Her Forbidden Knight

by Rex Stout

  “Me?” said Dumain. “I am worse yet than Dougherty. I got nozzing. I lost zee fifty.”

  “But how?”

  “Zee race ponies,” answered Dumain, with a fling at the jargon. “I play nozzing but écarté, and there is not zat here. I had a good what you call eet teep for Peemlico. Zee fourth race—zee name of zee horse was Parcel-Post.”

  “How did you play him?”

  “Straight. To win. A friend of mine got a telegram from zee owner. It was certain he should win.”

  “And I suppose he got the place?” asked Booth.

  “What does zat mean?”

  “It means he came in second.”

  The little Frenchman shook his head sorrowfully.

  “Oh, no. He came een last.”

  There was a shout of laughter from the others, but it was soon stopped by Dougherty, who turned to Jennings with a gesture. He wanted to get the thing finished.

  “I’m in the same class with Dumain,” said Jennings. “I tried your game, Dougherty, and I thought I was some poker player—but good night! They took my fifty so quick I didn’t have time to tell it good-by.”

  “Where’d you go?”

  “Pearly’s, on Sixth Avenue. I’ve sat in there once or twice before, and about six months ago I made a clean-up. But tonight—don’t make me talk about it.”

  “We’re a bunch of boobs,” Dougherty groaned. “We’d better all go out in the morning and sell lead pencils. Your turn, Driscoll.”

  But Driscoll said that he would prefer to follow Booth, and since Dougherty was not inclined to argue the matter, he turned to the typewriter salesman instead.

  “I’m willing,” said that gentleman, “though my tale contains but little joy. Still, I guess we’re about even.

  “It doesn’t matter exactly where I went. It’s downtown, and it’s in the rear of a two-by-four billiard hall. At any hour of any afternoon you may find there a number of gentlemen engaged in the ancient and honorable game of craps.

  “I’ll spare you the details—at least, most of ’em. The game is a big one: there’s lots of real money there for the man that knows how to get it, and I figured it out that I was just about the man.

  “I rolled the bones till my fingers ached and my knees were stiff, and my voice sounded like a Staten Island ferryboat in a fog—I have a little habit of talking to the ivories.

  “Well, to cut it short, I played in all directions. At one time I had six hundred dollars. At another time I had fifteen dollars. At half past eleven tonight I had an even hundred, and it was time to go.

  “I had the dice, and I decided on one more throw. My hundred—I played it all—was faded before I put it down, and I threw a natural—a seven. I stuck the two hundred in my pocket and said good night.”

  “Well, we’ve got our two hundred and fifty back, anyway,” observed Jennings.

  “And what good will that do?” growled Dougherty.

  “You never can tell. Tomorrow’s another day.”

  “It seems to me,” put in Driscoll, “that I remain to be heard from.”

  “Shoot your head off,” said the ex-prizefighter, “and hurry up about it. This is awful!”

  Driscoll blew his nose with care and deliberation, cleared his throat three times, and arose to his feet. There was something in his manner that caused the others to sit up straighter in their chairs with an air of expectancy. Noticing this flattering increase of attention, he smiled grandly and surveyed them with a leisurely eye.

  “In the first place, gentlemen,” he began, “I wish to say that I do not regard myself as a genius, in any sense of the word. At poker I am worse than helpless. The race ponies, as Dumain calls them, are a mystery to me. Nor have I that deft and subtle touch required to roll dice successfully.”

  There came a chorus of cries:

  “Cut it!”

  “Cheese the guff!”

  “Talk sense!”

  “Go on with the story!”

  Driscoll waited for them to finish, then resumed calmly:

  “Do not be impatient, gentlemen. As I say, I am well aware of the fact that I am no genius. Therefore, I realized that if my fifty dollars grew to the desired proportions it would be only by the aid of miraculous chance. I made my plans accordingly.

  “When I left you in front of the Lamartine at four o’clock I went straight to my own room. There I procured a piece of paper, and marked on it with a pen the figures from one to thirty-five, about an inch apart.

  “I then tore the paper into thirty-five pieces, so that I had each figure on a piece by itself. I placed these in my hat, mixed them around, and drew one forth. It was the figure thirty-two.”

  Again there came cries of impatience from the audience, who began to perceive that this lengthy preamble meant an interesting conclusion, and again the speaker ignored them and continued:

  “That operation completed, I threw myself on my bed for a nap. At six o’clock I rose, went to a restaurant for dinner, and from there to my work at the theater. My first action there was to borrow fifty dollars, thereby doubling my capital.

  “At the end of the play I dressed as hurriedly as possible, leaving the theater at exactly a quarter past eleven, and made my way to a certain establishment on Fiftieth Street, conducted by a Mr. Merrifield.

  “It is, I believe, the largest and finest of its kind in New York. They have there a contrivance commonly known as a roulette wheel, which has numbers and colors arranged on it in an unique fashion. I stood before it and placed my hundred dollars on the number thirty-two.”

  The speaker paused, turned, and took his overcoat from the back of the chair on which he had been sitting, while his audience looked on in breathless silence.

  Then he finished:

  “The result, gentlemen, can be easier shown than told. Here it is.”

  He drew forth from a pocket of the overcoat a stack of bills and tossed them on the table, crying:

  “There she is, boys! Thirty-five nice, crisp hundreds on one spin of the wheel!”

  Then and there was pandemonium. They shouted and danced about, and clapped Driscoll on the back till he sought a corner for refuge, and spread the bills over the table to gloat over, and generally raised the devil. Dumain was sitting down at the piano to play a triumphal march when Dougherty suddenly rushed over to him and clasped his shoulder.

  “Did you notice that number?” he asked excitedly.

  The little Frenchman looked up at Dougherty.

  “What number?”

  “The one that Driscoll played on the wheel.”

  “Yes—thirty-two. Why?”

  “Sure,” said Dougherty. “Number thirty-two. Don’t you remember?—you was down there this afternoon. That’s the number of Knowlton’s cell in the Tombs!”

  CHAPTER XVI.

  All Together

  WHEN LILA REACHED THE LOBBY OF THE LAMARTINE at nine o’clock on the following morning she found the Erring Knights already assembled in their corner.

  For a moment she forgot everything else in her surprise; she had thought that nothing less than the end of the world could possibly have roused these gentlemen of leisure from their beds at so early an hour.

  Dougherty hastened over to her desk and demanded to know why she had left her room.

  “Why not?” Lila smiled. “I feel all right, really. And, anyway, I had rather be down here than up there alone. Did you see him?”

  The ex-prizefighter grunted an affirmative and proceeded to give her a detailed account of his conversation with Knowlton on the previous morning. He ended by saying that they had engaged a lawyer, and that the sinews of war in the sum of three thousand dollars had been entrusted to Dumain as treasurer.

  “But Mr. Dougherty,” Lila exclaimed, “we can’t possibly use that! I thought—you see, I have saved a little—”

  Dougherty interrupted her:

  “Now see here. We’re doing this, and you’ve got to let us alone. Anyway, it’s not really costing us a cent. I won’t
explain how, but you can take my word for it.

  “Everything’s all right, and you don’t need to worry, and for Heaven’s sake don’t begin any of that stuff about you won’t take this and you won’t take that. If we’re going to help you we’ve got to help you. What did you think I meant yesterday morning—that I was going to carry a note to Knowlton and then go home and sit down with my fingers crossed?”

  Whereupon, giving her no time to answer, Dougherty turned and rejoined the others across the lobby.

  This was the beginning of a campaign which lasted a little over a month.

  The duties of the Erring Knights were varied and arduous. Each morning one of them conducted Lila to the hotel, and took her home each evening, this escort being necessitated by the fact that Sherman had twice accosted her on the street. He had also called at her home, but there was no necessity for a male guardian there. Mrs. Amanda Berry was a legion in herself.

  Dougherty was the official messenger between the Lamartine and the Tombs. At first Lila had insisted on going to see Knowlton herself, but he had begged her to spare him this final humiliation.

  The prisoner wrote:

  I long to see you; you know it; but it is enough to have the picture of this place imprinted on my own memory—I can’t bear that you should see me here.

  Whatever your imagination shows you it cannot be as dreadful as the reality. If I obtain my freedom I shall not feel that I have cheated justice. Heaven knows I could not pay more dearly for my crime than I have already paid.

  Knowlton stubbornly refused to allow his lawyer to procure his release on bail. The lawyer said he was quixotic; Dougherty used a stronger and commoner term, but they could not change his decision. He gave no reasons, but they understood; and the lawyer, who was at least as scrupulous as the average of his profession, declared to Dumain that for the first time in ten years’ practise he was defending a guilty man with a clear conscience.

  As for the case itself, it appeared to be by no means simple. The fact that they had no knowledge of the evidence held by the prosecution made them uneasy, and they bent their efforts mainly to attempts to discover its nature.

  There was no danger, they found, from Red Tim, who had got away safely the night before Knowlton’s arrest. And he was the only one of the gang whom Knowlton had ever seen or dealt with.

  The evidence which the lawyer feared most was that concerning any specific operations, and in relation to the wallet which Knowlton had missed the day following the fight in Dumain’s rooms. Knowlton suspected Sherman, but thought it possible that he had lost it on the street.

  “Well,” said the attorney, “the best we can say is that we’re on our guard. We must keep our wits about us and fight it out in the courtroom. We won’t know much about what they know before the day of the trial. It’s a fight in the dark for us; but remember, they have to furnish the proof.”

  Dougherty was openly optimistic. After winning a one to thirty-five shot on the number of Knowlton’s cell—he had recited the tale to the prisoner with great gusto—he refused to believe that their efforts could possibly culminate in anything short of glorious victory.

  “Think of it; just think of it,” he would say to Knowlton in a tone which partook of awe. “He drew the blooming number out of his hat—that was the first shot. Then he plays it single, and wins—that was the second. Why, we can’t lose. We’ll beat ’em both ways from the middle.”

  “Thanks, old man; I hope so,” Knowlton would reply.

  Thus three weeks passed by and found them marking time, waiting for the day of the trial. Dougherty spent the better part of two days seeking for Sherman, but without success. They had heard nothing from him, save the times he had accosted Lila on the street, nor seen him since the morning in Lila’s room.

  “He’s surely round somewhere,” said Dougherty to Dumain as they met in the lobby one morning. “In fact, I know he’s in town, because he’s still got that room on Thirty-fourth Street. But I can’t get in, and I can’t get him either going or coming.”

  The little Frenchman shrugged his shoulders and glanced across the lobby where Lila sat at her desk talking to a man who had just approached—probably a customer.

  “Bah! Let heem alone. So long as he ees not bother Mees Williams that ees all we want.”

  “It’s not all I want,” said Dougherty. “I want to punch his face, and I will. He’s a low-down, dirty—”

  He was interrupted by a call:

  “Mr. Dumain!”

  The voice was Lila’s. They turned. She was standing in front of her desk, her face very white, holding in her hand a sheet of printed paper. Dumain hurried over to her, gave one look at the paper which she thrust at him with a trembling hand, and called to Dougherty.

  The ex-prizefighter crossed the lobby:

  “What is it?”

  “Look!” Dumain held the paper before him. “A what you call eet—subpoena—for Mees Williams! Mon Dieu! Eet is all up!”

  “Shut up,” growled Dougherty, taking the subpoena. “Do you want the whole lobby to know about it? You get excited too easy.”

  “But what am I to do?” faltered Lila.

  “Be a sport. Don’t let ’em floor you with a little thing like this. They want you for a witness, do they? It’s a good job. I’d advise you to take it.”

  Lila gazed at him, amazed at his levity concerning what appeared to her to be the destruction of all their plans.

  Dougherty read over the subpoena with a smile.

  “The fact is,” said he, “that I’m surprised they didn’t spring this before. I’ve expected it all the time.

  “Sherman knew all about your being at Knowlton’s rooms—he told me and Dumain—and what’s more, he told us that he’d told the Secret Service about you. Now, why did they hold off so long? That’s the only part don’t like.”

  “But what am I to do?” Lila repeated.

  “There’s only one thing you can do—go on the stand.”

  “But Mr. Dougherty! Don’t you see? They will ask me about that night, and about the—the money. And he will be convicted.”

  Dougherty appeared to be greatly surprised.

  “And how so? Let ’em question you from now till doomsday and what will they find out? Simply that you went straight home from the hotel and spent the evening in your room reading Pilgrim’s Progress. The only one they’ll have against you is Sherman, and if a jury wouldn’t rather believe you than him I’m a liar.”

  Still Lila did not understand. She protested:

  “But I didn’t spend the evening in my room.”

  “Don’t you think I know it? I’m talking about evidence, not facts. As far as the jury’s concerned you did.”

  Lila gazed at him in horror.

  “Do you mean I’d have to lie?”

  “Well, that’s a pretty strong word,” said Dougherty, “but you can call it that if you want to.”

  “But I couldn’t—I couldn’t!”

  “You’ll have to.”

  Lila looked at him:

  “No. I know I couldn’t. If I am a witness, and they ask me about—that evening, I couldn’t tell them anything but the truth.”

  It was the tone rather than the words that caused Dougherty to force back the protest that came to his lips and convinced him of its uselessness.

  Here was an obstacle, indeed! And utterly unexpected. Dougherty was not up on feminine psychology, and he couldn’t understand how a girl could do for a man what Lila had done on the night of Knowlton’s arrest, and then refuse to lie for him.

  “Besides, it would be useless,” Lila was saying. “I think it was Mr. Sherman who saw me, but it may not have been. Some of the others may have seen me also. And now I remember: the man they left in the room did see me as I passed the door. He might not recognize me, but how can we know? And if he did—”

  “All right,” Dougherty interrupted; “then there’s no use talking about it. We’re in a he—we’re in a mess; but we’ll find a way
out, somehow. Dumain, find Driscoll and Booth. I’ll get Jennings. Leave it to us, Miss Williams. Don’t you worry about that thing”—pointing to the subpoena—“for a minute. Hurry up, Dumain!”

  And ten minutes later the Erring Knights, five strong, were assembled in their corner, holding a council of war over this new and dangerous complication.

  Booth was ready to throw up the sponge.

  “What’s the use?” he demanded. “They’ve got him fifty ways from breakfast. And this thing finishes it. If Miss Williams goes on the stand and tells what she knows, he doesn’t stand a chance.”

  “You don’t say!” observed Dougherty ironically. “What’s the matter—cold feet? And what do you think we’re here for? It’s up to us to fix it so that she don’t go on the stand.”

  “Tell me one thing,” said Driscoll. “Why haven’t they arrested her?”

  “Easy enough.” This from Jennings. “Because if they did they couldn’t force her to testify against Knowlton, and they couldn’t force Knowlton to testify against her. They figure that one is better than none.”

  “Come on, boys; talk business.” Dougherty pulled Jennings down on the lounge and glared at Booth. “We have enough trouble as it is, without trying to figure out why we haven’t got more.”

  But their wits refused to work. No one had anything to suggest that was worth listening to, unless it was Driscoll, who was strongly in favor of avoiding the subpoena by the simple expedient of running away from it.

  “The trial is only four days off,” said he. “Convey Miss Williams to some safe and sheltered spot till it’s over, and let Knowlton join her there.”

  “But then there’d be a warrant out for her for contempt,” Jennings objected.

  “Well, you can’t have everything,” retorted Driscoll.

  Dougherty told them to wait a moment and crossed the lobby to Lila’s desk. Soon he returned, shaking his head negatively.

  “She won’t do it,” he announced.

  “She’s darned particular,” growled Booth. “What will she do?”

  But the ex-prizefighter stood up for Lila:

  “No, you can’t blame her. She looks at it different from us. We’ll have to think up something else.”