Читать книгу Moses and Mrs. Aintree - Talbot Mundy - Страница 5

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THAT liner had a clean bill of health, but did not proceed to her pier. There began to be indignation meetings wherever there was room for twenty passengers to get together. But I noticed my friend Casey of the Federal Secret Service. Casey regards the public as a herd of silly sheep with goats distributed among the herd at intervals. Regarded in the main, he doesn't love them; but I suspect that like a good sheep-dog he would grow old before his time and die of sheer disgust if deprived of his job. And wherever Casey strolls with both fists in his pockets and a look of bland indifference on his round, red face, you may safely bet there are human wolves or goats to be "fixed to rights" as he describes it.

After an hour or two he strolled into the smoking room and noticed me.

"Where are you from this time?" he demanded, sitting down beside us. "China? Borneo?"

I told him, and came back with the obvious question.

"Oh, nothing much," said Casey. "We got our man. We'd no picture of him and didn't know what name he'd travel under, but he's locked in his stateroom now with a bull to keep him company. We'll be alongside in about an hour. I hear ye've gone into the detective business with Meldrum Strange. Ye look like it! My boy, ye'll have to learn never to look interested. Unless they're clever men who're making trouble it's not interesting at all, and if they are clever ye can't afford to let 'em worry ye!"

"Judge for yourself," I answered. "This looks like a case for you, not me. You'll admit it's interesting and romantic."

"Then it certainly isn't for me! There's no romance in my business, Ramsden, my boy. I deal in card-indexes and photygraffs and thumb-prints. Romance looks pretty in the newspapers and the books o' Doctor Conan Doyle. But romance and crime don't mix, no more than the smell of onions mixes with ice-cream sodies. But I've an hour, and I'm willing to be amused. Which are ye going to do—talk elephants an' gold-mines, which I believe ye know about, or discuss this marvelous, romantic case with me like a hen discussing water with a duck?"

I preferred the farm-yard to the zoo, and made a start by introducing Brice and Allison.

"Now take his breath away," I said. "Produce the gold plate." He studied it in silence for a minute.

"A picture of Moses, eh? I've seen Jews look like him. Take a stroll with me, and I'll point out to ye twenty or thirty men who might have sat for that picture. I suspect ye've man-handled the thing so that the thumb-prints are all overlaid. What's the writing all about? Some sort o' code? Have ye a key to it? It don't look to me like Yiddish."

Casey turned the plate over and over, holding it by the edges, for he regards thumb-prints as other men do first editions.

"Never mind," he went on. "Criminologically speaking, Moses is dead. How do ye propose to get this gold plate through the customs? Have ye declared it? Who's set a value on it?"

"We haven't declared it," Brice answered. "We have a permit authorizing us to take it out of Egypt in trust. Allison and I are personally responsible for it. Without this one we might find it difficult to identify absolutely the thirty-one others that were stolen, whereas with this—"

Casey whistled. He's a man of habit like the rest of us. The first bars of the last line of the chorus of a song that was beginning to grow whiskers in the war with Spain form his invariable, only war-cry—

"There'll be a hot time—"

"Have ye traced the thief over here? Ye'd better tell me all about it. Here, I'll slip it in me pocket, and ye'll have no trouble with the customs men. Which hotel? All right, I'll give it back to ye at the Waldorf this afternoon. I'll take good care of it. Now tell me all ye know."

Brice laughed; it might be a tall order to tell all he knew.

"Well," said Casey, "I understand ye've come after thirty-wan plates like this wan. 'Tis a big country, where there's room to hide such trifles."

"Trifles!" exploded Allison. "They're as impor-r-tant as Old Testament manuscripts."

"The Hell you say! Have ye any idee who took them. That might help."

Brice mentioned Gulad's name.

"Gulad? Gulad? Let me think a minute. There was a man named Gulad. Let me see. Yes, I remember. We held him in Boston. Colored man. The English would send from Aygypt for him. He'll be sent back to where he came from. Ye can arrest him over there in Aygypt."

"Who cares about him?" snorted Allison. "We believe that the real Gulad is over here, and that either he or a Mrs. Isobel Aintree has the plates."

"Aintree? Aintree? Isobel Aintree? Where have I heard that name?" said Casey. "Oh, yes. Go ahead; tell me some more." His eyes had a harder, keener look.

"According to Mr. Ross, the representative in London of Grim, Ramsden, and Ross, she returned to the United States by way of London, bringing the real Gulad with her, and also presumably those gold plates," said Brice.

"But how did Gulad get into the States?" Casey demanded.

"It seems he's a citizen. Gulad applied for in London, and obtained an American passport. The witnesses who identified him were Isobel Aintree and two of her followers, who all swore to having known him for a number of years."

"Ah! It's easy when they've been naturalized," said Casey. "I haven't a doubt he landed safely, if he'd papers. Between you and me and that sideboard yonder, if the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. was missing overnight, I'd suspect Mrs. Aintree as soon as any wan. She has a new religion, I believe, and wan's enough. Well, we're coming alongside. I'll say a word to the customs superintendent that'll save ye time."