MR. PAUL ZIMMERLEIN'S telephone rang shortly before midnight. He lived in a small, exclusive hotel on one of the crosstown streets, near Fifth Avenue. A brief conversation over the wire ensued. A few minutes later he appeared at the desk in the office downstairs, dressed for the street. He was very angry.
“Why was I not informed when I came in this evening that Mr. Prince had called up and was expecting me to join his party at the Helvetia for supper, Mr. Rogers? He rang me up at nine o'clock and instructed you to put the message in my box.”
“I have no recollection of—”
“Of course you haven't. You never do have any recollection. None of you. I shall take the matter up with the manager in the morning, Rogers. It has happened before. The least you could have done was to stick the message in my box.”
“I will inquire of the telephone operator. The regular boy is off tonight. If there has been any carelessness, Mr. Zimmerlein, it has been with her,—not with us, sir,” said the clerk, with the servility that is sometimes mistaken for civility on the part of hotel clerks.
“I haven't time to listen to her excuses. They have been waiting for me since eleven o'clock, and I have been in my room since ten.”
“I know, sir. It was a little before ten when you came in.”
“Well, be good enough to investigate. I warn you that I intend to complain in the morning.”
“I'm sorry, sir,” began the clerk, but Zimmerlein was already on his way to the street.
The night-clerk scowled after him, and then retired behind the key-rack to consult the operator.
“What's the matter with you?” he demanded. “Zimmerlein's sore as a crab about not getting a message that came in at nine,—he says,—and he 's going to raise hell about it.”
“Nobody called him up,—not till just a few minutes ago. It's the old gag. I heard what the guy said to Zimmerlein,—about calling up at nine and giving directions and all that bunk,—and I had to hold my tongue between my teeth to keep from butting in and telling him he was a liar, and—”
“Tell that to Mr. Coxhorn in the morning,” broke in the clerk, and moved languidly away. That was the extent of his investigations.
The Helvetia was a brisk five minutes' walk from Zimmerlein's hotel. He did it in three.
“Is Mr. Prince entertaining in his rooms or in the cafÉ?” he inquired at the desk.
“In the cafÉ, Mr. Zimmerlein.”
“Thanks.”
Fifteen minutes later, he sauntered up to a table at which a party of seven or eight people were seated. Nodding and smiling in his most amiable manner to the ladies, he laid his hand on the shoulder of one of the men.
“Sorry, old man, but they didn't give me your message. I should have been sitting on the doorstep waiting for you, if I'd known you really wanted me. Thanks for calling me up again. It was good of you, and I'll try to make up for all the lost time and trouble by being as agreeable as I know how to be.” He added an encircling smile. The ladies appeared to cheer up measurably.
The man addressed, a huge individual with a tremendous expanse of white shirt front, betrayed not the slightest sign of surprise or confusion. With all the profound affability of a far-Westerner, he made the newcomer welcome. If his steel-grey eyes bored inquiringly into Zimmerlein's for the briefest instant, no one else at the table was aware of the fact. Nor did any one observe the warning that shot back from the narrowing eyes of the belated guest.
A waiter produced a chair for Zimmerlein, and placed it between two of the ladies, who, with evident eagerness, made room for him. His smile deepened as he shook his head, affecting dismay.
“Not yet, but soon,” he pleaded. “I ran across an old friend of yours out in the lobby, Prince. Stillwell. I told him you'd be happy to have him join you, but as he's just off the train, he says he's filthy.”
“Where is he?” cried Prince, starting up. “I wouldn't miss seeing him for anything in the world. An old pal of mine in Japan,” he explained to his guests.
“If you will excuse us both, we 'll—” began Zimmerlein apologetically.
“Come along,” interrupted Prince, grabbing the other's arm. “Good old Still! We 'll bring him back with us if we have to drag him in. You 'll love him,” he added boisterously.
The two men hurried from the cafÉ. They did not speak until they reached a deserted corner of the hotel lobby.
0111
“What's up?” demanded Prince.
“I've just bad some damnably disturbing news. It's pretty bad, but I think I've got word to the right people in time to head off—trouble. I was just going to bed when I was called up on the 'phone. By God, he's cool-headed, I'll say that for him. Said he was you, and wanted to know why the devil I hadn't showed up over here. I was wise in a second. We met in the most casual manner at the corner. He will go a long way, that chap will, mark my words. He's as keen as a fox and as resolute as the devil. I can't explain here, Prince. We must get back to your party. My alibi lies there, you know, if I should happen to need it. You understand, don't you?”
“Certainly. I knew something was in the wind. Is it serious? Tell me that.”
“It can be serious,—desperately serious. But we can't do anything now. At one o'clock I shall ask you to excuse me, Prince. Engagement very early in the morning. Much-needed rest,—and so on. And, by the way, we were unable to locate Folwell. He—”
“Stillwell, wasn't it?”
“So it was. 'Grad, my nerves must be shot up worse than I thought. At any rate, he had vanished.”
“Have you managed to get in touch with any one else?”
“I've sent word to—Jehovah!” Zimmerlein permitted himself what was meant to be a smile, but was instead an ugly grin.
“About the only name that's safe to utter in these days,” said Prince, looking over his shoulder.
“You've done your bit tonight, my friend, by simply being who and what and where you are. Nothing more is required of you.”
“I'm not asking questions,” said Prince, scowling.
“You have asked one,” snapped Zimmerlein. “Oh, Lord! Haven't I a right to—”
“There is nothing more to be said on the subject,” said the other, fixing the big man with a look that caused him to quail. “You know as well as I just what our law is, Prince. I am not above it,—nor are you. Now, let us return.” Shortly after one o'clock, Zimmerlein said good night to the host and the guests upon whom he had deliberately imposed himself, and went forth into the night. A short distance down the street, he was hailed by a lone taxi-driver, who called out in the laconic, perfunctory manner of his kind:
“Taxi?”
Zimmerlein walked on a few paces, and then, apparently reconsidering, turned back.
“Take me to the Pennsylvania,” he said, and got into the cab.
When he took his seat, it was between two men who slunk down in the corners and kept their faces and bodies well out of sight from the occupants of passing cars and pedestrians on the sidewalk.
An unusual amount of clatter attended the getting under way of the car. The exhaust roared, the gears grated and snarled, and the loose links of tire-chains banged resoundingly against the mud-guards.
A quarter of an hour elapsed. Zimmerlein did most of the talking. Then, as the taxi drew up in front of the little hotel in the cross-town street, he got down and handed the driver a bank-note. His last words, before leaving the car, were:
“Remember, now. There must be no mistake, no slip-up. Be dead sure before you do a thing. He is to disappear,—that's all. There must be no trace,—absolutely no trace.” As he sauntered into the hotel, the taxi rattled swiftly off in the direction of Broadway, its remaining occupants silent and white-faced, but with lips and jaws rigidly set.
“No complaint after all, Rogers,” said he to the night clerk, rather jauntily. “My friend confessed that he hadn't called me up at all. It was his nice little way of stringing me. Assuage the poor girl's grief if you know how, Rogers. Tell her it's all right, and she can sleep soundly at the switch. Also, be good enough to say to her that I apologize for myself and for my friend.”
Rogers watched him enter the elevator, and once more strolled back to the switchboard.
“Hey! Wake up. Zimmerlein's just come in. He's stewed and says his friend's a liar. There won't be any court-martial.”
The girl yawned. “Say, has that darned old clock stopped, or is it still only ten minutes of two? It's been that for an hour. Never again for me. Next time Pilcher wants to get off till half-past 'leven, he needn't leave a call for me. I'm through accommodating that mutt. My Gawd! Two o'clock, and he swore he'd be here by eleven. I ought to report him. Do a guy like that a favour and he—What was that you said about old Zim-zim? D'you say he was soused?”
“No. I said stewed. He's carryin' an egg on an oyster fork. I never saw him drunk before.”
At his usual hour for breakfasting, Mr. Zimmerlein briskly entered the dining-room the next morning and seated himself at his customary table near the window. Two morning newspapers lay beside his plate of sliced oranges. His eyes swept the headlines on the front page. A slight frown darkened his brow. He looked again, a little more closely. Then he took up the other paper. A certain eagerness that had been in his eyes when he sat down gave way to something bordering on astonishment. His interest passed quickly to the second, third and fourth pages.
There wasn't a line,—not a solitary line about the sinking of the Elston!
He had encountered Elberon late in the afternoon of the preceding day. He was going into the club as the other came out.
“You will read something great in the morning papers,” Elberson had said guardedly. “Perhaps in the extras tonight.”
“I am always reading something great in the newspapers,” he had replied.
“They got the Elston. Report came about two o'clock. No details. I doubt whether it is known in Washington yet.”
But the morning papers had no account of the sinking. Not a word. What did it mean? Could it be possible that their news travelled so much faster than that obtained by the eager, avid Press? Were they even ahead of Washington? Elberon was in a position to know. He never went off half-cocked. There wasn't the least doubt in Zimmerlein's mind that the Elston had been sunk,—but why this amazing failure of the newspapers to—— He started suddenly. Comprehension flooded his brain. His eyes lighted up again. He understood in a flash. Suppressed! The news of the destruction of the Elston with all those vitally important men on board,—Why, of course! It had to be suppressed!
Nevertheless, he decided to drop in and see Elberon on his way down town.
As for last night's business, if it came to a head at all, it was after the papers had gone to press. Still, he took the time to run through both papers with unusual thoroughness. It was barely possible that a paragraph,—one of those widely spaced paragraphs that always exact attention,—might have stopped the presses at the last minute.
He slid indifferently over the account of a disastrous fire along the water-front of an American port from which heavily laden ships departed almost daily for French and English destinations. He knew all about that.
Elberon was not at his place of business. This defection on the part of Elberon exasperated him. It was a new sensation. He could not account for the sudden and admittedly unreasonable sense of irritation that assailed him, for, after all, Elberon regulated his actions according to the demands of his own business. The merchant's secretary announced that he doubted if his employer would be in the office before noon. He thought he had gone Christmas shopping with his wife.
“Damn Christmas!” muttered Zimmerlein as he closed the door behind him and stalked off into the counter-lined aisles that led by rectangular turns to the street.
The business of the night just ended had got on his nerves. His hand shook a little as he paused inside the doors to light a cigarette. It was a bad “business”; there was no use trying to make light of it.
Miss Mildred Agnew welcomed him with a cheery “Good morning,” and the alert office-boy went her one better by adding the information that it was “a fine day, sir.”
“Any messages, Miss Agnew?” inquired Zimmerlein.
“A telephone call, sir, from the steward of the Black Downs Country Club. He says there is a leak and wants to know if you, as chairman of the house committee, will do something about it right away.”
“A leak?” he demanded, stopping short.
“So he said, Mr. Zimmerlein.”
“Get him on the telephone and ask him to come in and see me at once.”
He was frowning darkly as the office-boy relieved him of his hat and coat and hung them up in the closet. His mail received scant attention. As a matter of fact, he swept the pile aside and touched a button on the corner of the desk.
Thorsensel came into the private office, carrying a roll of blue-prints.
“Any word?” asked Zimmerlein, as the other carefully and deliberately spread the prints on the desk and weighted one end of them down with a heavy steel ruler.
“No. Not a word.”
“It's—it's rather queer, don't you think?”
“You are nervous, Zimmerlein,” said Thorsensel, after a moment in which he studied the other with a keen and soul-searching eye. “It won't do, my friend. Nervousness tends to irritation, and irritation leads to impatience. You know what happens to the impatient, Zimmerlein.”
“Damn it all, I am nervous. I admit it. Don't lecture me. I'm not going to lose my grit,—or my head either.”
“You can't lose one without the other, you know,” remarked Thorsensel sententiously. “What do you suppose has happened?”
“Nothing,—nothing at all,” said the other. “You mean that—that they didn't pull it off? God, that is the very worst that could have happened.”
“That is exactly what I mean. You need not worry, however. Trust Scarf to play it safe. If he saw that there was the slightest chance of failure, he would have taken no risk. That's Scarf, my friend. Calm yourself. We will hear from him before noon. He will have worked out another plan, you may be sure.”
It may be mentioned here and now that Zimmerlein had consulted Thorsensel—the mastermind,—before taking a step in the affair of the night just past. He had gone directly from his hotel to the little French cafÉ down the street. He knew that it was the unvarying habit of the strange, silent engineer to drop in at this quaint place for a bite of something to eat and a bottle of red wine at midnight. Thorsensel never missed doing this. There was method in his continence.
A big and vital problem confronted Zimmerlein.
He did not dare act without consulting his pseudo-subordinate. Thorsensel took the matter out of his hands. It was he who laid the plans. Zimmerlein became merely an instrument, with certain functions to perform, and nothing more.
“I hope you are right,” said Zimmerlein, absorbing some of the other's fatalistic assurance. “God help us if you are wrong.”
“My dear man, God helps us because we are right, not because we are wrong,” said Thorsensel, laying his big, clenched fist upon the desk,—not violently but with a gentleness that suggested vast strength held under control by the power of a vaster will.
Zimmerlein drew a long, deep breath.
“You've heard about the Elston, I suppose?”
“Yes. They got her. I knew they would. That was the greatest tip we've ever had. Our report is that not one of the big bugs on board was saved. A number of the crew got off in boats, but they had to hurry. She went down in eight minutes. They made a good job of it, bless 'em. No wonder the night wind weeps! Now, we'll see what old England has to say for the invincibility of her fleet, and what she 'll say to the United States for letting the cat out of the bag.” He laughed aloud,—for the first time in the memory of Zimmerlein. Several of the men in the drafting-room looked up. They stared unblinkingly at the laugher.
The forenoon wore away. Thorsensel shuttled between the drafting-room and the private office. He no longer laughed. The pleased, confident look had left his eyes; in its stead lurked something that finally developed into real, undisguised anxiety. An atmosphere of restraint settled down like a cloud over the offices. The uneasiness of the two principal figures in the place was acutely infectious.
The report of Peter Hooge, the steward of the Black Downs Country Club, who arrived shortly after noon, neither increased nor lessened the strain. He was unnecessarily alarmed. What if secret service men did visit the club-house and question the employÉs? That was not an unusual proceeding. They were doing something of the sort all the time. But, said Peter, they obtained a list of all the members and guests of the club present on the premises at the time of the Reynolds explosion. Naturally, said both Zimmerlein and Thorsensel: That was just what they would do. Precious little good it would do them, however.
“I was obliged to show them my passports and papers from the Swiss Government,” said Peter.
“Well, they were all in order, weren't they?”
“Perfectly. That isn't the point. The mere fact that they asked for them proves something, doesn't it?”
“You are too old a bird to be frightened by pop-guns, Hooge,” said Thorsensel, gnawing at his moustache. “These fellows, from what I know of them, couldn't catch the scent of a polecat.”
“I'm not so sure of that,” put in Zimmerlein. “They've landed some pretty big fish.”
“They've landed a pack of blatant asses,” snapped Thorsensel. “Good God, man, you don't put Reistelen and others of his stripe in the class with—well, with a few I could mention, do you? They've only touched the surface, my friend. It is very deep,—very deep indeed—where the big fishes lie. Go back to your work, Hooge,—and don't worry us again with trifles.”
Late in the afternoon Scarf came in. He came as a stoop-shouldered, consumptive-looking, unwashed District Messenger of uncertain age and stability.
“Well?” cried Zimmerlein, glaring at the man.
“Where in hell have you been?” grated Thorsensel.
“That's just where I have been,” replied the messenger, straightening his bent figure and drawing a long, full breath. He passed his hand across his brow. “Or rather, I've been close enough to get an unpleasant whiff of it.”
“Don't sit down!” exclaimed Zimmerlein, as the man prepared to sink into a chair.
“I 'm all in, I 've got to,” and down he flopped. After a moment he leaned forward and fixed the others with burning, hitter eyes. “In the first place, do you know what's happened to Elberon?”
“No,” fell in unison from the lips of the two men.
“Well, he's sitting up in the United States Attorney's office with half a dozen experts trying to pump intelligence out of him.”
An imprecation ground its way out between Thorsensel's teeth. Zimmerlein's lower lip tightened against his teeth.
“I had it from Zumpe. They went to Elberon's house early this morning,—on the quiet, of course,—nothing for the public,—and took him down for a grilling. Zumpe says old Elberon has been getting pretty gabby with one or two people who ought to be good Germans but ain't.”
“The infernal fool! I have warned him repeatedly,” snarled Thorsensel. “He has been very thick lately with Kleinhans, the banker. I told him to take no chances with that man. I mentioned a few others too.”
“Some of 'em are straight, eh?” queried Scarf, a twist at the corner of his mouth that went for a sneer.
“Straight? No! Crooked as rattlesnakes! I wouldn't trust a man like Kleinhans out of my sight. He actually thinks he's an American,—and God knows that makes him worse than one. Well? Goon. What else?”
“That's all I know about Elberon. As for that other little matter,—” He stopped to wet his lips.
Zimmerlein muttered hoarsely: “Little matter!”
“I'm lucky, that's all,” said Scarf, and again passed his hand over his brow.
“Get on with it. You can't stay here all afternoon,” commanded Thorsensel.
“We came within an ace of dropping into a pit—a bottomless pit at that. Why didn't you tell me that secret service men were trailing him, Zimmerlein?”
“What? What's that you say?”
“Why, damn your eyes, Zimmerlein, that guy was suspected of giving information to the enemy. He's been watched like a hawk. We got onto it just in time. Don't you see what would have happened if they had followed us to his room? You don't, eh? Well, I'll tell you. We would have been nabbed with him,—before anything could have happened,—caught in the very net they were laying for him. His pals,—that's what they would have made of us,—his comrades, mind you, not his enemies. How the devil could we have explained? And would they have believed him, no matter what he said about us? Not on your life. The very thing they were watching for would have happened. A rendezvous! They would have had him dead to rights,—delivering information received earlier in the night to two German agents,—oh, what a diabolical joke it would have been on him, and what a devil of a mess we would have been in! God, I shiver every time I think of it,—and I've been shivering all day, let me tell you.”
“Secret service men after him?” muttered Thorsensel, incredulously. “What's the angle, Zimmerlein,—what's the angle? You are supposed to be on the inside up there. What do you know about this?”
“I am completely in the dark. I can't understand it, Thorsensel. It—are you sure, Scarf?”
“Absolutely. They got Blechter,—yanked him off the taxi when he stopped around in the next block, according to plans. He was to wait for us there,—fixing his engine as a blind,—stalling for time. He put up a fight,—poor fool. They got him just the same.”
“Will he squeal?” demanded Zimmerlein, pacing the floor.
“You ought to know. He's your protÉgÉ,” said Scarf succinctly.
“Better dead than alive, I'd say,” said Thorsensel unfeelingly. “Go on.”
“Well, from all I could learn, two of them waited outside the building and two of 'em were inside—I don't know just where. I think one of them was running the front elevator. All I know is that Ruddy and I barely had time to get out of the window and onto a little balcony and drop down to the one below, before they smashed in the door. Twelve foot drop, too,—and the balcony wasn't more than three feet wide. If we'd missed—Lord!”
“You were in his room?” cried Thorsensel.
“Sure. We got in through the building next door, sneaked up ten flights of stairs to the top. Got out on the roof through the 'dog-house,' and dropped down to the other roof. Sort of penthouse arrangement up there. Very simple after that. We had his apartment pretty well marked. Ninth floor front. It's closed except when he comes up occasionally from camp for a night or two. Family in the South somewhere, servants dismissed. We didn't waste any time. Had it all doped out. Went to his door and rang the bell. Pretty soon he came and opened it and asked what we wanted. We told him right off the reel that we were in the secret service and had to have a talk with him at once about a certain party he knows. He told us to go to hell. Then I showed him my badge and mentioned a name that bowled him over. He said: 'My God!' and drew back into the room. We went in and closed the door.
“I asked him first if there was anybody in the apartment—anybody that would be likely to hear our conversation. He said he was alone,—his people were out of town for the winter. Ruddy asked him point blank just what he knew about a certain party,—all of it. He came back with a question. 'Has there been an arrest?' 'Yes,' says I. He sat down, limp as a rag. 'My God, it's terrible—horrible,' he says. 'Who put you wise? How much is actually known?' That was enough for Ruddy. He stuck the gun under his ear and let him have it. He never knew what hit him. Ruddy dropped the revolver on the floor beside the chair,—just where he would have dropped it himself,—and then we started out to see if we could find anything in the apartment that oughtn't to be lying around loose. I forgot to say there was a Maxim silencer on the gun. We had just entered the first bed-room when his door bell rang. Two hearts stopped beating right there and then. For a minute we were paralysed. Then there was pounding on the door, and we heard some one say, 'Open up, or we 'll smash it in!'
“No use wasting time on minor details. After we got onto the balcony below, we opened the French windows, and sneaked into a big apartment,—darker than Egypt except when the light from a big electric sign down the street flashed every few seconds. We got out into the hall without rousing anybody and started down the stairs. Of course, we thought it was the elevator man pounding on the door up there,—he might have heard the muffled report if he happened to be near that floor. God was with us. We got down to the ground floor all right, but there we struck something worse than a stone wall. Two men were standing right in front of the passenger elevator. We jumped behind a curtain they have hanging there to hide the stairway. They didn't hear us. They were talking about Blechter. We knew in a second what they were. There was a cubby hole under the stairs where they keep mops and brooms and such stuff. We got in there, leaving a crack through which we could hear. After awhile the front elevator came down. We heard 'em all talking. They said he had shot himself, and they cursed their luck because they hadn't been able to take him alive. He must have been warned that they were after him. That's what they were roaring about. After a while we got out of the mop-hole and sneaked down to the basement. The doors were locked, and there were men in the engine room—a night fireman and a friend of his who was drunk and had come in to sleep it off. Somebody was walking up and down in the little court outside. We didn't dare risk a dash for it, so we hid under a pile of last summer's awnings for a couple of hours. When we couldn't stand it any longer, we decided to put on a bold front and pass ourselves off as plainclothes-men. It was dead easy. The employes about the place were scared stiff. All we had to do was to look hard at the head porter and the back elevator man, and tell 'em not to let anybody go near the storeroom for apartment E 9,—not on their lives. Here's the evening paper. You can read what it says.”
