The Victorian Rogues MEGAPACK ™: 28 Classic Tales

by Maurice Leblanc

  “May I take this letter?” Valeska asked.

  “No, I daren’t leave it. Mr. Cameron may miss it and ask for it. But you may tell Astro, if you think best.”

  Valeska gave another glance at the letter and handed it back. “My dear Miss Mannering, don’t worry about it,” she said, pressing her hand. “It may not be so bad as you fear. Whatever it is, Astro will find it out, you may be sure.”

  * * * *

  When the visitor had departed, Valeska walked into the studio with the news. Astro listened in silence till she had finished; then he smiled, nodded, and took up his water-pipe lazily.

  “The solution of this thing is so simple that I’m surprised it hasn’t occurred to you, my dear. But that’s because of your lack of experience and the fact that you haven’t read so much as I have. But, all the same, there may be something deeper in it than appears now. At any rate the girl is to be helped, and the lieutenant as well; and that we shall do.”

  “But what about the ‘Assassins’?” Valeska inquired anxiously.

  “Oh, that’s the whole thing, of course. But I think I’ll let you study that out yourself. It will be good practise for your reasoning powers. First, let’s see if your powers of observation have improved. Tell me all about the letter.” He blew out a series of smoke rings and regarded her quizzically.

  “Well,” Valeska puckered her brows, “it was written on buff-laid linen paper of about ninety pounds weight very heavy stock, anyway—in an envelope of the same, postmarked Madison Square station, April nineteenth, four P. M. The handwriting was that of a stout middle-aged man, who had just had some serious illness,—a foreigner, hard-working, unscrupulous, dishonest, with no artistic sensibility.”

  “Bravo! Is that all?”

  “No, the stationery came from Perkins & Shaw’s. I saw the stamping under the flap.”

  “Very good. Unfortunately we can’t ask there about the Assassins. But perhaps we’ll find my ideal criminal after all. The easiest plan will be to follow Cameron to-morrow night. Meanwhile, you had better do some thinking yourself.”

  Valeska sat down and gazed long into the great open fire, her brows frowning, her hands working mechanically, absorbed in thought. Astro took a small folding chess-board and gracefully amused himself with an intricate problem in the logistics of the game. When at last he had queened his white pawn according to his theory, he looked over at his assistant and smiled to see her seriousness. In that look something seemed to pass from him to her.

  “Oh!” she cried, jumping up, “does it begin with an H?”

  “More properly with a C,” he replied.

  She shook her head and went at the problem again, and kept at it until it was time to close the studio.

  * * * *

  The next afternoon Astro and Valeska waited for two hours across Seventy-eighth Street from Miss Mannering’s house before they saw the lieutenant emerge. They had already a good description of him, and had no trouble in recognizing the tall good-looking fellow who at half past six o’clock walked briskly up the street, ran down the stairs to the subway, and took a seat in a down-town local train. Astro and Valeska separated and took seats on the opposite side of the car, watching their man guardedly. At Twenty-third Street he got out, went up to the sidewalk, and walked eastward.

  Beyond Fourth Avenue was a row of three-story, old-fashioned, brick houses, back from the street. The lieutenant entered the small iron gate to one of the yards and, taking a key from his pocket, went in the front door of a house. It slammed behind him.

  “The headquarters of the Assassins,” said Astro calmly, his hands in his overcoat pockets, studying the windows.

  “And what next?” asked Valeska.

  “We’ll wait a while. Come into this next doorway.”

  On the side of the doorway they now entered was a sign, “Furnished Rooms.” It was now after seven o’clock, and had begun to snow. Valeska stood inside the vestibule protected from the weather; Astro waited just outside watching the doorway of number 109. The Twenty-third Street cars clanged noisily by, the din of the traffic muffled by the carpet of snow. The open mouth of the subway sucked in an unsteady stream of wayfarers.

  Suddenly Valeska put her hand on Astro’s arm. “Does it begin with ‘C-o’?” she asked.

  He smiled. “No, ‘C-a,’” he answered.

  “Oh, dear, I thought I had it! But don’t tell me! I’m sure I’ll work it out, though. But it makes me anxious. Anything might happen on a night like this!”

  “Yes, even an assasination.”

  “You don’t fear that, really?” She looked at him in alarm.

  “But I do,—assassination of a sort. What else could the letter mean?”

  She had not time to answer before the door of the next house opened, and a man buttoned up in a fur-trimmed overcoat came out. He stopped a moment to raise an umbrella, and they could see that he was a stout pasty-faced German of some fifty years, with a curling yellow mustache. He wore spectacles and seemed to be near-sighted.

  “There’s the man who wrote the letter! Follow him, Valeska! Find out who he is and all that’s possible! We must follow every lead.”

  Valeska was off on the instant, running down the steps and walking swiftly up Twenty-third Street.

  Astro lighted a cigar, turned up his collar and waited another half-hour in the doorway. Nobody having entered or left number 109 by that time, he rang the bell of number in. A Swedish maid came to the door.

  “I’d like to see what rooms you have,” said Astro.

  “The only one is on the third floor rear,” she replied, and showed him up two flights of unlighted stairs, steep and narrow, to a small square room, meagerly furnished. Walking to the window, Astro saw that, level with the floor, was a tin-covered roof over an extension in the rear. It stretched along the whole width of the four houses in the row. On this he might easily stand and look into the adjoining windows. Saying that he would move in later, Astro paid the girl for a week’s rent in advance, and left the house and walked home.

  * * * *

  Valeska next morning came full of news. “The German kept right along Twenty-third Street toward Broadway,” she said, “and it occurred to me that I might get him to make the first advances, and get acquainted without being suspected. So I passed him, and very gracefully slipped on the snow and dropped my purse. Then I began looking about on the sidewalk for the money that might have dropped out. My German friend came along and offered to help me. It took some time, and the long and short of it was that we had quite a conversation, and I convinced him that I was respectable. He walked along with me and asked me where I was going. I said that I had intended going to the Hippodrome with a friend; but that I had been detained, and it was so late I thought I’d go home. He proposed having something to eat, and of course I refused. I had to be urged and urged; but the more I refused, the more anxious he was to have me come. Finally, I reluctantly assented to his invitation, and we went to the Cafe Riche.

  “Well, you ought to have seen that German eat,—I mean you ought to have heard him eat! I couldn’t eat anything myself; but sipped the wine he ordered and coyly led him on, chattering away about myself ingenuously. I had an engagement with Richard Mansfield and a three years’ contract at one hundred dollars a week when he died, and was awfully anxious to get another chance. All the money I had was tied up in one of the trust companies, and so on. He kept on eating, taking the biggest mouthfuls I ever saw and leaving half of it on his mustache. Oh, I put in some hard work, I assure you!

  “Then he began asking me questions, and wanted to know if I would like to earn some money on the side. Would I? I jumped at it!—five thousand actor folk out of a job this season, you know, and all that. He said I reminded him of his dead daughter—you know I’m always reminding people of somebody—and he thought he could tru
st me. I cast down my eyes and let him go on.

  “He said there was a man he knew who had stolen some confidential papers, and he wanted to get them away from him without publicity. He needed a good clever woman to help him out on the job. I brightened up considerably. He asked me to go home with him so that he could give me a photograph to identify my victim. I said I would; although I confess I was getting nervous, not being quite sure what he was up to. He had begun paying me compliments, and when a German begins to get sentimental—well, you know!

  “I took the subway with him, and we went up to One Hundred and Twenty-sixth Street. There was a big apartment hotel there, called the Dahlia,—one of those marble-hailed affairs that look as if they were built of a dozen different kinds of fancy soap, with a red carpet and awfully funny oil-paintings and negro hall boys sitting in Renaissance armchairs. I refused to go up-stairs. Well, after a while he came down the elevator and handed me this photograph. What do you think?”

  She handed Astro a cabinet photograph. He lifted his fine brows when he looked at it.

  “Lieutenant Cameron!”

  Valeska nodded. “I’m to scrape up an acquaintance with him, get his confidence, and then report to Herr Beimer for final instructions. I wonder what poor little Miss Mannering would say?”

  She took off her sables, her saucy fur toque, and touched up her hair at the great carved mirror at one end of the studio.

  Astro sat regarding the portrait in his hand. He looked up to ask, “Did you find out what his business was?”

  She whirled round to him. “Oh, I forgot! He’s the agent for a big German firm, connected with the Krupps’ steel plant. They control the rights to a new magazine pistol. I was awfully interested in machinery, you know. It bored me to death; but I listened half an hour to his description of a new ammunition hoist for battleships.”

  Astro was suddenly electrified with energy. “Ah!” he exclaimed. “You didn’t remember that the Krupps stand in with the German government and have the biggest subsidies and contracts in the world? He wants you to make up to a construction officer in the United States navy, does he? He needs a clever woman! I should say he did! Was Herr Beimer sober?”

  “Perfectly, as far as I could see, except for his sentimentality. Of course he was a bit effusive, you know.”

  “Yes, I see. It wasn’t his night. It was Haskell’s night, whoever Haskell is! But I think we’ll have to hurry. This looks more serious than I thought at first. I shall sleep at number 111 in East Twenty-third Street to-night. And meanwhile I have a nice job of forgery for you, Valeska. I wish you’d practise copying this writing till you can write a short note that will pass for Lieutenant Cameron’s handwriting.”

  He took a letter from a drawer. The envelope was addressed to Miss Violet Mannering. Valeska took it and read it over carefully. It was a single sheet, torn from a double page, and read partly as follows:

  “I believe that just as everything seems somehow different at night when we can see farther than by day; for can we not see the stars? when our emotions seem freer so there are two worlds in which it is possible to exist. One is the dreary every-day place of business and duty and pain; the other is free from care or suffering. Don’t we enter that occult world at night through our dreams, where there is no such thing as conscience? There are no consequences there! No doubt it’s a dangerous place, because it is abnormal; but its exploration is fascinating. Why ignore the fact that it exists as a refuge from the worries of matter-of-fact existence—”

  Valeska read it thoughtfully. Her eyes looked through the paper as if into a mist beyond. “No wonder poor Miss Mannering is worried!” she said to herself. She looked at Astro, as if to ask a question. He was busy with a planimeter, calculating the area of a queer irregular polygon drawn on a sheet of parchment. Seeing his tense look, she turned to her study of the manuscript.

  * * * *

  As soon as it was dark, Astro opened the window of his room on Twenty-third Street, and walked along the crackling tin roof till he came to the first window of the house occupied by the Assassins. Looking in, he saw a small, bare, hall bedroom, furnished with a cot, a wash-stand, and one chair. The next two windows were lighted. He approached them carefully. Three men were seated at a library table strewn with magazines. All were smoking comfortably. One, Astro recognized as the lieutenant, another as Herr Beimer. The third was a yellow-faced man with red hair, high cheek-bones, and dark eyes deeply set into his skull. In front of him was a plate filled with what looked like caviar sandwiches, cut small and thin.

  Herr Beimer said something, at which the others laughed loudly. Then with a flourish, as if drinking their health, Lieutenant Cameron took one of the sandwiches and ate it almost with an air of bravado. Beimer looked at his watch. The lean yellow-faced man walked out of the room. The lieutenant took up an illustrated paper and began to read.

  Astro tiptoed carefully back to his room, put on his overcoat, and went down-stairs, walked over to the drug store, and at the telephone booth rang up Valeska.

  “Have you written the letter?” he asked.

  “Not yet,” was the answer.

  “Well, you must do it immediately as well as you can. Bring it to number 111 and ask for Mr. Silverman.”

  He then went back to his room. Another stealthy glance through the windows of the club showed the two still at the table. Cameron was busy with a pencil and a sheet of paper, explaining something to the German. The yellow-faced man watched them over his book. The lieutenant was evidently talking with a little difficulty; every little while he stopped, and began again with an effort. One leg was twitching at the knee-joint. He supported his head heavily on his hand.

  Going back to his room, Astro took a bottle of ammonia from his overcoat pocket and placed it on the sink. Next he poured a white powder from a paper and dissolved it in a tumbler of water, stirring it with a spoon. This done, he took the wash-bowl from the stand and put it on the table beside the bed. Then he sat down to wait for Valeska.

  In half an hour she appeared, breathing hard, her cheeks flushed with her haste.

  “Here it is,” she said, as soon as the maid had left.

  “It’s the best I could do.” She handed it over. It read:

  Please allow the bearer to come in and see me on important business at any time he may present this.

  ROBERT CAMERON.

  “Good!” said Astro. “Now you must wait here and listen at the window till you hear my whistle. Then come right along the roof to me and be ready for anything.”

  He started to open the door when she put a hand on his arm. “Does it begin with ‘C-a-n’?” she asked breathlessly.

  He nodded. “How did you get it?”

  “From the lieutenant’s letter.”

  “Of course. Well, it may have begun with ‘D-a-n’ by this time.”

  “D-a-n-g-e-r?”

  “Perhaps. Be ready!” And he was down-stairs.

  At the door of the Assassins’ Club, a white-haired negro answered the bell.

  Astro presented the letter. “I wish to see Lieutenant Cameron immediately!” he said.

  “Ah, don’t perzactly know, sah,” said the darky. “Mah o’ders is not to leave nobody, come in yah. Ah expect Ah’d better say no, sah.”

  Astro brushed past him and had set his foot on the stair, when a fat face looked down over the balusters. The portly form of Herr Beimer followed it.

  “Vat’s de madder?” he inquired, as he started down.

  Without further parley Astro ran up the stair, and, before there was any time for resistance from the astonished German, grasped him by the knees, and pulling his feet from under him, sent him madly sliding down the stairs. Herr Beimer, swearing a polysyllabic oath, stumbled awkwardly to his feet and set off upstairs again after his attacker. But by this time Astro was at the
top of the second flight. He dashed into the square room in the rear where he had seen the group of men. It was empty! Beside it, however, was a small hall bedroom, and here, in his shirt-sleeves, lying in a stupor on the cot, lay Lieutenant Cameron.

  Astro sprang to the door and locked it just as the excited German thumped ponderously on the panels. Next he threw up the window and whistled. Then taking the lieutenant in his arms, he succeeded in carrying him to the window-sill. Valeska was already on the roof outside, waiting for him.

  “Take his feet!” said Astro under his breath, and so together they managed to get the lieutenant out on the roof and to the window of the chamber in number in. By this time the man had begun to revive and to protest in word and action against his removal. They paid no heed to him, however, and bundled him into the room and on the bed. Then Astro shook him energetically.

  “Wake up, man!” he cried. “Wake up now! You can, if you try! Here! Smell this!” He reached for the ammonia and held it under the lethargic man’s nostrils.

  The lieutenant turned away his head, coughed, blinked, and partially rose on one arm. “Who are you?” he said, gazing at them in surprise.

  “Friends of Miss Mannering’s,” said Astro.

  The lieutenant shook his head, and stared. “What’s the matter?” he brought out laboriously.

  “I got you away from Beimer—afraid of trouble—want to help you.” Astro spoke very distinctly, as if to a deaf man.

  The lieutenant felt for his coat, found himself without one, seemed puzzled, and dropped back again limply.

  “The—draw—” his voice ended in a mumble.

  “Yes, the drawer! What drawer?” Astro asked eagerly.

  “Find draw—” The lieutenant seemed to drop asleep.

  “I wonder what he means? There’s something on his mind. No doubt he has hidden something.” Astro looked keenly at Valeska under drawn brows.