“No. Of course I ain’t. I only know it, that’s all. If you think my lamps have went bad you can assort them card which he flang on the floor.”
It took the young man but a few seconds to recover the torn bits of pasteboard and arrange them in proper order. “Well I’ll be darned—Jared Mallory is right. Say, lemme tell the Chief.”
Susie restrained him briefly. “Who is this bird Mallory—that you should get all het up over him? Who did he ever kill?”
“Jared Mallory,” explained the excited young man, “is one of the richest nuts in the United States: that’s all. He’s got a bankroll so big you’d have to have four eyes to see it all.”
“Then why the alias?” she queried practically.
“This joint ain’t Mallory’s size. He’s the kind of guy who thinks he’s slumming when he visits a hotel like this. Is that clear now?”
“Sure—sure it is, Gus. Clear as mud.”
It required just five minutes of the young man’s time to transmit his enthusiasm to the manager. “Of course,” counselled that dignitary, “you shall do nothing to embarrass Mr. Mallory. If he desires to visit us incognito—”
And within ten minutes the manager had informed two of his particular friends that Jared Mallory, the millionaire, was registered at the hotel under the name of Thomas Matlock Braden. By dinnertime that night a dozen persons knew it and before morning Tommy was a marked man—at which Tommy merely smiled a thoroughly satisfied smile. “When Mr. Barnum spoke his famous words,” he soliloquized, “he must have been timing things with a slow watch.”58
It was fully forty-eight hours before the rumor of Braden’s identity reached the ears of Mrs. Edgar H. Morse. At receipt of the tidings she almost collapsed. “That’s right—I knew all the time he was somebody tremendous.” And she proceeded to recount the incident of the monogrammed cigarettes.
But it was in the privacy of the Morse suite that the knowledge received a most thorough threshing out. “Golly!” breathed Edgar. “Think of me bumming around with Jared Mallory. Honeybunch! we’re sure sliding up the social ladder now, we are. I thought there was something funny about those cigarettes. And he’s a gentleman right—he is; so much of a one he don’t have to be watching his step all the time. Funny he should like me—er—a—that is, if he really does.”
Thus far Mallory was merely a name to Edgar Morse and Edgar Morse was only a name to Tommy Braden. Each set in motion inquiries as to the other. Tommy’s task proved the easier.
Within five days he was in possession of full information regarding the financial and social standing of his prospective victim. He knew that Mr. Morse had been a ten-thousand-a-year man with an aptitude for saving until a certain wild venture in war babies59 had catapulted him into the multi-millionaire class; so suddenly, in fact, that neither the excitable little man nor his wife had yet adjusted themselves to their new position in life. Tommy rather liked them; they weren’t the offensive type of nouveau riche—there was nothing aggressive or vulgar about either. And Tommy was convinced that he would not be doing them an injury by selling to them the Vanduyn pearls. According to Tommy’s way of figuring the detectives would never suspect that handsome jewels in the possession of Edgar H. Morse had been come by illicitly, so that, under the deal he contemplated no one would be the loser. “No one except Vanduyn,” he mused, “and that baby is stung anyway.”
Information regarding Jared Mallory came less readily to Mr. Morse. Mr. Mallory was not among those present in the Dun and Bradstreet reports;60 but now that the great hotel was agog with knowledge of Tommy’s supposedly true identity, scraps of information were working into a comprehensive—and rather flattering—whole. As a matter of fact the actual presence of Jared Mallory would not have excited the curiosity caused by Tommy’s incognito. There was something irresistibly intriguing about a man who sought to conceal his eminence—something of greater allure than the eminence itself. Mr. Mallory—so general comment had it—possessed the wealth of Crœsus,61 the family tree of a Plantagenet62 and he was inclined to be more or less of what the public expressively if inelegantly terms a nut.
Within a week all doubt which may have existed as to his being Jared Mallory had been removed. The manager had personally made occasion to visit Tommy’s room when Tommy was absent. He found a half hundred cigarettes monogrammed J. M., one or two handkerchiefs with the same embroidered initials and an ancient letter addressed to Jared Mallory’s New York address.
But even at that Tommy was not entirely satisfied. He closeted himself one day with the manager and explained to him that a telegram might possibly come to the hotel addressed to Mr. Mallory; in which event it was to be delivered to him. No such telegram ever arrived, but whatever doubt may have remained to the manager was promptly and effectively set at rest. Nor did that personage maintain the secrecy which had been demanded of him. True, he passed the information only to certain intimate friends who, in turn, conveyed it to their own intimates—until the positive knowledge was the property of the entire guest personnel.
There was, of course, an avalanche of attention showered upon the supposed Jared Mallory to all of which he was magnificently indifferent. He was courteous and frostily impersonal. He accepted one or two invitations with an air of bespeaking condescension, and through it all he vouchsafed his intimacy only to the Morses.
But even with them he maintained a reserve. Edgar Morse, prideful of his recent success, told Tommy of it, thereby bringing no agony of soul to Mr. Braden; but of himself Tommy never spoke. He did mention casually an acquaintanceship extending from Cape Town to Bombay and from New York to Sydney; he spoke feelingly and with passionate intensity whenever the subject of jewels was mentioned and he openly admired an unusually handsome emerald which Mrs. Morse possessed. But not once was he other than Thomas Matlock Braden—even on the memorable evening when Mrs. Morse, carried away by her interest in the conversation, addressed him as Mr. Mallory.
Tommy’s forehead corrugated in a frown of annoyance. “What’s that?” he inquired with frigid politeness.
She flushed scarlet. “Why—er—you see, folks around the hotel say you are Jared Mallory of New York.”
There was no doubting his anger. His voice came in crisp and incisive negation: “I am afraid I am not responsible for gossip. I am not Jared Mallory.”
Ella Morse was flustered and her husband came eagerly to her rescue. “Now don’t you go blaming Ella, Mr. Braden. She’s been hearing so much about you being Mr. Mallory and all the folks in the hotel wanting to know if you really were, that she—I—that is, we—we’ve sort of called you Mr. Mallory to ourselves and the name kind of slipped out. It ain’t any business of ours who you are—and we didn’t go to cause you any embarrassment.…” He paused and spluttered. Tommy stared coldly.
“I understand, Mr. Morse. And I am sure that Mr. Mallory would not be at all flattered.”
“No—of course he wouldn’t. He’d prob’ly be awful sore. That is—er—a—not because folks thought you were him—of course you’re as good as he is any day in the week, including Sundays—but on account of his feeling—well you know what I mean.”
“Yes. I’m sure I do. But let’s don’t discuss it further. I prefer to remain Thomas M. Braden.”
“’Sall right with me, Mr. Braden. You can be Willie Jones if you want to and it don’t make any difference to us, does it, Ella?”
But after Tommy had parted from them that evening after a session at the casino, Edgar swung on his wife. “Goshamighty, Ella—wasn’t he sore when he found out folks knew who he was?”
She nodded. “Can you blame him, Eddie? Here he’s taken all this trouble to make folks believe he ain’t Jared Mallory…I reckon he’s terribly put out. But there isn’t a doubt in the world that he’s him. If he wasn’t Mr. Mallory he wouldn’t get peeved about folks thinking he was.”
The friendship between Tommy Braden and the Morses
flourished after that little verbal clash. If unpleasant memory of it rankled in Tommy’s mind, he gave no indication and his suavity and friendliness put them completely in his power. They drove together—in Morse’s car—and Edgar and Tommy played golf daily. He shunned the society of the other guests, rigidly maintaining his attitude of impregnable exclusiveness. And it was after a fortnight of this that the subject of jewelry again came up: neither Edgar nor his wife suspecting that Tommy had introduced the subject.
He appeared to become inspired. He thrilled them with romances of famous gems. The history of renowned jewels he had at his finger-tips. They were seated in the parlor of his suite, the air filled with the fragrance of excellent cigars.…“But after all,” declaimed Mr. Braden, “there is only one jewel which is worthy the name.”
“And that is?”
“The pearl.”
They were in enthusiastic agreement. Tommy launched into an expansive account of the pearl fisheries which he claimed to have seen, he explained to them the mysteries of great pearls and enthralled them with his enthusiasm. And then——
“I’m passionately fond of them,” he confessed boyishly. “And I have something here—if you’d like to see it.”
A significant glance flashed between the others. The jewel collector had been humanized by his hobby.…He opened one of his trunks and a few seconds later returned with a battered leather case of sizeable dimensions. They gathered near him at the table, and then, very slowly and worshipfully, he flung back the lid.
The Vanduyn pearls smiled up at them in pink perfection. Mrs. Morse gasped with delight.
“Oh-oh! How glorious!”
Tommy caught up the rope of gems and ran them caressingly through his fingers. “They are among the most perfect pearls in the world—each one a match for every other one. Each has its history, its romance. It has taken me years to collect them.”
They were mesmerized by the magnificence of the jewels. And, while they stared under the spell, Tommy talked softly and well about them. He described the long stretches of sandy beach, the atolls and palm stretches of the somnolent South Seas—the slumbering coral reefs, the mahogany-skinned Kanakas.63 His voice trembled as he described the pearl fishing operations; the shark menace; the dangers faced by the pearl producers. He was a natural actor and he held the little manufacturer and his wife in the hollow of his hand. And then, just when it seemed as though they could no longer endure the glory of the thing he showed them—he snapped the case shut and turned away.
In a second he had dropped back into his customary manner: scrupulously polite, a trifle distant, unutterably exclusive. But the Morses were no longer with him in spirit. They were dazed. It was Edgar Morse who sounded the words which brought a lilt of triumph to the heart of Tommy Braden.
“I’m rather sorry you showed us those, Mr. Braden.”
“Sorry?”
“Yes. I want them.”
Tommy smiled good-humouredly. “Then I, too, am sorry. I’m afraid there are no other pearls precisely like these.”
Tommy Braden knew he had builded well. He deliberately shunted the conversation from the subject of jewelry, knowing that the little man and his sweet-faced wife would discuss the pearls once they were alone again. Nor was he wrong. They were captivated by the sheer beauty of the things; and their suddenly aroused passion had nothing whatever to do with the intrinsic worth of that which they had come to covet.
“If he would only sell them,” she said wistfully. “They would cost a fortune, but——”
“It isn’t the money,” he answered. “Mr. Mallory doesn’t care for money and he does care for his pearls: that’s all. I’m sure he’d never sell them—er—that is, I don’t think he would.”
“We could ask him.”
“I’m afraid we couldn’t. We might hint around…that is, kind of test him out.”
But, somehow, they found that assignment unreasonably difficult. Their mention of the pearls the night following excited no response from him, but on the night after that he consented to again display the magnificent rope. He told them off, jewel by jewel…but his manner forbade the mention of a sale. Talk of dollars and cents in connection with their flawless beauty would have been a sacrilege.
Morse did essay one valiant attempt—“We’d be awfully appreciative, Mr. Braden, if you could help us get some pearls exactly like those—er—a—that is, if there are any.”
The other man shrugged. “I’m afraid there are not,” he retorted briefly.
Tommy was playing an ultra-careful game. He was making progress slowly but surely; casting himself in the rôle of quarry. And he might have continued in just that way had not something occurred on the ensuing day which caused him considerable apprehension.
At first he did not see the Gargantuan figure which hulked at the desk and wrestled with the register. It was not until the stranger turned and surveyed the lobby through glassy, fishlike eyes that a premonition of danger smote him. His face hardened and he whistled sharply through his teeth.
The person at the desk was not one to inspire any emotion other than the most intense amusement. He was a man of overflowing girth and lumbering manner. His clothes were grotesquely misfit; the coat flapped loosely about the protuberant torso and the material of the suit glistened with a sheen begotten of arduous wear. Beneath the pants-cuffs shone a brief expanse of cheap, lavender sox topping aggressive russet shoes, the toes of which rose to points. From the top of the vest there was exhibited a small area of lavender silk shirt, a purple polka-dotted necktie and a collar of insignificant height but amazing circumference.
But it was the face which inevitably engaged the attention—engaged it and held it even more than the absurdly powerful gold chain which spanned the vest and held dangling from it a golden toothpick with which the big man toyed absently as he gazed about the lobby. The face was a fitting final touch to the ensemble. It was an enormous face; a pudgy, expressionless face; a face flanked by loose, pendulous jowls ruddily complexioned; a face like a great pudding set with two glass marbles.
A casual observer might have believed that those eyes were sightless as they stared stonily across the lobby. Once or twice the man blinked—the process consuming an interminably long time. He yawned with his eyes, but it did not seem to matter whether they were open or closed. And at length he heeded the irritable summons of an excessively peeved bellhop and turned to follow that person into an elevator.
Tommy Braden stood flatfooted staring as though at an apparition. But once the cage door closed, Braden crossed the lobby swiftly and glanced at the register.
JIM HANVEY—NEW YORK
He turned away. He strolled out upon the spacious veranda where he lighted a cigar and puffed reflectively. Eddie Morse and his wife, Ella, would not have known their friend at that moment. Tommy’s face was hard and bitter and there was fear delineated in it. He put his thoughts into unspoken words—
“What the hell is Jim Hanvey doing here? Why should a detective like him come to a joint like this?”
Tommy Braden, by dint of hard and untiring work, had risen gradually to the very top of his profession. The road had been neither easy nor undangerous. He had faced disappointment and reversal with a bravely smiling face—and now he had come to the point where he felt entitled to reap the fruits of his endeavor. Tommy had been the despair of detectives. He operated with an easy suavity and a level-headed cunning which sent them running up blind alleys in the futile search for evidence to convict, so that thus far Tommy had avoided the inconveniences of jail—save in the case of a single slip in the early days of his career.
That single jail sentence rankled in Tommy’s breast, and it had inspired in him a wholesome fear of state boarding houses. In jail one was deprived of one’s individuality and individuality was Tommy’s greatest stock in trade. He intensely disliked swapping his name for a number and his exquisitely tailore
d clothes for a uniform. It seemed a great pity that the state had no more judgment than to fail to differentiate between crude, lumbering crooks and gentlemen of the profession who operated with delicacy and finesse. But, after all, Tommy Braden feared only one man in the detective world, which was why he was so visibly disturbed at finding himself a fellow-guest of that one man.
The following morning he played golf with Edgar Morse. He unbent more than ever before and dazzled the little business man so thoroughly that Morse’s mind was not on the game and he lowered his course record seven strokes. “By Golly!” reflected Mr. Morse, “there ain’t a doubt that this Braden or Mallory, or whoever he is, really likes me.”
Tommy was annoyed. He had been enjoying the cat-and-mouse contest and Jim’s advent forced him to greater speed than he had planned. They walked in from the eighteenth green together, consumed large drinks of iced sarsaparilla which Mr. Morse insisted was excellent for the blood, and then Tommy made his way to the hotel while Mr. Morse selected his favorite putter and a half dozen balls for a session of utterly useless practice on the clock course.
Tommy saw the hulking figure of the mammoth detective too late to avoid a meeting. He was perturbed but at the same time thankful that his introduction to Jim at this particular time should come while he was unaccompanied. And realizing the inevitability of a talk with Jim, it was he who spoke first.
“Well, well, well—if it isn’t my fat friend.”
Jim looked up. Heavy eyelids closed over glassy orbs with maddening slowness, held shut for a moment, then uncurtained with even more annoying deliberateness. There was no doubting the sincerity of the surprise which was reflected upon the pudgy countenance.
“Well I’m a sonovagun! Tommy Braden!” Their hands met in a clasp of sincere cordiality. “It is Braden now, ain’t it, Tommy?”
Tommy smiled with rare good-humor. “Surest thing you know, Jim. Thomas Matlock Braden.”
Jim Hanvey, Detective Page 21
