“Nothing at all,” he grunted. “Nothing at all, I tell you. Just a bit of gunpowder I was experimenting with went off too close.” He shook his head at Beebe’s expostulations. “No, don’t need any doctor. Won’t have one around me. Skin burned, that’s all. My eyes were closed at the time — so they were unharmed. And I had all the first aid stuff necessary in the office there. Jason fixed me up hunky dory.” And this done, he went back to his swivel chair where he proceeded to busy himself with his papers, his white-bound head bobbing absurdly about.
The early fall evening dropped upon the office soon, and the lights in the three rooms went on full blast. Came at last five-thirty, and in turn Fisher, Hal, Beebe and Meier put on their coats, turned up their coat collars, got their umbrellas, and turned out into the chill drizzly night. Fifteen minutes later came the sweepers, with brushes and dustbins and baskets, and in a trice it seemed Folwell and Eaves were left in the office by themselves.
Folwell continued at his drawing-board, however, making a long line here and there on the plans, for after all, he was still drawing a salary from this man. At six o’clock, Andrew, the white-aproned waiter from downstairs, brought up the edibles Folwell had ordered; and Folwell was careful to pay him from his own pocket and have them deposited on his own desk. And at six-thirty o’clock Eaves called him in.
“Now we’re ready,” he said. “Here’s the Prince Albert coat. Your own black and grey striped trousers, as I noted this afternoon, are close enough to mine to be half-cousins. There’s a broad-brimmed grey felt hat on the stand, and here’s the chamois-skin gloves. In the corner you’ll fine the gold-headed blackthorn cane. Dammit, Jason, no reason why you can’t fool the devil himself when you get your face bound up exactly as mine is.”
Together they closed and locked the door of the outer office, and extinguished the lights in all but the private room. They first examined the patent shades to see that every one was down its full length. This ascertained, Folwell carefully unwound from Eaves’s face the yards of gauze, and then, by the aid of the mirror in Eaves’s private washcloset, bound around his own face sufficient of the gauze till his own head was as neatly bandaged as that of J. Hamilton Eaves had been. He doffed his coat, and donned Eaves’s impressive Prince Albert, noting that the new garment did not fit him half badly. At last, his head bearing the broad-brimmed Western hat Eaves still affected, the dudish chamois-skin gloves on his hands and the expensive cane in his grasp, he stood at attention. Eaves’s satisfied face showed that the make-up was all that could be desired. Whereupon Folwell, depositing the cane and gloves again on the desk, proceeded carefully to examine the workings of the revolver which Eaves had tossed to him earlier in the afternoon. It worked perfectly. And right in front of the older man’s puzzled face he deliberately emptied all the shells from it, tossed them into the half-opened drawer of the desk, and reloaded it shell by shell from the box of fifty he had brought with him from his shopping tour. Then, depositing it in his hip pocket, he looked up. “I’m all in readiness,” he announced. “What’s the programme for the first night?”
“Now for to-night,” said Eaves, politely ignoring the younger man’s transference of the shells. “We’ll play a most simple schedule. Later on, we’ll go further. But as I say, to-night our moves will be simple. In other words, all you’ll do will be to go home. From here you walk around the corner to Johnston’s Loop Garage, on Monroe, near Wells. Just march inside as though you owned the place, and in case you — well, you know my car, Jason? You’ve driven it?”
“Yes, I know it all right. It’s the brown single-seated Durck-Palmer, closed coupé?”
“Yes. It ought to be second from the rear on the left side, but if it should be moved, just call for Mike, the garage attendant. When Mike sees those clothes, he’ll know you all right, and he’ll steer you to wherever it’s standing. Climb in then and just drive out when Mike swings open the rolling doors. You need have no fear of having to talk with Johnson himself, for he’s lying ever drunk on the floor of his office. He must be the best customer his bootlegger’s got! The best way to drive out home is by way of Washington Street, and then Washington Boulevard, turning north on Clarkson Court. You’ve been over the road, however, with me. Run the car through the arch in front and around to the garage in the rear. Lionel always has the doors open and the lights on. Leave the car there, and old Jinny will see you from the kitchen window and come out and lock the doors. As soon as you get inside the house tell Lionel the details of our plan, but no need to mention anything about the details of our proposition, confession, or anything like that. Simply explain to him how you’ve taken my place for fourteen days on account of the threat to my life which he knows about. All clear?”
Folwell thought for a moment. “One question — and I think that’s all. If it should be necessary for anyone to get in connection with you, would it be of any use to ring you by ‘phone?”
Eaves shook his head vehemently. “No. None whatever. In the first place this inner ‘phone, Central 9660, is on the blink and won’t take any incoming calls. As for the ‘phone out there, if any person or persons are trying to get next to my moves, they might possibly check up by calling me. And right away my voice would be recognized. No, don’t ‘phone me. Only way you could get me in ease of emergency, once you go out of here, is for — say — Lionel or yourself, whom I know, to come to the office and rap — well, six times on the outer door. But don’t do it. Now beat it, Jason, and keep your eyes open every step. Don’t go to sleep on the job — for your own sake! I’ll see you in the morning. I’ve got plenty of details to keep me working on until ten o’clock, and as for sleeping on the camp cot, I can sleep like a brick on anything.” He paused. “I see the eats are waiting on your desk. And while you’re going, do you happen to have any of those peppermint lozenges about you?”
Folwell nodded toward his desk. “There’s a half bagful inside the desk. Help yourself.” He picked up the chamois-skin gloves, put them on, took the gold-headed blackthorn stick in his hand and clapped the broad Western felt hat on his head. As he glanced at himself in the mirror across the room, he had to admit that, with his face completely obliterated, he was a good imitation in build, stature, height and appearance of the well-known figure of J. Hamilton Eaves.
“Well, good-bye, Mr. Eaves,” he said easily, touching once more the hard, smooth, cold revolver that now reposed in his hip pocket. “I’m off now. The contest is on. And if your friend, the Star of the Night, feels like striking, I’m ready for him. And when next I see you, I’ll have earned back just about one-fourteenth of that confession you’ve just locked in the vault. And some day I may be able to tell you some facts about that paper. But not just now.” He turned on his heel. “Good night.”
“Good night, Jason,” said Eaves. His voice was tired and strained. “Good luck, boy. Watch your step.”
CHAPTER VI
HALF AROUND WITH THE CLOCK
WITH the latch of the door clicking back of him, Folwell made his way down by the stairway from the second floor. J. Hamilton Eaves now stood safely back in a tight little fort, while he, Jason Folwell, was striding forth in the darkness to combat the mysterious Star of the Night, if such an individual really existed. He walked across the foyer from the base of the white marble stairway, nodding to Mary Battersbee — “Apple Mary,” as the old English woman was called — who kept the little magazine, cigar and fruit stand near the doorway. And he noted with amusement Apple Mary’s startled stare, followed by her energetic nod back to him when she recognized — or thought she recognized — the person of J. Hamilton Eaves, one of the tenants of the building in which she sat patiently every day from 7 a.m. till 10 at night.
Out on the street, among the few late home-going brokers and brokers’ clerks, he hurried along under the arc lights. He watched both the sidewalks in front of him, and every quarter block took a careful survey of the sidewalk behind him. Nothing suspicious was to be seen, however. The rain had long since stopped, b
ut the air was chill. Around the corner he made his way, and the electric-lighted sign on Monroe Street, near Wells, guided him in the next part of his performance. Up the cement incline he marched, past the bearded mechanic and car-washer who quickly flung open the doors for him, and proceeded without any hesitancy toward Eaves’s Durck-Palmer which, at this hour of the night, stood forth prominently among the few remaining cars. He climbed in, saw that the windows were well up on this chill night that threatened more rain at any moment, and by the fact of having driven all makes of cars and experimented with their mechanisms, drove easily past the gaping mechanic who stared dumbly at the gauze-wrapped face at the steering wheel.
Out into the still glistening streets he ran, north to Washington, then west, and soon was going over the river. For twenty minutes he drove along Washington Boulevard, where he watched from the corner of his eye every car that passed him either way. But nothing suspicious was to be seen. At last he turned off at Clarkson Court, where he slowed up in front of an expensive brownstone residence with wide, curving windows, a stone piazza, and a narrow stone driveway running around the side to a cement garage in the rear. It was a peculiar residence — expensive, to be sure — but a house built evidently to imitate the style of architecture used by all millionaires and others possessing a greater fortune than J. Hamilton Eaves. Indeed, the man was a clever manipulator of effects.
Folwell drove up the small incline and around to the cement garage, which, as Eaves had described, stood open, with its cluster of lights in the ceiling turned on. Then, letting the car stand, he made his way around to the front door and rang the bell. It was answered by a youth of perhaps twenty-five, a youth whose tightly combed back hair in its oily-black pompadour showed up a narrow forehead, surmounting a pair of close-set eyes framed in the deep caverns of dissipation. The thin lips above the weak chin one unconsciously expected to see licked by his tongue at any moment. A cigarette was still smouldering in yellow-tinged fingernails, and he was faultlessly attired in a suit of splendid cut, a cravat the marvel of symmetry in the tying, and shoes foppish, green leather, tied by flaring bows.
“Why — father!” he exclaimed. “What’s happened to — ” He stopped. It was evident that Lionel Pettibone’s long, intimate association with his stepfather, J. Hamilton Eaves, was sufficient to show him that this was some sort of a weird, practical joke being played upon him; that he knew this figure that stood on the threshold was not his father.
“Hello, Lionel,” said Folwell, as he pushed in, half smiling at the other’s bewilderment under the gauze on his face. “I’ll explain as soon as we get inside.”
Lionel Pettibone, eyes still staring, led the way into a tiny library off the front hall, fitted with leather chairs and a rich mahogany table. Then he closed the door.
“What’s up, anyway?” he queried hurriedly. He tossed his half-consumed cigarette away and immediately drew forth another. “This — this is Jason Folwell, if I’m not mistaken in the voice.”
Folwell dropped down into the nearest chair. He took off his hat. He told the youth the details of the plan entered into by himself and the other’s stepfather, without, however, making any mention whatever of the unpleasant proposition involved. That, he knew, was not necessary.
Lionel Pettibone heard him through, puffing away on his cigarette, lounging back in a leather chair, his long, neatly trousered legs sprawling lazily across the rich Persian rug, his little, piglike eyes drinking in every sartorial detail of Folwell’s figure.
“Well,” he said at last in comment, “it’s a rummy sort of game to play against this bird — this Star of the Night. If it had been me, I’d have notified the police and been done with it. However, it’s your and his business.” He paused. “What’s he paying you for the stunt, anyway, Folwell?”
Folwell flushed under the gauze at the impudent curiosity of the other.
“I’d much rather you’d take that up with your father,” he said. Then he endeavoured to laugh it off.
Lionel shrugged his shoulders. He looked at his watch. “All right, old chap. Well, dinner’s waiting in the dining-car. Strip off that junk that’s on your face. You won’t need to swathe yourself up like a mummy again till morning. Nobody in the house but old Jinny, and no need to keep up the masquerade to-night. I’ll be pulling all the shades down while you fix up. You’ll find a smoking-jacket over there in that closet. Bathroom’s across the hall. Fix yourself comfortable, and we’ll eat.”
This was welcome news to Jason Folwell, and in the washroom to which Lionel showed him he lost no time in getting back to a normal-appearing man again. The gauze that he removed from his face he carefully wound up in a roll to be used again next morning. He doffed the Prince Albert coat and climbed into the more comfortable smoking-jacket that Lionel gave him. The first leg of the peculiar journey was over, but later feats might be and probably would be more difficult to handle, and more dangerous as well.
At the table in the paneled dining-room he sat directly across from Lionel Pettibone, and he enjoyed every one of the courses. Indeed, J. Hamilton Eaves spared no expense for his own enjoyment gustatorial. That was evident.
He chatted with the younger man on trivial subjects throughout the first courses of the dinner. It was during the salad that Lionel touched upon the threats his stepfather had received.
“If these three fellows were really killed, how do you think they met their deaths, Folwell?”
Folwell’s forehead creased up. “If they were killed — there is a question in itself. Your father considers they were either slugged or drugged. I haven’t, as yet, been able to conduct a rigorous investigation, lest it bring down a lot of notoriety which he doesn’t want. I do feel, however, that with my eyes open I’m a match for any devilishness that may be on foot. We’re living in the days of the twentieth century — not the days of mediæval Italy. These others simply ignored a warning — and suffered a penalty.”
“Haven’t you any fear, walking in the footsteps of a marked man, and resembling him to the last detail in dress?”
“Strangely, no,” returned Folwell with a laugh. “I can’t account for it. But I don’t seem to feel a bit shaky in my boots.”
“Well, I hope you meet your man and plug him through the heart,” said Lionel fervently. “But, I still repeat, if it had been me I’d have notified the police.”
Nothing more was said upon the question, the conversation drifting off to other topics. It was while they were eating dessert that Folwell managed to touch upon the subject of Roslyn Van Etten.
“I have forgotten to congratulate you on the published engagement between yourself and Miss Roslyn Van Etten, Lionel,” he said. “I read it in the papers several months ago, shortly after I first came with your father, but never have thought at the times you dropped in the office to tender you my best wishes.”
At his mention of Roslyn Van Etten, Folwell observed a shadow of something like distress pass across the narrow, piglike eyes, a look of hunted defiance. It was unmistakable. Lionel lighted another cigarette, adding his fifth stub to those on his dessert plate, before he essayed a reply.
“Yes — thanks — old chap. I’m a rather lucky guy, don’t you know, to cop off Roslyn Van Etten.” An avaricious leer came into the little eyes. “Heiress in two years, y’know, of fifty thousand from her mamma, and only daughter of a man worth a million.”
Folwell gave to the other a piercing, searching scrutiny. What sort of a man was this, he could not help but wonder, who would speak of the financial aspect of his coming marriage before an utter stranger, even in a facetious manner.
“But, of course,” Folwell commented lightly, “neither the fifty thousand nor the million would make any difference to you, I know. From the newspaper pictures, I can see she’s a beautiful girl — a perfect type of blonde — and a prize to any man, I’m thinking.”
Lionel laughed off his faux pas nervously. “Of course, she is,” he hastened to say. “I don’t mean what you think I meant �
�� that I was marrying her for her money. She’s a stunner, a blonde queen, don’t you think? The kind you can run into a swell eat-joint and have every eye in the place sizing you up.”
“A strange mind, this Lionel’s,” thought Folwell to himself again. “A mind materialistic, financial, loving display, unable apparently to see anything in the realm of the spirit.”
“She’s a wonderful girl,” he said aloud. “I saw her in the office once, when you were closeted with your father.”
But Lionel appeared to be no longer interested in the subject of Roslyn Van Etten. He leaned across the table and, fastening his little eyes upon Folwell, spoke.
“Say, Folwell, I want to ask you a question in confidence. Can you keep your trap shut if I put a query to you sub rosa? That is, to father?”
“Why, yes — yes,” returned Folwell. “Ask away. I may not be able to answer — but I’ll not divulge the fact.”
“Well, here it is: Does the old man make any considerable amount of money out of that National Industrial Securities Company?”
“Why — you ought to know as much as I about it. You’re his stepson — his only relative. I suppose you live on a very decent scale here, and enjoy a good allowance.”
“Do I, though!” snapped young Pettibone savagely. “I get an allowance of ten lone bucks a week for spending money and my incidental expenses, and the rent of my art studio. That’s all.”
“And how does the art pay?” asked Folwell, desperately trying to shift a conversation which, prying as it was, was distasteful to him. “I understand that you studied several years at it in another city?”
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