Читать книгу The Dark Ships - Footner Hulbert - Страница 5

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When Neill came to, he found himself lying fully dressed on the bed in his room at the Hotel Stafford. For the moment his mind was a blank; he was only aware that he felt terrible. The sun was streaming in and he glanced at his watch. Nearly twelve o’clock. He sat up, pressing his head between his hands, and presently staggered into the bathroom to get water. What has happened? he kept asking himself.

Suddenly recollection returned; Janet; the Lord Baltimore Hotel; Prescott Fanning; the taxicab. Good God! Fanning doped me! he thought. But how? how? I was watching him. The dope must have been in the wet glass when he brought it from the bathroom! O God! what a fool I was!

Neill went through his pockets. His money had not been touched, but a glance in the other side of his wallet told him that his papers had been ransacked. So Fanning knew now that he was an agent of the Treasury Department. Only one thing had been taken from his wallet—a photograph of the smiling Janet that he had snapped against a background of flowering dogwood.

When he thought of Janet he turned sick with anxiety. What had happened to her? He ran to the phone and called up the smart dress shop on Charles Street where she worked. A woman’s voice, refined and acidulous, said over the wire:

“No, Miss Emory isn’t here.”

“When will she be in?”

“I don’t expect to see her again. She sent me a telegram this morning resigning her position. She has left me flat. It is the most inconsiderate ...”

Neill was not interested in Madame Annette’s feelings. He hung up. Janet gone! He could not take it in fully. Gone? Gone?

He took down the receiver again and called up the flat that she shared with a girl pal. A sickening wait while he listened to the double buzz of the bell ringing at the other end. No answer. Remembering what Eyster had told him, he called up the City Pier to ask about the yacht Nadji. She had pulled out at seven-thirty the previous evening, he was told. At seven-thirty Fanning had been with Neill. But of course they could have joined the yacht at some other point later. Where was the yacht bound for? Through the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal, he was told, and out to sea through the Delaware Capes.

He rose and paced his room in an agony of distress, not knowing what to do then. Janet’s friend was a student at the Maryland Institute and he didn’t know how to reach her by phone.

In a moment or two his telephone rang and he ran to the instrument with a wild hope of hearing Janet’s voice over the wire. No such luck. It was the clerk downstairs saying:

“There’s a young man here wants to see you. He says you don’t know his name. I think he’s a taxi-driver.”

“Send him up,” said Neill.

It was a wizened little fellow in nondescript clothes, with an engaging grin. So far as Neill could remember, he had never seen him before. He said, grinning:

“My name is Johnny Tingstrom. I’m the guy that picked up you and the other guy at the Hanover Street entrance of the Lord Baltimore at seven-thirty last night.”

Neill seized his arm and jerked him through the door. “For God’s sake what happened?” he demanded.

“Wait a minute!” said the little fellow, laughing. “The other guy he tells me to drive to the Belvedere ...”

“I remember that.”

“When we are coming up the hill beside the Peabody he raps on the glass and says: ‘My friend has passed out cold!’ So I pulls in to the curb and gets out, and we looks at you and shakes you. You was in the gauze all right. Paralyzed. So the guy says: ‘He lives at the Stafford. We better take him home and put him to bed!’ and I says, ‘Okay, Boss.’

“So I drives to the Stafford and we take you in, one on each side. The clerks and the bellhops and the other guys in the lobby they get a big laugh seeing you brought in cold so early in the evening. So me and the other guy we lays you on your bed and beats it. I drives him to the Belvedere according to orders.

“Now I thinks there’s something funny about this business. You was perfectly steady when you got in my car. You passed out too quick. So I made up my mind to take a little time out to investigate. So after I dropped him I turns at the next corner and drives back, and I sees the guy coming out of the Belvedere and getting into a private car.”

“Did you get his license number?” asked Neill.

“Sure, but that won’t do you no good, because I looked it up myself later, and it was only a drive-yourself car, hired for the evening. It was brought back to the garage at eight-thirty by the guy who was driving it. They thought it was funny because he hadn’t had it out but little over an hour.”

“Did you get a good look at this driver?”

“Sure. And confirmed it by the description of him that they give me at the garage. A hell of a big guy with shoulders so heavy they seemed to weigh him forward....”

“I’ve seen the man. Go on.”

“From the Belvedere they drives to a house on Calvert Street and picks up a young lady. Gee! a wonderful-looking girl, Boss! She was wearing a pink dress and a black velvet wrap; light brown hair and blue eyes that looks almost black at night. There was something about her, you know, something that strikes a man down. I mean any man, even a poor hackie like me.”

“Get on! Get on!” said Neill, irritably. “I know what she looks like.”

“Pardon me, Boss. From Calvert Street they drives to the Hotel Milner on Cathedral, with me following. At the Milner they picks up a couple.”

“Describe them.”

“Well, I don’t get a very good look because I don’t dast go close. A youngish couple; the doll was all fixed up swell, but not like the young lady, too much paint. And the guy, he is just one of these ornery guys who dresses up like a sore finger and goes out at night when some other guy is paying.”

“Go on.”

“They starts downtown with me following, but at this hour the streets is almost empty and the big guy, I reckon he gets on to the fact that he’s being trailed and passes the word to his driver. They begin to speed up and turn one corner after another to try to shake me off.”

“And you lost them?”

“It was no fault of mine, Boss. I was stopped by a cop at the corner of Madison and Eutaw. It is always the way in this world; the crook gets away and the honest guy gets a ticket!” Tingstrom ruefully exhibited a pink card. “I’m on my way now to the traffic court.”

“How much will they soak you?” asked Neill.

“A fiver, I reckon.”

Neill gave him the money. “Here.”

“That certainly is white of you, Boss.”

“Not at all. It’s only fair. When you come up before the judge say nothing about my passing out, or that you were trailing another car. That won’t help us any.”

“Just as you say, Boss.”

“Give me a telephone number where I can call you if I should want you later.”

Tingstrom went away still grinning, and Neill recommenced the pacing of his room, hoping against hope that Janet would call him up. Even though they had quarreled he could not believe that she would sail away out of his life without a word. The strain of waiting soon became more than he could bear. He had to be doing something. He bathed and shaved and set out for the Maryland Institute. By asking from class to class he finally found Percita Wales, Janet’s friend.

“Where’s Janet?” he demanded.

Percita looked at him queerly and bit her lip before replying. She was a quiet, placid sort of girl who seldom went around with men. “Janet’s gone away,” she said.

“Where?”

“I don’t know.”

“You’re lying!”

Percita flushed up. “If you’re going to talk to me that way ...”

“Sorry,” said Neill. “I’m near out of my mind.” A sudden thought came to him. “Did you get a telegram?”

“Why, yes!” she said. “How did you know?”

“Let me see it.”

She fished it out of her handbag. Neill read:

Going to Canada for a few days. Don’t tell anybody and don’t worry. Writing. Janet.

Neill groaned. “Janet never sent this! It’s not her style.”

Percita’s eyes widened. “O! What do you think has happened? Do you know anything?”

“Keep your mouth shut about this until I can find out something,” said Neill. He ran out.

The telegram was a night message which had been filed in the main office on Baltimore Street at nine o’clock the previous evening. Neill took a taxi to the office and asked to be shown the original.

“Sorry. We can’t do that without proper authorization.”

“How can I get authorization?”

“If it’s a police matter, go to the police.”

Neill went out without answering. He couldn’t go to the police, for, after all, Janet might have gone with Fanning willingly, and he could not expose her to publicity. He himself was partly responsible. Their quarrel might have spurred her on to do something reckless. Girls were like that. Meanwhile she was swallowed up. Not for a moment did he believe that she had gone to Canada. Canada was the one place where he was sure she had not gone.

He went on to the Lord Baltimore, not that he expected to learn anything there, but just to be doing something. He asked for Fanning at the desk.

“Haven’t seen Mr. Fanning this morning,” said the clerk. He called up 1410. “No answer,” he said, after waiting awhile.

“Has he checked out?” said Neill.

“Checked out?” echoed the clerk, staring. “Certainly not! Mr. Fanning is a permanent guest here.”

Neill thought: Fanning is just fooling them. He’s gone all right. Left a few things in his room for a stall.

“Have you got a guest here called David Eyster?” he asked.

“Mr. Eyster has checked out.”

Neill suspected that Eyster possessed better information than he had.

“Say where he was going?” he asked.

“No information,” said the clerk.

Inquiries of the bell boys and the door men turned up nothing. Eyster apparently had slipped out of the hotel unseen.

He called up the office of the lawyer, Kettering, but again failed to find him. Mr. Kettering had gone to Washington for the day, he was told, and would not be in his office.

Neill taxied back to the Stafford because he had no place else to go. At the desk he was told that his room number had been called up twice while he was out. His heart leaped up and then sank again, fearing that he had missed an important clue. “The man left no message,” the clerk told him, “but he said he would call again.”

Neill ascended to his room and paced the floor, half crazy with the suspense of waiting. Three times he telephoned downstairs to make sure that the operator had not forgotten that he was in. When the bell finally rang, he flung himself on the instrument.

A man’s voice asked: “Is this room seven hundred four?” It was a voice Neill had never heard before. A tenor voice with a Scots burr.

“Yes.”

“Are you the guy that rents that room?”

“Yes. Who are you?”

“Never mind that. I have a message for you from a certain girl. I don’t know her name. Here’s what she looks like; brown hair; blue eyes with a kind of surprised look in them. Was wearing a pink silk dress and a black wrap.”

“Sure! Sure!” said Neill, in a shaking voice. “What’s her message?”

“She’s on the yacht Nadji in Absalom’s Harbor, and she’s in bad trouble.”

“Where’s Absalom’s?”

“Southern Maryland. Eighty miles south of Baltimore.”

“What are the circumstances? What kind of trouble ...?”

Neill heard a click as the receiver went up. The line was dead.

As he went through the lobby on his way out of the hotel, a well-meaning clerk said: “Is there anything wrong, Mr. Patton?”

Neill had no notion of confiding in him. “Why, no,” he said, easily. “What makes you ask?”

“There was a man came to the desk at eight o’clock this morning, asking for you. When I said you weren’t up he wouldn’t let me call you.”

“What sort of man?” asked Neill.

“Big fellow; roughly dressed; stoop-shouldered. I went off duty at nine or I would have told you. When I left the building he was waiting outside. The other boys told me he was waiting there all morning. Did he find you?”

“Nobody found me,” said Neill. “I think you fellows are seeing things.”

The clerk laughed, and Neill went on.

This added to his uneasiness. The stoop-shouldered man again! It looked as if he had a friend and an enemy both unknown to him. It was certainly not the stoop-shouldered man who had called him on the phone. That was a high-pitched voice, whereas the big fellow’s voice as he had heard it the night before had a subterranean rumble. Neill suspected that he had been followed all around town, and in his excitement had failed to notice it. In the street he looked sharply up and down for the big man, but he was not visible then.