"Don't I know it?" snapped Durand viciously. "There'll be no slip-up this time if you do your part. We'll get him, and we'll get him right."
"Without any violence, of course."
"Oh, of course."
Was there a covert but derisive jeer concealed in that smooth assent? Bromfield did not know, but he took away with him an unease that disturbed his sleep that night.
Before the clubman was out of the hotel, Jerry was snapping instructions at one of his satellites.
"Tail that fellow. Find where he goes, who he is, what girl he's mashed on, all about him. See if he's hooked up with Lindsay. And how? Hop to it! Did you get a slant at him as he went out?"
"Sure I did. He's my meat."
The tailer vanished.
Jerry stood at the window, still sullenly chewing his unlighted cigar, and watched his late visitor and the tailer lose themselves in the hurrying crowds.
"White-livered simp. 'No violence, Mr. Durand.' Hmp! Different here."
An evil grin broke through on the thin-lipped, cruel face.
CHAPTER XXVIII
IN BAD
When Bromfield suggested to Clay with a touch of stiffness that he would be glad to show him a side of New York night life probably still unfamiliar to him, the cattleman felt a surprise he carefully concealed. He guessed that this was a belated attempt on the part of Miss Whitford's fiancé to overcome the palpable dislike he had for her friend. If so, the impulse that inspired the offer was a creditable one. Lindsay had no desire to take in any of the plague spots of the city with Bromfield. Something about the society man set his back up, to use his own phrase. But because this was true he did not intend to be outdone in generosity by a successful rival. Promptly and heartily he accepted the invitation. If he had known that a note and a card from Jerry Durand lay in the vest pocket of his cynical host while he was holding out the olive branch, it is probable the Arizonan would have said, "No, thank you, kind sir."
The note mentioned no names. It said, "Wednesday, at Maddock's, 11
P.M. Show this card."
And to Maddock's, on Wednesday, at an hour something earlier than eleven, the New Yorker led his guest after a call at one or two clubs.
Even from the outside the place had a dilapidated look that surprised Lindsay. The bell was of that brand you keep pulling till you discover it is out of order. Decayed gentility marked the neighborhood, though the blank front of the houses looked impeccably respectable.
As a feeble camouflage of its real reason for being, Maddock's called itself the "Omnium Club." But when Clay found how particular the doorkeeper was as to those who entered he guessed at once it was a gambling-house.
From behind a grating the man peered at them doubtfully. Bromfield showed a card, and after some hesitation on the part of his inquisitor, passed the examination. Toward Clay the doorkeeper jerked his head inquiringly.
"He's all right," the clubman vouched.
Again there was a suspicious and lengthy scrutiny.
The door opened far enough to let them slide into a scantily furnished hall. On the first landing was another guard, a heavy, brutal-looking fellow who was no doubt the "chucker-out." He too looked them over closely, but after a glance at the card drew aside to let them pass.
Through a door near the head of the stairs they moved into a large room, evidently made from several smaller ones with the partitions torn down and the ceilings pillared at intervals.
Clay had read about the magnificence of Canfield's in the old days, and he was surprised that one so fastidious as Bromfield should patronize a place so dingy and so rough as this. At the end of one room was a marble mantelpiece above which there was a defaced, gilt-frame mirror. The chandeliers, the chairs, the wall-paper, all suggested the same note of one-time opulence worn to shabbiness.
A game of Klondike was going. There were two roulette wheels, a faro table, and one circle of poker players.
The cold eyes of a sleek, slippery man sliding cards out of a faro-box looked at the Westerner curiously. Among the suckers who came to this den of thieves to be robbed were none of Clay's stamp. Lindsay watched the white, dexterous hands of the dealer with an honest distaste. All along the border from Juarez to Calexico he had seen just such soft, skilled fingers fleecing those who toiled. He knew the bloodless, impassive face of the professional gambler as well as he knew the anxious, reckless ones of his victims. His knowledge had told him little good of this breed of parasites who preyed upon a credulous public.
The traffic of this room was crooked business by day as well as by night. A partition ran across the rear of the back parlor which showed no opening but two small holes with narrow shelves at the bottom. Back of that was the paraphernalia of the pool-room, another device to separate customers from their money by playing the "ponies."
As Clay looked around it struck him that the personnel of this gambling-den's patrons was a singularly depressing one. All told there were not a dozen respectable-looking people in the room. Most of those present were derelicts of life, the failures of a great city washed up by the tide. Some were pallid, haggard wretches clinging to the vestiges of a prosperity that had once been theirs. Others were hard-faced ruffians from the underworld. Not a few bore the marks of the drug victim. All of those playing had a manner of furtive suspicion. They knew that if they risked their money the house would rob them. Yet they played.
Bromfield bought a small stack of chips at the roulette table.
"Won't you take a whirl at the wheel?" he asked Lindsay.
"Thanks, no, I believe not," his guest answered.
The Westerner was a bit disgusted at his host's lack of discrimination. "Does he think I'm a soft mark too?" he wondered. "If this is what he calls high life I've had more than enough already."
His disgust was shared by the clubman. Bromfield had never been in such a dive before. His gambling had been done in gilded luxury. While he touched shoulders with this motley crew his nostrils twitched with fastidious disdain. He played, but his interest was not in the wheel. Durand had promised that there would be women and that one of them should be bribed to make a claim upon Clay at the proper moment. He had an unhappy feeling that the gang politician had thrown him down in this. If so, what did that mean? Had Durand some card up his sleeve? Was he using him as a catspaw to rake in his own chestnuts?
Clarendon Bromfield began to weaken. He and Clay were the only two men in the room in evening clothes. His questing eye fell on tough, scarred faces that offered his fears no reassurance. Any one or all of them might be agents of Durand.
He shoved all of his chips out, putting half of them on number eight and the rest on seventeen. His object was to lose his stack immediately and be free to go. To his annoyance the whirling ball dropped into the pocket labeled eight.
"Let's get out of this hole," he said to Lindsay in a low voice. "I don't like it."
"Suits me," agreed the other.
As Bromfield was cashing his chips Clay came rigidly to attention. Two men had just come into the room. One of them was "Slim" Jim Collins, the other Gorilla Dave. As yet they had not seen him. He did not look at them, but at his host. There was a question in his mind he wanted solved. The clubman's gaze passed over both the newcomers without the least sign of recognition.
"I didn't know what this joint was like or I'd never have brought you," apologized Clarendon. "A friend of mine told me about it. He's got a queer fancy if he likes this frazzled dive."
Clay acquitted Bromfield of conspiracy. He must have been tailed here by Durand's men. His host had nothing to do with it. What for? They could not openly attack him.
"Slim" Jim's eyes fell on him. He nudged Dave. Both of them, standing near the entrance, watched Lindsay steadily.
Some one outside the door raised the cry, "The bulls are comin'."
Instantly the room leaped to frenzied excitement. Men dived for the doors, bets forgotten and chips scattered over the floor. Chairs were smashed as they charged over them, t
ables overturned. The unwary were trodden underfoot.
Bromfield went into a panic. Why had he been fool enough to trust Durand? No doubt the fellow would ruin him as willingly as he would Lindsay. The raid was fifteen minutes ahead of schedule time. The ward politician had betrayed him. He felt sure of it. All the carefully prepared plans agreed upon he jettisoned promptly. His sole thought was to save himself, not to trap his rival.
Lindsay caught him by the arm. "Let's try the back room."
He followed Clay, Durand's gangmen at his heels.
The lights went out.
The Westerner tried the window. It was heavily barred outside. He turned to search for a door.
Brought up by the partition, Bromfield was whimpering with fear as he too groped for a way of escape. A pale moon shone through the window upon his evening clothes.
In the dim light Clay knew that tragedy impended. "Slim" Jim had his automatic out.
"I've got you good," the chauffeur snarled.
The gun cracked. Bromfield bleated in frenzied terror as Clay dashed forward. A chair swung round in a sweeping arc. As it descended the spitting of the gun slashed through the darkness a second time.
"Slim" Jim went down, rolled over, lay like a log.
Some one dived for Lindsay and drove him against the wall, pinning him by the waist. A second figure joined the first and caught the cattleman's wrist.
Then the lights flashed on again. Clay saw that the man who had flung him against the partition was Gorilla Dave. A plain-clothes man with a star had twisted his wrist and was clinging to it. Bromfield was nowhere to be seen, but an open door to the left showed that he had found at least a temporary escape.
A policeman came forward and stooped over the figure of the prostrate man.
"Some one's croaked a guy," he said.
Gorilla Dave spoke up quickly. "This fellow did it. With a chair. I seen him."
There was a moment before Lindsay answered quietly. "He shot twice.
The gun must be lying under him where he fell."
Already men had crowded forward to the scene of the tragedy, moved by the morbid curiosity a crowd has in such sights. Two policemen pushed them back and turned the still body over. No revolver was to be seen.
"Anybody know who this is?" one of the officers asked.
"Collins—'Slim' Jim," answered big Dave.
"Well, he's got his this time," the policeman said. "Skull smashed."
Clay's heart sank. In that noise of struggling men and crashing furniture very likely the sound of the shots had been muffled. The revolver gone, false testimony against him, proof that he had threatened Collins available, Clay knew that he was in desperate straits.
"There was another guy here with him in them glad rags," volunteered one of the gamblers captured in the raid.
"Who was he?" asked the plain-clothes man of his prisoner.
Clay was silent. He was thinking rapidly. His enemies had him trapped at last with the help of circumstance, Why bring Bromfield into it? It would mean trouble and worry for Beatrice.
"Better speak up, young fellow, me lad," advised the detective. "It won't help you any to be sulky. You're up against the electric chair sure."
The Arizonan looked at him with the level, unafraid eyes of the hills.
"I reckon I'll not talk till I'm ready," he said in his slow drawl.
The handcuffs clicked on his wrists.
CHAPTER XXIX
BAD NEWS
Colin Whitford came into the room carrying a morning paper. His step was hurried, his eyes eager. When he spoke there was the lift of excitement in his voice.
"Bee, I've got bad news."
"Is the Bird Cage flooded?" asked Beatrice. "Or have the miners called a strike again?"
"Worse than that. Lindsay's been arrested. For murder."
The bottom fell out of her heart. She caught at the corner of a desk to steady herself. "Murder! It can't be! Must be some one of the same name."
"I reckon not, honey. It's Clay sure enough. Listen." He read the headlines of a front-page story.
"It can't be Clay! What would he be doing in a gambling-dive?" She reached for the paper, but when she had it the lines blurred before her eyes. "Read it, please."
Whitford read the story to the last line. Long before he had finished, his daughter knew the one arrested was Clay. She sat down heavily, all the life stricken from her young body.
"It's that man Durand. He's done this and fastened it on Clay. We'll find a way to prove Clay didn't do it."
"Maybe, in self-defense—"
Beatrice pushed back her father's hesitant suggestion, and even while she did it a wave of dread swept over her. The dead man was the same criminal "Slim" Jim Collins whom the cattleman had threatened in order to protect the Millikan girl. The facts that the man had been struck down by a chair and that her friend claimed, according to the paper, that the gunman had fired two shots, buttressed the solution offered by Whitford. But the horror of it was too strong for her. Against reason her soul protested that Clay could not have killed a man. It was too horrible, too ghastly, that through the faults of others he should be put in such a situation.
And why should her friend be in such a place unless he had been trapped by the enemies who were determined to ruin him? She knew he had a contempt for men who wasted their energies in futile dissipations. He was too clean, too much a son of the wind-swept desert, to care anything about the low pleasures of indecent and furtive vice. He was the last man she knew likely to be found enjoying a den of this sort.
"Dad, I'm going to him," she announced with crisp decision.
Her father offered no protest. His impulse, too, was to stand by the friend in need. He had no doubt Clay had killed the man, but he had a sure conviction it had been done in self-defense.
"We'll get the best lawyers in New York for him, honey," he said.
"Nobody will slip anything over on Lindsay if we can help it."
"Will they let us see him? Or shall we have to get permission from some one?"
"We'll have to get an order. I know the district attorney. He'll do what he can for me, but maybe it'll take time."
Beatrice rose, strong again and resilient. Her voice was vibrant with confidence. "Then after you've called up the district attorney, we'll drive to Clay's flat in Harlem and find out from Johnnie what he can tell us. Perhaps he knows what Clay was doing in that place they raided."
It was not necessary to go to the Runt. He came to them. As Beatrice and her father stepped into the car Johnnie and Kitty appeared round the corner. Both of them had the news of a catastrophe written on their faces. A very little encouragement and they would be in tears.
"Ain't it tur'ble, Miss Beatrice? They done got Clay at last. After he made 'em all look like plugged nickels they done fixed it so he'll mebbe go to the electric chair and—"
"Stop that nonsense, Johnnie," ordered Miss Whitford sharply, a pain stabbing her heart at his words. "Don't begin whining already. We've got to see him through. Buck up and tell me what you know."
"That's right, Johnnie,"' added the mining man. "You and Kitty quit looking like the Atlantic Ocean in distress. We've got to endure the grief and get busy. We'll get Lindsay out of this hole all right."
"You're dawg-goned whistlin'. Y'betcha, by jollies!" agreed the Runt, immensely cheered by Whitford's confidence. "We been drug into this an' we'll sure hop to it."
"When did you see Clay last? How did he come to be in that gambling-house? Did he say anything to you about going there?" The girl's questions tumbled over each other in her hurry.
"Well, ma'am, it must 'a' been about nine o'clock that Clay he left last night. I recollect because—"
"It doesn't matter why. Where was he going?"
"To meet Mr. Bromfield at his club," said Kitty.
"Mr. Bromfield!" cried Beatrice, surprised. "Are you sure?"
"Tha's what Clay said," corroborated the husband. "Mr. Bromfield invited him. We both noticed i
t because it seemed kinda funny, him and Clay not bein'—"
"Johnnie," his wife reproved, mindful of the relationship between this young woman and the clubman.
"Did he say which club?"
"Seems to me he didn't, not as I remember. How about that, Kitty?"
"No, I'm sure he didn't. He said he wouldn't be back early. So we went to bed. We s'posed after we got up this mo'nin' he was sleepin' in his room till the paper come and I looked at it." Johnnie gave way to lament. "I told him awhile ago we had orto go back to Arizona or they'd git him. And now they've gone and done it sure enough."
Keen as a hawk on the hunt, Beatrice turned to her father quickly.
"I'm going to get Clarendon on the 'phone. He'll know all about it."
"Why will he know all about it?"
"Because he was with Clay. He's the man the paper says the police are looking for—the man with Clay when it happened."
Her father's eyes lit. "That's good guessing, Bee."
It was her fiancé's man who answered the girl's call. She learned that
Clarendon was still in his room.
"He's quite sick this morning, Miss," the valet added.
"Tell him I want to talk with him. It's important."
"I don't think, Miss, that he's able—"
"Will you please tell him what I say?"
Presently the voice of Bromfield, thin and worried, came to her over the wire. "I'm ill, Bee. Absolutely done up. I—I can't talk."
"Tell me about Clay Lindsay. Were you with him when—when it happened?"
There was a perceptible pause before the answer came.
"With him?" She could feel his terror throbbing over the wire. Though she could not see him, she knew her question had stricken him white. "With him where?"
"At this gambling-house—Maddock's?"
"No, I—I—Bee, I tell you I'm ill."
"He went out last night to join you at your club. I know that. When did you see him last?"
"I—we didn't—he didn't come."
The Big-Town Round-Up Page 17
