I
Kestner waited until the chamber-maid had finished putting his newly acquired room to rights. He waited still another moment or two until he heard the click of her pass-key in a room farther down the hall. Then he locked the door with its safety-latch, opened his suit-case and from it lifted out a coil of insulated wire, a dry-cell little bigger than a cigarette case, and a telephonic helmet made up of a band of spring-steel with two small watch-case receivers attached to its ends. Then he went to the window, opened it, and from an awning hook on the outside unwound the loose ends of two insulated wires.
These he drew in over the sill, shutting the window down on them and carefully connecting them with the ends of wire which he had taken from his suit-case. Having drawn down the window-blinds, he switched on the electric lights, swung an arm chair about, so that his back would be to the electrolier, and placed on the table beside him a pile of morning papers and a copy of the "Isle of Penguins."
He next adjusted the helmet to his head, fitting the microphones over his ears. He seated himself in his chair, with one knee crooked leisurely over the leather-covered arm. Thereupon he took out a cigar, lighted it, and lay back in his chair calmly and contentedly perusing one of the morning papers which he had picked up from the table beside him.
Kestner had not read more than a quarter of a column before he let the paper drop in his lap, and sat listening, with his head a little on one side. Thinly but distinctly, along the thread of silk-covered copper which connected the receiver at his ear with the dictophone transmitter concealed behind the window-curtains in the room below, came the sound of a piano. Kestner, as he continued to listen, recognised the air. It was Rubinstein's Barcarole, and it was being extremely well played.
The piano-music continued, stopped, and began again. Then still again it stopped. Kestner, as he dropped his paper, caught the distinct and unmistakable sound of a door being closed.
Then came the sound of voices, thin but clear, over that connecting thread of copper. And with the opening words, Kestner knew it was Cherry Dreiser alias Sadie Wimpel alias Puggy Mason who was speaking.
"How's that for stealin' a base?" demanded the pert and slightly nasal voice of the shover for the Lambert counterfeiters. Her inquiry was followed by a chuckle of satisfaction.
"Are you sure you weren't noticed?" It was Maura Lambert's voice that sounded next, deeper and fuller-noted than the other woman's.
"Dead sure! I beat it up to the seventh floor; then I walked down three. An' when I meets a floor-skirt on the stairs I brush by with a Chilcoot stare that leaves her frozen to the marble!"
"But why have you kept us waiting and worrying so long?" asked the more solemn voice.
"Ain't a girl like me gotta look out for herself? Ain't I hep to what's goin' to happen to this gang?"
"Nothing can happen to this gang, Sadie, so long as we stick together!" was the answer.
"Can't it? With that sleepy-eyed slooth fr'm over the water doggin' us ev'ry step we take! Oh, I see the Gov'nor's finish, an' I see it close! Why, I can't slide into a pool-room an' lay a bet without havin' some one lookin' over me shoulder an' countin' me change! An' this shadow business is sure givin' me the Willies! Doggone it, I want somethin' I can freeze onto, this time. I've always been fooled. That Count dub I married in Monte Carlo turned out to be a bank-sneak. That Hinkle man I loved like a father was nothing but a mail-pouch thief lookin' for a capper. That American photographer who wanted me to hit the state-fair circuits with him had cooked up a panel-game so's I could go through a haytosser's clothes while he took his photograph in a cow-boy rig-out! They was grafters, dearie, ev'ry last one o' them, an' I was hungerin' for a Harlem flat and the simple life!"
"Then what do you intend to do?" asked the deeper voice, none too sympathetically.
"Why, I inten' to cotton to that bunch o' rhino an' make hay while the sun shines! D'ye get me? I've got a cherub-faced old guy from Saginaw, who's made a million out o' Michigan lumber an' never learnt how to spend it. I'm going to kindergarten him into the trick o' movin' through the white lights! I'm goin' to mason-jar this sucked orange stuff an' freeze onto that old guy. I'm sick o' bein' a dip an' capper and livin' like a street cat!"
"And then what?"
"I'm thinkin' some of starrin', if things come my way. An' that old geezer is certainly crazy about me. He's got dropsy, an' a face like a Dutch cheese, but he's just famishin' for a female who'll be half-way decent to him an' tote him aroun' to the Broadway shows an' help him with his pinochle on rainy nights! A girl's always got a better chance with an old guy like that. They kind o' git grateful. So I'm goin' to kick in when the kickin's easy!"
"Cherry, you can't do a thing like this! I couldn't believe it of you!"
The other girl laughed.
"Wait until you see me steam down the White Lane dolled up like a Longacre Squab! That'll be better'n gettin' chased off the map by a bunch o' federal flatties, I guess. Why, I gotta do it, to save me neck! I've been sufferin' from chronic cold feet ever since this gink Kestner landed on us! I ain't got the nerve to break a plugged nickel for a postage-stamp without gettin' a chill wonderin' who's goin' to spring on me with the wrist irons! An' once they get your finger-prints down at headquarters, what chanct has a girl got? You can slide across the pond, an' blacksnake round the Loov an' take in early mass at the Madeleine. But I can't get away with that foreign stuff. First place, I git balled up on the languidge. Then I get so homesick I could fall on the neck of ev'ry Cook's tourist that buys American white-wear at the Gallerie Lafayette! An' I'm canned for Monte Carlo, after that badger coup with old Novikoff!"
"Then what do you intend to do?"
"Me ? Why, I'm goin' to sour on this crime stuff an' reform. Do what I've been tellin' you—have a nice old Uncle Updyke an' an electric runabout an' start studyin' for the stage. No, dearie, this ain't no repentance act I'm puttin' over. But I've got the winter to think of. An' I'm tired o' being chased across the map by ev'ry low-brow slooth who owns a nickel lodge-pin. I wanta rest. I'm dead sick o' needle-pumpers an' hop-nuts an' crooks an' dips and con guys. An' I'm dead sick o' the Gov'nor an' his day-dream about makin' eighty million o' counterfeit an' gettin' away with it! It can't be done, dearie. It can't! An' take a little tip from Sadie, an' beat it while the goin's good!"
"And what could I gain by that?" was the quiet-toned and half-indignant inquiry of the other woman.
"You'd get over havin' heart-failure ev'ry time you hear a bell ring! Hully gee, woman, don't you know that shovin' the queer is a felony in this country an' good for fifteen years with hard labour? D'you expect me to keep me beauty an' have a thing like that to brood over? It's too wearin'! An' if I was in your place, with your looks, I'd sure tie a tin can to that nutty parent o' yours! I'd get a smooth talker an' go into suburban real estate or open a swell little bucket-shop down in the Wall Street distric'!"
"Cherry, you're talking nonsense, and you know it!" reproved the fuller-toned voice.
"No, I ain't. An' I mean it. It don't take me a year to crack wise to a fightin' chance. You're a boob to stick to a nut who hasn't a show in the runnin'. He's in bad, an' you know it. An' that guinney Morello's as bughouse as the Gov'nor hisself. He'll hang the Indian sign on you. An' when them dagoes git to makin' love, I want somethin' to back up against so I won't git a knife in the back for stallin' him off when his zooin' bug gits workin' overtime! They ain't safe, dearie! An' he's so stuck on you he'd file his way into Sing Sing if they sent you up!"
"Cherry, you're not telling me the truth about that lumberman from Saginaw!"
"So help me Mike, dearie, I got that old pineland fossil so he'll eat out o' my hand! An' I breeze into that house o' his just off the upper Avenoo an' tell the butler I want covers laid for four an' holler for a Clover Club quick before I pass away! Why, all I gotta do is dust the cigar ashes off that ol' guy's vest-front an' feed the gold-fish!"
"And what is this going to lead to?" was the other woman's question. "What do you expect to get out of it?"
"I expec' to git took care of," was the deliberate answer, "an' I expec' to eat regular an' to be able to hold my head up when I walk into a Winter Garden first night and show them lobster-palace broads what a year in Paris can do for a girl who keeps her eyes open!"
"And you intend to blackmail that ridiculous old man, the same as you blackmailed Novikoff and—"
"Have a heart, woman, have a heart!" broke in the other voice. "I've never so much as lifted a baroque-pearl out o' that old guy's stud-set! I ain't even pinched a coffee spoon. I've got a bigger scheme than that, an' a neater one, an' I'm goin' to land it, or I'm all to the Camembert as a Lambert gang capper!"
"You mean that when you make your haul it will be a big one?"
"Nix on the rough stuff, lady! I ain't goin' to loot no Fift' Avenoo home an' I ain't goin' to have a van back up to the curb an' crack that ol' geezer's faith in me. Not on your life. I'm goin' to make this a home run or nothin'! I ain't goin' to crab a nickel from him. I'm goin' to make that ol' man marry me, an' I'm goin' to make him do it of his own free will!"