From Place to Place Part 12

"Quite so, sir."

The captain turned to serve a party of men and women, and Trencher fell back. He idled back through the Chinese room, vigilant to note whether any of the persons scattered about it were regarding him with more than a casual interest or, more important still, whether any there present knew him personally.

Rea.s.sured on this point he stepped out of the room and along with a quarter for a tip tendered to one of the maids the check he had just pilfered, meanwhile studying her face closely for any signs that she recalled him as one who had dealt with her within the s.p.a.ce of a minute or so. But nothing in her looks betrayed recognition or curiosity as she bestirred herself to reclaim the articles for which the check was a voucher of ownership, and to help him into them.

Ten seconds later Trencher, a personality transformed, stood quite at his ease on the top step of the flight outside the entrance to the Clarenden looking into Broadway. The long dark overcoat which he now wore, a commonplace roomy garment, fitted him as though it had been his own. With its collar turned up about his cheeks it helped admirably to disguise him. The soft black hat was a trifle large for his head. So much the better--it came well down over his face.

The huge illuminated hands of a clock set in the middle of a winking, blinking electric sign a few blocks north, at the triangular gore where Seventh Avenue crosses Broadway, told him the time--six minutes of eleven. To Trencher it seemed almost that hours must have pa.s.sed since he shot down Sonntag, and yet here was proof that not more than ten minutes--or at the most, twelve--had elapsed. Well, he had worked fast and with results gratifying. The spats that might have betrayed him were safely hidden in one place--yonder between the seat cushions of O'Gavin's car, which stood where he had left it, not thirty feet distant. His telltale overcoat and his derby hat were safely bestowed in the cafe check room behind him awaiting a claimant who meant never to return. Even if they should be found and identified as having been worn by the slayer of Sonntag, their presence there, he figured, would but serve to confuse the man hunt. Broadway's living tides flowed by, its component atoms seemingly ignorant of the fact that just round the corner below a man had been done to death. Only at the intersection of Thirty-ninth Street was there evidence, in the quick movement of pedestrians out of Broadway into the cross street, that something unusual served to draw foot pa.s.sengers off their course.

In front of the clothing shop three doors south of him no special congestion of traffic revealed itself; no scrouging knot of citizens was to be seen, and by that Trencher reasoned that the negro had been taken elsewhere by his captors--very probably to where the body would still be lying, hunched up in the shadow before the Jollity's side doors. From the original starting point the hunt doubtlessly was now reorganising.

One thing was certain--it had not eddied back this far. The men of the law would be working on a confused basis yet awhile, anyhow. And Trencher meant to twistify the clews still further, for all that he felt safe enough already. For the first time a sense of security exhilarated him. Almost it was a sense of exultation.

He descended the steps and went straight to the nearest of the rank of parked taxicabs. Its driver was nowhere in sight. A carriage starter for the cafe, in gorgeous livery, understood without being told what the tall m.u.f.fled-up gentleman desired and blew a shrill blast on a whistle.

At that the truant driver appeared, coming at a trot from down the street.

"'Scuse me, mister," he said as he mounted to his seat at the wheel.

"Been a shootin' down the street. Guy got croaked, they say, and they can't find the guy that croaked um."

"Never mind the shooting," said Trencher as he climbed into the cab, whose door the starter had opened for him.

"Where to, gent?"

"Harty's Palm Garden," said Trencher, naming a restaurant a mile and a half away, straight up Broadway. His main thought now was to get entirely out of this part of town.

Riding along uptown Trencher explored the pockets of the pilfered overcoat. The search produced a pair of heavy gloves, a wadded handkerchief, two cigars, a box of matches, and, last of all, a triangular bra.s.s token inscribed with a number and a firm name. Without the imprint of the name Trencher would have recognised it, from its shape alone. It had come from the check room in the upper-tier waiting room of the Grand Central Station. Discovery of it gave him a new idea--an idea involving no added risk but having in it added possibilities for insuring the ultimate success of his get-away. In any event there could be neither harm nor enhanced danger in putting it into execution.

Therefore, when he had emerged from the cab at Harty's and had paid the fare and had seen the driver swing his vehicle about and start off back downtown, he walked across Columbus Circle to the west curve of it, climbed into another taxicab and was driven by way of Fifty-ninth Street and Fifth Avenue to the Grand Central. Here at the establishment of the luggage-checking concessionaire on the upper level of the big terminal he tendered the bra.s.s token to a drowsy-eyed attendant, receiving in exchange a brown-leather suit case with letters stenciled on one end of it, like this:

M. K. P.

STAMFORD, CONN.

Waving aside a red-capped negro porter, Trencher, carrying the spoil of his latest coup, departed via one of the Vanderbilt Avenue exits.

Diagonally across the avenue was a small drug store still open for business at this hour, as the bright lights within proved. Above its door showed the small blue sign that marked it as containing a telephone pay booth. For Trencher's purposes a closed booth in a small mercantile establishment was infinitely to be preferred to the public exchange in the terminal--less chance that the call could be traced back to its source, less chance, too, that some inquisitive operator, trying to kill time during a dull hour, might listen in on the wire, and so doing overhear things not meant for her ears. He crossed over and entered the drug store.

Except for a sleepy clerk at the rear there was no one visible within the place. Trencher crowded his bulk into the booth, dropped the requisite coin in the slot and very promptly got back the answering hail from a certain number that he had called--a number at a place in the lower fringe of the old Tenderloin.

"Is that the Three Deuces?" asked Trencher. Then: "Who's speaking--you, Monty? . . . Know who this is, at this end? . . . Yes, that's right.

Say, is the Kid there--Kid Dineen? . . . Good! Call him to the phone, will you, Monty? And tell him to hurry--it's devilish important."

A short pause followed and when Trencher spoke again he had dropped his voice to a cautious half-whisper, vibrant and tense with urgency. Also now he employed some of the argot of the underworld:

"h.e.l.lo, Kid, h.e.l.lo! Recognise my voice, don't you? . . . Good! Now listen: I'm in a jam. . . . What? . . . Never mind what it is; you'll know when you see the papers in the morning if you don't know sooner. I've got to lam, and lam quick. Right now I've got the bulls stalled off good and proper, but I can't tell how long they'll stay stalled off. Get me? So I don't want to be showing my map round any ticket windows. So here's what I want you to do. Get some coin off of Monty, if you haven't got enough on you. Then you beat it over to the Pennsylvania Station and buy me a ticket for Pittsburgh and a section in the sleeper on the train that leaves round one-twenty-five to-night. Then go over on Ninth Avenue to Silver's place----What? . . . Yes; sure, that's the place. Wait for me there in the little room upstairs over the bar, on the second floor.

They've got to make a bluff of closing up at one, but you know how to get up into the room, don't you? . . . Good! Wait for me till I show up, or if I get there first I'll wait for you. I ought to show inside of an hour from now--maybe in less time than that if things keep on breaking right. Then I'll get the ducats off of you and beat it across through the Hudson Tube to the Manhattan Transfer and grab the rattler over there in Jersey when she comes along from this side. That'll be all. Now hustle!"

From the drug store he went, carrying the brown suit case with him, round into Forty-second Street. He had taken a mental note of the initials on the bag, but to make sure he was right he looked at them again before he entered the big Bellhaven Hotel by its Forty-second-Street door. At sight of him a bell boy ran across the lobby and took from him his burden. The boy followed him, a pace in the rear, to the desk, where a spruce young gentleman awaited their coming. "Can I get a room with bath for the night--a quiet inside room where I'll be able to sleep as late as I please in the morning?"

inquired Trencher.

"Certainly, sir." The room clerk appraised Trencher with a practiced eye. "Something for about four dollars?"

"That'll do very well," agreed Trencher, taking the pen which the clerk had dipped in ink and handed over to him.

Bearing in mind the letters and the address on the suit case, Trencher registered as M. K. Potter, Stamford, Conn. Meanwhile the clerk had taken a key from a rack containing a vast number of similar keys.

"I won't leave a call--and I don't want to be disturbed," warned Trencher.

"Very well, sir. Front! Show the gentleman to 1734." Five minutes later Trencher, in an inner room on the seventeenth floor, with the door locked on the inside, had sprung the catch of the brown suit case and was spreading its contents out upon the bed, smiling his satisfaction as he did so. Plainly fortune was favouring him at each new turning.

For here was a somewhat rumpled black suit and along with it a blue-striped shirt, showing slight signs of recent wear, a turndown collar that was barely soiled, and a plain black four-in-hand tie.

Trencher went through the pockets of the suit, finding several letters addressed to Marcus K. Parker at an address in Broad Street, down in the financial district. Sewn in the lining of the inner breast pocket of the coat was a tailor's label also bearing the same name. At the sight Trencher grinned. He had not missed it very far. He had registered as Potter, whereas now he knew that the proper owner of the suit case must be named Parker.

Parker, he figured, belonged to the race of commuters; evidently he lived in Stamford and did business in New York. Accepting this as the correct hypothesis the rest of the riddle was easy to read. Mr. Parker, coming to town that morning, had brought with him his dinner rig in a suit case.

Somewhere, probably at his office, he had changed from his everyday garb to the clothes he brought with him, then he had packed his street clothes into the bag and brought it uptown with him and checked it at the Grand Central, intending after keeping his evening engagements to reclaim the baggage before catching a late train for Stamford.

Fine! Results from Trencher's standpoint could hardly have been more pleasing. Exulting inwardly over the present development and working fast, he stripped off his clothing down to his shoes and his undergarments--first, though, emptying his own pockets of the money they contained, both bills and silver, and of sundry personal belongings, such as a small pocketknife, a fountain pen, a condensed railway guide and the slip of pasteboard that represented the hat and coat left behind at the Clarenden. Then he put on the things that had come out of the Stamford man's bag--the shirt, the collar and the tie, and finally the outer garments, incidentally taking care to restore to Parker's coat pocket all of Parker's letters.

This done he studied himself in the gla.s.s of the chiffonier and was deeply pleased. Mirrored there he saw a different man from the one who had rented the room. When he quit this hotel, as presently he meant to do, he would not be Trencher, the notorious confidence man who had shot a fellow crook, nor yet would he be the Thompson who had sent a darky for a bag, nor the Tracy who had picked a guest's pocket at a fashionable restaurant, nor yet the Potter who had engaged a room with bath for a night. From overcoat and hat to shoes and undergarments he would be Mr. Marcus K. Parker, a thoroughly respectable gentleman, residing in the G.o.dly town of Stamford and engaged in reputable mercantile pursuits in Broad Street--with opened mail in his pocket to prove it.

The rest would be simplicity. He had merely to slip out of the hotel, carrying the key to 1734 with him. Certainly it would be as late as noon the following day before chambermaid or clerk tried to rouse the supposed occupant of the empty room. In all likelihood it would be later than noon. He would have at least twelve hours' start, even though the authorities were nimble-witted enough to join up the smaller mystery of an abandoned suit case belonging to one man and an abandoned outfit of clothing belonging to another, with the greater and seemingly unconnected mystery of the vanishment of the suspect in the Sonntag homicide case. Long before this potential eventuality could by any chance develop, he meant, under another name and in another disguise, to be hidden away at a quiet boarding house that he knew of in a certain obscure factory town on a certain trolley line leading out from Pittsburgh.

Now to clear out. He bestowed in various pockets his money, his knife, his pen and his railway guide, not one of these having upon it any identifying marks; he pouched his small change and his roll of bills.

Nothing remained to be disposed of or accounted for save the pasteboard square that represented the coat and hat left behind at the Clarenden.

When this had been torn into fine and indistinguishable bits and when as a final precaution the fragments had been tossed out of the window, the last possible evidence to link the pseudo Parker with the real Trencher in this night's transactions would be gone.

He had the slip in his hands and his fingers were in the act of twisting it in halves when the thought that something had been overlooked--something vitally important--came to him; and he paused to cogitate. What had been forgotten? What had he overlooked? What had he left undone that should have been done? Then suddenly appreciation of the thing missing came to him and in a quick panic of apprehension he felt through all the pockets of Parker's suit and through the pockets of his own garments, where he had flung them down on the bed, alongside the rifled suit case.

His luck piece was gone--that was it! The old silver trade dollar, worn thin and smooth by years of handling and with the hole drilled through the centre of it--that was what was gone--his token, his talisman, his charm against evil fortune. He had carried it for years, ever since he had turned crook, and for nothing in this world would he have parted from it.

In a mounting flurry of superst.i.tious terror he searched the pockets again, with fingers that shook--this man who had lost faith in human beings, who had no hope and no fear for the hereafter, who had felt no stabs of regret or repentance for having killed a man, whose thoughts had never known remorse for any misdeed of his. The second hunt and the third and the fourth were fruitless as his first one had been; Trencher's luck piece was gone.

Those wise men, the alienists, say that all of us are insane on certain subjects, however sane we may be upon other subjects. Certainly in the mental composition of every one of us is some quirk, some vagary, some dear senseless delusion, avowed or private. As for Trencher, the one crotchet in his cool brain centred about that worthless trade dollar.

With it in his possession he had counted himself a winner, always.

Without it he felt himself to be a creature predestined and foreordained to disaster.

To it he gave all the credit for the fact that he had never served a prison sentence. But once, and once only, had he parted company with it, even temporarily. That was the time when Murtha, that crafty old Central-Office hand, had picked him up on general principles, had taken him to headquarters, and first stripping him of all the belongings on his person, had carried him to the Bertillon Bureau, and then and there, without shadow of legal right, since Trencher was neither formally accused of nor formally indicted for any offence and had no previous record of convictions, had forced him to undergo the ordeals, ethically so repugnant to the instincts of the professional thief, of being measured and finger-printed and photographed, side face and full face.

He had cursed and protested and pleaded when Murtha confiscated the luck piece; he had rejoiced when Murtha, seeing no harm in the thing, had restored it to him before lodging him in a cell under the all-embracing technical charge of being a suspicious person. Because he had so speedily got it back, Trencher had gone free again with the loss of but two days of liberty--or anyway, so Trencher firmly believed. But because it had left his custody for no more than an hour his pictures were now in the Gallery, and Murtha had learned the secret of Trencher's one temperamental weakness, one fetish.

And now--at this time, of all times--it was gone again. But where had it gone? Where could it have gone? Mentally he reconstructed all his acts, all his movements since he had risen that morning and dressed--and then the solution came to him, and with the solution complete remembrance. He had slipped it into the right-hand pocket of the new tan-coloured topcoat--to impregnate the garment with good luck and to enhance the prospects for a successful working-out of the scheme to despoil the Wyoming cattleman; and he had left it there. And now here he was up on the seventeenth floor of the Bellhaven Hotel and the fawn-coloured coat with the luck piece in one of its pockets dangled on a hook in the cloak booth of the Clarenden cafe, less than a block away from the spot where he had shot Sonntag.

He marvelled that without his talisman he had escaped arrest up to now; it was inconceivable that he had won his way thus far. But then the answer to that was, of course, that he had retained the pasteboard square that stood for possession of the coat itself. He gave thanks to the unclean spirits of his superst.i.tion that apprehension of his loss had come to him before he destroyed the slip. Had he gone ahead and torn it up he would now count himself as doomed. But he hadn't torn it up.

There it lay on the white coverlet of the bed.

He must make a try to recover his luck piece; no other course occurred to him. Trying would be beset with hazards, acc.u.mulated and thickening.

He must venture back into the dangerous territory; must dare deadfalls and pitfalls; must run the chance of possible traps and probable nets.

By now the police might have definitely ascertained who it was that killed Sonntag; or lacking the name of the slayer they might have secured a reasonably complete description of him; might have spread the general alarm for a man of such and such a height and such and such a weight, with such a nose and such eyes and such hair and all the rest of it. It might be that the Clarenden was being watched, along with the other public resorts in the immediate vicinity of where the homicide had been committed. It might even be that back in the Clarenden he would encounter the real Parker face to face. Suppose Parker had finished his supper and had discovered his loss--losses rather--and had made a complaint to the management; and suppose as a result of Parker's indignation that members of the uniformed force had been called in to adjudicate the wrangle; suppose through sheer coincidence Parker should see Trencher and should recognise the garments that Trencher wore as his own. Suppose any one of a half dozen things. Nevertheless, he meant to go back. He would take certain precautions--for all the need of haste, he must take them--but he would go back.

He put the pink check into his waistcoat pocket, switched out the room light, locked the door of the room on the outside, took the key with him and went down in an elevator, taking care to avoid using the same elevator that shortly before brought him up to this floor level.

Presently he was outside the hotel, hurrying afoot on his return to Broadway. On the way he pitched the key into an areaway.