Читать книгу The Adventuress - Arthur B. Reeve, Brander Matthews - Страница 10

WE could only stare from Burke to Hastings, startled at the magnitude of the affair as it developed so rapidly.

For a moment Hastings was at a loss, then darted quickly into a telephone-booth to call up his office on long distance for confirmation of the news.

As we waited I happened to glance out into the lobby. At the far end, in an angle, to my surprise I saw Shelby and Paquita. Evidently she had hovered about, waiting for a chance to find him alone, and had at last succeeded.

Already Kennedy and Burke had seen them.

Paquita was talking earnestly. Of course, we could not overhear what was said, and they were so placed that even if we moved closer to them they would be likely to see us. Still, from our corner we could observe without being observed.

It seemed as if Paquita were making a desperate effort to attract Shelby, while, on his part, it was quite evident that he was endeavouring to get away.

Paquita was indeed a fascinating figure. From what I had already observed, a score of the young fellows about the Harbour House would have given their eyes to have been in Shelby’s place. Why was he seeking so to avoid her? Was it that he did not dare to trust himself with the little dancer? Or was there some hold that she had over him which he feared?

The interview had not proceeded long when Shelby deliberately seemed to excuse himself and walked away. Paquita looked after him as he hurried off, and I would have given much to have been close enough to observe her expression. Was it one of fury, of a woman scorned? At any rate, I would have wagered that it boded no good for Shelby.

I turned to say something to Kennedy and found that he was looking in another direction. We were not the only observers. From a window outside on the porch the sallow-faced man was also watching. As Shelby walked away the man seemed to be very angry. Was it the anger of jealousy because Paquita was with Shelby or was it anger because Shelby had repulsed her advances? Who was the fellow and why was he so interested in the little dancer and the young millionaire?

Hastings rejoined us from the telephone-booth, his face almost pale.

‘It’s a fact,’ he groaned. ‘They have been trying to reach me all day, but could not. The secret of the telautomaton stolen—the secret that is too terrible to be in the hands of anyone except the Government. How did you hear of it?’ he asked Burke.

Burke answered slowly, watching the expression on Hastings’s face. ‘When the cashier of the company arrived at the office this morning he found the safe had been rifled. It seems an almost incomprehensible thing—as you will understand when you see it for yourself. The cashier telephoned at once to the Secret Service in the Custom-House, and I jumped out on the case. You did not go to your own office. I did a little hasty deduction—guessed that you might have gone to see Kennedy. At any rate I wanted to see him myself.’

Kennedy interrupted long enough to tell about the revolver-shot and the attack on Hastings at our very door.

‘Whew!’ exclaimed Burke, ‘just missed you. Well,’ he added, with a dry sort of humour, ‘I missed you, too, and decided to come out here on the train. Kennedy, you must go back to town with me and look at that safe. How anybody could get into it is a mystery beyond me. But the telautomaton is gone. My orders are simple—get it back!’

For a moment neither Kennedy nor Hastings spoke. It was most peculiar—the plans gone in Westport, the model gone in New York.

‘Who could have stolen the model?’ I asked finally. ‘Have you any theory, Burke?’

‘A theory, yes,’ he replied slowly, ‘but no facts to back it. I suppose you know that the war has driven out some of the most clever and astute crooks that Paris, Vienna, London, and other capitals ever produced. The fact is that we are at present in the hands of the largest collection of high-grade foreign criminals that has ever visited this country. I think it is safe to say that at present there are more foreign criminals of high degree in New York and at the fashionable summer resorts than could be found in all the capitals of Europe combined. They have evaded military service because at heart they are cowards and hate work. War is hard work. Then, there is little chance of plying their trade, for their life is the gay life of the cafés and boulevards. Besides, America is the only part of the world where prosperity is reigning. So they are here, preying on American wealth. Suppose someone—some foreign agent—wanted the telautomaton. There are plenty of tools he could use for his purpose in obtaining it.’

The countenance of the sallow-faced man recurred to me. It was an alarming possibility that Burke’s speculation raised. Were we really not involved in a pure murder case, but in the intricacies of the machinations of some unknown power?

Burke looked at his watch, then again at Kennedy. ‘Really, I think you ought to go back to town,’ he reiterated, ‘and take the case up there.’

‘And leave these people all here to do as they please, cover up what they will?’ objected Hastings, who had tried to prevent just that sort of thing by bringing Kennedy out post-haste.

‘My men are perfectly competent to watch anything that goes on at Westport,’ returned Burke. ‘I have them posted all about and I’m digging up some good stuff. Already I know just what happened the night before the conference. That cabaret dancer, Paquita, motored out here and arrived about the time the Sybarite cast anchor. She met Shelby Maddox at the Casino and they had a gay supper party. But it ended early. She knew that Marshall Maddox was coming the next day. I know he had known her in the city. As to Shelby we don’t know yet. The meeting may have been chance or it may have been prearranged.’

I recalled not only the little incident we had just seen, but the glance of jealousy Paquita had given Shelby when she saw him with Winifred. What did it mean? Had Shelby Maddox been using Paquita against his brother, and now was he trying to cast her off? Or was Burke’s theory correct? Was she a member of a clever band of super-criminals, playing one brother against the other for some ulterior end? Was the jealousy feigned or was it real, after all?

‘What I am endeavouring to do now,’ went on Burke, ‘is to trace the doings of Paquita the night of the murder. I cannot find out whether she came out at the invitation of Marshall Maddox or not. Perhaps it was Shelby. I don’t know. If it was Marshall, what about his former wife? Did he suppose that she would not be here? Or didn’t he care?’

‘Perhaps—blackmail,’ suggested Hastings, who, as a lawyer, had had more or less to do with such attempts.

Burke shook his head. ‘It might have been, of course, but in that case don’t you think you, as Maddox’s lawyer, would have heard something of it? You have not—have you? You don’t know anything about her?’

Burke regarded the lawyer keenly, as though he might be concealing something. But Hastings merely shook his head.

‘Mr Maddox did not confide his weaknesses to me,’ Hastings remarked coldly.

‘If we are going back to the city,’ returned Burke, cheerfully changing the subject, to the evident surprise of Hastings, ‘I must find my operative, Riley, and let him know what to do while we are gone.’

‘Look,’ muttered Kennedy under his breath to us and nodding down the lobby.

Shelby Maddox had sought and found Winifred, and was chatting as animatedly as if there had been no Paquita in the world less than five minutes before.

As we watched, Hastings remarked: ‘It was only the day before the murder that Shelby first met Winifred Walcott. I believe he had never seen his brother-in-law’s sister before. She had been away in the West ever since Frances Maddox married Walcott. Winifred seems to have made a quick conquest.’

Remembering what had happened before, I took a quick look about to see whether anyone else was as interested as ourselves. Seeing no one, Kennedy and I strolled down the corridor quietly.

We had not gone far before we stopped simultaneously. Nestled in the protecting wings of a big wicker chair was Paquita, and as we watched her she never took her eyes from the couple ahead.

What did this constant espionage of Shelby mean? For one thing, we must place this little adventuress in the drama of the Maddox house of hate. We moved back a bit where we could see them all.

A light footfall beside us caused us to turn suddenly. It was Mito, padding along on some errand to his master. As he passed I saw that his beady eyes had noted that we were watching Shelby. There was no use to retreat now. We had been observed. Mito passed, bestowing a quick sidewise glance on Paquita as he did so. A moment later he approached Shelby deferentially and stood waiting a few feet away.

Shelby looked up and saw his valet, bowed an excuse to Winifred, and strode over to where Mito was standing. The conversation was brief. What it was about we had no means of determining, but of one thing we were certain. Mito had not neglected a hasty word to his master that he was watched. For, an instant later when Mito had been dismissed, Shelby returned to Winifred and they walked deliberately out of the hotel across a wide stretch of open lawn in the direction of the tennis-courts. To follow him was a confession that we were watching. Evidently, too, that had been Shelby’s purpose, for as he chatted he turned half-way, now and then, to see if they were observed. Again Mito padded by and I fancied I caught a subtle smile on his saturnine face. If we were watching, we were ourselves no less watched.

There was nothing to be gained in this blind game of hide-and-seek, and Kennedy was evidently not yet prepared to come out into the open. Paquita, too, seemed to relinquish the espionage for the moment, for she rose and walked slowly toward the Casino, where she was quickly joined by some of her more ardent admirers.

I glanced at Kennedy.

‘I think we had better go back to Burke and Hastings,’ he decided. ‘Burke is right. His men can do almost as much here as we could at present. Besides, if we go away the mice may play. They will think we have been caught napping. That telautomaton robbery is surely our next big point of attack. Here it is first of all the mystery of Marshall Maddox’s death, and I cannot do anything more until the coroner sends me, as he has promised, the materials from the autopsy. Even then I shall need to be in my laboratory if I am to discover anything.’

‘Your sallow-faced friend seemed quite interested in you,’ commented Burke as we rejoined him.

‘How’s that?’ inquired Kennedy.

‘From here I could see him, following every move you made,’ explained the Secret Service man.

Kennedy bit his lip. Not only had Mito seen us and conveyed a warning to Shelby, but the dark-skinned man of mystery had been watching us all. Evidently the situation was considerably mixed. Perhaps if we went away it would really clear itself up and we might place these people more accurately with reference to one another.

Burke looked at his watch hurriedly. ‘There’s a train that leaves in twenty minutes,’ he announced. ‘We can make the station in a car in fifteen.’

Kennedy and I followed him to the door, while Hastings trailed along reluctantly, not yet assured that it would be safe to leave Westport so soon.

At the door a man stepped up deferentially to Burke, with a glance of inquiry at us.

‘It’s all right, Riley,’ reassured Burke. ‘You can talk before them. One of my best operatives, Riley, gentlemen. I shall leave this end in your charge, Val.’

‘All right, sir,’ returned the Secret Service operative. ‘I was just going to say, about that dark fellow we saw gum-shoeing it about. We’re watching him. We picked him up on the beach during the bathing hour. Do you know who he is? He’s the private detective whom Mrs Maddox had watching her husband and that Paquita woman. I don’t know what he’s watching her yet for, sir, but,’ Riley lowered his voice for emphasis, ‘once one of the men saw him talking to Paquita. Between you and me, I wouldn’t be surprised if he was trying to double-cross Mrs Maddox.’

Hastings opened his eyes in wonder at the news. As for me, I began to wonder if I had not been quite mistaken in my estimate of Irene Maddox. Was she the victim, the cat’s-paw of someone?

Riley was not finished, however. ‘Another thing before you leave, Mr Burke,’ he added. ‘The night watchman at the Harbour House tells me that he saw that Japanese servant of Shelby Maddox last night, or, rather, early this morning. He didn’t go down to the dock and the watchman thought that perhaps he had been left ashore by mistake and couldn’t get out on the Sybarite.

‘That’s impossible,’ cut in Hastings quickly. ‘He was on the yacht last night when we went to bed and he woke me up this morning.’

‘I know it,’ nodded Riley. ‘You see, I figure that he might have come off the yacht in a row-boat and landed down the shore on the beach. Then he might have got back. But what for?’

The question was unanswered, but not, we felt, unanswerable.

‘Very well, Riley,’ approved Burke. ‘Keep right after anything that turns up. And don’t let that Paquita out of sight of some of the men a minute. Goodbye. We’ve just time to catch the train.’

Hastings was still unreconciled to the idea of leaving town, in spite of the urgency of the developments in New York.

‘I think it’s all right,’ reassured Kennedy. ‘You see, if I stayed I’d have to call on an agency, anyhow. Besides, I got all I could and the only thing left would be to watch them. Perhaps if I go away they may do something they wouldn’t dare otherwise. In that case we have planted a fine trap. You can depend on it that Burke’s men will do more for us, now, than any private agency.’

Hastings agreed reluctantly, and as we hurried back to New York on the train Kennedy quizzed Burke as he had Hastings on the journey out.

There was not much that Burke could add to what he had already told us. The robbery of the safe in the Maddox office had been so cleverly executed that I felt that it would rank along with the historic cases. No ordinary yeggs or petermen had performed this operation, and as the train neared the city we were all on edge to learn what possibly might have been uncovered during the hours that we had been working on the other end of the case out at Westport.