The Black Eagle Mystery Part 9

"You? What are you doing this for?"

"There's no danger. I'm careful. Did you get my letter?"

"Yes, this morning."

"Will you come?"

"Are you sure it's all right? Have you seen the papers here?"

"All of them. Don't be afraid. I'm taking no risks. Are you coming?"

"Yes."

"When?"

"I can leave tonight. There's a train at eight."

"Good. I'll meet you and explain everything. Do as I said in the letter.

I'll be there."

"Very well-understand. Please ring off. Good-bye."

For a moment I sat thinking. She was going to Toronto to meet Barker by a train that left at eight, and it was now half-past five. There was no use trying to trace the call-I knew enough for that-so I got Mr.

Whitney's office and told him, careful, without names. He was awful pleased and handed me out some compliments that gave me the courage to ask for something I was crazy to get-the scoop for Babbitts. It would be a big story-Barker landed through the girl he was in love with. I knew they'd follow her and could Babbitts go along? I don't have to tell you that he agreed, making only one condition-if they were unsuccessful, _silence_. O'Mally, who was up from Philadelphia, would go. Babbitts could join him at the Grand Central Station.

I took a call for the _Dispatch_, found Babbitts and told him enough to send him home on the run-but not much; there's too many phones in those newspaper offices. It was nearly seven when I got there myself, dragged him into our room, and while I packed his grip gave him the last bulletins. He was up in the air. It would be the biggest story that had ever come his way.

I had to go down to the station with him, for neither he nor O'Mally knew her. I was desperate afraid she wouldn't come-get cold feet the way women do when they're eloping. But at a quarter of eight she showed up.

She didn't look a bit nervous or rattled, and went about getting her ticket as quiet as if she was going for a week-end to Long Island.

O'Mally-he was a fat, red-faced man, looking more like a commercial traveler than a sleuth-was right behind her as she bought it. Then as she walked to the track entrance with her suitcase in her hand, I saw them follow her, lounging along sort of neighborly and casual, till the three of them disappeared under the arch.

It was late before I went to sleep that night. I kept imagining them tracking her through the Toronto Depot, leaping into a taxi that followed close on hers, and going somewhere-but where I couldn't think-to meet Barker. For the first time I began to wonder if any harm could come to Babbitts. In detective stories when they shadowed people there were generally revolvers at the finish. But, after all, Johnston Barker wasn't flying for his life, or flying from jail. As far as I could get it, he was just flying away with the Copper Pool's money.

Perhaps that wasn't desperate enough for revolvers.

When I finally did go to sleep I dreamed that all of us, the fat man, Babbitts, Carol Whitehall and I and Mr. Barker, were packed together in one taxi, which was rushing through the dark, lurching from side to side. As if we weren't enough, it was piled high with suitcases, on one of which I was sitting, squeezed up against Mr. Barker, who had a face like an eagle, and kept telling me to move so he could get his revolver.

I don't know what hour I awoke, but the light was coming in between the curtains and the radiators were beginning to snap with the morning heat when I opened my eyes. I came awake suddenly with that queer sensation you sometimes have that you're not alone.

And I wasn't. There sitting on a chair by the bedside, all hunched up in his overcoat, with his suitcase at his feet, was Himself, looking as cross as a bear.

I sat up with a yelp as if he'd been a burglar.

"_You_ here?" I cried.

He looked at me, glum as an owl, and nodded.

"Yes. It's all right."

"Why-why-what's happened?"

"Nothing."

"You haven't been to Toronto and back in this time?"

"I've been to Rochester and back," he snapped. "She got out there, waited most of this infernal night and took the first return train."

"Came back?"

"Isn't that what I'm saying?" For Himself to speak that way to me showed he was riled something dreadful. "She got off at Rochester and stayed round in the depot-didn't see anyone, or speak to anyone, or send a phone, or a wire. She got a train back at three, we followed her and saw her go up the steps of her own apartment."

"Why-what do you make of it?"

He shrugged:

"Only one of two things. She either changed her mind or saw she was being shadowed."

CHAPTER VI

JACK TELLS THE STORY

This chapter in our composite story falls to me, not because I can write it better but because I was present at that strange interview which changed the whole face of the Harland case. Even now I can feel the tightening of the muscles, the horrified chill, as we learned, in one of the most unexpected and startling revelations ever made in a lawyer's office, the true significance of the supposed suicide.

It was the morning after the night ride of Babbitts and O'Mally, and I was late at the office. The matter had been arranged after I left the evening before and I knew nothing of it. As I entered the building I ran into Babbitts, who was going to the Whitney offices to report on his failure and in the hopes that some new lead might have cropped up.

Drawing me to the side of the hall he told me of their expedition. I listened with the greatest interest and surprise. It struck me as amazing and rather horrible. Until I heard it I had not believed the story of the typewriter girl-that Barker was in love with Miss Whitehall-but in the face of such evidence I had nothing to say.

We were both so engrossed that neither noticed a woman holding a child by the hand and moving uncertainly about our vicinity. It wasn't till the story was over and we were walking toward the elevator that I was conscious of her, looking this way and that, jostled by the men and evidently scared and bewildered. Judging her too timid to ask her way, and too unused to such surroundings-she looked poor and shabby-to consult the office directory on the wall, I stopped and asked her where she wanted to go.

She gave a start and said with a brogue as rich as b.u.t.ter:

"It's to L'yer Whitney's office I'm bound, but where is it I don't know and it's afeared I am to be demandin' the way with everyone runnin' by me like hares."

"I'm going there myself," I said, "I'll take you."

She bubbled out in relieved thanks and followed us into the elevator. As the car shot up I looked her over wondering what she could want with the chief. She was evidently a working woman, neatly dressed in a dark coat and small black hat under which her hair was drawn back smooth and tight. Her face was of the best Irish type, round, rosy and honest. One of her hands clasped the child's, his little fingers crumpled inside her rough, red ones. She addressed him as "Dannie," and when pa.s.sengers crowded in and out, drew him up against her, with a curious, soft tenderness that seemed instinctive.

He was a pale, thin little chap, eight or nine, with large, gray eyes, that he'd lift to the faces round him with a solemn, searching look. I smiled down at him but didn't get any response, and it struck me that both of them-woman and boy-were in a state of suppressed nervousness.

Every time the gate clanged she'd jump, and once I heard her mutter to him "not to be scared."

Inside the office Babbitts went up the hall to the old man's den and I tried to find out what she wanted. Her nervousness was then obvious.

Shifting from foot to foot, her free hand-she kept a tight clutch on the boy-fingering at the b.u.t.tons of her coat, she refused to say. All I could get out of her was that she had something important to tell and she wouldn't tell it to anyone but "L'yer Whitney."

By this time my curiosity was aroused. I asked her if she was a witness in a case, and with a troubled look she said "maybe she was," and then, backing away from me against the wall, reiterated with stubborn determination, "But I won't speak to no one but L'yer Whitney himself."