Val ordered Eddie to drive to the University Club and settled back on the cushions to discuss with himself this further aspect of the affair.
This man with no hands! Val was free to admit to himself that he did not like him, nor any part of him. There was something sinister about him that repelled, yet he held him with an air of hazy mystery. So it had been no dream, this vision he had had of an intruder whose arms ended in stumpy, sawed-off wrists. He had actually been in Val’s bedroom—in fact, he had stolen the books from him.
Ah, yes, the books. Val permitted himself to consider them for an instant. Evidently they held the explanation of all this mystery. Everything seemed to revolve about them. A man is killed in order that they might be recovered. Another man is drugged to sleep and the books removed from his room. There must be a powerful motive concealed behind such developments. What was it that these commonplace enough books held that made it so important that they be recovered?
And if they were really so valuable, in fact, why had Jessica Pomeroy been so willing—even anxious, it seemed—to get rid of them? Was there a message from the dead in them? Some secret that had gone to the grave with Miss Pomeroy’s father? Val shrugged his shoulders and gave it up.
Where did the man without hands come into this, anyway? Val knew now that it was the same who had drugged him and stolen the books. That being the case, probably he could cast light upon the murder of poor old Mat Masterson. In fact, undoubtedly he? could. Evidently he did not commit the murder himself—how could a man with no hands beat in another’s head with a heavy, blunt instrument? But he was in the affair, that was certain.
So was Jessica Pomeroy, for that matter. He remembered now that she had thought him from the police—that she had shown fear at mention of the murder, and fear at the advent of this man, this uncanny stranger with the wicked eyes and mouth and the mutilated limbs. Yet, not being implicated herself in the murder, of course—being nothing but an innocent bystander, as it were, why should she not hand over this man to the police and let them sift the matter to the bottom?
Val decided that she could not do that. There was far more to this affair than appeared on the surface; there were things no stranger should know about; no stranger, that is, beside himself. But he had begun not to consider himself a stranger where this beautiful girl was concerned. In the two short glimpses he had had of her, she had already taken possession of his thoughts to the exclusion of almost every other subject.
What was the mystery that surrounded her? Val wondered. Probably, in some way, she was in the power of this sinister cripple. She feared him, of that he was certain; yet she did not refuse to admit him to her apartment; and, indeed, he entered as though he belonged there—as though Jessica herself was, in some manner, his own. Could it be that he—but Val cast the thought aside. It was plain enough that Jessica loathed the man.
Well, he would learn something of all this to-morrow at dinner. He smiled as he gave himself over to reflections at what he would say to her and of what she would say to him. How she would smile at him tenderly with her eyes over the gleaming silver and shining white cloth of the dinner table at the Giltmore. He knew an alcove, somewhat away from the rest of the dining room, where they might have comparative privacy. That would be good. He could call up the Giltmore at once and reserve that table for to-morrow night.
His heart sang within him as he reflected on these matters. Here he was, young, in perfect health, beginning to enjoy life again, no financial worries of any kind except how to dispose of his abnormally large income—and now, into his life like a falling star shooting across the summer skies came Jessica Pomeroy with all her radiant beauty. And with her came mystery and adventure, murder and sudden death, messages from the dead and ten thousand dollar bills, engagements for dinner at seven thirty at the Giltmore, men with no hands . . . everything necessary, in fact, to feed the fires of romance and youth. Life was a fine proposition—there was no getting away from that. Poor old Mat Masterson!
The car swung around the comer into Fifth Avenue in its most exclusive part, and stopped at the door of the University Club. Eddie Hughes jumped off and opened the door, rousing Val from his reverie. “Eh, what?” said Val, coming to himself. “Oh, the club, to be sure.”
“Yes, sir, the club,” said Eddie impassively. “Shall I wait, sir?”
“No. Go home and tell Chong I’ll be home to dinner—and tell him to make it good, too.” This was a joke, because Chong’s cooking was the glory of Val’s apartment, and no one knew this better than the suave little Oriental himself, who worshiped Val with an abiding love that was second only to the love Eddie had for his employer.
“You needn’t come back, Eddie. I’ll try to stagger home on foot.”
“Yes, sir. Don’t stagger through any dark streets, sir,” replied Eddie evenly.
Val looked at him in inquiry.
“Why, what do you mean?” he asked. “Anything up that I don’t know about?” Eddie, as Val well knew, was not accustomed to making remarks at random to his employer.
Eddie stepped closer and whispered. There was nobody near them, so there was no reason for whispering, but it suited the moods of both men.
“There was two men, sir.” He paused and looked at Val significantly, mysteriously.
“Two men!” Val gazed at him. “You mean⸺”
“Yes,” came back Eddie. “They followed us in a taxi. I kinda thought you might of took notice, sir, but I guess you was too busy thinking. They was hanging around across the street from our last stop, with a cab handy, and when we beat it I looked back and noticed them give ’er the gas and followed.” In moments of forgetfulness Eddie always lapsed into the dialect of the east side streets where he spent his youth.
“H-mm!” Val cleared his throat importantly. So there were mysterious men following him in taxicabs. That was good. He could have wished for nothing better. There might be adventure later—there would be fighting, and blood, and kisses—how did one manage to live until the next night; to pass the time stupidly until seven thirty of the next evening at the Giltmore Hotel and⸺”
“Is that all, sir?” broke in Eddie.
“All right, Eddie. You can go. I’ll watch out for them.”
Seated at a window of the club he watched the kaleidoscope that is Fifth Avenue and pitied the passers-by who probably lived such uneventful sordid existences that nobody shadowed them, nobody made attacks on their lives; they did not know Jessica Pomeroy, to say nothing of never having made up their minds to marry said Jessica Pomeroy—which, by the way, Val had already decided to do. For some people life was very drab and lusterless.
“Some filly, that,” remarked a drawling voice next to him. He turned, roused from his reverie, and beheld Freddy Vandenburgh, who lived, thought and expressed himself only in terms of the race track. Freddy nodded to a girl getting into a machine at the curb.
“Oh, fair,” admitted Val, hesitating to admit that, with the exception of one, there were any good looking girls in the world.
“I say, Val, you’re just the man I wanted to see,” said Freddy. “You see, I’ve got a good, first hand, sure-fire tip on the third race at Belmont to-morrow and⸺”
“Well, why don’t you play it?” inquired Val, though he knew the reason as well as Freddy did.
“Well, the fact is, Val—the reason why—that is, you know, my next quarter’s allowance isn’t due for three weeks and⸺”
“What about last quarter’s allowance, Freddy?”
Freddy smiled ingenuously. “The last quarter’s! Ha! That’s rather rich—most of it went to you when it did finally roll around. So I sort of thought⸺”
“You sort of thought that maybe⸺” Val looked at him pointedly.
“Exactly!” Freddy sighed with relief. That was just what he had thought.
“Well, there’s nothing doing, Fred, old kid,” he said with decision.
“Why, what do you mean, Val?” said Freddy with alarm.
“Oh, nothing,” yawned Val, “except that the last time you had a tip that was sure to come through it cost me just fifteen hundred berries—too much money to put on a racehorse that won’t race. The poor plug is probably running yet. I⸺”
“I say, Val, I didn’t mean I want you to go in on this with me, you know,” protested Freddy. “I just thought you might help me out with a loan, seeing I’m so short myself. This is different—this is a dead-sure thing—I got it from the owner himself. This here Jessica filly⸺”
“Jessica?” asked Val, sitting up with interest.
The other nodded. “Keep it quiet, though. No use everybody being in on it. Only brings the odds up, y’know. If you’d only let me have, say, five hundred, Val⸺”
“All right, Freddy. Five hundred it is.” He pulled out his check book. A sudden thought occurred to him. Freddy had been following the races—to the great destruction of his generous quarterly allowance—for many years. Perhaps he would know. . . .
“Freddy?”
“Yes, what is it?”
“Did you ever hear of a racing man by the name of Peter J. Pomeroy?” He asked this nonchalantly, as though it was nothing to him; just something he was idly curious about. He gazed out of the window again at the passing show, pointedly careless about Freddy’s reply.
“Old Pete Pomeroy? You bet I did,” replied Freddy. “One of the finest.” Freddy knew everybody who was anybody on the track—it would have been strange if he did not know Pomeroy.
“Why do you ask, Val, ole kid?”
“Oh, no particular reason, Freddy. What kind was he?”
“Died more than a year ago, I think—saw something about his bally demise in the papers. Awf’ly decent sort, Val—one of those old southern gentlemen. Funny thing about him—used to breed and race, both. Sort of eccentric. Afraid of banks, or something like that; say, that bird used to carry as much as a hundred thousand dollars around with him, sometimes. I’ve seen that much on him more than once. Had all kinds of money and figured it was just as good to him as to a bank—and not half so much of a temptation, I guess. Anyway, everybody knew he never put his money in a bank—funny, he never was held up.
“Queer duck. Had his breeding farm somewhere down in Virginia—near Old Point Comfort, y’know—I think it was a little on the other side of Hampton; tremendous estate, and they say he had a sort of a private race track on his estate, where he used to work them out. Had a daughter, too, I think. I saw her once, five—six years ago—just out of boarding school.” Val sat up again.
“His daughter?” he repeated.
The other nodded lazily. “Yeh. Funny lookin’ little tike, too. Skinny legged, with freckles and ugly red hair—I say, what’s up?” he asked in alarm.
Val had shut up his check book and put it in his pocket.
“Nothing,” he said shortly. “Only you don’t get a nickel, that’s all.” Ugly red hair, indeed. Freckles and skinny legs. The poor, misguided simp! Had the nerve to ask him for money, too. Why⸺
“Oh, I say, Val, you know you⸺” he broke off with a whistle, and a grin spread its way across his pleasant, weak face.
“So that’s it,” he said, enlightened. “The filly, eh? Well, you know, Val, she was only a kid when I saw her,” he said ingratiatingly. “You know, that kind usually grow up into awf’ly fine looking girls. In fact, come to think of it, this girl’s eyes were great—nicest I ever saw—white star on her forehead and—er, I mean, nice skin, and the freckles were really very fetching, if you know what I mean. She was⸺”
Val laughed. “Freddy, you old hypocrite, you win! Only the next time you say a girl has red hair think it over carefully before you open that fool mouth of yours. That nearly cost you five hundred dollars, and cheap at the price, too. Now, this Jessica horse—how about placing a little bet on her for me, too?”