated nowhere else than from an oriental writing-brush.
“Now,” said he decisively, “to work!”
A MOMENT he puzzled over the fragments, with knit brows. Then he nodded with satisfaction.
“Yes,” thought he, “that ‘Pea’ means ‘Pearl Harbor,’ for sure! And ‘Isla’ ‘Oa’ means Island of Oahu!”
Quickly he reached for the 1911 annual report of the lighthouse board. In a moment he had found map 12.
“Let’s see!” he murmured, as with his pencil he began exploring the large scale-map of Honolulu and vicinity. “Here we are; Pearl Harbor, the strategic keystone of the whole group. ‘Puu’? What’s that? Ah-ha! Puuloa! Puuloa or Pearl River entrance to the harbor! Sure as guns—that’s it! ‘Bet’ means ‘Between’! ‘ar’ must be ‘March’!”
On another sheet of paper he quickly copied out the fragments, and began filling in the connecting words as fast as he could locate them. The inscription now read:
Eyes gleaming with excitement, lips compressed to a tight, thin line, two pink spots beginning to burn on his hollow cheeks, Darrow worked on and on.
“Come on, now! Come on!” he breathed eagerly to himself, as though he had been beside a race-track, encouraging his choice. And with intense eagerness he scrutinized the large scale-map of the harbor. His pencil traced lines here and there, paused, darted, and made black jabs.
“‘Ua’?” he exclaimed. “That might mean anything! “There’s a little million of ’em, there! But—let’s see, now—” And, laying one end of his pencil on the Puuloa entrance, he swung the other slowly round.
“Oh!” he ejaculated, as the answer fairly leaped up at him from the map. In a direct line, across the harbor to the southeast by east, with the city itself forming the third point of a flat triangle, he saw the words:
“Kapua entrance. Diamond Hill.”
“That’s it, sure!” he exulted; and now the puzzle said:
“Now,” Darrow rejoiced, “all I’ve got to do is frame out that first line, and I’ve got it—got at least the clue to work from. After that—”
“Yo’-all a gwine home right soon, boss?“ sounded Dan’s deep voice from the other end of the long room. The clerk started guiltily. He had forgotten Dan, the office, everything, even to the lateness of the hour, in that exciting search.
But now, as he looked up, as he peered with those owlish spectacles of his over the desk-top at the negro, he realized all at once that the western light was fading, that shadows were beginning to creep from the corners, that he could stay no longer. And with a grimace of displeasure, he made answer:
“All right, uncle, lock up. I'm off!”
For, much as he should have liked to remain, well he knew the danger of exciting Dan’s suspicions. The old negro, garrulous like all his kind, might in a moment wreck all Darrow’s plans. Much depended on a semblance of casuality.
So, gathering up some papers and slamming them into drawers, the clerk acted the part of finishing an unusually long day’s work, The vital paper, however, the white sheet with the three fragments gummed to it, he did not leave.
Instead, he carefully placed it, with the partial solution, in his bill-fold, which he buttoned up securely in his inside coat-pocket.
Then, locking his desk and giving Dan a hearty “Good night,” he took his leave. His mind, as he left the building, swarmed with theories, perplexities, hopes, fears, and feverish desires.
Why had the secretary grown so angry at the news of this suspicious occurrence? Why had Admiral Burke been acting so suspiciously of late? Who had known that he, Darrow, had in his possession, in his desk, these fragments of paper? And who had seized the opportunity of his absence from that desk, of Dan’s absence from the room, to make that hasty, futile search? These and a score of other vital questions whirled and seethed within bis bewildered brain.
Like one tranced, he went down the broad steps and turned toward New York Avenue. Vaguely, like moving mists within a blurred crystal, he seemed to perceive vast, shifting forces whereof he could have no definite knowledge, no sure information. To him it seemed as though he were entangled, against his will, in some inexorable machinery of fate; as though a tide, a river of destiny were bearing him along, the sport and puppet of its vast, impersonal will.
“I am caught in—in something, Heaven knows what!” he realized, as he swung into the street and started toward the corner where he usually got his car for Brightwood. “Why should I, a mere nobody, just a cog in this enormous machinery, get mixed up in things this way? I'd give a year's salary to be out of it!”
But his mood could not endure. The early April warmth and perfume, the scent of new grass, the soft breeze from the river, soothed and comforted him. At first, seeming to feel that every passer-by, white or black, must fathom and divine his secret. he presently gained self-confidence once more. Even a pride, a sense of power now began to grow in him.
That he, just one of the army of underlings in a minor office, should by chance hold in his hands—skilled only to the typewriter and the reporter’s pencil—secrets of state, perhaps, matters of life, death, national fate, the destiny of nations, thrilled him with a sudden flare of joy.
And, his head once more held high, fists hard-clenched, he strode along unmindful now of all the personal menace, peril, or prospects of tremendous evil.
“I will run this thing to earth, and do it quick!” he swore. “I may not be Sherlock Holmes. My name may be only James B. Darrow, oil-checker, Class 2B, age 21, but—well—wait! Wait, that’s all!”
He hastened his pace now eager to get home, to reach his third-floor room in Mrs. Sagg’s third-rate boarding-house on Myrtle Street. It seemed to him that if he could only sit there at the window, in the dusk, looking out over Rock Creek at the dim leaf-masses of the national park, the solution of that all-important first line would come to him. What might it not reveal? He felt a thrill of eagerness, of burning impatience to begin the vital problem.
Then all at once he stopped, struck by a sudden idea.
“Gee!” he ejaculated. “That never occurred to me! And it’s maybe the most important thing of all!”
As a man will, when trying to readjust his mental processes, Darrow clasped his hands behind him, bent his head, and strolled along a little way, oblivious to all about him. Little he knew that, half a block behind, a husky individual in a gray suit and Panama, with bristly, close-cropped yellow mustache, had slacked his pace at the same moment, and now with sudden interest was studying the shop-window signs, as though looking for some very special place.
Unconscious of all this, Darrow suddenly raised his head again. Then, with a new set to his jaw, and new light in his eye, he turned and struck out rapidly for Twelfth Street.
The gray-suited man, imperturbable, presently ceased his inspection of the windows and seemed to come to the conclusion that he, too, had business in that section.
Darrow never stopped his rapid walk till he had reached the Universal Typewriter Exchange, at Twelfth and J. In he strode. The time was now 5.42.
“If I’m going to pull this off,” thought he, “I’ve got to go some!”
Then, to a clerk who was just covering a machine with a rubber cloth: “Is Haskins here yet?”
“Hallo! That you, Jim?” sounded a voice from the repair-room, at the back. “Come on in!”
Darrow tramped into the back room. There sat Haskins in his shirt-sleeves at the bench. On his hands lay coats of grease, some of which had been transferred to his nose. Never minding it, Darrow shook with him.
“Where you been, this month o’ Sundays?” he exclaimed. “Haven’t seen you since that I. W. W. ball. Dead? Married? What?”
“Oh, nothin’,” replied the repair-man, reaching for his corn-cob. “Seems like you ain’t been over-friendly.”
“Busy as Hades, that’s all,” hedged Darrow. “How’s your job panning out?”
“Fine, fine. Typewriters is where I live. That’s me, every time. Anythin’ you wanted in my line?”
“Well, I don’t know. Maybe. I’ve been thinking for a day or two I might rent a machine to take home with me and work nights, a little. Fact is, Hasky, I’ve got the story-bug. Want to write a detective yarn for the—”
Haskins interrupted with a derisive snicker.
“You, kid?” he jibed.
“Yes, me! Why not?”
“Aw, ferget it!”
“I do, I tell you.”
“Fine detective-story you’d write! Say, kid, you couldn’t detect the Capitol on a clear day! Now—”
“Do you want to talk machines, or don’t you?”
“Mean it? Mean biz?”
“That’s what I said. Here, can you give me a machine with that kind of type? If you can, trot her out, p. d. q., and I’ll take her for a month.”
Speaking, the drew out his bill-book. From it he extracted the sheet of paper with the three fragments pasted thereon. This sheet he folded so as to show only the third bit of writing.
“There!” he exclaimed, exhibiting this specimen to Hasky, “there’s the type that takes my bun! Come along now, give us that machine, and I’m on!”
“That?” sniffed the typewriter-man, lighting his pipe. He held the blazing match close to the paper—for already in the little back shop the light was failing fast—and earnestly inspected the writing for a minute. Then he shook his head.
“Naw!” exclaimed he, scornfully, “you don’t want that! Why, that’s a Redmond! One o” them sewin’-machine things, with spools an’ bobbins, an’ God knows what, in ’em. They’re tied to the post, kid, believe me. What you want is—”
And like a rapid-fire gun he clacked off the names and virtues, selling-points and excellences of a dozen machines; all the kinds, in fact, carried by the Universal Exchange.
“So you don’t think this is a good machine for me?” queried Darrow, as though half-convinced. “Strikes me, as a change from the regulation cut-and-dried thing, it’s rather neat. You know I use the Jones Special, at the office. I want something different; want to try a new one. How about it?”
“Well,” declared Hasky, blowing fumes, “that may all be, but you don’t want this. Why, only ministers and spring poets use it. If you want to bury your work and double-cross it from the go-off, get one. Otherwise, nix! If there was any demand for it, don’t you s’pose we’d list it? ’Stead o’ that, nobody in town will even handle the darn thing. Come off! Get wise, kid; get wise!”
“Nobody in town handles ’em?” queried Darrow, as he once more pocketed his sample. A sudden sinking oppressed his heart. He felt as though the staging of all his plans had instantly been kicked away, leaving them to crumble into ruin. Had not the shop been so dark, Haskins must have noticed his expression; but as it was, the dim light shielded him from observation.
“Nobody has ’em you say?” repeated he.
“Why, nobody I know of, unless that little jerk Eye-talian place over on K Street. That ‘fence,’ I call it.”
“What name?”
Hasky eyed his friend suspiciously a moment, then replied:
“Oh, pshaw! How do I know? Macaroni di Spagett, I guess. Bughouse, you? If you want an A1 machine, now, up to the minute, and a lallapalooza every way, I’m your huckleberry. But for the love o’ Lou, cut out the coke-talk, the punk brands, and all such—”
“Good-by; see you later!” interrupted Darrow, glancing ostentatiously at his watch. “Got just five minutes to get my car, or have to wait half an hour. We’ll have it out to-morrow. Ta-ta!”
And, leaving Haskins big-eyed with wonder, he vanished from the shop.
“Sure nutty!” muttered the repair-man, picking up his screwdriver again. “With a big, big N! Story-writin’?! On a Redmond! Now, what d’ye think o’ that?”
Darrow, meanwhile, was making rapid tracks toward K street. The gray-suited man, a considerable distance in the rear, also decided that K Street was really the object of his rather dilatory search.
AS Darrow hurried on the trail of the unknown, his plans as yet merely vague, he felt a subtle fire of excitement beginning to consume his patience.
Now that he had definitely entered this race with fate, which in a way had been forced upon him, he swore with firm-set jaw that he would see it through, would win at any cost, however high the stake, or go down in disgrace, defeat, and infamy. Less than twenty-four hours before, he had been only an ordinary, every-day young clerk, thinking few thoughts outside the narrow ruts of business, baseball, and Louis Carr (back home from Indiana). To-day, what destiny of nations might not rest upon his shoulders? To-morrow, what would be the issue? Weal or wo?”
“Search me!” he panted, a trifle winded with the rapid gait he had struck. “Don’t know, can’t see. But by the great jumping jewsharp, I’m in this till the finish!”
Again he looked at his watch.
“Five-forty-seven,” he noted. He had stayed with Haskins only five minutes. “I've got just thirteen minutes to locate a place I never saw, don’t know the name of, and never even heard of till just now. Say, is this some stunting, or ain’t it?”
And, breathless, he swung along as fast as he dared risk. To attract attention, at this particular time, he felt to be highly imprudent.
Now, were my story dealing with matters of less import, I might write a page or two concerning the desperate hunt for what Hasky had named “the little jerk Eyetalian place over on K street.” But since, after all, that hunt consisted of only a quick walk down the street, with eyes peeled for a window containing typewriters, plus an Italian sign; and, secondly, since any such description would delay far other and more vital things, I pass it all with this brief summary, viz., that Darrow really did run it to earth at precisely three minutes after six.
His heart bounded as he caught the words in gilt letters:
P. BUCCAMANO & CO.,
Typewriters to Sell and Rent.
Maquine da Scrivere a Fittare ed a Vendere.
Across the street he dove.
Rattle! Rattle Rattle! went the locked door, under his hasty shaking.
“Too late?” he wondered, with unspeakable dread.
No, there at the rear, he could dimly see a figure moving. Then came a voice, surly, suspicious:
“All-a close’ for-a business!”
Darrow’s only answer was to rattle the catch more vigorously than ever. The proprietor, after a moment’s silence, came forward heavily. A key turned. The door opened.
“Well, w’at-a you want?” demanded P. Buccamano & Co., compounded of fat and curls, a greasy mustache, an odor of garlic, and a general shirt-sleeve effect. From the rear room Darrow heard an infant’s wail, then the tones of a woman soothing it with the “La-la-la-la!” which speaks a universal tongue.
“W’at-a you want, eh? No open for a biz, dis evening.”
“Got any machines to let?” demanded Darrow, walking in. The best way to meet Buccamano’s argument seemed to be to ignore it.
“Machine? Yes, but we not-a open for—”
“What kinds you got? What price per week, and month?” Already Darrow was inspecting the meager stock ranged on shelves constructed by the very simple means of setting packing-cases side by side and one on top of the other, with the open tops toward the shop.
“All-a kind, mista, but—”
“Got any Redmonds?”
“Da Red-o-monda? Yes, yes: t’ree, four. But—”
“How much a week?”
“Oh-a, sometime-a get dollar. Sometime-a—”
“How about seventy-five cents a week? Three dollars a month?”
“All-a right. You take-a one?”
“Let me look at ’em first,” commanded Darrow. “All you've got. Every one. I’ve got a rush piece of work to do, and I can’t use any other machine but the Redmond. Mighty particular piece of work. Got to have a good machine. Let me look at ’em—all!”
Buccamano & Co., grumbling, struck a match and lighted a flaring jet. Though it was still daytime outside, yet through the dusty, musty pane seeped only a dim light.
As the jet blazed, and Buccamano started down the shop to bring a machine, the gray-suited man with the Panama slid into a doorway across the street.
The Italian deposited the Redmond in front of Darrow, on a rough bench covered with a disorder of paper and fly-specked stationer’s supplies.
The machine, Darrow saw at a glance, was not the one on which the specimens in his pocket had been written, for the type was script instead of nonpareil. Nevertheless he picked up a sheet of yellow paper, slid it between the rollers and quickly delivered himself of the original and highly entertaining sentiment:
“Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of the party.”
“Nope! Won’t do!” he exclaimed in a tone of disappointment. “See this ‘e’ here, and this ‘k’? Rotten! Bring another!”
The next one made his heart jump. One squint at the type-basket showed him the sought-for kind of letter. But disappointment followed close upon elation. For, having quickly written out a seemingly meaningless jumble of letters, containing, however, the well remembered fragments: “Di, Bet, Puu, Oa, Min, ua, Pea, ar. 12-27, 19, ill, a, Isla,” his trained eye, long used to every minute point of typewriter lore, detected hopeless discrepancies between the alinement and spacing of the copy before him and the original in his pocket.
“Come on! Come on!” he exclaimed impatiently. “Let’s have another!”
“W’at-a da matter-a you?” growled Buccamano & Co., eying his customer with irritation. “One-a machine just so good-a than de odders!”
“If you want to rent me a machine,” answered Darrow, with asperity, “you show me the goods, see? If not, I take my money somewhere else and get the kind of a Redmond I want. Are you on?”
He made a move as though to rise. The Italian only grinned at him, ill-naturedly, and shook his head so hard that the brass earrings flailed.
“No, no, you not-a do it!” he retorted. “Not get-a Red-o-monda anywhere else-a da city! Cole agenta, me, Buccamano!”
And with a kind of primitive malice he whacked his adipose breast.
Darrow felt a stab of secret satisfaction. “By the Lord Harry,” thought he, “I am on the track, all right, all right! Now if I could only just get the right machine, the rest would be lead pipe.”
To the Italian he added in a more wheedling tone:
“Come, come, now; do me a favor, won’t you? I’m a government employee, understand? In the stationery department of the pension office. You use me right, and maybe I can throw some biz your way—big money, what? Trot out all the Redmonds you’ve got, and let me look at ’em. Fact is,” he rattled on, quick invention supplying him with copious falsehoods, “fact is, I’m a government typewriter inspector.”
He turned back his lapel, and showed a nickel badge which, had the Italian examined it, he would have seen certified to all and sundry that bearer was (number 43,257, in the Foresight Accident Company; please notify home office, etc., etc.”
The badge went. Buccamano grew respectful.
“Yes,” continued Darrow, “I’m an inspector. If these machines look good to me, you never can tell what mightn’t happen. Trot out the others.”
Buccamano needed no second bidding. He hardly more than half believed his customer; yet, on the other hand, it might be true, after all. “Better be on the safe side,” thought he, hauling down the remaining two machines of the desired make.
One of these machines Darrow saw at once, was not what he was after at all. Nevertheless he pounded off a classic sentiment about a “quick black fox” and pretended to scrutinize it carefully under the gaslight.
The other looked more promising, at first. Knowing full well the instinct of everybody when trying a machine, to write his own name, he whacked out “John J. Burley, 3016 N. St., N. W.,” several times, then on another sheet tried the fragmentary words again. The former sheet, with the name, he left on the bench. In case of inquiry later, it might prove very useful in side-tracking investigators. As for the sheet with the cabala on it, he examined that with intense earnestness.
But though for a moment he believed, with fast-beating heart, that at last his search was ended, he was presently forced to admit, against his will, that certain fatal discrepancies showed themselves.
“Great Heavens, where is the right machine?” thought he to himself, despairingly. “Somewhere in this city it certainly must exist. If I could only find it—”
Up he looked at the proprietor.
“Here, I'll take this one,” said he. “I'll try it a week, anyhow. Reserve it for me, will you?” And he laid a hand on the last machine.
“All-a right. You make-a da deposit now?”
“I'll pay you in advance. That's better. Send it up to my address, to-morrow fore-noon sure!” He indicated the name he had written.
Slowly he counted out seventy-five cents into Buccamano’s fat palm.
“Gee!” thought he, “that means I go mighty shy on lunches till pay-day. It comes high, this detective-story of mine, but I must have it!”
Then straight into the Italian’s eyes he peered. eo.
“You've got another of these machines?” asked he.
“One more, yes, meester. But it's no here-a. I rent-a heem, las’ wik.”
“Who’s got it?”
Darrow’s heart leaped madly as he fired this master-question at the greasy fellow. He tried to hold his voice steady; yet in spite of himself he felt it must be trembling. The Italian, now thoroughly suspicious, squinted at him with puckered eyes. Under the crude gas-flare, the young clerk could detect a glitter of dawning hostility in the black optics.
“Who—who’s got it, please?” repeated he, suavely.
“W’at-a for you want-a know it?”
Darrow made a quick change of front.
“See here, you!” he exclaimed, pointing a lean forefinger right into the man’s face, while his own eyes began to blaze behind the goggles. “I’ve had enough o’ this: I’m not going to waste any more time chewing the rag with you! Two minutes I give you to tell me where that other machine is, or by thunder, I’ll make it hot for you! Just ’round the corner, yonder,” he jerked his thumb over his shoulder, “I’ve got two plain-clothes men waiting. Want ’em in here? In my pocket I’ve got a warrant!” This was perfectly true; only it was a warrant for payment of an oil-bill. “Want me to serve it on you? Now, come across!”
Buccamano started back. His yellow complexion became a pale olive. Darrow had taken a long chance; but the shaft had struck home. The Italian weakened instantly before the minatory gaze of the young clerk.
“All—all-a right, meester!” he exclaimed, spreading his hands, fingers wide and palms vertical, toward Darrow, in a gesture of repellence. “All-a right! You no call-a da cop! I—I tell-a you all—everyt’ing-a!”
“Quick!”
“Dis-a minute! Yes, yes! Right away!”
And, turning, he started to shuffle off toward the back of the shop.
“Wait-a one minnute! I getta da book!” said he.
“No, you don’t!” shouted Darrow. “You don't get out o’ my sight! No gun-play in this!” He reached back toward his own hip-pocket, where lay a small pocket-dictionary. “Come back, there! Come back! What name, now? What address?”
Buccamano halted. He began to sweat and tremble. Despite his avoirdupois, his heart was thimble-size.
“No shoot-a! No shoot!” he pleaded, secretly cursing the luck that his own gun was lying on a shelf in the back room. “I tell-a you, queeck! Yes, yes! I give-a you all you want-a!”
“Go on! Who’s got it?”
“Globe Laundry—he got it! Las’ wik, so help-a—” and he raised his hands on high.
“Globe Laundry? Where's that?”
“How I remember all-a address? So many da machine!”
“Where is it?” Again Darrow’s hand crept back toward the dictionary.
“Two hundr’ five, A, Nort’ Twenty-Fourt’ Street!” whined Buccamano. “But you no—”
“Thanks,” said Darrow, cold as steel. “Now, that’s all from you, see? The best thing you can do is to keep your mouth sewed right up tight! Zitto! Are you wise? Good night!”
And, taking. good care not to turn his back toward the Italian, he retreated in good order from the dingy little shop.
The door slammed. Once more he stood in the street.
“Now for it!” he exclaimed.
PLANS all unformulated, knowing neither what he should encounter nor how to meet it, yet driven forward by the hot tides of determination that now coursed through every fiber, the clerk laid his course westward for the address that the Italian had been forced to give him.
As he went—all unconscious of the surveillance of the man in gray, who still dogged his tracks—he tried to analyze the situation, size it up, and make some definite campaign of action; yet, try as he would, only one fact seemed to stand out clearly as a beacon-guide through the morass of difficulties. This: that he must, at all hazards, lay hands on the typewriter whereon the original message had been written. This with that machine under observation, he might be able to determine who had written those words, and when, and why. How thin a spider’s web of hope! Yet it was all he had. And to it with a bulldog grip he hung.
By a process of elimination he reasoned, as he strode along in the approaching twilight.
“It was certainly written on a Redmond. That’s sure. The only Redmonds in this town are handled by that crafty dago. I’ve seen ’em all but one. I haven’t found the one I want. Therefore—the one that’s out now is the one I’m after!”
Yet, though according to all rules of logic this proposition worked to a satisfactory proof, it left him with an anxious dread, a doubt, a sinking uncertainty. What if, after all, it didn’t turn out so? What if, to-morrow, he had no data for the secretary?
“Gad!” he murmured in alarm, quickening his pace, “that’ll be my finish, all right, all right, more ways than one!”
Twenty minutes brought him to his destination; but now that he was near the place, his courage—till now adequate—began to ooze. He had had no supper, for one thing. The emptiness of his stomach reacted on his nerve. Dyspeptic always, he had little reserve force. He longed for the strength of a Hackenschmidt, to grapple with this problem, throw it, and hold it down. Half consciously he sneered at his own weakness, his sedentary ineptitude for the hard hand-grapple with virile strife.
“I am a dope, that’s a fact!” thought he, as he turned off K into Twenty-Fourth Street, and with blinking eyes began to seek the house numbers. “Gee whiz! What a mutt I was to tackle a thing one hundred sizes too big for me!”
But he did not withdraw. No, something in the clamp of that thin lantern-jaw bespoke a will which could not retreat; which could only go on, on, on, till something broke.
“Two hundred and five, A,” he repeated to himself, scanning the numbers. “That’s an odd number. I’m on the same side. Guess I’d better cross over.”
He did so, and continued down the street. Now he had reached 150—175—200.
“Ah!” he exclaimed. Across the street from him, its lights yellowing the sidewalk, he perceived the place.
“What? A Chink joint?” And he stopped in amazement. This contingency had not been thought of. The idea of any Chinaman hiring a typewriter was too bizarre to have occurred to him. Yet such was the case.
For, in big red letters on the glass, he read the words:
CHARLEY YUN LEE
and hanging from an iron rod at right angles to the building depended a red sign:
Globe Laundry
For a minute or two Darrow was at a loss. He had expected to find a regular American laundry, with an office into which, on a pretext of inspecting the gas mantles or something of that sort, he could gain access. Once there, he had counted on a quick wit and on circumstances to enable him to find out something about the machine. Maybe he might, in the first place, blunder right in and ask to see it—though, in view of the circumstances, this might prove unwise. At any rate, he had thought only of dealing with Americans. But now, facing the problem of tackling Chinamen, he felt a sudden chill. The astute, slant-eyed men he could not understand; they baffled him. In common with all white men, he felt the impossibility of ever getting beneath the yellow exterior, into the psychology of the Oriental. So, horribly chagrined, he stopped a moment to consider.
Yet, even in his surprise and disappointment, he felt a thrill of exultation. For this circumstance certainly lent color to his theory. Now he began to see light.
“That India-ink mark on the back of my fragments—yes, it was a character of some sort or other!” thought he. “I’m on the trail, all right enough. Only, how the deuce am I going to follow it now?”
Vaguely, with nebulous outlines and vast, unknown proportions, he began to see something taking shape. What, he knew not; but the ghostly figure of some huge, sinister plot began to grow faintly visible. He wiped his forehead, where the sweat was pricking out, and drew a deep breath.
“Gosh!” he ejaculated.
Then, slowly, he walked past the laundry, on the other side of the street.
For a moment he had the idea of going over and entering. But what reason could he give? He had no soiled linen to leave, no washing to call for. At once he felt the impossibility of visiting that place without at least running the risk of arousing fatal suspicions.
“No,” said he, strolling along, hands clasped behind him, head bowed in thought—“no, I’ve got to get at it some other way. My great Scott, what wouldn’t I give to have an X-ray eye for just about ten minutes!”
At the next corner he crossed the street, then came back along the sidewalk that led directly past the laundry. Loitering, he drew near. His heart thumped disagreeably, and he noticed a shortage of breath as he came abreast of the Globe. But he kept on.
Now he was right in front of it.
In he peered, staring eagerly through those round, black-rimmed goggles of his.
“Bah!” thought he. “Nothing doing!”
For, after all his hopes, nothing could be seen—nothing of the slightest moment. The interior was absolutely innocent-appearing. In the window, bundles of washing. At one side of the shop, an ironing-table, before which a couple of blue-clad, pigtailed men industriously plied their irons. At the other, a stove, with more irons. On the walls, long red scrolls with sprawling characters; a gaudy print or two; a Chinese calendar. The shop was one of ten thousand, all alike.
Keenly disappointed, he passed on. All at once he felt very shaky, tired, lonesome, and helpless. He, a rather anemic young lighthouse establishment clerk, trying to run down an intangible clue with no slightest assistance; he, all alone, against the unknown—what hope?
And now plunged into the black abyss of despair, facing denunciation from his superior, discharge, loss of his only source of livelihood, he began to tremble with sickening apprehension.
Thus for the moment utterly overthrown, he blundered up the street in the evening gloom. A quick-lunch room attracted his attention, inviting him to rest and think. Into it he turned.
“Egg-sandwich and,” he ordered, sitting on one of the high revolving stools. But when the stale egg, dripping grease from between the soggy rolls, and the strong, muddy coffee were slapped down on the shiny counter, he found no appetite, He could not force himself to take more than a single bite and drink half the anemic coffee. Dejectedly he paid, from a diminished purse. The cash-register rang, and once more he found himself out on the sidewalk, wound in a web of difficulties that ever an amateur detective encountered.
All at once he felt a strong imperative for solitude—for a chance to rest, to think, to puzzle out this thing apart from the jostling contact of humanity. His mind turned toward the new park down by the tidal reservoir along the banks of the Potomac. And thither, with a real relief, he now betook himself.
He found a bench not far from the water’s edge. A certain peace descended on him, thus to leave the city behind, even though it was but a few hundred paces in the rear. The calm of evening soothed him. The slow, even current seemed as though it bore away the troubles and hot vexations of his spirit. In midstream the island loomed vaguely comforting. Over beyond Analostan a twinkling light or two betrayed the location of Rosslyn. Darrow’s thoughts turned to the country, the grass and fields over on the Virginia shore, the dark outlines of the trees, half-glimpsed, and, above, the big and quiet stars.
Once more he seemed to see home, the old farm back in Mount Sterling, Indiana. Just so, from the big barn, he had once been used to look across the flood of the Ohio, at the lights of Warsaw, in the Blue Grass State.
“Say, I was the champ boob ever to leave it!” murmured he; and a mist formed upon his glasses. He blinked hard, gulped, and, burying his aching head in both hands, tried to think. All he could see was the face of Louise Carr.
Then, instantly, lightning seemed to strike him.
A sheaf of brilliant fires burst in his brain. He felt himself hurled from the bench to the gravel walk.
He tried to cry out; but iron hands were at his throat. A knee was on his chest, there in the gloom.
“Uh! Uh!” was all the sound he could bring forth, even with the most horrible exertion.
Vainly he tried to strike. His arms were pinioned. He heard panting breath.
Then he sensed a hard, quick hand ripping his coat open. Out it tore the billfold, after which came a foul curse, and once more a smashing blow cracked on his skull.
Still struggling, though but weakly now, he felt himself lifted.
Some one, enormously strong, was carrying him like a child.
“Uh! Wa! Wa-a-ah!” he groaned.
A heave, a swing!
Out through the air he whirled.
A deafening splash, a gurgling fight for breath, and then—
SOMETIMES an inch more or less, a bit of mud, the fraction of a second, or the merest accident, changes the course of history.
Had James Macdonnel not blundered with the lock at the famous Hugomont gate, Waterloo might have had a different ending, and the tragedy of St. Helena might have never been.
Thus, now, in the career of James B. Darrow, and in the vital issues at present therewith connected, a half-rotten old plank altered the nation’s record-scroll. Whence had it come, that plank? Far down the river, maybe, there to lodge against the mud, and wait, and idle, till all at once a human being—destined for one big human event—found himself clinging to its farther end with the grip of half-drowned desperation.
Without that plank at hand, Darrow’s life would have ended in the Potomac, at that very place and moment. With it—but this story will presently inform you.
At first, able only to cling, to catch his gasping breath, he did no more than craw] a little up the bank, and lie th€re in the dark—muddy, drenched, and in a daze. But gradually he recovered some measure of sense and reason; slowly he pulled himself together, spat out the mud and water, looked about him, found himself still alive, and—save for an aching head and a blood-oozing cut on the scalp—comparatively intact.
Then, a few minutes later, having washed off the worst of the filth and blood, he dragged himself up the bank again, and so reached the path and the bench once more.
Vaguely seen, a few couples were strolling in the vicinity. On the next bench but one sat a youth and maiden; but they appeared oblivious. The city lights cast dim rays. Darrow thanked Heaven for the darkness. If anybody noticed him at all, it was no doubt only to mistake him for a harmless tramp.
Darrow noticed that his hat was gone. He felt around the bench. On the grass he found it. This gave him a grain of comfort. Nothing is more forlorn than your civilized man without a hat. The hat was dry, too; and that was something.
He put it on his wounded head, and felt a tiny flicker of hope revive. A great weariness oppressed him; but he dared not sit down again in the park, to think. His wet, clinging clothes, too, urged him to be moving. Even though his billfold was now gone, and with it the precious scraps of paper, apparently his only clue, he could not feel that everything was lost. Still, in his mind he bore the image of those disjointed words, those letters. So long as life remained in him, nobody could take those away!
“I guess,” thought he, “the best thing I can do is hike along and think this out. It’s check, all right, but not mate! Not mate, yet—by a long shot!”
Lamely, with aching head, he limped along. As he went, he raised a tremulous fist.
“Do I quit now?” quoth he. “I guess so—nix!”
The oblivious couple ceased for a second in their whispering of sweet nothings, to wonder dimly at this hobo person. But only for a second. Into the gloom Darrow vanished.
Suddenly a great longing seized him, wet and chilly and all but lost in the maze of ever-increasing difficulties.
“Gee! If I could only get a cigarette!” said he.
He felt in his pocket. Yes, there was a little loose change still left. Off to the left, half-glimpsed through the park trees, glimmered a brace of lights, red and green, like a liner head-on. Darrow bore a straight course for those beacons. The prospect of a drug-store was infinitely comforting.
With diffidence he approached. But, save for a mild stare, the drug clerk showed no very great concern. Drug clerks get used to everything. That a man should be wet and muddy cannot excite them.
“Took a nap down on the bank, there, and fell in,” Darrow felt constrained to volunteer. “Say, I’ll take a penny box of matches, too.”
He lit up the cheap cigarette and felt better at once.
Two cigarettes set him thinking again. By the time he was ready to light the third, he felt reviving courage as he paced the park, waiting to dry off in the warm spring air.
“Quit, now?” he repeated, with something savage in his intonation. “When I’m on the track? When if—if I don’t make good, I get the ax? Forget it!”
Vanished, now, the originally high patriotic motives which had at first inspired him to report his suspicions to the secretary. Vanished all altruism. In their place, a very human, personal fear of losing his job; anger at all the labor and abuse he had already endured as a result of his quest; a burning desire to get even with somebody, he knew not whom—to make good—to batter down, in spite of all his weakness, the vast powers which seemed to have been set in motion to crush him.
And, shaking his bony fist at the perfectly indifferent stars, he swore. Then, with the speed of light, an idea occurred to him. He could feel its sudden entrance from his subconscious into his objective mind, as though it had broken free from moorings and swung into the mental stream.
“Got it!” cried he, exultant. “Got it—if the luck turns!”
Waiting no longer, he once more set off in the direction of the Globe laundry. Forgotten, now, the fact that he was still wet and untidy, that hunger was assailing him, that his head ached madly with the clout he had received at the hands of some person unknown.
Forgotten his angry wonder as to that assailant and as to the manner wherein anybody could have learned that on his person he had borne those scraps of paper. Forgotten the chagrin of their loss. A new idea possessed him. And, strong in hope renewed, he strode along.
He kept to alleyways and small back streets. The avenues and larger streets he shunned, for there, among the bright lights, his drabbled wetness would surely attract attention, which was the one thing he must now at all hazards avoid.
Though he was by no means over-familiar with this part of the city, down along the river, yet he found no very serious difficulty in working his way, hobo-fashion, toward the desired spot. Night covers, even more than charity, a multitude of shortcomings.
On the way, he passed an open-fronted hardware-shop where, on benches, all manner of tools and ironware lay displayed in little boxes.
Here he stopped a minute. He counted out the last of his money. One dime, two nickels, seven pennies. By dint of haggling, he got a thirty-five-cent chisel, somewhat rusty, for these twenty-seven cents.
Absolutely broke, yet rich in expectations, he pocketed this bit of steel, and once more pushed along.
“Maybe this,” thought he, “will answer questions even better than old Macaroni di Spagett, back there!”
Arriving again in the vicinity of the Globe, he paused. From the distance of a block away, he reconnoitered. Still shone the lights in the laundry window. Though the hour was now past ten, the Orientals were at work, he judged.
“So much the better,” he assured himself, casually walking nearer. Yes, he could see both men toiling over their irons in the front room. “Good!” said Darrow.
He turned back, took J Street, and, arriving at the alley that ran parallel to Twenty-Fourth, entered it. Here, save for a rare gaslight, was welcome darkness. Silent and furtive, he slipped along. As he went, he scrutinized the backyard fences and gates, most of which were numbered to correspond with the buildings in front.
In less than five minutes he had located the back gate of the laundry. Even had not the number, 205A, been painted there, he could have told the place; for, peeking through a knot-hole in the fence, he made out dim, ghostly lines of washing hanging in the yard.
“Here’s where I get busy!” said Darrow to himself, pausing a moment to make sure no eye beheld him. A sudden sputter and yowl down the alley startled him almost out of his damp skin. Then he grinned with relief.
“Huh! Only a couple o’ cats!”
Once more he turned to the gate. Cautiously he tried the latch. It did not yield.
“Locked,” said he. “Come on, chisel, get busy!”
Quietly, yet strongly, he applied it. With a snap of broken cast iron, the gate swung inward. Darrow’s long neck stretched as his owlish visage peered through the opening, this way, then that. The yard was deserted.
A moment later Darrow was inside, the gate shut after him; and, creeping down the brick walk between the rows of wind-swayed linen, he approached the back porch of 205A.
A lattice-work protected it on two sides. On the third, six steps led up. To the right, Darrow could vaguely distinguish two windows, tight-shuttered.
“What next?” wondered he, pausing at the foot of the steps. Now that he was actually on the field of action, nothing very definite occurred to him. To make a plan, at a distance, is a very different thing from executing it in detail.
“Hang it!” he thought, “I’ve got to do something, anyhow! Can’t risk loafing ’round here for long, that’s certain!” And, daring hardly to breathe, he turned from the walk and approached the nearer of the two windows.
“Too high,” he judged, with disappointment. He could, in fact, just touch the sill with his raised hand. No chance of peeking in, even had the shutter been open.
About him he peered in the dark, straining his eyes for some means of climbing up.
“Ah! A box!” said he to himself, much relieved. Beside the porch stood an empty soap-box. He was just on the point of reclaiming this, when—what? There at the rear gate, a creak of hinges! A rattle of the broken latch!
Darrow realized that somebody was entering the yard!
A wild fear shot through him. To be detected spying there meant ruin, or a charge of attempted larceny, that much was certain. Assault, he might encounter; perhaps murder! He began to tremble violently. Down he crouched in the dark corner where the porch joined the house. He held his breath. The pounding of his heart seemed certain to betray him. There in an abject, cringing heap he obliterated himself.
None too soon, for already the unknown person was cautiously coming down the walk. Darrow could hear his breathing; the wheeze of it indicated a bulky individual. At the bottom of the steps the man paused an instant. Against the pallid dark of the sky, Darrow perceived a black blotch, which was the newcomer’s head.
It moved. Footsteps sounded on wood. Then the porch-boards creaked.
Darrow, all ears, waited in a cold tremor of excitement.
Tap-tap-tap! Tap-tap! came a knocking. Three raps, then two. The signal was repeated. With a kind of desperate summing-up of the will, Darrow craned his neck. His eyes came to the level of the porch-floor. Through the lattice he, all unseen, found he could get a line of vision on the door. Yes, there stood a vague, black figure, motionless.
Tap-tap-tap! Tap-tap!
All at once came a little click. A slide had been opened in the door. A round, white beam of light spouted out upon the caller’s face. Darrow knew a pocket electric flash-lamp was being directed through the hole.
Only an instant the light lasted; yet in that instant the young clerk got sight of a bristly, close-cropped yellow mustache and a beefy face surmounted by a Panama. Then darkness fell again, blacker than ever by contrast with the light.
A voice from within: “Got it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Any trouble?”
“No, sir. No fight in him. Weak! Harmless!”
“Where is he?”
“Safe. I fixed him.”
“Good! Give it to me!”
Came a slight rustle of paper in the dark. Then the inner voice spoke again—and Darrow knew it was no foreign voice, either, but a straight-out American one—a voice familiar, despite its muffled dulness:
“Here’s the cipher. He may have talked. Cable this at once. To-night! Immediately! Understand?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Here!”
Another sound of paper.
“Why didn’t you come sooner?”
“Went up to the other place. Thought you’d be there, sir.”
“Of course. I ought to be, now. Hold on; I'll go with you now!”
Click! The slide was closed.
Darrow held his breath till he thought he must burst. At last, having either to breathe or die, he took a little air through wide-open lips, soundlessly.
The wait seemed an hour. Really it was but five minutes. Then a key grated and the door swung open. Another dark figure joined the other, which all this time had stood there motionless.
“They'll work late in the front room to-night,” whispered the man who had come out—seemingly a tall, square-shouldered person. “Everything’s ready, except just to give the word. You cable, while I go—you know!”
“Yes, sir!”
No further speech passed between them. Together they went down the steps and along the bricks to the gate. There they paused a moment. Though Darrow could now no longer see even the dimmest shadow of them, he sensed that this momentary delay was for the purpose of reconnoissance before venturing into the alley.
A voice from the gate, a voice he could have sworn he recognized: “What’s the matter with this catch?”
“Anything? I don't know, sir.”
“I’ll have to get after Katsu about such carelessness. It’s broken!”
“No matter. After to-night—well—”
The gate closed after the two men. Silence fell. But for a long time Darrow still crouched in obscurity. Who could tell? They might be coming back!
If he thought of it once, he did a hundred times, the lure of safe retreat while vet he was alive and sound. His head ached brutally, now that the first flush of excitement had passed. It was gummed and sticky with dried blood. Warm though the night was, a chill was in his bones. His damp clothing clung about him in soggy and depressing heaviness. And, more than all, the colloquy he had overheard filled him with shrinking, sinister apprehensions.
“Cipher! Cable?” thought he. “To-night! All over but that? My Heaven! What am I up against!”
Almost on the point of creeping toward the gate in retreat was he. But, as he stirred, he felt the chisel in his pocket. And, like a powder-train, the sequence of determinations flared up in him again.
“Quit? Without even a look-in? all After I've been through? Huh!”
And now with most minute caution, yet filled once more with revivified pluck, he reached for the soap-box again. Under the window he placed it, making sure by jiggling it steady with his hands that it was firmly planted.
Upon it he mounted.
Noiselessly he applied one of his goggled-eyes to a thin crack between the blinds.
“What?” he gasped, astonished despite himself into a whispered voicing of his surprise.
THE room into which he now found himself peering was lighted by a Welsbach. This in itself might have seemed strange for the rear room of a Chinese laundry; but stranger still were the other appointments.
For instead of tubs, clothes-horses, shelves full of washing-powder, and a stove, Darrow beheld a comfortably furnished apartment with a revolving book-case, a Morris chair, and other chairs well upholstered, a smoking-table whereon lay débris of cigars, and—most important of all—a broad desk with a typewriter.
Unable to believe his senses, Darrow for a moment felt that he must be in error. Perhaps, after all, this room was not a part of the laundry. Perhaps it belonged to the adjoining house. Darrow visualized this possibility very distinctly; so distinctly that already a sense of huge disappointment was beginning to steal over him, when it was instantly dispelled by the sight, there on the wall, of a red, character-covered scroll.
On the table, too, he now observed a carven ivory netsuke. And, lying open on the desk, with a paper-knife across its leaves to hold it in position, a book such as never was made on this side of the Pacific.
Then, eagerly realizing that now his search was almost at an end, he scrutinized the typewriter.
“A Redmond, for sure!” exulted he. “The Redmond! The very identical one, so help me, that wrote the message I’m after!”
And, giving a great leap, his heart began to thrash with the excitement of a chase all but completed, with the foreknowledge that, in the next few minutes, destiny was making, life and death were being weighed, the balances of fate about to tip!
Yet now, even though his goal was in plain sight, the young chap knew not how to proceed. It is one thing to contemplate, from a safe distance, breaking into a conspirators’ den with the aid of a chisel; another thing to execute that coup.
How could he tell what situation might face him there? How know the number of plotters in the house, masked by the laundry in front? How hope anything but this—that at the first suspicious sound that door across the room would burst open and death leap on him in the guise of steel or lead?
“G-g-gosh!” chattered Darrow weakly in the face of such contingencies. “If I—if I had a machine-gun, or something, or a—a squad of cops—maybe I might butt in there. But this way! Plain suicide.”
Why not retreat now, lay the case on the desk of the nearest police station, and let authority run the game to bay? Surely he had followed the spoor far enough! What could be gained now by crawling into the very lair of the beast? But even before he had thought it out in logical sequence Darrow knew it was to be that way or no way at all.
To report this thing, to stir up city-wide, nation-wide excitement, maybe, and then after all to run the risk that nothing would develop, nothing be found, would inevitably ruin him.
Then, too, he feared lest, by giving his secret to others, the prey might escape him, the plot go through to its infernal success. Now that this very night was destined for the crisis, now that every minute perhaps might be vital, he dared not leave his vantage-post.
“No, no!” thought he. “Lone hand! Whole game or nothing this deal.”
Then, before he rightly realized what he was doing, he had the chisel in hand once more, and with trembling yet steel-strong hands was prying at the catch. It strained, creaked, then, with a sharp ting burst in halves. Darrow, breathing hard, waited in the thick dark, standing on the soap-box.
A moment thus he remained there, every nerve atingle, listening, peering for his very life. Nothing! He seemed to have excited no suspicion in the other occupants of the house. A hissing sputter and yowl betrayed the presence of feline combatants again on the alley fence. From the street corner, half a block up, jangled a trolley-gong. The even hum of the city’s life, dull, monotonous, far, droned on and on. Yet to Darrow it seemed that he alone of all those thousands was really living—really infused with the inner, vital knowledge of the overshadowing tragedy about to consummate itself.
“The window, now!” thought he. And, noiselessly opening one of the shutters, he thrust his chisel under the lower sash.
Now very great grew his risk of detection. For the light inside, streaming out, bathed him in a soft, white radiance. Instantly he realized that, standing thus, it would be ten chances to one somebody would very soon discover him and raise an outcry.
“In I go now,” he grunted, “or it’s all off.”
He threw his full strength on the chisel.
Snap!
He almost fell off the box with the recoil of the breaking blade. In burning haste he jerked the broken half of the chisel out from under the sash and jammed in the stouter part, next the handle.
Again he pried. This time something gave above. The window rose half an inch.
Frenzied, he hung his weight upon the handle. With a jangle of wrecked metal, the window yielded. Next moment Darrow had raised it, and, flinging a leg over the sill, had clambered into the mysterious chamber.
Like an instantaneous photograph the topography of the room printed itself upon his fevered brain. Here the table, there the typewriter, yonder the single door leading into the front part of the house—into the “laundry.”
With quick sagacity, he tiptoed, panting, to that door. A second, and the key was turned, the door securely locked.
“That’ll hold ’em a few seconds, anyhow,” grunted Darrow.
He wheeled, and, with a single gesture, turned off the gas.
“No rubbering from outside, now!”
Then he turned to the typewriter-desk. Even though the quick transition from light to dark practically blinded him, he knew just where to lay hands on that all-precious thing.
“Give me one minute, now, and I'll have it out o’ here and away!” he exulted, his heart thrashing so it nearly choked him.
But even as he laid hands on it came a running of soft-shod feet in a hallway beyond the door. Then cries burst forth—two voices sounded, chattering unintelligibly yet with accents of wild fear.
And, hurling themselves against the panels, clattering the knob, then pounding again in frenzy, Darrow heard the laundrymen fighting savagely for admission.
“Stand back!” he roared. “The first man through that door I'll blow his yellow head off!” This, though his only weapon was a broken, blunted fragment of a thirty-five-cent chisel.
A moment’s pause. Darrow seized the typewriter. Then along the bottom of the door a bright streak appeared in the dark. They had made a light. And, almost instantly, with a thunderous crash, some heavy thing shivered against the panels near the lock.
Toward the window Darrow started with the machine. But he had not made two steps when—smash went the door again.
Darrow saw a jagged, uneven spangle of light appear in the panel.
Snarling, high-pitched cries rose from the hall. Then through the splintered hole catapulted a flat-iron. And right after it a long, thin, saffron-yellow arm was thrust. The corded hand, clawlike and lean, twisted up, around, grasping for the key on the inside of the door.
“Here, you, stop that!” screamed Darrow in a frenzy of sudden rage—red rage, so wild that it banished fear and waked the till-then-unknown killing lust in him. “Cut that out, you murderous Chinks!”
Down he flung the typewriter onto the table. Out he flashed his chisel; and, like a tiger flinging himself upon that hand, struck at it with a madman’s strength.
Rose a horrid, wild-pitched shriek in the hallway. The arm and hand jerked back. And Darrow, still clutching the chisel, ran once more for the machine.
But now the sounds of an ax at work on the lock outside gave unmistakable warning that scant time remained.
“They'll get me sure!” thought Darrow. “Sure as shootin’, if I try to lug it off! How far ahead of ’em could I keep, with a fifty-pound handicap?”
Something else would have to be done. Some other method thought of to tear from that piece of mechanism its secret! Some other way beside stealing it and running. But what? How?
For, smashing against the lock, the heavy, shattering blows resounded.
Howls and imprecations in a strange tongue filled the hallway. Darrow cringed an instant, his hawk-face pale as milk, eyes blazing, mouth agape.
Then, with a cry, “By gad! Got it!” his brain riven with inspiration, he snatched at the ribbon of the machine.
Years of work with typewriters had taught him more than mere accuracy and speed.
“This! This! Got to have it!” he panted.
Both hands grabbing, he hauled the ribbon out in great, yard-long loops and coils. The ribbon-spools spun round like mad. Their tiny ratches buzzed.
“Quick! The ribbon!”
With a last desperate jerk he ripped it away. One of the spools flew jingling to the floor.
But now, as in exultation he crammed the long blue tape into a mass and shoved it into a pocket, the door burst inward.
By the light in the hall he saw two savage, snarling, pig-tailed men in flapping denin, cascade through the wreckage.
Up whirled the arm of one as Darrow turned to leap through the window. The ax swirled, gyrating wildly through the air.
Darrow crouched.
Crash! The glass was gone. All over and about him rained down splinters of it.
Then, shouting something incoherent, the young clerk jumped and straddled the sill. But before he could leap down yellow hands were clutching at his shoulder, grappling for his throat. A chair banged over in the room.
Full into a snarling face he drove his fist, laying his knuckles open against teeth.
A grunt. A swaying, tugging, straining wrench. Darrow felt his coat rip. Blindly he grappled. His fingers closed on something—a heavy braid of hair.
He caught a glint of a razorlike blade.
Then he plunged out in a half leap.
Down he crashed through the flimsy soap-box. He arose, staggered, half fell, then straightened, and broke into a dazed run for the gate.
A door jerked open. Thudded some heavy body on the earth behind him. Like a shot Darrow bounded down the walk.
An instant later he was racing along the alley toward the bright lights on J Street. Only when he reached the corner did he slacken to glance round.
Nothing.
“They've quit!” he gasped. “Gee! What’s this I’ve got?”
He stood there, staring at a long pendulous object in his hand—a thing which until that instant he knew not that he had.
“Holy cats! A pigtail? What the—” A pigtail it certainly was, with a false scalp affixed thereto.
“What? Not Chinks at all? Why—why then—Japs?”
And Darrow, his brain reeling with the horror, the reaction of the past few minutes, the unspeakable astonishment of this discovery, leaned weakly up against the alley fence, shaken all over, sick, broken. He had just sense enough left to cram the pigtail into his breast-pocket. Then everything whirled round.
He knew that he was fainting.
HE revived, to find himself lying in the mud, a little knot of curious, sympathetic, half-suspicious persons, black and white, surrounding him. Instantly he understood the prime importance of creating no scene and of forestalling any police interference. So, struggling weakly to a sitting posture, he managed to articulate:
“All—all right now. Fits. Go home all right. No, not drunk. Epilepsy—that’s all.”
So they helped him to his feet and brushed him off; and somebody gave him a good nip from a pocket-flask; and thus, in a very few minutes, he was headed for home.
All the way out to Brightwood he stayed on the front platform of the electric, thus escaping the scrutiny of even the few late suburbanites. Unseen, shockingly disreputable, bruised, torn, and filthy, he let himself into Mrs. Sagg’s third-rate boarding-house. And so once more, close to midnight, he regained his room.
Being by nature methodical, the first thing he did was to strip and take a good, warm bath. Then he washed and bandaged his scalp wound, got into pajamas and dressing-gown, polished up his goggles, flung the ruck of dirty clothes into a closet—after having first hauled out the typewriter-ribbon and laid it on his table—and lighted his student-lamp.
“Now,” he said at last, getting down his tripod microscope from the shelf—“now, here’s where I grow busy!”
In a fresh, well-inked ribbon the metal types as they strike leave an impression which sometimes you can make out with the naked eye. Under the microscope it becomes quite clear.
Even when a ribbon has been written two or three times over, something of the last impression can be read. The great difficulty is this: that the ribbon moves very slowly, and that therefore the letters are crowded uneven and irregular, overlapping one another and forming the most puzzling combinations.
None the less, with patience, good eyesight, and a fair lens, plus the right ingredient of luck and quick-witted imagination to fill gaps, you can really read a ribbon. Try it yourself some time, when you have a whole long night to spare, and see.
Darrow had the night, the time, the patience, and all the other requisites. Also, the ribbon had been written over only once, for more than three-quarters of its length. As he pored over it, moving it by sixteenths of inches under his microscope, he made notes.
Here, there, he jotted down a letter on a pad beside him. His breathing came irregularly. On his thin cheeks the spots of color glowed. Yet hour by hour he toiled, pausing only from time to time for a few whiffs of tobacco, a few turns up and down the dingy room.
Thus all night long he labored; and dawn found him spent and fevered, weak, and with an aching head, a body bruised, yet a mind keenly exultant, a soul thrilled with the poignant joys of victory.
“Made good, have I?” he spoke at last in a kind of tremulous whisper, flinging down his pencil. “Well, some!”
To the very butt he smoked his last cigarette. When it was gone, he sat a moment in deep meditation. Then he whistled softly.
“Gee!” he exclaimed.
Page after page of elaborately detailed report he wrote. He read it over, corrected it, signed it “John Doe,” and sealed it carefully in, a big envelope which he directed to the President of the United States, with “urgent” underscored in the lower left-hand corner. Ten minutes later he had mailed this in the box at the adjacent corner, first collection 6 a.m.
Then he went back, locked his door, set the catch on his alarm-clock so that it could not by any possibility go off, and turned in.
At quarter to eight a rapping on his door awakened him.
“Come in!”
Entered a large gentleman, very pale, with glasses, and with an unnecessary muffler high about his mouth. He closed the door with care.
“Good morning, sir,” said Darrow. “Please excuse my not getting up. I was out late last night on the case you set me at. It’s good of you to have come, sir, but you needn’t have. I was going to report just as soon as I could get pulled together. Fierce headache I’ve got. You gave me twenty-four hours, you remember?”
“Darn you!” he croaked. “I could shoot you dead, there, where you sit and mock me!”
“Oh, no, you couldn't, sir,” replied Darrow sweetly, “because, you see, I’ve got you covered now, right under the sheet. Just start to pull that right hand out of that pocket, and I plunk you, sure. Through the abdomen, sir; it’s a lingering death, they say, and very painful. Now, please, what do you want of me?”
“You scum! You've proved nothing!”
“So? How about the Diagram of Mines planted March 12-27, between Kapua Entrance and Pearl River, Island of Oahu? How about the laundry? Who's Katsu? Why did a man about your size give orders last night at ten-thirty to cable the cipher. How about—”
“Stop! Stop!”
“Chinamen with fake queues? And—”
“Wait a minute!” The man’s voice grew savage in its fear. “Wait! What’s your price?”
“My—how’s that?”
“Your figure! It just comes to this: do you prefer to press this thing, prove nothing after all, and be broken—utterly ruined, or call a halt now, and—”
“Sell out, you mean?”
“Name your own figure!” whispered the man, coming close to the bed. “Name it! You'll get it, blast you, every penny!”
“Please get back a little—so, that’s right,” directed Darrow. Under the sheet his hand moved, as he kept the muzzle of the automatic trained on his caller. “No, I’m sorry, but there’s nothing doing. Your whole biz has gone to smash. Burke's cleared. It’s all off. Too late. That ribbon did it,” and he nodded at the table, where still lay the coils of blue.
“You mean—”
“I mailed a full report to the President this morning at five-thirty. Naming names, too. In a little while now you'll be it! Are you on?”
“What?” gasped the man. “Oh, merciful Heaven! Then—then—”
His voice tailed off into a husky squeak. He swayed and took a step to keep from falling.
“Yes, I guess that’s about right,” judged Darrow coldly. “There’s just about one answer. They say hydrocyanic acid gas is the easiest way. Quickest—only takes a second. Now, please go away. I’m sleepy. Good-by.”
Like a somnambulist the man staggered out. Darrow listened for the street door to close.
Then he went out in the hall.
“Mrs. Sagg!” he hailed. “Oh, Mrs. Sagg!”
“Yes, sir?” came a voice from below.
“If you let anybody else disturb me to-day, on any pretext whatever, I'll leave! I want to sleep. I’m going to! Understand?”
He went back, bolted his door, washed down another headache-powder with a glass of water, and, pulling the bedclothes up about his ears, snuggled down for a long sleep.
He yawned, stretched, and turned over.
After a pause: “I’ve jolted Uncle Sam good and plenty. I’ve wised him O. K. The rest’s up to him. I’m done!”
Another pause; then two disconnected thoughts: “Wish’t I could apologize to old Burke, but I can’t. And—wish’t I knew what Louise would think. Louise—”
A minute later, indifferent alike to wars and rumors of wars, secrets of state, high treason, and sudden death, James B. Darrow, oil-checker, Class 2B and highly obscure, was snoring with vigorous cadences.
(The end.)
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1936, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 87 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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