The Million-Dollar Suitcase Part 25

"He telephoned in just before you came saying that he'd be right up to see you. I told him you hadn't returned. He laughed and hung up."

"All right, Roberts. Send him in when he comes." I dismissed the secretary. c.u.mmings was keeping tabs on me with a vengeance. What was on his chest?

I didn't need to wait long to find out. In another minute he was at my door greeting me in an off-hand, "h.e.l.lo, Boyne. Ready to jump into your car and go around with me to see d.y.k.eman?"

"Just got down to the office, c.u.mmings," I watched him, trying to figure out where I stood and where he stood after this week's absence. "Haven't seen Worth Gilbert yet. What's the rush with d.y.k.eman?"

"You'll find out when you get there."

Not very friendly, seeing that c.u.mmings had been Worth's lawyer in the matter, and aside from that queer scene in my office, there'd been no actual break. He stood now, not really grinning at me, but with an amused look under that bristly mustache, and suggested,

"So you haven't seen young Gilbert?"

The tone was so significant that I gave him a quick glance of inquiry as I said,

"No. What about him?"

"Put on your coat and come along. We can talk on the way," he replied, and I went with him to the street, dug little Pete out of the bootblack stand and herded him into the roadster to drive us. c.u.mmings gave the order for North Beach, and as we squirmed through and around congested down-town traffic, headed for the Stockton Street tunnel, I waited for the lawyer to begin. When it came, it was another startling question,

"Didn't find Skeels in the south, eh?"

I hadn't thought they'd carry their watching and trailing of us so far.

I answered that question with another,

"When did you see or hear from Worth Gilbert last?"

"Not since the funeral," he said promptly, "the day before the funeral--a week ago to-day, to be exact. I ran down to make my inventory then; as administrator, you know."

He looked at me so significantly that I echoed,

"Yes, I know."

"Do you? How much?" His voice was hard and dry; it didn't sound good to me.

"See here," I put it to him, as my clever little driver dodged in and out through the narrow lanes between PaG.o.da-like shops of Chinatown, avoiding the steep hill streets by a diagonal through the Italian quarter on Columbus Avenue. "If there's anything you think I ought to be told, put me wise. I suppose you raised that money for Worth--the seventy-two thousand that was lacking, I mean?"

"I did not."

I turned the situation over and over in my mind, and at last asked cautiously,

"Worth did get the money to make up the full amount, didn't he?"

We had swerved again to the north, where the Powell car-line curves into Bay Street, and were headed direct for the wharves. c.u.mmings watched me out of the corners of his eyes, a look that bored in most unpleasantly, while he cross-examined,

"So you don't know where he raised that money--or how--or when? You don't even know that he did raise it? Is that the idea?"

I gave him look for look, but no answer. An indecisive slackening of the machine, and Little Pete asked,

"Where now, sir?"

"You can see it," c.u.mmings pointed. "The tall building. Hit the Embarcadero, then turn to your right; a block to Mason Street."

So close to the dock that ships lay broadside before its doors, moored to the piles by steel cables, the Western Cereal Company plant scattered its mills and warehouses over two city blocks. Freight trains ran through arcades into the buildings to fetch and carry its products; great trucks, some gas driven, some with four-and six-horse teams, loaded sacks or containers that shot in endless streams through well worn chutes, or emptied raw materials that would shortly be breakfast foods into iron conveyors that sucked it up and whined for more. It was a place of aggressive activity among placid surroundings, this plant of d.y.k.eman's, for its setting was the Italian fisherman's home district; little frame shacks, before which they mended their long, brown nets, or stretched them on the sidewalks to dry; Fisherman's Wharf and its lateen rigged, gayly painted hulls, was under the factory windows.

We pulled up before the door of a building separate from any of the mills or warehouses, and I followed c.u.mmings through a corridor, past many doors of private offices, to the large general office. Here a young man at a desk against the rail lent c.u.mmings respectful attention; the lawyer asked something in a low tone, and was answered,

"Yes, sir. Waiting for you. Go right through."

Down the long room with its rattling typewriters, its buzz of clerks and salesmen we went. c.u.mmings was a little ahead of me, when he checked a moment to bow to some one over at a desk. I followed his glance. The girl he had spoken to turned her back almost instantly after she had returned his greeting; but I couldn't be mistaken. There might be more than one figure with that slim, half girlish grace about it, and other hair as l.u.s.trously blue-black, but none could be wound around a small head quite so shapely, carried with so blossomlike a toss. It was Barbara Wallace.

So this was where her job was. Strange I had not known this fact of grave importance. I went on past her unconscious back, left her working at her loose-leaf ledgers, beside her adding machine, my mind a whirl of ugly conjecture. d.y.k.eman's employee; that would instantly and very painfully clear up a score of perplexing questions. d.y.k.eman would need no detectives on my trail to tell him of my lack of success in the Skeels chase. Lord! I had sent her as concise a report as I could make--to her, for Worth. I walked on stupidly. In front of the last door in the big room, c.u.mmings halted and spoke low.

"Boyne, you and I are both in the employ of the Van Ness Avenue Bank.

We're somewhat similarly situated in another quarter; I'm representing the Gilbert estate, and you've been retained by Worth Gilbert."

I grunted some sort of a.s.sent.

"I brought you here to listen to what the bank crowd has to say, but when they get done, I've something to tell you about that young employer of yours. You listen to them--then you listen to me--and you'll know where you stand."

"I'll talk with you as soon as I get through here, c.u.mmings."

"Be sure you do that little thing," significantly, and we went in.

CHAPTER XV

AT d.y.k.eMAN'S OFFICE

We found Whipple with d.y.k.eman. I had always liked the president of the Van Ness Avenue Bank well enough; one of the large, smooth, amiable sort, not built to withstand stress of weather, apt to be rather helpless before it. He seemed now mighty upset and worried. d.y.k.eman looked at me with hard eyes that searched me, but on the whole he was friendly in his greeting and inquiries as to my health.

While I was getting out of my coat and stowing it, making a great deal of the process so as to gain time, I saw c.u.mmings was exchanging low spoken words with the two of them. I tried to keep my mind on these men before me and why I was with them, but all the while it would be running back to the knock-out blow of seeing that girl in d.y.k.eman's place. She was double-crossing Worth! I might have grinned at the idea that I'd let myself be fooled by a pair of big, expressive, wistful, merry black eyes; but I had seen the look in those same eyes when they were turned on my boy; to think she'd look at him like that, and sell him out, was against nature. It was hurting me beyond all reason.

Whipple asked me about my trip south as though it was the most public thing in the world and he knew its every detail, and accepted my reply that I couldn't take one man's pay and report to another, with,

"Just so, Mr. Boyne. But your agency is retained--regularly, year by year--by our bank. And our bank has given over none of its rights--I should say duties--in regard to the Clayte case. We stand ready to a.s.sist any one whose behavior seems to us that of a law-abiding citizen.

We don't want to advance any criminality. We can't strike hands with outlaws--"

"Tell him about the suitcase, Whipple," d.y.k.eman broke in impatiently, rather spoiling the president's oratorical effect. "Tell him about the suitcase."

The suitcase! Was this one of the things Barbara Wallace had let out to her employer? She could have done so. She knew all about it.

"One moment, please," I snapped. "I've been away for a week, Mr.

Whipple. I don't know a thing of what you're talking about. Did Captain Gilbert fail to meet his engagement with you Monday morning?"

Whipple shook his head.