The Crevice Part 9

When the detective arrived at the club, he was ushered immediately to the small ante-room on the second floor, where he found Anita anxiously awaiting him.

"Miss Lawton," he began, without further greeting than a quick handclasp, "you told me, the other day, that your girls here were all staunch and faithful to you. Your secretary downstairs had previously informed me that they were trained to hold positions of trust, and that you obtained such positions for them. I want you to obtain four positions for four of the girls in whom you place the most implicit confidence."

"Why, certainly, Mr. Blaine, if I can. Do you mean that they are to have something to do with your investigation into my father's affairs?"

"I want them to play detective for me, Miss Lawton. Have you four girls unemployed at the moment?--Say, for instance, a filing clerk, a stenographer, a governess and a switchboard operator, who are sufficiently intelligent and proficient in their various occupations, to a.s.sume such a trust?"

"Why, yes, I--I think we have. I can find out, of course. Where do you wish to place them?"

"That is the most difficult part of all, Miss Lawton. You must obtain the positions for them. These three men who stand in _loco parentis_ toward you, as you say, and your spiritual adviser, Dr. Franklin, who so obviously wishes to ingratiate himself with them, would none of them refuse a request of this sort from you at this stage of the game, particularly if they are really engaged in a conspiracy against you.

Go to these four men--Mr. Mallowe first--and tell them that because of the sudden, complete loss of your fortune, your club must be disorganized, and beg them each to give one of your girls, special protegees of yours, a position. Send your filing clerk to Mr. Mallowe, your most expert stenographer to Mr. Rockamore, your switchboard operator to Mr. Carlis, and your governess into the household of your minister. I have learned that he has three small children, and his wife applied only yesterday at an agency for a nursery governess. The last proposition may be the most difficult for you to handle, but I think if you manage to convey to the Reverend Dr. Franklin the fact that your three self-appointed guardians have each taken one of your girls into their employ, in order to help them, and that his following their benevolent example would bring him into closer _rapport_ with them, no objection will be made--provided, of course, the young woman is suitable."

"I will try, Mr. Blaine, but of course I can do nothing about that until to-morrow, as it is so late in the afternoon. However, I can have a talk with the girls, if they are in now--or would you prefer to interview them?"

"No, you talk with them first, Miss Lawton, and to-morrow morning while you are arranging for their positions I will interview them and instruct them in their primary duties. I will leave you now. Remember that the girls must be absolutely trustworthy, and the stenographer who will be placed in the office of Mr. Rockamore must be particularly expert."

After the detective had taken his departure, Anita Lawton descended quickly to the office of the secretary.

"Emily," she asked, "is Loretta Murfree in, or Fifine Dechaussee?"

"I think they both are, Miss Lawton. Shall I ring for them?"

"Yes, please, Emily; send them to me one at a time, in the ante-room, and let me know when Agnes Olson and Margaret Hefferman come in. I wish to talk with all four of them, but separately."

Loretta Murfree was the first to put in an appearance. She was a short, dumpy, black-haired girl of twenty, and she bounced into the room with a flas.h.i.+ng, wide-mouthed smile.

"How are you, dear Miss Lawton? We have missed you around here so much lately, but of course we knew that you must be very much occupied--"

She stopped and a little embarra.s.sed flush spread over her face.

"I have been, Loretta. Thank you so much for your kind note, and for your share in the beautiful wreath you girls sent in memory of my dear father."

"Sure, we're all of us your friends, Miss Lawton; why wouldn't we be, after all you've done for us?"

"It is because I feel that, that I wanted to have a talk with you this afternoon. Loretta, if a position were offered to you as filing clerk in the office of a great financier of this city, at a suitable salary, would you accept it, if you could be doing me a great personal service at the same time?"

"Would I, Miss Lawton? Just try me! I'd take it for the experience alone, without the salary, and jump at the chance, even if you weren't concerned in it at all, but if it would be doing you a service at the same time, I'm more than glad."

"Thank you, Loretta. The position will be with an a.s.sociate of my father's, I think, President Mallowe of the Street Railways. You must attend faithfully to your duties, if I am able to obtain this place for you, but I think the main part of your service to me will consist of keeping your eyes open. To-morrow morning a man will come here and interview you--a man in whom you must place implicit confidence and trust, and whose directions you must follow to the letter. He will tell you just what to do for me. This man is my friend; he is working in my interests, and if you care for me you must not fail him."

"Indeed I won't, Miss Lawton! I'll do whatever he tells me.... You said that I was to keep my eyes open. Does that mean that there is something you wish me to find out for you?" she asked shrewdly.

"I cannot tell you exactly what you are to do for me, Loretta. The gentleman whom you are to meet to-morrow morning will give you all the details." Anita Lawton approached the girl and laid her hand on her shoulder. "I can surely trust you? You will not fail me?"

The quick tears sprang to the Irish girl's eyes, and for a moment softened their rather hard brilliance.

"You know that you can trust me, Miss Lawton! I'd do anything in the world for you!"

Anita Lawton held a similar conversation with each of the three girls, with a like result. To Fifine Dechaussee, a tall, refined girl, with the colorless, devout face of a religieuse, the probability of entering a minister's home, as governess for his children, was most welcome. The young French girl, homesick and alone in a strange land, had found in Anita Lawton her one friend, and her grat.i.tude for this first opportunity given her, seemed overwhelming. Margaret Hefferman rejoiced at the possible opportunity of becoming a stenographer to the great promoter, Mr. Rockamore; and demure, fair-haired little Agnes Olson was equally pleased with the prospect of operating a switchboard in the office of Timothy Carlis, the politician.

Meantime, back in his office, Henry Blaine was receiving the personal report of Guy Morrow.

"The old man seems to be strictly on the level," he was saying. "He attends to his own affairs and seems to be running a legitimate business in his little shop, where he prints and sells maps. I went there, of course, to look it over, but I couldn't see anything crooked about it. However, when I left, I took a wax impression of the lock, in case you wanted me to have a key made and inst.i.tute a more thorough investigation, at a time when I would not be disturbed."

"That's good, Morrow. We may need to do that later. At present I want you merely to keep an eye on them, and note who their visitors are.

You've been talking with the girl you say--the daughter?"

"Yes, sir--" The young man paused in sudden confusion. "She's a very quiet, respectable, proud sort of young woman, Mr. Blaine--not at all the kind you would expect to find the daughter of an old crook like Jimmy Brunell. And by the way, here's a funny coincidence! She's a protegee of Miss Lawton's, employed in some philanthropic home or club, as she calls it, which Pennington Lawton's daughter runs."

"By Jove!" Blaine exclaimed, "I might have known it! I thought there was something familiar about her appearance when I first saw her! No wonder Miss Lawton had promised not to divulge her name. It's a small world, Morrow. I'll have to look into this. Go back now and keep your eye on Jimmy."

"Very well, sir." Guy Morrow paused at the door and turned toward his chief. "Have you seen the late editions of the evening papers, Mr.

Blaine? They're all slamming you, for refusing to accept the call to Grafton, to investigate those bomb outrages last night."

Henry Blaine smiled.

"There won't be any more of them," he remarked quietly. "That strike will die down as quickly as it arose, Morrow; the whole thing was a plant, and the labor leaders and factory owners themselves were merely tools in the hands of the politicians. That strike was arranged by our friend Timothy Carlis, to get me away from Illington on a false mission."

"You don't think, sir, that they suspect--"

"No, but they are taking no chances on my getting into the game. They don't suspect yet, but they will soon--because the time has come for us to get busy."

CHAPTER VII

THE LETTER

The next morning, when Ramon Hamilton presented himself at Henry Blaine's office in answer to the latter's summons, he found the great detective in a mood more nearly bordering upon excitability than he could remember having witnessed before. Instead of being seated calmly at his desk, his thoughts masked with his usual inscrutable imperturbability, Blaine was pacing restlessly back and forth with the disquietude, not of agitation, but of concentrated, ebullient energy.

"I sent for you, Mr. Hamilton," he began, after greeting his visitor cordially and waving him to a chair, "because we must proceed actively with the investigation into the alleged bankruptcy of Pennington Lawton. We have been pa.s.sive long enough for me to have gathered some significant facts, but we now must make a salient move. The time hasn't yet come for me to step out into the open. When I do, it will be a tooth-and-nail fight, and I must be equipped with facts, not theories. I want some particulars about Mr. Lawton's insolvency, and there is no one who could more naturally inquire into this without arousing suspicion than you."

"I don't need to tell you, Mr. Blaine, how anxious I am to do anything I can to help you, for Miss Lawton's sake," Ramon Hamilton replied eagerly. "I should like to have looked into the matter long ago--indeed, I felt that suspicion must have been aroused in the minds of Mallowe and his a.s.sociates by the fact that I accepted the astounding news of the bankruptcy as unquestioningly as Miss Lawton herself, unless they thought me an addlepated fool--but I didn't want to go ahead without direct instructions from you."

"I did not so direct you, Mr. Hamilton, for a distinct purpose. I wished the men we believe to be responsible for the present conditions to be slightly puzzled by your att.i.tude, so that when the time came for you to begin your investigation, they would be more completely rea.s.sured. In order to make your questioning absolutely bona fide, I want you to go first this morning to the office of Anderson & Wallace, the late Mr. Lawton's attorneys, and question them as if having come with Miss Lawton's authority. Don't suggest any suspicion of there being any crookedness at work, but merely inquire as fully as possible into the details of Mr. Lawton's business affairs. They will, in their replies, undoubtedly bring in Mr. Mallowe, Mr. Rockamore and Mr.

Carlis, which will give you a cue to go quite openly and frankly to one of the three--preferably Mallowe--for corroboration. Knowing that you come direct from the late Mr. Lawton's attorneys, he will be only too glad to give you whatever information he may possess or may have concocted--and so lay open to you his plan of defense."

"Defense? You think, then, Mr. Blaine, that they antic.i.p.ate possible trouble--exposure, even? Surely such astute, far-seeing men as Mallowe and Rockamore are, at least, would not have attempted such a gigantic fraud if they'd antic.i.p.ated the possibility of being discovered!

Carlis has weathered so many storms, so many attacks upon his reputation and civic honor, that he may have felt c.o.c.ksure of his position and gone into this thing without thought for the future, but the other two are men of different caliber, men with everything in the world to lose."

"And colossal, unearned wealth to gain--don't forget that, Mr.

Hamilton. Men of different caliber, I grant you, but all three in the same whirlpool of crime, bound by thieves' law to sink or swim together. It is because they are astute and far-seeing that they must inevitably have considered the possibility of exposure and safeguarded themselves against it with bogus corroborative proof. If that proof is in tangible form, and we can lay our hands on it, we shall have them where we want them. Now go back to your office, Mr. Hamilton, and dictate this letter to your stenographer, having it left open on your desk for your signature. Don't wait for the letter to be typed, but proceed at once to the office of Anderson & Wallace. You, as a lawyer, will of course know the form of inquiry to use."

The detective handed Ramon Hamilton a typewritten sheet of paper from his desk; and the young man, after hastily perusing it, gazed with a blank stare of amazement into Blaine's eyes.

"I can't make this out," he objected. "Who on earth is Alexander Gibbs, and what has he to do with Miss Lawton's case? This letter seems to inform one Alexander Gibbs that I have retained you to recover for us the last will and testament of his aunt, Mrs. Dorothea Gibbs. I have no such client, and I know no one in--what's the address?--Ellenville, Sullivan County."