The Washington times., 1913-03-27
CHAPTER II.
The First Covert.

HEN l walked into my office
N{ about $50 o'clock the next
" morning. 1 was greeted by my
clerk with the information
that Jeffrey had been trying to get me
and wanted me to call him UP as soon
as came in. While we were talking
the phone bell rang and Madeline called
to say that Jeffrey had been trying
to get me at the house. So. without
stopping to take of my overcoat or
hat. l called up his studio.
I heard him unhook the receiver be-
fore the bell had stopped ringing. and
knew he must have been waiting by
the instrument for my call. The quality
of his voice shocked me. 1t was
harassed, uneven. keyed up clear TO
the breaking point with unnatural ex-
citement.
I'm awfulIy sorry to trouble you, old
man." he said. Its a shame tc break
UP your work right at the beginning of
the day. but 1 guess you'll have to come
to the rescue"
What's the matter?'' asked.
do You mind coming up? 1 can't
leave here for an hour or two. and I
simply can't talk over the phone
utes," said /. Hold hard till I get
there"
With that 1 hung up, told my clerk I
probably shouldn't be back that morn
ing, and started uptown. I'd have been
wise, I suppose, to put brief In my
pocket to read on the way up-some-
thing to keep me from speculating and
had some data to go on. But I doubt
IL anything could have Kept my mind
of him.
Jeffrey wasn't one of my Oldest
friends-not one of that litfle group of
people all Of us carry along In dimin-
ishing numbers through lie from boy
hood-people whose circumstances and
relations we know almost instintively;
people whose world we were born a
part of. Friends of this class we are
apt to think we know all about, And.
as far as externals go, we do. Really.
we are likely to know very little indeed
about their interior Qualities-their soul
machinery-and We live along side by
side with them for years, in a state OF
partial or sometimes total misunder-
standing.
The friendship between Jeffrey and me
was the other sort. We were both
grown-up men when we first laid eyes
on each other, and the thing that made
our friendship was sort Of instructive
sympathy-a mutual ability to under
stand each other-that had carried us
across the preliminaries of mere ac-
Quaintance in one jump.
The result Of this was that, so far
as externals went, We knew relatively
little about each other. It had never
seemed worth while to stop to tell. when
there were so many more important
and interesting things to talk about
jeffrey, / was sure. couldn't have fur
nished would-be biographer with any
connected account of my existence pre-
vious to our meeting three or four years
ago, and / was in the same case with
him.
1 knew he was a brilliantly successful
portrait painter: / knew, in a frag-
mentary way, that as very young
man he had supported himself as a
newspaper artist. ! knew he had a per-
fectly enormous list Of casual ac-
quaintances-people from every walk of
life, way down to the very lowest strata
of the underworld.
/ have described him heretofore as a
man of pure genius-a man who relied
further than any one else / have ever
known, on queer set of intuitions that
seemed to begin where ordinary logical
processes of thought left off He claim
ed, you may remember, A special extra
sense for crime; said he could detect
crime on a mans soul as easily as /
could detect whisky on his breath.
1t was a perfectly unbelievable claim,
Of course, and / shauld have treated II
as fanctful, except for the uncanny dem
onstration of ii which he had given in
% n,
Marshall and the Whispering Man. JEFF
rey had solved that and had done it..
SO far as any of us could see. by the
exercise Of this same sheer intuition.
which he claimed. Either by that or
by the blindest luck in the world. And
life.
In a word. knew the man himself
as intimately, perhaps. as ] knew any
one in the world, except Madeline But
IL l..
couldn't even have sworn that he had
no brothers or sister. though had never
heard of any. A perfect stranger might
have come to me and told me any sort
Of weird or tragic adventure as having
belonged to Jeffrey's past somewhere,
and / couldn't have contradicted him.
] did know this, though: he was the
sort OF person adventures happen to
imaginative, possessed occasionally BY
powerful impulses; full OF that strange
quality we call. or the lack of better
word, temperament Given the right
combina ton of circumstances and the
right incentive. and Jeffrey might have
done almost anything.
So / will have to confess that as
rode uptown on my way 10 his studio.
sudden. unexpected difficulty, my
thoughts ran riot. ] conjectured
whole chamber OF horrors about him
terrible hands reaching out of that
blank past of his and snatching at
him. I'd have said. when l knocked
at his studio door, that nothing ! could
find on the other side of 1t would sur
prise me.
But what / did find did surprise me,
and that was nothing-nothing out of
the ordinary. ] mean. There was TO
yelled lady in black. looming tragi-
caIIy In dark corner: no mysterious
communication; no spot-oh! I had
been ready for anything!-of blood on
the studio floor. Simply everything as
l had always seen II, and Jeffrey him.
self-quite his old self smiling apollo
getically and holding out his hand to
II ts,sphsasd you net y coma" ~