The Net Part 30

"I'll send them anyhow, Marechal Neils."

"Oh, you are a--Wait!"

For a second time Miss Warren broke off; but now Norvin heard her cry out gladly to some one. He held the receiver patiently until his arm cramped, then rang up again.

"Oh, I forgot all about you, Norvin dear," she chattered. "Vittoria has just come, so I can't talk to you any more. Won't you run out and meet her? I know she's just dying to--She says she isn't, either! Oh, fiddlesticks! You're not so busy as all that. Very well, we'll probably eat the cake ourselves. Good-by!"

"Good-by, Avenger," he laughed.

As he turned away smiling he found Bernie Dreux comfortably ensconced in an office chair and regarding him benignly.

"h.e.l.lo, Bernie! I didn't hear you come in."

"Wasn't that Myra Nell talking?" inquired the little man.

"Yes."

"You called her 'Avenger.' What has she been up to now?"

Blake handed him the red-hand letter. To his surprise Bernie burst out angrily:

"How dare she?"

"What?"

"It's most unladylike--begging a gentleman for gifts. I'll see that she apologizes."

"If you do I'll punch your head. She couldn't do anything unladylike if she tried."

"I don't approve--"

"Nonsense!"

"I'll see that she gets her chocolates."

"Oh, I've sent 'em--a deadly consignment--enough to destroy both of you. And I've left a standing order for five pounds a week."

"But that letter--it's blackmail." Bernie groaned. "She holds me up in the same way whenever she feels like it. She's getting suspicious of me lately, and I daren't tell her I'm a detective. The other day she set Remus, our gardener, on my trail, and he shadowed me all over the town. Felicite thinks there's something wrong, too, and she's taken to following me. Between her and Remus I haven't a moment's privacy."

"It's tough for a detective to be dogged by his gardener and his sweetheart," Norvin sympathized. He began to run through his mail, while his visitor talked on in his amusing, irrelevant fashion.

"I'm rather offended that I wasn't named on that Committee of Fifty,"

Bernie confessed, after a time. "You know how the Chief relied on me?"

"Exactly."

"Well, I'm full of Italian mysteries now. What I haven't discovered by my own investigations, Vittoria Fabrizi has told me. For instance, I know what became of the boy Gino Cressi."

"You do?" Blake looked up curiously from a letter he had been eagerly perusing.

"He's in Mobile."

"Are you sure?"

"Certainly."

"I think you're wrong."

"Why am I wrong?"

"Read this. My mail is full of anonymous communications." He pa.s.sed over the letter in his hand, and Mr. Dreux read as follows:

NORVIN BLAKE,

NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA.

The Cressi boy is hidden at 93 1/2 St. Phillip Street. Go personally and in secret, for there are spies among the police.

ONE WHO KNOWS.

"Good Lord! Do you believe it?"

"I shall know in an hour." In reality Norvin had no doubt that his informant told the truth. On the contrary, he found that he had been waiting subconsciously for a hint from this mysterious but reliable source, and now that it had come he felt confident and elated. "A leak in the department would explain the maddening series of checkmates up to date." After a moment's hesitation he continued: "If Gino Cressi proves to be the boy I saw that night, we will put the rope around his father's and his uncle's necks, for he is little more than a child, and they evidently knew he would confess if accused; otherwise they wouldn't have been so careful to hide him." He rose and, eying Dreux intently, inquired, "Will you go along and help me take him?"

Bernie fell into a sudden panic of excitement. His face paled, he blinked with incredible rapidity, his lips twitched, and he clasped his thin, bloodless hands nervously.

"Why--are you--really--going--and alone?"

Norvin nodded. "If they have spies among our own men the least indiscretion may give the alarm. Besides, there is no time to lose; it would be madness to go there after dark. Will you come?"

"You--b-b-bet," Mr. Dreux stuttered. After a painful effort to control himself he inquired, with rolling eyes, "S-say, Norvin, will there be any fighting--any d-d-danger?"

Blake's own imagination had already presented that aspect of the matter all too vividly.

"Yes, there may be danger," he confessed. "We may have to take the boy by force." His nerves began to dance and quiver, as always before every new adventure.

"Perhaps, after all, you'd better not go. I--understand how you feel."

The little man burst out in a forceful expletive.

"_Pudding!_ I _want_ to fight. D-don't you see?"

"No. I don't."

"I've never been in a row. I've never done anything brave or desperate, like--like you. I'm aching for trouble. I go looking for it every night."

"Really!" Blake looked his incredulity.