VI
It was less than an hour later when Kestner turned casually in at the Indiana sandstone front of a cheaply ornate house not far from Fifth Avenue, glanced up at its heavily curtained windows, and slipped a pass-key into the lock. Then he swung open the vestibule door, a weighty combination of plate-glass faced by a grill-work of wrought iron and backed by a panel curtain of brocaded red silk. He did this calmly and quietly, yet he breathed a little easier when once he had found the entire front of the house was in darkness.
Once inside, he came to a stop and took out his pocket flash-light. Then he stood for a minute or two, listening intently, with that abnormal nervous perceptivity which is common to the hunted and frequently acquired by the hunter. Once assured by those over-sensitised aural nerves that he was momentarily safe from interruptions, he proceeded to explore his immediate surroundings. He did this cautiously, probing with his narrow light-shaft into the gloom as delicately as a cook's broom-straw probes a rising cake.
Before him, he saw a wide hallway. The back of this hallway was bisected by a proportionately broad stairway, mounting some eighteen or twenty wide steps to a landing. From this landing it branched right and left to the floor above. At the back of the landing stood a huge grandfather's clock, and on pedestals at either side of it were two suits of what looked like fifteenth-century armour. The polished metal of these two suits, as obviously factory-made as the clock, threw back Kestner's interrogative flash in scattered pencils of light.
Brief as that survey of the place was, it proved sufficient to convey to the trespasser a conviction of the general shoddiness of its grandeur. From the rug on which he stood to the indirect-lighting alabaster-basin, suspended on gilded links, it impressed Kestner as being shoddy, as being meretricious in its splendours.
He did not wait, however, to cogitate long over this impression. He made his way straight to the stairs, circled about to the right, and under a velour portière found a pair of doors, stained to look like mahogany. These doors were locked. A minute or two with his "spider," however, soon had them open. And he was rewarded by the sight of the steel front of the bond-safe he had expected there.
So without more ado, he pushed back the pine doors flat against the wall, shut off his pocket flashlight, and let the velour drapery fall into place behind him. There, with his straining ear against the japanned steel surface, he set to work on the safe combination.
He worked for a quarter of an hour, quite without success. Then he changed his position, dropped on his knee again, and once more took up the contest between a mechanism of obdurate steel wards and dials, on the one hand, and a long-trained and supersensitised ear on the other. But a half hour had slipped away before he had conquered the combination.
He sighed with relief as the plungers slid back, in response to his pressure on the nickelled handle. He rose to his feet, swung open the heavy door, and again switched on his flash-light. Then he proceeded to search the safe.
The contents of that carefully concealed vault were eminently disappointing. There were a number of guide-books and passports and railway-maps, revealing the innocent fact that the gentleman from Saginaw was a surprisingly extensive and an apparently unwearied traveller. There was a canvas bag of French gold, and a few hundred dollars in American yellow-backs. Under these was a plate of etched steel, such as might be used for an exceptionally large business card. There were also a package or two of letters, banded and sealed, and a larger package of unmounted photographs, carefully tied together and as carefully sealed where the yellow tape-ends had been knotted together.
The one thing that caught and held Kestner's attention was a despatch-box of metal covered with an outer case of worn pig-skin. He drew this to the front of the safe, turning it over and over and flashing his light interrogatively about it. It was locked, and his "spider" was too large to be of use.
He hesitated for a moment, but only for a moment. Then he caught up the plate of etched steel, held the box under his knee, and worked the edge of the plate between the box and its lid. Then he pried with all his force. That force was sufficient to make the lock-bar yield and let the lid fall back. A moment later he was going through the contents.
The first thing on which his wavering pencil of light fell was a methodic bundle of blue-prints, each print folded to the size of a legal envelope, and each backed by several pages of typewritten matter and enigmatic rows of figures, interspersed with small designs, the nature of which the man with the flashlight had no time to determine. But what impressed him, even in that cursory survey, was the care and neatness with which each document had been prepared and filed away. On the back of each, he also discovered, stood a methodically penned descriptive-title, and he stooped closer to decipher these titles. Then he stopped and took a fuller breath, as though an unlooked-for shock had imposed on him the necessity of some prompt mental readjustment. For the documents into which he had peered at haphazard were labelled as follows:—
"Baker, Fort. Cal. (West Dept) R.R.S. Sausalito—T. M. Weaver—maps.
"Banks, Fort. Mass. Cal. (East Dept) Winthrop Branch, Boston—depend on Screven for code-wires and data.
"Barrancas, Fort. Fla. (East. Dept) Tel. and P.O. same; 8m, Pensacola—Leavett or Riley safe.
"Barry, Fort. Cal—"
Kestner would have read more, for that list most acutely appealed to his professional curiosity. But the chance to delve deeper into the package, he saw, was suddenly lost to him. His first instinctive movement was to quench his flash-light. His next was to crowd close in under the velour hanging and stand there holding his breath. There had come to him the distinct sound of a door opening and closing again, the fall of quick steps along the floor, the rustle of drapery, and the tap of hurrying heels on the polished hardwood treads of the stairway. A moment later he heard the snap of a switch. He could tell, even from his hiding-place, that the upper hall had been lighted.
Kestner waited a moment and then slipped quietly out from under his covering. He crept forward to the foot of the stairway, keeping close to the shadowy wainscoting. Then he peered up the stairs, to where the light shone strongest.
There, in front of the great old-fashioned grandfather's clock, he saw Sadie Wimpel. She had swung open the clock-door and had dropped on one knee before the large time-piece. Kestner could see her as she reached carefully into the clock, with one hand, and he knew that she had either just concealed something in that untoward hiding-place or had just taken something from it.
Kestner watched her as she rose to her feet, dusted her finger-tips by brushing them lightly together, and then carefully closed the clock-door. Then she looked quickly to the right and the left, to where the divided stairway led to the floor above. Apparently satisfied that she had been quite unobserved from that quarter, she stepped forward and turned out the light at the wall-switch on the landing.
Kestner stood listening as she made her way on up the stairs and deeper into the house. He heard a door open and close and the sound of steps and another door being opened. Then came the sound of voices, thin and faraway, from an inner room, the dim echo of a girl's laugh, an answering more guttural laugh, and then the soft thud of a closing door again.
Kestner tiptoed back to the safe, closed the steel door, restored the imitation velour drapery to its place, and started cautiously up the stairs. He moved quietly but quickly, taking the turn to the right as the girl had done. He did not come to a stop until he had passed a portière and found himself in utter darkness, a little puzzled as to which way to proceed.
As he stood there in doubt, he heard the thin sound of voices again. Then he made still another discovery. For several seconds he had remained stationary, puzzled by the faint aroma which filled the darkness about him, assailing his memory with some ghostly association which eluded explanation. Then, of a sudden, it came home to him. That indeterminate reminder of the past arose from nothing more nor less than a Russian cigarette. It was a fragrance that took him at a bound back to Newskii Prospekt and the Moika, to Contant's and Pivato's and to Mavritania and Moscow and the coffee-houses of Kherson on those hot August nights when certain Asiatic fortress-plans had been lost and in the end found again.
Kestner knew that he was sniffing a cigarette which had been bought and made in Russia. And the thin and exotic odour of that tobacco suddenly stirred him beyond reason, disturbed him more than he would have been willing to acknowledge.
He stepped gropingly toward the door from which the sound of muffled voices still came. But he could hear nothing clearly. So he crept still closer, until his body was against the door-frame itself. He was about to reach out a cautious hand and grasp the door-knob when he became suddenly and tinglingly aware that he was no longer standing in darkness. The electrics had been switched on behind him.
That discovery brought him wheeling about as though he had been shot. He found himself, even as his hand went to his hip, standing face to face with a straight-bodied and youthful-looking Japanese in a service coat. This was the valet, Kestner surmised, of whom Sadie Wimpel had spoken. And here, he further surmised, was as pretty a kettle of fish as a man could stumble into!
"You wish to see?"—the imperturbed voice inquired in excellent and most crisply enunciated English. He spoke very quietly, without surprise and without apprehension, with a fortitude that seemed reptilious in its casual intentness.
The two strangely divergent figures stood facing each other, studying each other in silent appraisal. Kestner stared at the immobile Oriental face; the oblique aloe-like eyes stared back at the scrutinising Secret Agent. Odd as those two figures were, they had one thing in common. Each man bore the consciousness of having achieved an area of authority; each man, in his own way, was plainly not unused to power. So that combative stare lasted for several seconds, and from it neither emerged in any way a victor. But to the silence there had to be an end.
"I wish to see your master," was Kestner's final response.
"For what purpose?" inquired the crisp and tacitly challenging voice.
"On confidential business," was Kestner's reply. He was pondering just what pretext would appear the most reasonable.
"But the nature, please, of that business?" was the uncompromising query.
"Are you a servant here?" demanded Kestner, in his heaviest note of authority.
"The business, please?" repeated the Oriental, prolonging the ultimate sibilant into a strangely snake-like warning hiss.
"A servant here, a butler, has been stealing from this house. I have just arrested him."
The studious slant eyes did not move from Kestner's face.
"You are, please, an officer?"
"Naturally—and some time before morning I'd like to see your master."
Again there was that silent, combative stare of appraisal and counter-appraisal and then a chair was pushed forward,
"Wait, please!"
Kestner bowed and stepped over to the chair, but he did not drop into it. He saw the slim-bodied servant cross to the door, tap the panel with his knuckles, and step inside, closing the door after him.
Kestner was used to thinking quickly, but here was a dilemma where an immediate decision seemed impossible. His first impulse was to follow that wise-eyed young Jap through the door and have it out, face to face with the Saginaw lumberman who smoked Russian cigarettes. For Kestner's plans had miscarried. Appearances, he had to confess, were dolefully against him. Yet, nothing, his next thought was, could be gained by waiting.
He stood up, looked about, and then sat down again. For the portière at the far end of the room had suddenly lifted. Through the doorway where this portière hung stepped a young woman. And that young woman was Sadie Wimpel.
She carried a tray on which stood a small chafing-dish and an electric coffee percolator. Several seconds elapsed before she actually saw Kestner. Then she came to a standstill, stooping forward a little with the weight of the tray. Her eyes slowly widened and then narrowed again, like camera lenses controlled by an invisible bulb.
"For the love o' Mike!" she said, very quietly and very slowly.
Kestner himself did not move. He sat watching the young woman as she placed the tray on the end of a table, still staring back at him all the while. Then she lifted a puzzled hand and milked the pink lobe of her ear between a meditative thumb and forefinger.
"For the love o' Mike!" she slowly and somewhat lugubriously repeated.
Kestner decided to take the bull by the horns. The situation was too full of menace for delay.
"Sadie," he said, as he took a step or two nearer her, "this is one of the big moments of your life!"
"Yes, it looks it!" was her mocking retort. "It looks it, with me last chance queered!"
"You never had a chance here," he told her. "And it won't be long before you find that out."
"So you're gay-cattin' for me now!" she derided. Kestner, ignoring her scorn, stepped still nearer, for the door had opened and the Japanese valet was stepping out through it.
"Whatever happens in there, forget we're enemies. Give me five minutes with that man and you'll understand. Wait, that's all I want you to do!"
She did not answer him, for the valet was already close to them.
"Come, please," he said with his crisp intonation and his punctiliously polite forward bend of the body.
And Kestner, wary and watchful, for all his heavy-lidded smile of indifference, crossed to the open door and stepped into the other room.