The Million Dollar Mystery Part 16

"I'd give a good deal to learn."

The shadow and the glowing cigarette disappeared around the corner, and the lights in the apartment were turned on again.

"He's gone. You really think he's watching me?"

"He is watching this apartment, I know that much."

And even at that moment the watcher was watching from his vantage behind the corner.

"Suspicious!" he murmured, tossing the cigarette into the gutter.

"They're watching me for a change. I'll drop out. I know what I know.

It's a great world. It's fine to be alive and kicking on top of it."

He went on without haste and took the subway train for down-town.

"Is there any way I could get near him?" asked Braine.

"To-morrow night you might leave by the janitor's entrance. I'll keep the lights on till you're outside. Then I'll turn them off and you can follow and learn who he is."

"It's mighty important."

"Don't scowl. At your age a wrinkle is apt to remain it you once get it started."

He laughed. "Wrinkles!" She could talk of wrinkles!

"They are more important than you think. Every morning I rub out the wrinkle I go to bed with."

"I wish you could rub out the general stupidity which is wrinkling my brain. I've made three moves and failed in each. What's come over me?"

"Perhaps you've had too many successes. The wheel of chance is always turning around."

"May I smoke?"

"Thanks. At least it proves you still have some consideration for me.

You would smoke whether it was agreeable or not. But I like the odor of a good cigar. And it always helps you to think."

Braine lighted his cigar and began his customary pacing. At length he paused.

"Suppose we have a real old-fas.h.i.+oned coaching party out to the old mansion we know about?"

"And what shall we do there?"

"Make the mansion, an enchanted castle where sometimes people who enter can't get out. Do you think you could get her to go?"

"I can try."

"Olga, I must have that girl; and I must have her soon. Sometimes I find myself mightily puzzled over the whole thing. If Hargreave is alive, why doesn't he turn up now that it's practically known that his daughter presides over his household? I might understand it if I didn't know that Hargreave is really afraid of nothing. Where is the man with the five thousand, picked up at sea? What was the reason for Jones carrying that box out in broad daylight? Who is the chap watching across the street? Sometimes I believe in my soul--if I have one!--that Hargreave is playing with us, playing! Well," flinging the half consumed cigar into the grate, "the Black Hundred always goes forward, win or lose, and never forgets."

"We are a fine pair!" said the woman bitterly.

"We are exactly what fate intended us to be. They wrote you down in the book as a beautiful body with a crooked mind. They wrote me down as the devil, doomed to roam the earth's top till I'm killed."

"Killed?"

"Why, yes. I'm not the kind of chap who dies in bed, surrounded by the weeping members of the family, doctor, nurse, and priest. I'm a scoundrel; but it has this saving grace, I enjoy being the scoundrel.

Now, I'm going up to the club. There's nothing like a game of billiards or chess to smooth that wrinkle which seems to worry you."

In the great newspaper office there was a mighty racket. Midnight always means pandemonium in the city room of a metropolitan daily.

Copy boys were rus.h.i.+ng to and fro, messengers and printers with sticky galleys in their hands; reporters were banging away at their typewriters, and intermingling you could hear the ceaseless clickety-click from the telegraph room.

The managing editor came out of his office and approached the desk of the night city editor.

"Editorial page gone down?"

"Twenty minutes ago," said the night city editor.

"I wanted a stick on that Panama rumpus."

"Too late."

"Where's Jim Norton?"

"At the chamber of commerce banquet. The major is going to throw a bomb into the enemy's camp."

"Nothing on the Hargreave stuff?"

"No. Guess I'd better put that in the cubbyhole. He's dead."

"No will found yet?"

"Not a piece as big as a postage stamp."

"That will leave the girl in a tough place. No will, no birth certificate; and, worst of all, no photograph of the old man himself.

I don't see why Jim sidestepped this affair. He is the only man in town who knew anything about Hargreave."

"He hasn't given it up; but he wants to cover it on his own, turn the yarn over when he's got it, no false alarms."

"Ah! So that's the game?"

"Yes; and Jim is the sort every paper needs. When the time comes the story turns up, if there is one. Here he is now. Looks like an actor in the fourth act of a drama. Good-looking chap, though."

Norton came in through the outer gates. He was in evening clothes, top hat. A dead cigarette dangled between his lips.

"How much do you want?" asked the night city editor.

"Column and a half."

"Off with your glad rags!"