VII
It was three days later that Kestner talked with the Department at Washington.
"That was good work rounding up Wallaby Sam," said the chief's voice over the wire. "But what we want is that Lambert woman."
"It will take time," announced Kestner.
"I don't care what it takes," said the voice on the thread of steel that brought the ear of Manhattan leaning close to the lips of Washington. "We've got to gather her in. Casey reports another Indian Head ten from your district!"
"That Indian Head ten never came from the Lambert gang," protested Kestner. "I talked it over with Casey and put Wilsnach on the case. It's the work of a Williamsburg Italian named Carlesi, cheap photo-engraving with brush-work colouring and hand shading. And Wilsnach ought to have Carlesi rounded up before midnight."
"But you know what it means to us, having this woman and her old man running loose!"
"They're still loose, of course, but they'd never do cheap work like Carlesi's. You can always be sure of that. If they break bad paper, they break it big!"
"Precisely! And that's why we've got to get them and get them quick. That First Colonial Hundred was one of the neatest counterfeits that ever went under the glass. And three banks had O.K'd it before it was turned in!"
"I'll do my best," answered Kestner, "but you'll have to let me do it my own way."
"It's your case," assented the Chief's voice.
It was at the same moment that Kestner meditatively hung up the receiver that a knock sounded on his door. He crossed the room and peered into his fan-light projecting-mirror with its minute camera obscura attachment (an invention of his own) and saw that his caller was nothing more than a messenger-boy in uniform. Before he could turn the key and open the door, however, the knock was repeated.
Kestner eyed that boy keenly as he stepped inside. The occupant of the room even yawned and stretched himself, with an air of indifference, but made his scrutiny still more searching. For the sealed envelope which he stared down at bore Kestner's own name, to say nothing of this new address of his which he had supposed unknown to the rest of the world.
He signed for the message, opened it, and motioned for the boy to sit down. At the same moment Kestner backed against the door and quietly turned the key in the lock. For one quick glance had already carried back to consciousness the startling fact that the sheet of paper which he held was signed by Maura Lambert herself.
The message which he found himself reading was both explicit and brief. "Could I see you at once?" it read. "I ask only because it is most urgent and most important. Maura Lambert."
After studying this message for a second time Kestner stood submitting the bearer of it to still another of his apparently impersonal and abstracted scrutinies. Yet in that brief second or two the Secret Service man had taken in every detail of that youth's uniform and appearance, from the celluloid number-plate on his cap to the worn-down heels of his shoes.
His final decision was in no way a contradiction of his first impression. That A.D.T. boy was authentic enough. But somewhere behind that message, he felt, there was still some trickery, some hidden trap which it was his business to fathom.
"Where did this note come from?" was Kestner's casual inquiry.
"Fr'm th' Alambo," was the equally casual reply.
"What's that?" demanded Kestner.
"Squab-dump!" was the laconic answer.
Then seeing he was not understood, the uniformed youth added: "It's one o' them burlap-lined apartment-hotels wit' all th' onyx in th' office an' all the Tenderloin in th' uppers!"
"You mean it's not the right place for a young woman?"
"Gee; it's full o' th'm! An' I guess it's as good 's any other theatrical dump along th' Way."
"Where is it?"
"Jus' above Longacre Square."
"And where did you get this note?"
"From a woman in number seventeen."
"What did she look like?"
The youth appraised his interrogator, looking him up and down with listless yet uncannily sagacious eyes.
"She was a peach," he finally asserted. "But, say, she wasn't th' cheap kind!"
"Then the other kind there are cheap?"
"They's all got a sprinklin' o' broads, them second-raters,—'nd I guess th' Alambo ain't no Martha Washington."
"What did that woman look like?" repeated Kestner.
The youth struggled through a description which Kestner was able to organise into a sufficiently convincing picture of Maura Lambert. But the mystery of the situation only increased. There was a touch of novelty in having the enemy one had pursued half way round the world suddenly turning about and soliciting an interview. And it was equally disturbing to the established order of things to find Maura Lambert in an environment as unsavoury as the Alambo promised to be, for Lambert, whatever his activities, had always sheltered his youthful "scratcher" behind at least a façade of respectability.
"Was that woman alone when she gave you this note?" pursued Kestner.
"Sure," was the answer.
"Did she tell you to bring back an answer?"
"Yep! An' give me a bone extra f'r bein' quick!"
Kestner pondered the situation for a moment or two.
"How soon will you be back at the Alambo?"
The youth took off his cap and examined a second message stowed away there.
"'S soon as I beat it down to th' McAlpin an' back," was his answer.
"That means inside an hour?" asked Kestner, as he sat down and began writing on a sheet of paper.
"Yep," answered the boy.
Kestner's written reply was as brief as the message that prompted it. He merely said:
"I'll be glad to see you and since you say it's urgent, the sooner the better."
He sealed the note, quietly crossed the room to the locked door, turned the key, and stepped out into the hall. He seemed relieved to find that hallway quite empty.
"Wait here for me," he called back to the boy.
The wait, to the listless-eyed youth, was not a long one. But in that brief space of time a message had gone down for a taxi-cab and a federal plain-clothes man had received instructions to shadow an A.D.T. messenger to the Hotel McAlpin and from the McAlpin back to the Alambo. But that boy was to be in no way interfered with.
Kestner handed his message to the waiting youth, and with it a dollar bill.
"Now are you sure that second message is for the McAlpin?" he inquired.
For answer, the youth produced the message itself. It was a violet-coloured envelope, redolent of patchouli, and inscribed with a handwriting that was almost childish in its formlessness.
One glance at it was enough, and the next moment Kestner was pushing the boy half-humorously towards the open door. Once that door was closed again, however, Kestner's diffidence had disappeared. In two minutes he had made himself ready for the street, and in another two minutes he was in a taxicab speeding across the city in the direction of the Alambo.
It was a case, he felt, where nothing was to be lost by taking the initiative. He had long since learned, in his warfare against the criminal, that there was always an advantage in the unexpected. Instead of quietly waiting for Maura Lambert to come to him, whatever that visit might signify, he was going to her. And in work such as his, he reassured himself, it was worth something, now and then, to trump an enemy's ace.