The Black Eagle Mystery Part 3

"Yes," says Iola with a giggle, "that's its society name, but Mr. Ford calls it the Surgery."

Before I could ask her why Mr. Ford called it that, the bell rang and she jumped up, squas.h.i.+ng the orange peel and bits of paper back in the box.

"Here, you go and answer it," I said, "I'll hide this." She went into the front office and as I pushed the box out of sight on a shelf I could hear her talking to a man at the door. The conversation made me stand still listening.

The man's voice asked for Miss Whitehall, Iola answering that she wasn't there.

"Where is she?" said the man, gruff and abrupt it seemed to me.

"In her own home-she hasn't come down today at all."

"Is she coming later?"

"No, she's sick in bed."

There was a slight pause and then he said:

"Well, I got to see her. I've notes here that are overdue and the endorsee's dead."

"Endorsee?" came Iola's little pipe, full of troubled surprise, "who's he?"

"Hollings Harland who killed himself last night. What's her address?"

I could hear Iola giving it and the man muttering it over. Then there was a gruff "Good morning" and the door snapped shut.

Iola came back, her eyes big, her expression wondering.

"What do you suppose that means?" she said.

I didn't know exactly myself but-notes, endorsee dead!-it had a bad sound. As Iola reached down her lunch box and tied it up, talking uneasily about the man and what he'd wanted, I remembered the gossip in New Jersey when Miss Whitehall started her land scheme. There'd been rumors then that maybe she was backed, and if Hollings Harland had been behind it-My goodness! you couldn't tell what might happen. But I wasn't going to say anything discouraging to Iola, so to change the subject I moved to the door of the private office and looked in.

"Why does Mr. Ford call this the surgery?"

At the mention of the managing clerk Iola brightened up and said with a smirk:

"Because it's where Miss Whitehall chloroforms her clients with her beauty and performs the operation of separating them from their money.

He's always saying cute things like that."

We stood in the doorway and looked in. It was a smaller room than the others, but furnished just as richly, with a mahogany center table, big leather-covered armchairs and photographs of foreign views on the walls.

In one corner was an elegant, gold-embossed screen, that, when I spied behind it, I saw hid a washstand. It was the last room of the suite and had only one door that led into the office we'd been sitting in. In the outside wall was a window from which you could see way over the city-a wonderful view.

I walked to it and looked out. Over the roofs and chimneys I caught a glimpse of the Hudson, a silvery gleam, and the Hoboken hills beyond.

Pressing my forehead against the gla.s.s I glimpsed down the sheer drop of the walls to the roof of a church-a flat, black oblong with a squatty dome at one end-squeezed as close as it could get against the lower stories. Back of that were old houses, dwellings that would soon be swept away, the yards behind them narrow strips with the separating fences as small as lines made by a pencil.

I was so interested that for a moment I forgot Iola, but she brought me back with a jerk.

"It was in the room above this that Mr. Harland was sitting with Mr.

Barker, before it happened."

"You don't say," I answered. "Is it like this?"

"Exactly the same. I've seen it-one day when the boss was away and I went up with Della Franks. They were in there just as we are in here and then he went out this way-"

The door had been partly pushed to and she started to ill.u.s.trate how he had left the room, brus.h.i.+ng round its edge. Something caught her, there was a sound of ripping and she stopped, clapping her hand on her back:

"There go my pleats-Ding it!" she craned round over her shoulder trying to see the back of her skirt. "What's got me? Oh, the key. Well what do you make of that-caught me like a hook."

She drew her dress off the key, which fell out of the lock on to the floor.

"It's only ripped," I said consolingly. "I can pin it for you."

"Well, there's always something to be thankful for," she said, as I pinned her up. "But it's an unlucky day, I can feel _that_. That key's never before been on the inside of the door." She bent and picked it up.

"I'd like to know what smart Aleck changed it."

"Probably the scrubwoman."

"I guess so," she grumbled, "put it on the wrong side where it waited patiently and then got its revenge on me. Such is life among the lowly."

That night Babbitts was late for dinner. I expected it but Isabella, who says she never lived out except in families where the husband comes home at six like a Christian, was getting restive about the chops, when he finally showed up, tired as a dog.

"My Lord!" he said, as I helped him off with his coat. "What a day!"

"Because of the suicide?"

"Outcome of the suicide and all the rest of it. The wildest panic on the Street. The Copper Pool's gone smash. Let's have something to eat. I've had no lunch and I'm famished."

When we were at table and the edge off his hunger he told me more:

"It began this morning, and this afternoon when there was still no trace of Barker-Gee whizz! it was an avalanche."

"You mean he's _gone_? Disappeared?"

"That's the way it looks. They had their suspicions when they couldn't find him last night. And today-n.o.body knows a thing about him at his house or his office, can't account for it, don't understand. Then we turned up something that looked like a clincher. One of his motors, a limousine, and his chauffeur, fellow called Heney, have disappeared too."

"What do they say about that at the house?"

"Same thing-know nothing. n.o.body was in the garage from six to half-past eight. When the other men who sleep there came back Heney and the limousine were gone."

"Did anyone see Barker at the Black Eagle Building?"

"No-that's the strongest proof that he's decamped. You'd suppose with such a scene as that going on he'd have shown up. But not a soul's been found who saw him there. If he wanted to slip out quietly he could easily have done it. Jerome and the Franks girl say they were so paralyzed they never gave him another thought and he could have pa.s.sed behind them, as they stood in the corridor, and gone down by the side stairs. There's another flight round the corner on the branch hall. The street on that side was deserted-the boys say every human being in the neighborhood was round on the Broadway front."

"But, but," I stammered, for I couldn't understand it all, "what's he done? What's the reason for his going?"

"Reason!" said Babbitts with a snort. "Believe me, there's reason enough. Somebody's welched on the Copper Pool and they think it's he and that he's disappeared with twenty million."

"Twenty million! How could he?"

"By selling out on the rest of the crowd. They think he's been selling copper to the Pool itself of which he was the head."