Black Caesar's Clan Part 29

The j.a.p grinned expansively at the praise. Then he glanced at Hade and reported:

"He's getting back his powers of motion, sir. He'll be all right in another half-minute."

Rodney Hade sat up, with galvanic suddenness, rubbing his misused throat and darting a swift snakelike glance about him.

His eye fell on the three men between him and the door. Then, at each of the two hallway windows, he saw other men posted, on the veranda. And he understood the stark helplessness of his situation. Once more the masklike smile settled on his pallid face.

"Mr. Hade," said Brice, "for the second time this evening, I beg to tell you you are my prisoner. So are your crew. The house is surrounded. Not by Caesars, this time, but by trained Secret Service men. I warn you against trying any charlatan tricks on them. They are apt to be hasty on the trigger, and they have orders to shoot if--"

"My dear Brice," expostulated Hade, a trifle wearily, "if we were playing poker, and you held four aces to my two deuces--would you waste breath in explaining to me that I was hopelessly beaten? I'm no fool. I gather that you've marched my men off to jail. May I ask why you made an exception of me? Why did you bring me back here?"

"Can't you imagine?" asked Brice. "You say you're no fool.

Prove it. Prove it by--"

"By telling you where I have cached as much of the silver as we've jettisoned thus far?" supplemented Hade. "Of course, the heroic Standish will show you where the Caesar cache is, down there in the inlet. But I am the only man who knows where the three-quarter million or more dollars already salvaged, are salted down. And you brought me here to argue me into telling? May I ask what inducements you offer?"

"Certainly," said Gavin, without a moment's hesitation.

"Though I wonder you have not guessed them."

"Lighter sentence, naturally," suggested Hade. "But is that all? Surely it's a piker price for Uncle Sam to pay for a gift of nearly a million dollars. Can't you better it?"

"I am not the court," returned Brice, nettled. "But I think I can promise you a fifty per cent reduction in what would be the average sentence for such an offense, and a lighter job in prison than falls to the lot of most Federal criminals."

"Good," approved Hade, adding: "But not good enough. I'm still in the thirties. I'm tougher of const.i.tution than I look. They can't sentence me for more than a span of years.

And when my term is up, I can enjoy the little batch of 1804 dollars I've laid by. I think I'll take my chance, unless you care to raise the ante."

Brice glanced around at the men who stood on the veranda.

Then he lowered his voice, so as not to be heard by them.

"You are under courtmartial sentence of death as a spy, Mr.

Hade," he whispered. "The war is over. That sentence won't be imposed, in full, I imagine, in times of peace. But your war record will earn you an extra sentence that will come close to keeping you in Atlanta Penitentiary for life. I believe I am the only member of the Department who knows that Major Heidenhoff of the Wilhelmstra.s.se and Rodney Hade are the same man. If I can be persuaded to keep that knowledge from my superiors, in return for full information as to where the 1804 dollars are cached--those you've already taken from the inlet--and if the mortgage papers on this place are destroyed--well--?"

"H'm!" mused Hade, his black eyes brooding and speculative.

"H'm! That calls for a bit of rather careful weighing. How much time will you give me to think it over and decide? A week?"

"Just half an hour," retorted Gavin. "My other men, who took your silly band of cutthroats to jail, ought to be back by then. I am waiting here till they report, and no longer. You have half an hour. And I advise you to make sane use of it."

Hade got slowly to his feet. The smile was gone from his lips. His strange black eyes looked indescribably tired and old. There was a sag to his alert figure.

"It's hard to plan a coup like mine," he sighed, "and then to be bilked by a man with not one-tenth my brain. Luck was with you. Blind luck. Don't imagine you've done this by your wits."

As he spoke he shuffled heavily to the adjoining music-room, and let his dreary gaze stray toward its two windows. On the veranda, framed in the newly unshuttered window-s.p.a.ce, stood four Secret Service men, grimly on guard.

Hade strode to one window after the other, with the cranky mien and action of a thwarted child, and slammed the shutters together, barring out the sinister sight of his guards. Gavin did not try to prevent him from this act of boyish spite. The master-mind's reaction, in its hour of brokenness, roused his pity.

From the windows, Hade's gloomy eyes strayed to the piano. On it lay a violin case. He picked it up and took out an age-mellowed violin.

"I think clearer when I play," he said, glumly, to Brice.

"And I've nearly a million dollars' worth of thinking to do in this half hour. Is it forbidden to fiddle? Milo's father paid $4,000 for this violin. It's a genuine Strad. And it gives me peace and clear vision. May I play, or--?"

"Go ahead, if you want to," vouchsafed Gavin, fancying he read the attempt of a charlatan to remain picturesque to the end.

"Only get your thinking done, and come to a decision before the half hour is up. And, by the way, let me warn you again that those men out there have orders to shoot, if you make a move to escape."

"No use in asking you to play my accompaniments, Claire?"

asked Hade, in pathetic attempt at gayety as he walked to the hallway door. "No? I'm sorry. n.o.body else ever played them as you do."

He tried to smile. The effort was a failure. He yanked the curtains shut that hung between music room and hall. Then, at a gesture from Gavin, he pulled them halfway open again, and, standing in the doorway, drew his bow across the strings.

Gavin sat down on the long hall couch, a yard outside the music-room door, beside Claire and the still stupefied Milo.

The j.a.p took up his position back of them, alert and tense as a fox terrier. The three Secret Service men in the front doorway stood at attention, yet evidently wondering at the prisoner's queer freak.

From under the deftly wielded bow, the violin wailed forth into stray chords and phrases, wild, unearthly, discordant.

Hade, his face bent over the instrument, swayed in time with its undisciplined rhythm.

Then, from dissonance and incoherence, the music merged into Gounod's Ave Maria. And, from swaying, Hade began to walk.

To and fro, urged by the melody, his feet strayed. Now he was in full view, between the half-open curtains. Now, he was hidden for an instant, and then he was crossing once more before the opening.

His playing was exquisite. More--it was authoritative, masterly, soaring. It gripped the hearers' senses and heartstrings. The beauty and dreaminess of the Ave Maria flooded the air with loveliness. Brice listened, enthralled.

Down Claire's cheek rolled a teardrop, of whose existence she was not even aware.

The last notes of the melody throbbed away. Brice drew a long breath. Then, at once the violin spoke again. And now it sang forth into the night, in the Schubert Serenade,--gloriously sweet, a surge of pa.s.sionate tenderness.

Back and forth, under the spell of his own music, wandered Hade. Then he stopped. Gavin leaned forward. He saw that Hade was leaning against the piano, as he played. His head was bowed over the instrument as though in reverence. His black eyes were dreamy and exalted. Gavin sat back on the couch and once more gave himself over to the mystic enthrallment of the music. The Serenade wailed itself into silence with one last hushedly exquisite tone. Brice drew a long breath, as of a man coming out of a trance.

Simon Cameron had jumped into Claire's lap. But, receiving no attention from the music-rapt girl, the cat now dropped to the floor, and started toward the stairs.

At the same time, the violin sounded anew. And Gavin frowned in disappointment. For, no longer was it singing its heart out in the magic of an immortal melody. Instead, it swung into the once-popular strains of "Oh, Promise Me!"

And now it seemed as though Hade were wantonly making fun of his earlier beautiful playing and of the effect he must have known it had had upon his hearers. For he played heavily, monotonously, more like a dance-hall soloist than a master.

And, as though his choice of an air were not sharp enough contrast to his other selections, he strummed amateurishly and without a shred of technique or of feeling.

Jarring as was the result upon Brice, it seemed even more so on Simon Cameron. The cat had stopped in his progress toward the stairs, and now stared round-eyed at the music-room doorway, his absurd little nostrils sniffing the air. Then, deliberately, Simon Cameron walked to the doorway and sat down there, his huge furry tail curled around round him, staring with idiotic intentness at the player.

Gavin noted the cat's odd behavior. Simon Cameron was far too familiar with Hade's presence in the house to give Rodney a second glance. Indeed, he had only jumped up into Claire's lap, because the fascinatingly new Secret Service men at the front door smelt strongly of tobacco,--the smell a Persian cat hates above all others. But now, he was gazing in delighted interest at the violinist.

At the sight, a wild conjecture flashed into Gavin's brain.

With a sharp order to the j.a.p, he sprang up and rushed into the music room.

Leaning against the piano, playing the rebellious violin, was--Roke!

Rodney Hade had vanished.

The windows were still shuttered. No other door gave exit from the music room. There were no hangings, except the door-curtains, and there was no furniture behind which a child could hide unseen. Yet Hade was no longer there.

Roke laid aside his violin, at sight of Gavin and the j.a.p. At the former's exclamation of amaze, two more of the Secret Service men left their post at the front door and ran in. The tramp of their hurrying feet made the guards outside the open windows of the music room fling wide the closed shutters.

Clearly, Hade had not escaped past them.

Folding his arms, and grinning impudently at the astounded cordon of faces, Roke drawled: