← catalogue

Blindfolded

by Earle Ashley Walcott · English · Gutenberg #7788 · 510,142 chars · public domain (US)

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Blindfolded
    
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.

Title: Blindfolded

Author: Earle Ashley Walcott


        
Release date: March 1, 2005 [eBook #7788]
                Most recently updated: March 16, 2018

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/7788

Credits: Text file produced by Charles Aldarondo, Tiffany Vergon, Joshua
        Hutchinson, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
        
        HTML file produced by David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BLINDFOLDED ***




Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Tiffany Vergon, Joshua
Hutchinson, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team








BLINDFOLDED


By Earle Ashley Walcott





CONTENTS


CHAPTER

  I A DANGEROUS ERRAND
  II A CRY FOR HELP
  III A QUESTION IN THE NIGHT
  IV A CHANGE OF NAME
  V DODDRIDGE KNAPP
  VI A NIGHT AT BORTON'S
  VII MOTHER BORTON
  VIII IN WHICH I MEET A FEW SURPRISES
  IX A DAY IN THE MARKET
  X A TANGLE OF SCHEMES
  XI THE DEN OF THE WOLF
  XII LUELLA KNAPP
  XIII A DAY OF GRACE
  XIV MOTHER BORTON'S ADVICE
  XV I AM IN THE TOILS
  XVI AN ECHO OF WARNING
  XVII IN A FOREIGN LAND
  XVIII THE BATTLE IN THE MAZE
  XIX A DEAL IN STOCKS
  XX MAKING PROGRESS
  XXI AT THE BIDDING OF THE UNKNOWN
  XXII TRAILED
  XXIII A PIECE OF STRATEGY
  XXIV ON THE ROAD
  XXV A FLUTTER IN THE MARKET
  XXVI A VISION OF THE NIGHT
  XXVII A LINK IN THE CHAIN
  XXVIII THE CHASE IN THE STORM
  XXIX THE HEART OF THE MYSTERY
  XXX THE END OF THE JOURNEY
  XXXI THE REWARD




BLINDFOLDED




CHAPTER I

A DANGEROUS ERRAND


A city of hills with a fringe of houses crowning the lower heights;
half-mountains rising bare in the background and becoming real mountains
as they stretched away in the distance to right and left; a confused
mass of buildings coming to the water's edge on the flat; a forest
of masts, ships swinging in the stream, and the streaked, yellow,
gray-green water of the bay taking a cold light from the setting sun as
it struggled through the wisps of fog that fluttered above the serrated
sky-line of the city--these were my first impressions of San Francisco.

The wind blew fresh and chill from the west with the damp and salt of
the Pacific heavy upon it, as I breasted it from the forward deck of the
ferry steamer, _El Capitan_. As I drank in the air and was silent with
admiration of the beautiful panorama that was spread before me, my
companion touched me on the arm.

“Come into the cabin,” he said. “You'll be one of those fellows who
can't come to San Francisco without catching his death of cold, and then
lays it on to the climate instead of his own lack of common sense. Come,
I can't spare you, now I've got you here at last. I wouldn't lose you
for a million dollars.”

“I'll come for half the money,” I returned, as he took me by the arm and
led me into the close cabin.

My companion, I should explain, was Henry Wilton, the son of my
father's cousin, who had the advantages of a few years of residence in
California, and sported all the airs of a pioneer. We had been close
friends through boyhood and youth, and it was on his offer of employment
that I had come to the city by the Golden Gate.

“What a resemblance!” I heard a woman exclaim, as we entered the cabin.
“They must be twins.”

“There, Henry,” I whispered, with a laugh; “you see we are discovered.”
 Though our relationship was not close we had been cast in the mold of
some common ancestor. We were so nearly alike in form and feature as
to perplex all but our intimate acquaintances, and we had made the
resemblance the occasion of many tricks in our boyhood days.

Henry had heard the exclamation as well as I. To my surprise, it
appeared to bring him annoyance or apprehension rather than amusement.

“I had forgotten that it would make us conspicuous,” he said, more
to himself than to me, I thought; and he glanced through the cabin as
though he looked for some peril.

“We were used to that long ago,” I said, as we found a seat. “Is the
business ready for me? You wrote that you thought it would be in hand by
the time I got here.”

“We can't talk about it here,” he said in a low tone. “There is plenty
of work to be done. It's not hard, but, as I wrote you, it needs a man
of pluck and discretion. It's delicate business, you understand, and
dangerous if you can't keep your head. But the danger won't be yours.
I've got that end of it.”

“Of course you're not trying to do anything against the law?” I said.

“Oh, it has nothing to do with the law,” he replied with an odd
smile. “In fact, it's a little matter in which we are--well, you might
say--outside the law.”

I gave a gasp at this disturbing suggestion, and Henry chuckled as he
saw the consternation written on my face. Then he rose and said:

“Come, the boat is getting in.”

“But I want to know--” I began.

“Oh, bother your 'want-to-knows.' It's not against the law--just outside
it, you understand. I'll tell you more of it when we get to my room.
Give me that valise. Come along now.” And as the boat entered the slip
we found ourselves at the front of the pressing crowd that is always
surging in and out of San Francisco by the gateway of the Market-Street
ferry.

As we pushed our way through the clamoring hack-drivers and
hotel-runners who blocked the entrance to the city, I was roused by a
sudden thrill of the instinct of danger that warns one when he meets
the eye of a snake. It was gone in an instant, but I had time to trace
effect to cause. The warning came this time from the eyes of a man, a
lithe, keen-faced man who flashed a look of triumphant malice on us as
he disappeared in the waiting-room of the ferry-shed. But the keen
face, and the basilisk glance were burned into my mind in that moment as
deeply as though I had known then what evil was behind them.

My companion swore softly to himself.

“What's the matter?” I asked.

“Don't look around,” he said. “We are watched.”

“The snake-eyed man?”

“Did you see him, too?” His manner was careless, but his tone was
troubled. “I thought I had given him the slip,” he continued. “Well,
there's no help for it now.”

“Are we to hunt for a hiding-place?” I asked doubtfully.

“Oh, no; not now. I was going to take you direct to my room. Now we are
going to a hotel with all the publicity we can get. Here we are.”

“Internaytional! Internaytional!” shouted a runner by our side. “Yes,
sir; here you are, sir. Free 'bus, sir.” And in another moment we were
in the lumbering coach, and as soon as the last lingering passenger had
come from the boat we were whirling over the rough pavement, through a
confusing maze of streets, past long rows of dingy, ugly buildings, to
the hotel.

Though the sun had but just set, the lights were glimmering in the
windows along Kearny Street as we stepped from the 'bus, and the
twilight was rapidly fading into darkness.

“A room for the night,” ordered Henry, as we entered the hotel office
and saluted the clerk.

“Your brother will sleep with you?” inquired the clerk.

“Yes.”

“That's right--if you are sure you can tell which is which in the
morning,” said the clerk, with a smile at his poor joke.

Henry smiled in return, paid the bill, took the key, and we were shown
to our room. After removing the travel-stains, I declared myself quite
ready to dine.

“We won't need this again,” said Henry, tossing the key on the bureau as
we left. “Or no, on second thought,” he continued, “it's just as well to
leave the door locked. There might be some inquisitive callers.” And we
betook ourselves to a hasty meal that was not of a nature to raise my
opinion of San Francisco.

“Are you through?” asked my companion, as I shook my head over a
melancholy piece of pie, and laid down my fork. “Well, take your bag.
This door--look pleasant and say nothing.”

He led the way to the bar and then through a back room or two, until
with a turn we were in a blind alley. With a few more steps we found
ourselves in a back hall which led into another building. I became
confused after a little, and lost all idea of the direction in which
we were going. We mounted one flight of stairs, I remember, and after
passing through two or three winding hallways and down another flight,
came out on a side street.

After a pause to observe the street before we ventured forth, Henry
said:

“I guess we're all right now. We must chance it, anyhow.” So we dodged
along in the shadow till we came to Montgomery Street, and after a brief
walk, turned into a gloomy doorway and mounted a worn pair of stairs.

The house was three stories in height. It stood on the corner of an
alley, and the lower floor was intended for a store or saloon; but a
renting agent's sign and a collection of old show-bills ornamenting the
dirty windows testified that it was vacant. The liquor business appeared
to be overdone in that quarter, for across the alley, hardly twenty feet
away, was a saloon; across Montgomery Street was another; and two more
held out their friendly lights on the corner of the street above.

In the saloons the disreputability was cheerful, and cheerfully
acknowledged with lights and noise, here of a broken piano, there of a
wheezy accordion, and, beyond, of a half-drunken man singing or shouting
a ribald song. Elsewhere it was sullen and dark,--the lights, where
there were lights, glittering through chinks, or showing the outlines of
drawn curtains.

“This isn't just the place I'd choose for entertaining friends,” said
Henry, with a visible relief from his uneasiness, as we climbed the worn
and dirty stair.

“Oh, that's all right,” I said, magnanimously accepting his apology.

“It doesn't have all the modern conveniences,” admitted Henry as we
stumbled up the second flight, “but it's suitable to the business we
have in hand, and--”

“What's that?” I exclaimed, as a creaking, rasping sound came from the
hall below.

We stopped and listened, peering into the obscurity beneath.

Nothing but silence. The house might have been a tomb for any sign of
life that showed within it.

“It must have been outside,” said Henry. “I thought for a moment
perhaps--” Then he checked himself. “Well, you'll know later,” he
concluded, and opened the door of the last room on the right of the
hall.

As we entered, he held the door ajar for a full minute, listening
intently. The obscurity of the hall gave back nothing to eye or ear, and
at last he closed the door softly and touched a match to the gas.

The room was at the rear corner of the building. There were two windows,
one looking to the west, the other to the north and opening on the
narrow alley.

“Not so bad after you get in,” said Henry, half as an introduction, half
as an apology.

“It's luxury after six days of railroading,” I replied.

“Well, lie down there, and make the most of it, then,” he said, “for
there may be trouble ahead.” And he listened again at the crack of the
door.

“In Heaven's name, Henry, what's up?” I exclaimed with some temper.
“You're as full of mysteries as a dime novel.”

Henry smiled grimly.

“Maybe you don't recognize that this is serious business,” he said.

“I don't understand it at all.”

“Well, I'm not joking. There's mischief afoot, and I'm in danger.”

“From whom? From what?”

“Never mind that now. It's another person's business--not mine, you
understand--and I can't explain until I know whether you are to be one
of us or not.”

“That's what I came for, isn't it?”

“Hm! You don't seem to be overly pleased with the job.”

“Which isn't surprising, when I haven't the first idea what it is,
except that it seems likely to get me killed or in jail.”

“Oh, if you're feeling that way about it, I know of another job that
will suit you better in--”

“I'm not afraid,” I broke in hotly. “But I want to see the noose before
I put my head in it.”

“Then I'm sure the assistant bookkeeper's place I have in mind will--”

“Confound your impudence!” I cried, laughing in spite of myself at the
way he was playing on me. “Assistant bookkeeper be hanged! I'm with you
from A to Z; but if you love me, don't keep me in the dark.”

“I'll tell you all you need to know. Too much might be dangerous.”

I was about to protest that I could not know too much, when Henry raised
his hand with a warning to silence. I heard the sound of a cautious step
outside. Then Henry sprang to the door, flung it open, and bolted down
the passage. There was the gleam of a revolver in his hand. I hurried
after him, but as I crossed the threshold he was coming softly back,
with finger on lips.

“I must see to the guards again. I can have them together by midnight.”

“Can I help?”

“No. Just wait here till I get back. Bolt the door, and let nobody
in but me. It isn't likely that they will try to do anything before
midnight. If they do--well, here's a revolver. Shoot through the door if
anybody tries to break it down.”

I stood in the door, revolver in hand, watched him down the hall, and
listened to his footsteps as they descended the stairs and at last faded
away into the murmur of life that came up from the open street.




CHAPTER II

A CRY FOR HELP


I hastily closed and locked the door. It shut out at least the eyes and
ears that, to my excited imagination, lurked in the dark corners and
half-hidden doorways of the dimly-lighted hall. And as I turned back to
the room my heart was heavy with bitter regret that I had ever left my
home.

This was not at all what I had looked for when I started for the Golden
Gate at my friend's offer of a “good place and a chance to get rich.”

Then I rallied my spirits with something of resolution, and shamed
myself with the reproach that I should fear to share any danger that
Henry was ready to face. Wearied as I was with travel, I was too much
excited for sleep. Reading was equally impossible. I scarcely glanced
at the shelf of books that hung on the wall, and turned to a study of my
surroundings.

The room was on the corner, as I have said, and I threw up the sash
of the west window and looked out over a tangle of old buildings,
ramshackle sheds, and an alley that appeared to lead nowhere. A wooden
shutter swung from the frame-post of the window, reaching nearly to
a crazy wooden stair that led from the black depths below. There were
lights here and there in the back rooms. Snatches of drunken song and
rude jest came up from an unseen doggery, and vile odors came with them.
Shadows seemed to move here and there among the dark places, but in the
uncertain light I could not be sure whether they were men, or only boxes
and barrels.

Some sound of a drunken quarrel drew my attention to the north window,
and I looked out into the alley. The lights from Montgomery Street
scarcely gave shape to the gloom below the window, but I could
distinguish three or four men near the side entrance of a saloon. They
appeared quiet enough. The quarrel, if any there was, must be inside the
saloon. After an interval of comparative silence, the noise rose again.
There were shouts and curses, sounds as of a chair broken and tables
upset, and one protesting, struggling inebriate was hurled out from the
front door and left, with threats and foul language, to collect himself
from the pavement.

This edifying incident, which was explained to me solely by sound, had
scarcely come to an end when a noise of creaking boards drew my eyes to
the other window. The shutter suddenly flew around, and a human figure
swung in at the open casing. Astonishment at this singular proceeding
did not dull the instinct of self-defense. The survey of my surroundings
and the incident of the bar-room row had in a measure prepared me for
any desperate doings, and I had swung a chair ready to strike a blow
before I had time to think.

“S-h-h!” came the warning whisper, and I recognized my supposed robber.
It was Henry.

His clothes and hair were disordered, and his face and hands were grimy
with dust.

“Don't speak out loud,” he said in suppressed tones. “Wait till I fasten
this shutter. The other one's gone, but nobody can get in from that side
unless they can shin up thirty feet of brick wall.”

“Shall I shut the window?” I asked, thoroughly impressed by his manner.

“No, you'll make too much noise,” he said, stripping off his coat and
vest. “Here, change clothes with me. Quick! It's a case of life and
death. I must be out of here in two minutes. Do as I say, now. Don't ask
questions. I'll tell you about it in a day or two. No, just the coat and
vest. There--give me that collar and tie. Where's your hat?”

The changes were completed, or rather his were, and he stood looking as
much like me as could be imagined.

“Don't stir from this room till I come back,” he whispered. “You can
dress in anything of mine you like. I'll be in before twelve, or send a
messenger if I'm not coming. By-by.”

He was gone before I could say a word, and only an occasional creaking
board told me of his progress down the stairs. He had evidently had some
practice in getting about quietly. I could only wonder, as I closed and
locked the door, whether it was the police or a private enemy that he
was trying to avoid.

I had small time to speculate on the possibilities, for outside the
window I heard the single word, “Help!”

The cry was half-smothered, and followed by a gurgling sound and noise
as of a scuffle in the alley.

I rushed to the window and looked out. A band of half a dozen men was
struggling and pushing away from Montgomery Street into the darker end
of the alley. They were nearly under the window.

“Give it to him,” said a voice.

In an instant there came a scream, so freighted with agony that it burst
the bonds of gripping fingers and smothering palms that tried to close
it in, and rose for the fraction of a second on the foul air of the
alley. Then a light showed and a tall, broad-shouldered figure leaped
back.

“These aren't the papers,” it hissed. “Curse on you, you've got the
wrong man!”

There was a moment's confusion, and the light flashed on the man who
had spoken and was gone. But that flash had shown me the face of a man I
could never forget--a man whose destiny was bound up for a brief period
with mine, and whose wicked plans have proved the master influence of
my life. It was a strong, cruel, wolfish face--the face of a man near
sixty, with a fierce yellow-gray mustache and imperial--a face broad at
the temples and tapering down into a firm, unyielding jaw, and marked
then with all the lines of rage, hatred, and chagrin at the failure of
his plans.

It took not a second for me to see and hear and know all this, for the
vision came and was gone in the dropping of an eyelid. And then there
echoed through the alley loud cries of “Police! Murder! Help!” I was
conscious that there was a man running through the hall and down the
rickety stairs, making the building ring to the same cries. My own
feelings were those of overmastering fear for my friend. He had gone on
his mysterious, dangerous errand, and I felt that it was he who had been
dragged into the alley, and stabbed, perhaps to death. Yet it seemed I
could make no effort, nor rouse myself from the stupor of terror into
which I was thrown by the scene I had witnessed.

It was thus with a feeling of surprise that I found myself in the
street, and came to know that the cries for help had come from me, and
that I was the man who had run through the hall and down the stairs
shouting for the police.

Singularly enough there was no crowd to be seen, and no excitement
anywhere. Some one was playing a wheezy melodeon in the saloon, and men
were singing a drunken song. The alley was dark, and I could see no
one in its depths. The house through which I had flown shouting was now
silent, and if any one on the street had heard me he had hurried on and
closed his ears, lest evil befall him. Fortunately the policeman on the
beat was at hand, and I hailed him excitedly.

“Only rolling a drunk,” he said lightly, as I told of what I had seen.

“No, it's worse than that,” I insisted. “There was murder done, and I'm
afraid it's my friend.”

He listened more attentively as I told him how Henry had left the house
just before the cry for help had risen.

The policeman took me by the shoulders, turned me to the gaslight, and
looked in my face.

“Excuse me, sor,” he said. “I see you're not one of that kind. Some of
'em learns it from the blitherin' Chaneymen.”

I was mystified at the moment, but I found later that he suspected me of
having had an opium dream. The house, I learned, was frequented by the
“opium fiends,” as they figure in police slang.

“It's a nasty place,” he continued. “It's lucky I've got a light.” He
brought up a dark lantern from his overcoat pocket, and stood in the
shelter of the building as he lighted it. “There's not many as carries
'em,” he continued, “but they're mighty handy at times.”

We made our way to the point beneath the window, where the men had
stood.

There was nothing to be seen--no sign of struggle, no shred of torn
clothing, no drop of blood. Body, traces and all had disappeared.




CHAPTER III

A QUESTION IN THE NIGHT


I was stricken dumb at this end to the investigation, and half doubted
the evidence of my eyes.

“Well,” said the policeman, with a sigh of relief, “there's nothing
here.”

I suspected that his doubts of my sanity were returning.

“Here is where it was done,” I asserted stoutly, pointing to the spot
where I had seen the struggling group from the window. “There were
surely five or six men in it.”

The policeman turned his lantern on the spot. The rough pavement had
taken no mark of the scuffle.

“It's hard to make sure of things from above in this light,” said the
policeman, hinting once more his suspicion that I was confusing dreams
with reality.

“There was no mistaking that job,” I said. “See here, the alley leads
farther back. Bring your light.”

“Aisy, now,” said the policeman. “I'll lead the way. Maybe you want one
yourself, as your friend has set the fashion.”

A few paces farther the alley turned at a right angle to the north,
yawning dark behind the grim and threatening buildings, and filled with
noisome odors. We looked narrowly for a body, and then for traces that
might give hint of the passage of a party.

“Nothing here,” said the policeman, as we came out on the other street.
“Maybe they've carried him into one of these back-door dens, and maybe
they whisked him into a hack here, and are a mile or two away by now.”

“But we must follow them. He may be only wounded and can be rescued. And
these men can be caught.” I was almost hysterical in my eagerness.

“Aisy, aisy, now,” said the policeman. “Go back to your room, now.
That's the safest place for you, and you can't do nothin' at all out
here. I'll report the case to the head office, an' we'll send out the
alarm to the force. Now, here's your door. Just rest aisy, and they'll
let you know if anything's found.”

And he passed on, leaving me dazed with dread and despair in the
entrance of the fateful house.

The sounds of drunken pleasure were lessening about me. The custom
had fallen off in the saloon across the street to such extent that the
proprietor was putting up the shutters. The saloon on the corner of the
alley was still waiting for stray customers and I crossed over to it
with the thought that the inmates might give me a possible clue. A man
half-asleep leaned back in a chair by the stove with his chin on his
breast. Two rough-looking men at a table who were talking in low tones
pretended not to notice my entrance, but their furtive glances gave more
eloquent evidence of their interest than the closest stare.

The barkeeper eyed me with apparent openness. I called for a glass of
wine, partly as an excuse for my visit, and partly to revive my shaken
spirits.

“Any trouble about here to-night?” I asked in my most affable tone.

The barkeeper looked at me with cold suspicion.

“No, sir,” he said shortly. “This is the quietest neighborhood in town.”

“I should think there would be a disturbance every time that liquor was
sold,” was my private comment, as I got the aftertaste of the dose. But
I merely wished him good night as I paid for the drink, and sauntered
out.

I promptly got into my doorway before any one could reach the street to
see whither I went, and listened to a growling comment and a mirthless
laugh that followed my departure. Hardly had I gained my concealment
when the swinging doors of the saloon opened cautiously, and a face
peered out into the semi-darkness. With a muttered curse it went back,
and I heard the barkeeper's voice in some jest about a failure to be
“quick enough to catch flies.”

Once more in the room to wait till morning should give me a chance to
work, I looked about the dingy place with a heart sunk to the lowest
depths. I was alone in the face of this mystery. I had not one friend
in the city to whom I could appeal for sympathy, advice or money. Yet
I should need all of these to follow this business to the end--to learn
the fate of my cousin, to rescue him, if alive and to avenge him, if
dead.

Then, in the hope that I might find something among Henry's effects to
give me a clue to the men who had attacked him, I went carefully through
his clothes and his papers. But I found that he did not leave memoranda
of his business lying about. The only scrap that could have a possible
bearing on it was a sheet of paper in the coat he had changed with
me. It bore a rough map, showing a road branching thrice, with crosses
marked here and there upon it. Underneath was written:

“Third road--cockeyed barn--iron cow.”

Then followed some numerals mixed in a drunken dance with half the
letters of the alphabet--the explanation of the map, I supposed, in
cipher, and as it might prove the clue to this dreadful business, I
folded the sheet carefully in an envelope and placed it in an inmost
pocket.

The search having failed of definite results, I sat with chair tilted
against the wall to consider the situation. Turn it as I would, I could
make nothing good of it. There were desperate enterprises afoot of which
I could see neither beginning nor end, purpose nor result. I repented of
my consent to mix in these dangerous doings and resolved that when the
morning came I would find other quarters, take up the search for Henry,
and look for such work as might be found.

It was after midnight when I had come to this conclusion, and, barring
doors and windows as well as I could, I flung myself on the bed to rest.
I did not expect to sleep after the exciting events through which I had
passed; yet after a bit the train of mental pictures drawn out by the
surging memories of the night became confused and faded away, and I sank
into an uneasy slumber.

When I awoke it was with a start and an oppressive sense that somebody
else was in the room. The gas-light that I had left burning had been
put out. Darkness was intense. The beating of my own heart was the only
sound I could distinguish. I sat upright and felt for the matches that I
had seen upon the stand.

In another instant I was flung back upon the bed. Wiry fingers gripped
my throat, and a voice hissed in my ear:

“Where is he? Where is the boy? Give me your papers, or I'll wring the
life out of you!”

I was strong and vigorous, and, though taken at a disadvantage,
struggled desperately enough to break the grip on my throat and get a
hold upon my assailant.

“Where is the boy?” gasped the voice once more; and then, as I made no
reply, but twined my arms about him, my assailant saved all his breath
for the struggle.

We rolled to the floor with a thud that shook the house, and in this
change of base I had the luck to come out uppermost. Then my courage
rose as I found that I could hold my man. I feared a knife, but if he
had one he had not drawn it, and I was able to keep his hands too busy
to allow him to get possession of it now. Finding that he was able to
accomplish nothing, he gave a short cry and called:

“Conn!”

I heard a confusion of steps outside, and a sound as of a muffled oath.
Then the door opened, there was a rush of feet behind me, and the flash
of a bull's-eye lantern. I released my enemy, and sprang back to the
corner where I could defend myself at some advantage. It was a poor
chance for an unarmed man, but I found a chair and set my teeth to give
an account of myself to the first who advanced, and reproached the lack
of foresight that had allowed me to lay the revolver under the pillow
instead of putting it in my pocket.

I could distinguish four dark figures of men; but, instead of rushing
upon me as I stood on the defensive, they seized upon my assailant. I
looked on panting, and hardly able to regain my breath. It was not half
a minute before my enemy was securely bound and gagged and carried out.
One of the men lingered.

“Don't take such risks,” he said. “I wouldn't have your job, Mr. Wilton,
for all the old man's money. If we hadn't happened up here, you'd have
been done for this time.”

“In God's name, man, what does all this mean?” I gasped.

The man looked at me in evident surprise.

“They've got a fresh start, I guess,” he said. “You'd better get some of
the men up here. Mr. Richmond sent us up to bring this letter.”

He was gone silently, and I was left in the darkness. I struck a match,
lighted the gas once more, and, securing the revolver, looked to the
letter. The envelope bore no address. I tore it open. The lines were
written in a woman's hand, and a faint but peculiar perfume rose from
the paper, it bore but these words:

“Don't make the change until I see you. The money will be ready in the
morning. Be at the bank at 10:30.”

The note, puzzling as it was, was hardly an addition to my perplexities.
It was evident that I had been plunged into the center of intrigue, plot
and counterplot. I was supposed to have possession of somebody's boy.
A powerful and active enemy threatened me with death. An equally
active friend was working to preserve my safety. People of wealth were
concerned. I had dimly seen a fragment of the struggling forces, and it
was plain that only a very rich person could afford the luxury of hiring
the bravos and guards who threatened and protected me.

How wide were the ramifications of the mystery? Whose was the boy, and
what was wanted of him? Had he been stolen from home and parents? Or was
he threatened with mortal danger and sent into hiding to keep him from
death?

The fate of Henry showed the power of those who were pursuing me. Armed
as he was with the knowledge of his danger, knowing, as I did not, what
he had to guard and from what he had to guard it, he had yet fallen a
victim.

I could not doubt that he was the man assaulted and stabbed in the alley
below. But the fact that no trace of him or of a tragedy was to be found
gave me hope that he was still alive. Yet, at best, he was wounded and
in the hands of his enemies, a prisoner to the men who had sought his
life. It must be, however, that he was not yet recognized. The transfer
of the chase to me was proof that the scoundrels had been misled by the
resemblance between us, and by the letters found in the coat. They were
convinced that he was Giles Dudley, and that I was Henry Wilton. As long
as there was hope that he was alive I would devote myself to searching
for him and to helping him to recover his liberty.

As I was hoping, speculating, planning thus, I was startled to hear a
step on the stair.

The sound was not one that need be thought out of place in such a house
and neighborhood even though the hour was past four in the morning. But
it struck a chill through me, and I listened with growing apprehension
as it mounted step by step.

The dread silence of the house that had cast its shadow of fear upon me
now seemed to become vocal with protest against this intrusion, and to
send warning through the halls. At last the step halted before my door
and a loud knock startled the echoes.

With a great bound my heart threw off its tremors, and I grasped the
revolver firmly:

“Who's there?”

“Open the door, sor; I've news for ye.”

“Who are you?”

“Come now, no nonsense; I'm an officer.”

I unlocked the door and stepped to one side. My bump of caution had
developed amazingly in the few hours I had spent in San Francisco, and,
in spite of his assurance, I thought best to avoid any chance of a rush
from my unknown friends, and to put myself in a good position to use my
revolver if necessary.

The man stepped in and showed his star. He was the policeman I had met
when I had run shouting into the street.

“I suspicion we've found your friend,” he said gravely. “You're wanted
at the morgue.”

“Dead!” I gasped.

“Dead as Saint Patrick--rest his sowl!”




CHAPTER IV

A CHANGE OF NAME


“Here's your way, sor,” said the policeman, turning into the old City
Hall, as it was even then known, and leading me to one of the inner
rooms of the labyrinth of offices.

The odors of the prison were heavy upon the building. The foul air from
the foul court-rooms and offices still hung about the entrance, and the
fog-laden breeze of the early morning hours was powerless to freshen it.

The policeman opened an office door, saluted, and motioned me to enter.

“Detective Coogan,” he said, “here's your man.”

Detective Coogan, from behind his desk, nodded with the careless dignity
of official position.

“Glad to see you, Mr. Wilton,” he said affably.

If I betrayed surprise at being called by Henry's name, Detective Coogan
did not notice it. But I hastened to disclaim the dangerous distinction.

“I am not Wilton,” I declared. “My name is Dudley--Giles Dudley.”

At this announcement Detective Coogan turned to the policeman. “Just
step into Morris' room, Corson, and tell him I'm going up to the
morgue.”

“Now,” he continued, as the policeman closed the door behind him, “this
won't do, Wilton. We've had to overlook a good deal, of course, but you
needn't think you can play us for suckers all the time.”

“But I tell you I'm not--” I began, when he interrupted me.

“You can't make that go here,” he said contemptuously. “And I'll tell
you what, Wilton, I shall have to take you into custody if you don't
come down to straight business. We don't want to chip in on the old
man's play, of course, especially as we don't know what his game is.”
 Detective Coogan appeared to regret this admission that he was not
omniscient, and went on hastily: “You know as well as we do that we
don't want any fight with _him_. But I'll tell you right now that if you
force a fight, we'll make it so warm for him that he'll have to throw
_you_ overboard to lighten ship.”

Here was a fine prospect conveyed by Detective Coogan's picturesque
confusion of metaphors. If I persisted in claiming my own name and
person I was to be clapped into jail, and charged with Heaven-knows-what
crimes. If I took my friend's name, I was to invite the career of
adventure of which I had just had a taste. And while this was flashing
through my mind, I wondered idly who the “old man” could be. The note I
had received was certainly in a lady's hand. But if the lady was Henry's
employer, it was evident that he had dealt with the police as the
representative of a man of power.

My decision was of necessity promptly taken.

“Oh, well, if that's the way you look at it, Coogan,” I said carelessly,
“it's all right. I thought it was agreed that we weren't to know each
other.”

This was a chance shot, but it hit.

“Yes, yes,” said the detective, “I remember. But, you see, this is
serious business. Here's a murder on our hands, and from all I can learn
it's on account of your confounded schemes. We've got to know where we
stand, or there will be the Old Nick to pay. The papers will get hold of
it, and then--well, you remember that shake-up we had three years ago.”

“But you forget the 'old man,'” I returned. The name of that potent
Unknown seemed to be my only weapon in the contest with Detective
Coogan, and I thought this a time to try its force.

“Not much, I don't!” said Coogan, visibly disturbed. “But if it comes to
a choice, we'll have to risk a battle with him.”

“Well, maybe we're wasting time over a trifle,” said I, voicing my hope.
“Perhaps your dead man belongs somewhere else.”

“Come along to the morgue, then,” said he.

“Where was he found?” I asked as we walked out of the City Hall.

“He was picked up at about three o'clock in the back room of the
Hurricane Deck--the water-front saloon, you know--near the foot of
Folsom Street.”

Detective Coogan asked a number of questions as we walked, and in a few
minutes we came to the undertaker's shop that served as the city morgue.
At the best of times it could not be a place of cheer. In the hour
before daybreak, with the chill air of the morning almost suppressing
the yellow gaslights, the errand on which I had come made it the abode
of dread. Yet I hoped--hoped in such an agony of fear that I became
half-insensible to my surroundings.

“Here it is,” said Coogan, opening a door.

The low room was dark and chill and musty, but its details started forth
from the obscurity as he turned up the lights.

Detective Coogan's words seemed to come from a great distance as he
said: “Here, you see, he was stabbed. The knife went to the heart. Here
he was hit with something heavy and blunt; but it had enough of an
edge to cut the scalp and lay the cheek open. The skull is broken. See
here--”

I summoned my resolution and looked.

Disfigured and ghastly as it was, I recognized it. It was the face of
Henry Wilton.

The next I knew I was sitting on a bench, and the detective was holding
a bottle to my lips.

“There, take another swallow,” he said, not unkindly. “I didn't know you
weren't used to it.”

“Oh,” I gasped, “I'm all right now.” And I was able to look steadily at
the gruesome surroundings and the dreadful burden on the slab.

“Is this the man?” asked the detective.

“Yes.”

“His name?”

“Dudley--James Dudley.” I was not quite willing to transfer the whole of
my identity to the dead, and changed the Giles to James.

“Was he a relative?”

I shook my head, though I could not have said why I denied it. Then, in
answer to the detective's question, I told the story of the scuffle in
the alley, and of the events that followed.

“Did you see any of the men? To recognize them, I mean?”

I described the leader as well as I was able--the man with the face of
the wolf that I had seen in the lantern-flash.

Detective Coogan lost his listless air, and looked at me in
astonishment.

“I don't see your game, Wilton,” he said.

“I'm giving you the straight facts,” I said sullenly, a little disturbed
by his manner and tone.

“Well, in that case, I'd expect you to keep the straight facts to
yourself, my boy.”

It was my turn to be astonished.

“Well, that's my lookout,” I said with assumed carelessness.

“I don't see through you,” said the detective with some irritation. “If
you're playing with me to stop this inquiry by dragging in--well, we
needn't use names--you'll find yourself in the hottest water you ever
struck.”

“You can do as you please,” I said coolly.

The detective ripped out an oath.

“If I knew you were lying, Wilton, I'd clap you in jail this minute.”

“Well, if you want to take the risks--” I said smiling.

He looked at me for a full minute.

“Candidly, I don't, and you know it,” he said. “But this is a stunner on
me. What's your game, anyhow?”

I wished I knew.

“So accomplished a detective should not be at a loss to answer so simple
a question.”

“Well, there's only one course open, as I see,” he said with a groan.
“We've got to have a story ready for the papers and the coroner's jury.”

This was a new suggestion for me and I was alarmed.

“You can just forget your little tale about the row in the alley,” he
continued. “There's nothing to show that it had anything to do with this
man here. Maybe it didn't happen. Anyhow, just think it was a dream.
This was a water-front row--tough saloon--killed and robbed by parties
unknown. Maybe we'll have you before the coroner for the identification,
but maybe it's better not.”

I nodded assent. My mind was too numbed to suggest another course.

The gray dawn was breaking through the chill fog, and people were
stirring in the streets as Detective Coogan led the way out of the
morgue. As we parted he gave me a curious look.

“I suppose you know your own business, Wilton,” he said, “but I suspect
you'd be a sight safer if I'd clap you in jail.”

And with this consoling comment he was gone, and I was left in the dawn
of my first morning in San Francisco, mind and body at the nadir of
depression after the excitement and perils of the night.




CHAPTER V

DODDRIDGE KNAPP


It was past ten o'clock of the morning when the remembrance of the
mysterious note I had received the preceding night came on me. I took
the slip from my pocket, and read its contents once more:

“Don't make the change until I see you. The money will be ready in the
morning. Be at the bank at 10:30.”

This was perplexing enough, but it furnished me with an idea. Of course
I could not take money intended for Henry Wilton. But here was the first
chance to get at the heart of this dreadful business. The writer of the
note, I must suppose, was the mysterious employer. If I could see her I
could find the way of escape from the dangerous burden of Henry Wilton's
personality and mission.

But which bank could be meant? The only names I knew were the Bank of
California, whose failure in the previous year had sent echoes even into
my New England home, and the Anglo-Californian Bank, on which I held a
draft. The former struck me as the more likely place of appointment, and
after some skilful navigating I found myself at the corner of California
and Sansome Streets, before the building through which the wealth of an
empire had flowed.

I watched closely the crowd that passed in and out of the
treasure-house, and assumed what I hoped was an air of prosperous
indifference to my surroundings.

No one appeared to notice me. There were eager men and cautious men, and
men who looked secure and men who looked anxious, but neither man nor
woman was looking for me.

Plainly I had made a bad guess. A hasty walk through several other banks
that I could see in the neighborhood gave no better result, and I had
to acknowledge that this chance of penetrating the mystery was gone. I
speculated for the moment on what the effects might be. To neglect an
order of this kind might result in the withdrawal of the protection that
had saved my life, and in turning me over to the mercies of the banditti
who thought I knew something of the whereabouts of a boy.

As I reflected thus, I came upon a crowd massed about the steps of a
great granite building in Pine Street; a whirlpool of men, it seemed,
with crosscurrents and eddies, and from the whole rose the murmur of
excited voices.

It was the Stock Exchange, the gamblers' paradise, in which millions
were staked, won and lost, and ruin and affluence walked side by side.
As I watched the swaying, shouting mass with wonder and amusement, a
thrill shot through me.

Upon the steps of the building, amid the crowd of brokers and
speculators, I saw a tall, broad-shouldered man of fifty or fifty-five,
his face keen, shrewd and hard, broad at the temples and tapering to
a strong jaw, a yellow-gray mustache and imperial half-hiding and
half-revealing the firm lines of the mouth, with the mark of the wolf
strong upon the whole. It was a face never to be forgotten as long as
I should hold memory at all. It was the face I had seen twelve hours
before in the lantern flash in the dreadful alley, with the cry of
murder ringing in my ears. Then it was lighted by the fierce fires of
rage and hatred, and marked with the chagrin of baffled plans. Now it
was cool, good-humored, alert for the battle of the Exchange that had
already begun. But I knew it for the same, and was near crying aloud
that here was a murderer.

I clutched my nearest neighbor by the arm, and demanded to know who it
was.

“Doddridge Knapp,” replied the man civilly. “He's running the Chollar
deal now, and if I could only guess which side he's on, I'd make a
fortune in the next few days. He's the King of Pine Street.”

While I was looking at the King of the Street and listening to my
neighbor's tales of his operations, Doddridge Knapp's eyes met mine.
To my amazement there was a look of recognition in them. Yet he made no
sign, and in a moment was gone. This, then, was the enemy I was to meet!
This was the explanation of Detective Coogan's hint that I should be
safer in jail than free on the streets to face this man's hatred or
revenge.

I must have stood in a daze on the busy street, for I was roused by some
one shaking my arm with vigor.

“Come! are you asleep?” said the man, speaking in my ear. “Can't you
hear?”

“Yes, yes,” said I, rousing my attention.

“The chief wants you.” His voice was low, almost a whisper.

“The chief? Who? Where?” I asked. “At the City Hall?” I jumped to the
conclusion that it was, of course, the chief of police, on the scent of
the murder.

“No. Of course not. In the second office, you know.”

This was scarcely enlightening. Doubtless, however, it was a summons
from my unknown employer.

“I'll follow you,” said I promptly.

“I don't think I'd better go,” said the messenger dubiously. “He didn't
say anything about it, and you know he's rather--”

“Well, I order it,” I cut in decisively. “I may need you.”

I certainly needed him at that moment if I was to find my way.

“Go ahead a few steps,” I said.

My tone and manner impressed him, and he went without another word. I
sauntered after him with as careless an air as I could assume. My heart
was beating fast. I felt that I was close to the mystery and that the
next half-hour would determine whether I was to take up Henry Wilton's
work or to find my way in safety back to my own name and person.

My unconscious guide led the way along Montgomery Street into an office
building, up a flight of stairs, and into a back hallway.

“Stay a moment,” I said, as he had his hand on the door knob. “On second
thoughts you can wait down stairs.”

He turned back, and as his footsteps echoed down the stair I opened the
door and entered the office.

As I crossed the threshold my heart gave a great bound, and I stopped
short. Before me sat Doddridge Knapp, the King of the Street, the man
for whom above all others in the world I felt loathing and fear.

Doddridge Knapp finished signing his name to a paper on his desk before
he looked up.

“Come in and sit down,” he said. The voice was alert and
businesslike--the voice of a man accustomed to command. But I could find
no trace of feeling in it, nothing that could tell me of the hatred or
desperate purpose that should inspire such a tragedy as I had witnessed,
or warn me of danger to come.

“Do you hear?” he said impatiently; “shut the door and sit down. Just
spring that lock, will you? We might be interrupted.”

I was not at all certain that I should not wish very earnestly that
he might be interrupted in what Bret Harte would call the “subsequent
proceedings.” But I followed his directions.

Doddridge Knapp was not less impressive at close view than at long
range. The strong face grew stronger when seen from the near distance.

“My dear Wilton,” he said, “I've come to a place where I've got to trust
somebody, so I've come back to you.” The voice was oily and persuasive,
but the keen gray eyes shot out a glance from under the bushing eyebrows
that thrilled me as a warning.

“It's very kind of you,” I said, swallowing my astonishment with an
effort.

“Well,” said Knapp, “the way you handled that Ophir matter was perfectly
satisfactory; but I'll tell you that it's on Mrs. Knapp's say-so, as
much as on your own doings, that I select you for this job.”

“I'm much obliged to Mrs. Knapp,” I said politely. I was in deep waters.
It was plainly unsafe to do anything but drift.

“Oh, you can settle that with her at your next call,” he said good
humoredly.

The jaded nerves of surprise refused to respond further. If I had
received a telegram informing me that the dispute over the presidency
had been settled by shelving both Hayes and Tilden and giving the
unanimous vote of the electors to me, I should have accepted it as
a matter of course. I took my place unquestioningly as a valued
acquaintance of Doddridge Knapp's and a particular friend of Mrs.
Knapp's.

Yet it struck me as strange that the keen-eyed King of the Street had
failed to discover that he was not talking to Henry Wilton, but to some
one else who resembled him. There were enough differences in features
and voice to distinguish us among intimate friends, though there were
not enough to be seen by casual acquaintances. I had the key in the next
sentence he spoke.

“I have decided that it is better this time to do our business face to
face. I don't want to trust messengers on this affair, and even cipher
notes are dangerous,--confoundedly dangerous.”

Then we had not been close acquaintances.

“Oh, by the way, you have that other cipher yet, haven't you?” he asked.

“No, I burnt it,” I said unblushingly.

“That's right,” he said. “It was best not to take risks. Of course you
understand that it won't do for us to be seen together.”

“Certainly not,” I assented.

“I have arranged for another office. Here's the address. Yours is Room
15. I have the key to 17, and 16 is vacant between with a 'To Let' sign
on it. They open into each other. You understand?”

“Perfectly,” I said.

“You will be there by nine o'clock for your orders. If you get none by
twelve, there will be none for the day.”

“If I can't be there, I'll let you know.” I was off my guard for a
moment, thinking of the possible demands of Henry's unknown employer.

“You will do nothing of the kind,” said Doddridge Knapp shortly. His
voice, so smooth and businesslike a moment before, changed suddenly to
a growl. His heavy eyebrows came down, and from under them flashed
a dangerous light. “You will be there when I tell you, young man, or
you'll have to reckon with another sort of customer than the one you've
been dealing with. This matter requires prompt and strict obedience to
orders. One slip may ruin the whole plan.”

“You can depend on me,” I said with assumed confidence. “Am I to have
any discretion?”

“None whatever.”

I had thus far been able to get no hint of his purposes. If I had not
known what I knew, I should have supposed that his mind was concentrated
on the apparent object before him--to secure the zeal and fidelity of an
employee in some important business operation.

“And what am I to do?” I asked.

“Be a capitalist,” he said with an ironical smile. “Buy and sell what
I tell you to buy and sell. Keep under cover, but not too much under
cover. You can pick your own brokers. Better begin with Bockstein and
Eppner, though. Your checks will be honored at the Nevada Bank. Oh,
here's a cipher, in case I want to write you. I suppose you'll want some
ready money.”

Doddridge Knapp was certainly a liberal provider, for he shoved a
handful of twenty-dollar gold pieces across the desk in a way that made
my eyes open.

“By the way,” he continued, “I don't think I have your signature, have
I?”

“No, sir,” I replied with prompt confidence.

“Well, just write it on this slip then. I'll turn it into the bank for
your identification. You can take this check-book with you.”

“Anything more?”

“That's all,” he replied with a nod of dismissal. “Maybe it's
to-morrow--maybe it's next month.”

And I walked out into Montgomery Street, bewildered among the
conflicting mysteries in which I had been entangled.




CHAPTER VI

A NIGHT AT BORTON'S


Room 15 was a plain, comfortable office in a plain, comfortable building
on Clay Street, not far from the heart of the business district. It was
on the second floor, and its one window opened to the rear, and faced
a desolate assortment of back yards, rear walls, and rickety stairways.
The floor had a worn carpet, and there was a desk, a few chairs and
a shelf of law books. The place looked as though it had belonged to a
lawyer in reduced circumstances, and I could but wonder how it had
come into the possession of Doddridge Knapp, and what had become of its
former occupant.

I tried to thrust aside a spirit of melancholy, and looked narrowly to
the opportunities offered by the room for attack and defense. The walls
were solidly built. The window-casement showed an unusual depth for
a building of that height. The wall had been put in to withstand an
earthquake shock. The door opening into the hall, the door into Room
16, and the window furnished the three avenues of possible attack or
retreat. The window upon examination appeared impracticable. There was
a sheer drop of twenty feet, without a projection of any kind below it.
The ledge was hardly an inch wide. The iron shutters by which it might
be closed did not swing within ten feet of any other window. The one
chance of getting in by this line was to drop a rope ladder from the
roof. The door opening into Room 16 was not heavy, and the lock was a
cheap affair. A good kick would send the whole thing into splinters. As
it swung into Number 16 and not into my room it could not be braced with
a barricade. Plainly it was not a good place to spend the night
should Doddridge Knapp care to engineer another case of mysterious
disappearance.

The depression of spirits that progressed with my survey of the room
deepened into gloom as I flung myself into the arm-chair before the
desk, and tried to plan some way out of the tangle in which I was
involved. How was I, single-handed, to contend against the power of
the richest man in the city, and bring home to him the murder of Henry
Wilton? I could look for no assistance from the police. The words of
Detective Coogan were enough to show that only the most convincing proof
of guilt, backed by fear of public sentiment, could bring the department
to raise a finger against him. And how could I hope to rouse that public
sentiment? What would my word count against that of the King of the
Street?

Where was the motive for the crime? Until that was made clear I could
not hope to piece together the scraps of evidence into a solid structure
of proof. And what motive could there be that would reconcile the
Doddridge Knapp who sought the life of Henry Wilton, with the Doddridge
Knapp of this morning, who was ready to engage him in his confidential
business? And had I the right to accept any part in his business? It had
the flavor of treachery about it; yet it seemed the only possible chance
to come upon the secret springs of his acts, to come in touch with the
tools and accomplices in his crime. And the unknown mission, that had
brought Henry to his death? How was I to play his part in that? And even
if I could take his place, how was I to serve the mysterious employer
and Doddridge Knapp at the same time, when Doddridge Knapp was ready to
murder me to gain the Unknown's secret.

Fatigue and loss of sleep deepened the dejection of mind that oppressed
me with these insistent questions, and as I vainly struggled against it,
carried me at last into the oblivion of dreamless slumber.

The next I knew I was awaking to the sound of breaking glass. It was
dark but for a feeble light that came from the window. Every bone in my
body ached from the cramped position in which I had slept, and it seemed
an age before I could rouse myself to act. It was, however, but a second
before I was on my feet, revolver in hand, with the desk between me and
a possible assailant.

Silence, threatening, oppressive, surrounded me as I stood listening,
watching, for the next move. Then I heard a low chuckle, as of some one
struggling to restrain his laughter; and so far from sympathizing with
his mirth, I was tempted to try the effect of a shot as an assistance in
suppressing it.

“I thought the transom was open,” said a low voice, which still seemed
to be struggling with suppressed laughter.

“I guess it woke him up,” said another and harsher voice. “I heard a
noise in there.”

“You're certain he's there?” asked the first voice with another chuckle.

“Sure, Dicky. I saw him go in, and Porter and I have taken turns on
watch ever since.”

“Well, it's time he came out,” said Dicky. “He can't be asleep after
that racket. Say!” he called, “Harry! What's the matter with you? If
you're dead let us know.”

They appeared friendly, but I hesitated in framing an answer.

“We'll have to break down the door, I guess,” said Dicky. “Something
must have happened.” And a resounding kick shook the panel.

“Hold on!” I cried. “What's wanted?”

“Oh,” said Dicky sarcastically. “You've come to life again, have you.”

“Well, I'm not dead yet.”

“Then strike a light and let us in. And take a look at that reminder
you'll find wrapped around the rock I heaved through the transom. I
thought it was open.” And Dicky went off into another series of chuckles
in appreciation of his mistake.

“All right,” I said. I was not entirely trustful, and after I had
lighted the gas-jet I picked up the stone that lay among the fragments
of glass, and unwrapped the paper. The sheet bore only the words:

  “At Borton's, at midnight. Richmond.”

This was the name of the agent of the Unknown, who had sent the other
note. Dicky and his companion must then be protectors instead of
enemies. I hastened to unlock the door, and in walked my two visitors.

The first was a young man, tall, well-made, with a shrewd, good-humored
countenance, and a ready, confident air about him. I had no trouble
in picking him out as the amused Dicky. The other was a black-bearded
giant, who followed stolidly in the wake of the younger man.

“You've led me a pretty chase,” said Dicky. “If it hadn't been for Pork
Chops here, I shouldn't have found you till the cows come home.”

“Well, what's up now?” I asked.

“Why, you ought to know,” said Dicky with evident surprise. “But you'd
better be hurrying down to Borton's. The gang must be there by now.”

I could only wonder who Borton might be, and where his place was, and
what connection he might have with the mystery, as Dicky took me by the
arm and hurried me out into the darkness. The chill night air served
to nerve instead of depress my spirits, as the garrulous Dicky
unconsciously guided me to the meeting-place, joyously narrating some
amusing adventure of the day, while the heavy retainer stalked in
silence behind.

Down near the foot of Jackson Street, where the smell of bilge-water
and the wash of the sewers grew stronger, and the masts of vessels could
just be seen in the darkness outlined against the sky, Dicky suddenly
stopped and drew me into a doorway. Our retainer disappeared at the same
instant, and the street was apparently deserted. Then out of the night
the shape of a man approached with silent steps.

“Five-sixteen,” croaked Dicky.

The man gave a visible start.

“Sixteen-five,” he croaked in return.

“Any signs?” whispered Dicky.

“Six men went up stairs across the street. Every one of them did the
sailor-drunk act.”

“Sure they weren't sailors?”

“Well, when six coves goes up the same stairs trying the same dodge, all
inside of ten minutes, I has a right to my suspicions. And Darby Meeker
ain't been to sea yet that I knows on.”

“Darby Meeker!” exclaimed Dicky in a whisper. And he drew a whistle
under his breath. “What do you think of that, Wilton? I had no idea he
was back from that wild-goose chase you sent him on.”

“It looks bad,” I admitted cautiously. “I dare say he isn't in good
temper.”

“You'll have to settle with him for that piece of business,” said Dicky
with a chuckle.

I failed to see the amusing side of the prospect. I wished I knew what
Mr. Meeker looked like.

The guard had melted away into the darkness without another word, and
we hurried forward with due caution. Just past the next corner was a
lighted room, and the sound of voices broke the quiet. A triangular
glass lantern projected from above the door, and such of the paint as
had not weathered away made the announcement:

[Illustration: BORTON'S Meals Liquors Lodgings]

We pushed open the door and walked in. The room was large and dingy, the
ceiling low. Tables were scattered about the sanded floor. A bar took
up the side of the room next the entrance, and a general air of
disreputability filled the place. The only attempts at ornament, unless
the arrangement of various-colored bottles behind the bar came under
that head, were the circles and festoons of dirty cut paper hanging from
the ceiling.

About the room, some at the tables, some at the bar, were numbers of
stout, rough-looking men, with a few Greek fishermen and two or three
sailors.

Behind the bar sat a woman whose appearance in that place almost
startled me. She might have been nearing seventy, and a hard and evil
life had left its marks on her bent frame and her gaunt face. Her
leathery cheeks were lined deep, and a hawk-like nose emphasized the
unpleasant suggestions conveyed by her face and figure. But the most
remarkable feature about her was her eyes. There was no trace of age in
them. Bright and keen as the eyes of a rat, they gave me an unpleasant
thrill as I felt her gaze fixed upon me when I entered the door, arm in
arm with Dicky. It was as though they had pierced me through, and had
laid bare something I would have concealed. It was a relief to pass
beyond her into a recessed part of the room where her gaze might waste
itself on the back of my head.

“Mother Borton's up late to-night,” said Dicky thoughtfully, as he
ordered wine.

“You can't blame her for thinking that this crowd needs watching,” I
suggested with as much of airiness as I could throw into my manner.

Dicky shook his head for a second, and then resumed his light-hearted,
bantering way. Yet I could see that he was perplexed and anxious about
something that had come to his attention on our arrival.

“You'll not want to attend to business till all the boys are here?”
 asked Dicky.

“Not unless there's something to be done,” I responded dryly.

Dicky gave me a quick glance.

“Of course,” he said with a laugh that was not quite easy, “not unless
there's something to be done. But I thought there was something.”

“You've got a fine mind for thinking, Dicky,” I replied. “You'd better
cultivate it.”

“Well, they say there's nothing like society for that sort of
cultivation,” said Dicky with another laugh. “They don't say what kind,
but I've got a pretty good stock here to choose from.” He was at his
ease in banter again, but it struck unpleasantly on me that there was
something behind.

“Oh, here's a queer friend,” he said suddenly, looking to the door. “I'd
better speak to him on the matter of countersigns.”

“By all means,” I said, turning in my chair to survey the new-comer.

I saw the face for an instant. The man wore a sou'wester, and he had
drawn his thick, rough coat up as though he would hide his head under
the collar. Cheek and chin I could see were covered by a thick blond
beard. His movements were apparently clumsy, but his figure was lithe
and sinuous. And his eyes! Once seen they never could be forgotten. At
their glance, beard and sou'wester dropped away before my fancy, and I
saw in my inner vision the man of the serpent glance who had chilled
my spirit when I had first put foot in the city. It flashed on me in an
instant that this was the same man disguised, who had ventured into the
midst of his enemies to see what he might learn of their plans.

As I watched Dicky advance and greet the new-comer with apparent
inquiry, a low harsh voice behind gave me a start of surprise.

“This is your wine, I think,”--and a lean, wrinkled arm passed over my
shoulder, and a wrinkled face came near my own.

I turned quickly. It was Mother Borton, leering at me with no apparent
interest but in her errand.

“What are you doing here?” asked the crone in a voice still lower.
“You're not the one they take you to be, but you're none the less in
danger. What are you doing with his looks, and in this place? Look out
for that man you're with, and the other. Yes, sir,” her voice rose. “A
small bottle of the white; in a minute, sir.”

I understood her as Dicky and the new-comer came to the table and took
seats opposite. I commanded my face to give no sign of suspicion, but
the warning put me on the alert. I had come on the supposition that I
was to meet the band to which Henry Wilton belonged. Instead of being
among friends, however, it seemed now that I was among enemies.

“It's all right,” said Dicky carelessly. “He's been sent.”

“That's lucky,” said I with equal unconcern. “We may need an extra hand
before morning.”

The new-comer could not repress a triumphant flash in the serpent eyes.

“I'm the one for your job,” he said hoarsely, his face as impassive as a
stone wall.

“What do you know about the job?” I asked suspiciously.

“Only what I've been told,” he answered.

“And that is--”

“That it's a job for silence, secrecy, and--”

“Spondulicks,” said Dicky with a laugh, as the other hesitated for a
word.

“Just so,” said the man.

“And what else?” I continued, pressing him firmly.

“Well,” he admitted hoarsely, “I learned as how there was to be a change
of place to-night, and I might be needed.”

I looked at him inquiringly. Perhaps I was on the threshold of knowledge
of this cursed business from the mouth of the enemy.

“I heard as how the boy was to be put in a safer place,” he said,
wagging his head with affected gravity.

Some imp put it into my brain to try him with an unexpected bit of news.

“Oh,” I said coolly, “that's all attended to. The change was made
yesterday.”

The effect of this announcement was extraordinary. The man started with
an oath.

“The hell you say!” he exclaimed in a low, smooth voice, far different
from the harsh tone he had used thus far. Then he leaped to his feet,
with uncontrollable rage.

“Tricked--by God!” he shouted impulsively, and smote the table with his
fist.

His outburst threw the room into confusion. Men sprang from their
chairs. Glasses and bottles fell with clinking crash. Oaths and shouts
arose from the crowd.

“Damn you, I'll have it out of you!” said the man with suppressed fury,
his voice once again smooth and low. “Where is the boy?”

He smote the table again; and with that stroke the false beard fell from
his chin and cheek, and exposed the malignant face, distorted with rage.
A feeling of horrible repulsion came over me, and I should have struck
at that serpent's head but for a startling occurrence. As he spoke, a
wild scream rose upon the air, and as it echoed through the room the
lights went out.

The scream was repeated, and after an instant's silence there rose a
chorus of shouts and oaths, mingled with the crash of tables and the
clink of breaking glass and crockery, as the men in the room fought
their way to the door.

“Oh, my God, I'm cut!” came in a shriek out of the darkness and clamor;
and there followed the flash of a pistol and a report that boomed like a
cannon in that confined place.

My eyes had not been idle after the warning of Mother Borton, and in an
instant I had decided what to do. I had figured out what I conceived to
be the plan of the house, and thought I knew a way of escape. There were
two doors at the rear of the room, and facing me. One led, as I knew,
to the kitchen; the other opened, I reasoned, on a stair to the
lodging-rooms above.

Before the scream that accompanied the extinction of the lights had
died away, I had made a dive beneath the table, and, lifting with all my
might, had sent it crashing over with my enemy under it. With one leap
I cleared the remaining table that lay between me and the door. And with
the clamor behind me, I turned the knob and bounded up the stairs, three
steps at a time.




CHAPTER VII

MOTHER BORTON


The noise of the struggle below continued. Yells and curses rose from
the maddened men. Three shots were fired in quick succession, and a cry
of “Oh, my Lord!” penetrated through the closed door with the sound of
one sorely hurt.

I lingered for a little, listening to the tumult. I was in a strange and
dangerous position. Enemies were behind me. There were friends, too, but
I knew no way to tell one from the other, and my ignorance had nearly
brought me to my death. I hesitated to move, but I could not remain in
the open hall; and as the sounds of disturbance from below subsided, I
felt my way along the wall and moved cautiously forward.

I had progressed perhaps twenty steps when a door, against which my hand
pressed, yielded at the touch and swung slowly open. I strove to stop
it, for the first opening showed a dim light within. But the panel gave
no hold for my fingers, and my efforts to close the door only swung it
open the faster. I drew back a little into the shadow, for I hesitated
to dash past the sight of any who might occupy the room.

“Come in!” called a harsh voice.

I hesitated. Behind, the road led to the eating-room with its known
dangers. A dash along the hall for the front door meant the raising of
an alarm, and probably a bullet as a discourager of burglary. Should I
escape this, I could be certain of a warm reception from the enemies on
watch outside. Prudence lay in facing the one rather than risking the
many. I accepted the invitation and walked into the room.

“I was expecting you,” said the harsh voice composedly. “Good evening.”

“Good evening,” I returned gravely, swallowing my amazement as best I
could.

By the table before me sat Mother Borton, contemplating me as calmly
as though this meeting were the most commonplace thing in the world. A
candle furnished a dim, flickering light that gave to her hard wicked
countenance a diabolic leer that struck a chill to my blood.

“Excuse me,” I said, “I have lost my way, I fear.”

“Not at all,” said Mother Borton. “You are in the right place.”

“I was afraid I had intruded,” I said apologetically.

“I expected you,” she repeated. “Shut the door.”

I glanced about the room. There was no sign of another person to be
seen, and no other door. I obeyed her.

“You might as well sit down,” she said with some petulance. “There's
nothing up here to hurt you.” There was so much meaning in her tone of
the things that would hurt me on the floor below that I hastened to show
my confidence in her, and drew up a chair to the table.

“At your service,” I said, leaning before her with as much an appearance
of jaunty self-possession as I could muster.

“Who are you, and what are you doing here?” she asked grimly.

What should I answer? Could I tell her the truth? “Who are you?” she
repeated impatiently, gazing on me. “You are not Wilton. Tell me. Who
are you?”

The face, hard as it was, seamed with the record of a rough and evil
life, as it appeared, had yet a kindly look as it was turned on me.

“My name is Dudley,--Giles Dudley.”

“Where is Wilton?”

“Dead.”

“Dead? Did you kill him?” The half-kindly look disappeared from her
eyes, and the hard lines settled into an expression of malevolent
repulsiveness.

“He was my best friend,” I said sadly; and then I described the leading
events of the tragedy I had witnessed.

The old woman listened closely, and with hardly the movement of a
muscle, to the tale I told.

“And you think he left his job to you?” she said with a sneer.

“I have taken it up as well as I can. To be frank with you, Mrs. Borton,
I know nothing about his job. I'm going along on blind chance, and
trying to keep a whole skin.”

The old woman looked at me in amazement.

“Poor boy!” she exclaimed half-pityingly, half-admiringly. “You put your
hands to a job you know nothing about, when Henry Wilton couldn't carry
it with all his wits about him.”

“I didn't do it,” said I sullenly. “It has done itself. Everybody
insists that I'm Wilton. If I'm to have my throat slit for him I
might as well try to do his work. I wish to Heaven I knew what it was,
though.”

Mother Borton leaned her head on her hand, and gazed on me thoughtfully
for a full minute.

“Young man,” said she impressively, “take my advice. There's a train for
the East in the mornin'. Just git on board, and never you stop short of
Chicago.”

“I'm not running away,” said I bitterly. “I've got a score to settle
with the man who killed Henry Wilton. When that score is settled, I'll
go to Chicago or anywhere else. Until that's done, I stay where I can
settle it.”

Mother Borton caught up the candle and moved it back and forth before my
face. In her eyes there was a gleam of savage pleasure.

“By God, he's in earnest!” she said to herself, with a strange laugh.
“Tell me again of the man you saw in the alley.”

I described Doddridge Knapp.

“And you are going to get even with _him_?” she said with a chuckle that
had no mirth in it.

“Yes,” said I shortly.

“Why, if you should touch him the people of the city would tear you to
pieces.”

“I shall not touch him. I'm no assassin!” I exclaimed indignantly. “The
law shall take him, and I'll see him hanged as high as Haman.”

Mother Borton gave a low gurgling laugh.

“The law! oh, my liver,--the law! How young you are, my boy! Oh, ho,
oh ho!” And again she absorbed her mirthless laugh, and gave me an evil
grin. Then she became grave again, and laid a claw on my sleeve. “Take
my advice now, and git on the train.”

“Not I!” I returned stoutly.

“I'm doing it for your own good,” she said, with as near an approach to
a coaxing tone as she could command. It was long since she had used her
voice for such a purpose and it grated. “For my sake I'd like to see you
go on and wipe out the whole raft of 'em. But I know what'll happen to
ye, honey. I've took a fancy to ye. I don't know why. But there's a look
on your face that carries me back for forty years, and--don't try it,
dearie.”

There were actually tears in the creature's eyes, and her hard, wicked
face softened, and became almost tender and womanly.

“I can't give up,” I said. “The work is put on me. But can't you help
me? I believe you want to. I trust you. Tell me what to do--where I
stand. I'm all in the dark, but I must do my work.” It was the best
appeal I could have made.

“You're right,” she said. “I'm an old fool, and you've got the real
sand. You're the first one except Henry Wilton that's trusted me in
forty years, and you won't be sorry for it, my boy. You owe me one, now.
Where would you have been to-night if I hadn't had the light doused on
ye?”

“Oh, that was your doing, was it? I thought my time had come.”

“Oh, I was sure you'd know what to do. It was your best chance.”

“Then will you help me, now?” The old crone considered, and her face
grew sharp and cunning in its look.

“What can I do?”

“Tell me, in God's name, where I stand. What is this dreadful mystery?
Who is this boy? Why is he hidden, and why do these people want to know
where he is? Who is behind me, and who threatens me with death?”

I burst out with these questions passionately, almost frantically. This
was the first time I had had chance to demand them of another human
being.

Mother Borton gave me a leer.

“I wish I could tell you, my dear, but I don't know.”

“You mean you dare not tell me,” I said boldly. “You have done me a
great service, but if I am to save myself from the dangers that surround
me I must know more. Can't you see that?”

“Yes,” she nodded. “You're in a hard row of stumps, young man.”

“And you can help me.”

“Well, I will,” she said, suddenly softening again. “I took a shine
to you when you came in, an' I says to myself, 'I'll save that young
fellow,' an' I done it. And I'll do more. Mr. Wilton was a fine
gentleman, an' I'd do something, if I could, to git even with those
murderin' gutter-pickers that laid him out on a slab.”

She hesitated, and looked around at the shadows thrown by the flickering
candle.

“Well?” I said impatiently. “Who is the boy, and where is he?”

“Never you mind that, young fellow. Let me tell you what I know. Then
maybe we'll have time to go into the things I don't know.”

It was of no use to urge her. I bowed my assent to her terms.

“I'll name no names,” she said. “My throat can be cut as quick as yours,
and maybe a damned sight quicker.”

Mother Borton had among her failings a weakness for profanity. I have
omitted most of her references to sacred and other subjects of the kind
in transcribing her remarks.

“The ones that has the boy means all right. They're rich. The ones as is
looking for the boy is all wrong. They'll be rich if they gits him.”

“How?”

“Why, I don't know,” said Mother Borton. “I'm tellin' you what Henry
Wilton told me.”

This was maddening. I began to suspect that she knew nothing after all.

“Do you know where he is?” I asked, taking the questioning into my own
hands.

“No,”--sullenly.

“Who is protecting him?”

“I don't know.”

“Who is trying to get him?”

“It's that snake-eyed Tom Terrill that's leading the hunt, along with
Darby Meeker; but they ain't doing it for themselves.”

“Is Doddridge Knapp behind them?”

The old woman looked at me suddenly in wild-eyed alarm.

“S-s-h!” she whispered. “Don't name no names.”

“But I saw--”

She put her hand over my mouth.

“He's in it somewhere, or the devil is, but I don't know where. He's an
awful man. He's everywhere at once. He's--oh Lord! What was that?”

I had become infected with her nervousness, and at a cracking or
creaking sound turned around with half an expectation of seeing
Doddridge Knapp himself coming in the door.

There was no one there--nothing to be seen but the flickering shadows,
and no sound broke the stillness as we listened.

“It's nothing,” I said.

“I reckon I ain't got no call to be scared at any crackings in this old
house,” said Mother Borton with a nervous giggle. “I've hearn 'em long
enough. But that man's name gives me the shivers.”

“What did he ever do to you?” I asked with some curiosity.

“He never did nothing,” she said, “but I hearn tell dreadful things
that's gone on of nights,--how Doddridge Knapp or his ghost was seen
killing a Chinaman over at North Beach, while Doddridge Knapp or his
ghost,--whichever was the other one,--was speaking at a meeting, at the
Pavilion. And I hearn of his drinkin' blood--”

“Nonsense!” said I; “where did you get such stories?”

“Well, they're told me for true, and by ones I believe,” she said
stoutly. “Oh, there's queer things goes on. Doddridge Knapp or the
devil, it's all one. But it's ill saying things of them that can be
in two places at once.” And the old dame looked nervously about her.
“They've hushed things up in the papers, and fixed the police, but
people have tongues.”

I wondered what mystification had given rise to these absurd reports,
but there was nothing to be gained by pursuing them. The killing of the
Chinaman might have been something to my hand, but if Doddridge Knapp
had such a perfect alibi it was a waste of time to look into it.

“And is this all you know?” I asked in disappointment.

Mother Borton tried to remember some other point.

“I don't see how it's going to keep a knife from between my ribs,” I
complained.

“You keep out of the way of Tom Terrill and his hounds, and you'll be
all right, I reckon.”

“Am I supposed to be the head man in this business?”

“Yes.”

“Who are my men?”

“There's Wilson and Fitzhugh and Porter and Brown,” and she named ten or
a dozen more.

“And what is Dicky?”

“It's a smart man as can put his finger on Dicky Nahl,” said Mother
Borton spitefully.

“Nahl is his name?”

“Yes. And I've seen him hobnob with Henry Wilton, and I've seen him
thick as thieves with Tom Terrill, and which he's thickest with the
devil himself couldn't tell. I call him Slippery Dicky.”

“Why did he bring me here to-night?”

“I hearn there's orders come to change the place--the boy's place, you
know. You was to tell 'em where the new one was to be, I reckon, but Tom
Terrill spoiled things. He's lightning, is Tom Terrill. But I guess he
got it all out of Dicky, though where Dicky got it the Lord only knows.”

This was all that was to be had from Mother Borton. Either she knew
no more, or she was sharp enough to hide a knowledge that might be
dangerous, even fatal, to reveal. She was willing to serve me, and I was
forced to let it pass that she knew no more.

“Well, I'd better be going then,” said I at last. “It's nearly four
o'clock, and everything seems to be quiet hereabouts. I'll find my way
to my room.”

“You'll do no such thing,” said Mother Borton. “They've not given up the
chase yet. Your men have gone home, I reckon, but I'll bet the saloon
that you'd have a surprise before you got to the corner.”

“Not a pleasant prospect,” said I grimly.

“No. You must stay here. The room next to this one is just the thing for
you. See?”

She drew me into the adjoining room, shading the candle as we passed
through the hall that no gleam might fall where it would attract
attention.

“You'll be safe here,” she said. “Now do as I say. Go to sleep and git
some rest. You ain't had much, I guess, since you got to San Francisco.”

The room was cheerless, but in the circumstances the advice appeared
good. I was probably safer here than in the street, and I needed the
rest.

“Good night,” said my strange protectress, “You needn't git up till you
git ready. This is a beautiful room--beautiful. I call it our bridal
chamber, though we don't get no brides down here. There won't be no
sun to bother your eyes in the mornin', for that window don't open up
outside. So there, can't nobody git in unless he comes from inside the
house. There, git to bed. Look out you don't set fire to nothing. And
put out the candle. Now good night, dearie.”

Mother Borton closed the door behind her, and left me to the shadows.

Her departure did not leave me wholly at my ease. I had escaped from my
foes, but I was no closer to being in touch with those who would be my
friends; and before daylight I might be lying here with my throat slit.
At the reflection I hastily bolted the door, and tried the fastenings
of the window. All seemed secure, but the sound of a footstep in the
passageway gave me a start for an instant.

“Only Mother Borton going down stairs,” I thought, with a smile at my
fears.

There was nothing to be gained by sitting up, and the candle was past
its final inch. I felt that I could not sleep, but I would lie down on
the bed and rest my tired limbs, that I might refresh myself for the
demands of the day. I kicked off my boots, put my revolver under my
hand, and lay down.

Heedless of Mother Borton's warning I left the candle to burn to the
socket, and watched the flickering shadows chase each other over walls
and ceiling. The shadows grew larger and blacker, and took fantastic
shapes of men and beasts. And then with a confused impression of deadly
fear and of an effort to escape from peril, a blacker shadow swallowed
up all that had gone before, and carried me with it.




CHAPTER VIII

IN WHICH I MEET A FEW SURPRISES


I awoke with the sense of threatened danger strong in my mind. For a
moment I was unable to recall where I was, or on what errand I had come.
Then memory returned in a flood, and I sprang from the bed and peered
about me.

A dim light struggled in from the darkened window, but no cause for
apprehension could be seen. I was the only creature that breathed the
air of that bleak and dingy room.

I drew aside the curtain, and threw up the window. It opened merely on
a light-well, and the blank walls beyond gave back the cheery reflection
of a patch of sunlight that fell at an angle from above.

The fresher air that crept in from the window cleared my mind, a dash
of water refreshed my body, and I was ready once more to face whatever
might befall.

I looked at my watch. It was eight o'clock, and I had slept four hours
in this place. Truly I had been imprudent after my adventure below, but
I had been right in trusting Mother Borton. Then I began to realize
that I was outrageously hungry, and I remembered that I should be at
the office by nine to receive the commands of Doddridge Knapp, should he
choose to send them.

I threw back the bolt, but when I tried to swing the door open it
resisted my efforts. The key had been missing when I closed it, but
a sliding bolt had fastened it securely. Now I saw that the door was
locked.

Here was a strange predicament. I had heard nothing of the noise of the
key before I lost myself in slumber. Mother Borton must have turned
it as an additional precaution as I slept. But how was I to get out? I
hesitated to make a noise that could attract attention. It might bring
some one less kindly disposed than my hostess of the night. But there
was no other way. I was trapped, and must take the risk of summoning
assistance.

I rapped on the panel and listened. No sound rewarded me. I rapped again
more vigorously, but only silence followed. The house might have been
the grave for all the signs of life it gave back.

There was something ominous about it. To be locked, thus, in a dark room
of this house in which I had already been attacked, was enough to shake
my spirit and resolution for the moment. What lay without the door, my
apprehension asked me. Was it part of the plot to get the secret it was
supposed I held? Had Mother Borton been murdered, and the house seized?
Or had Mother Borton played me false, and was I now a prisoner to my own
party for my enforced imposture, as one who knew too much to be left at
large and too little to be of use? On a second and calmer thought it
was evidently folly to bring my jailers about my ears, if jailers there
were. I abandoned my half-formed plan of breaking down the door, and
turned to the window and the light-well. Another window faced on the
same space, not five feet away. If it were but opened I might swing
myself over and through it; but it was closed, and a curtain hid the
unknown possibilities and dangers of the interior. A dozen feet above
was the roof, with no projection or foothold by which it might be
reached. Below, the light-well ended in a tinned floor, about four feet
from the window sill.

I swung myself down, and with two steps was trying the other window.
It was unlocked. I raised the sash cautiously, but its creaking protest
seemed to my excited ears to be loud enough to wake any but the dead. I
stopped and listened after each squeak of the frame. There was no sign
of movement.

Then I pushed aside the curtain cautiously, and looked within. The room
appeared absolutely bare. Gaining confidence at the sight, I threw the
curtain farther back, and with a bound climbed in, revolver in hand.

A scurrying sound startled me for an instant, and with a scramble I
gained my feet, prepared to face whatever was before me. Then I saw the
disappearing form of a great rat, and laughed at my fears.

The room was, as I had thought, bare and deserted. There was a musty
smell about it, as though it had not been opened for a long time, and
dust and desolation lay heavy upon it. A dark stain on the floor near
the window suggested to my fancy the idea of blood. Had some wayfarer
less fortunate than I been inveigled to his death in this evil place?

There was, however, nothing here to linger for, and I hastened to try
the door. It was locked. I stooped to examine the fastening. It was of
the cheapest kind, attached to door and casement by small screws. With a
good wrench it gave way, and I found myself in a dark side-hall between
two rooms. Three steps brought me to the main hall, and I recognized
it for the same through which I had felt my way in the darkness of the
night. It was not improved by the daylight, and a strange loneliness
about it was an oppression to the spirits. There were six or eight rooms
on the floor, and the doors glowered threateningly on me, as though they
were conscious that I was an intruder in fear of his life.

The intense stillness within the house, instead of reassuring me, served
as a threat. After my experience of the night, it spoke of treachery,
not of peace.

I took my steps cautiously down the stairs, following the way that led
to the side entrance. The saloon and restaurant room I was anxious to
evade, for there would doubtless be a barkeeper and several loiterers
about. It could not be avoided, however. As I neared the bottom of the
stairs, I saw that a door led from the hallway to the saloon, and that
it was open.

I moved slowly down, a step at a time, then from over-cautiousness
tripped and came down the last three steps at once with the clatter of a
four-horse team.

But nobody stirred. Then I glanced through the open door, and was
stricken cold with astonishment. The room was empty!

The chairs and tables that a few hours ago I had seen scattered about
were gone. There was no sign that the place had been occupied in months.

I stepped into the room that I had seen crowded with eager friends and
enemies, eating, drinking, ready for desperate deeds. My step echoed
strangely with the echo of an untenanted house. The bar and the shelves
behind it were swept clear of the bottles and glasses that had filled
them. Dust was thick over the floor and walls. The windows were stained
and dirty, and a paper sign on each pane informed the passers-by that
the house was “To Let.”

Bewildered and apprehensive, I wondered whether, after all, the events
of the night, the summons from Dicky Nahl, the walk in the darkness, the
scene in the saloon, the encounter with the snake-eyed man, the riot,
the rush up the dark stair, and the interview with the old crone, were
not a fantastic vision from the land of dreams.

I looked cautiously through the other rooms on the first floor. They
were as bare as the main room. The only room in the whole house that
held a trace of furniture or occupancy must be the one from which I had
escaped. It seemed that an elaborate trap had been set for my benefit
with such precautions that I could not prove that it ever had been.

There was, however, no time to waste in prying into this mystery. By my
watch it was close on nine o'clock, and Doddridge Knapp might even now
be making his way to the office where he had stationed me.

The saloon's front doors were locked fast, but the side door that led
from the stairway to the street was fastened only with a spring lock,
and I swung it open and stepped to the sidewalk.

A load left my spirits as the door closed behind me. The fresh air of
the morning was like wine after the close and musty atmosphere I had
been breathing.

The street was but a prosaic place after the haunt of mystery I had
just left. It was like stepping from the Dark Ages into the nineteenth
century. Yet there was something puzzling about it. The street had no
suggestion of the familiar, and it appeared somehow to have been turned
end for end. I had lost my sense of direction. The hills were where the
bay ought to be. I seemed to have changed sides of the street, and it
took me a little time to readjust the points of the compass. I reasoned
at last that Dicky Nahl had led me to the street below before turning to
the place, and I had not noticed that we had doubled on our course.

I hurried along the streets with but a three-minute stop to swallow a
cup of coffee and a roll, and once more mounted the stairs to the office
and opened the door to Number 15.

The place was in disorder. The books that had been arranged on the desk
and shelves were now scattered about in confusion, as though they had
been hurriedly examined and thrown aside in a fruitless search. This
was a disturbing incident, and I was surprised to discover that the door
into the adjoining room was ajar. I pushed it wide open, and started
back. Before me stood Doddridge Knapp, his face pale as the face of a
corpse, and his eyes starting as though the dead had risen before him.




CHAPTER IX

A DAY IN THE MARKET


The King of the Street stood for a moment staring at me with that
strange and fearsome gaze. What was there in that dynamic glance that
struck a chill to my spirit as though the very fountain of life had
been attacked? Was it the manifestation of the powerful will behind that
mask? Or was it terror or anger that was to be read in the fiery eyes
that gleamed from beneath those bushy brows, and in the play of the
cruel mouth, which from under that yellow-gray mustache gave back the
sign of the Wolf?

“Have you any orders, sir?” I asked in as calm a voice as I could
command.

“Oh, it's you, is it?” said the Wolf slowly, covering his fangs.

It flashed on me that the attack in the Borton den was of his planning,
that Terrill was his tool, and that he had supposed me dead. It was thus
that I could account for his startled gaze and evident discomposure.

“Nine o'clock was the time, you said,” I suggested deferentially. “I
believe it's a minute or two past.”

“Oh, yes,” said Doddridge Knapp, pulling himself together. “Come in
here.”

He looked suspiciously at me as he took a seat at his desk, and motioned
me to another.

“I had a little turn,” he said, eying me nervously; “a vertigo, I
believe the doctor called it. Just reach my overcoat pocket there, will
you?--the left-hand side. Yes, bring me that flask.”

He poured out a small glass of liquor, and the rich odor of brandy rose
through the room. Then he took a vial from an inside pocket, counted a
few drops into the glass, and drank it at a swallow.

I marveled at the actions of the man, and wondered if he was nerving
himself to some deed that he lacked courage to perform.

When he had cleared his throat of the fiery liquor, the Wolf turned to
me with a more composed and kindly expression.

“I never drink during business hours,” he said with a trace of apology
in his tone. “It's bad for business, and for the drink, too. But this
is a little trouble I've had a touch of in the last two months. Just
remember, young man, that I expect you to do your drinking after
business is over--and not too much then. And now to business,” said my
employer with decision. “Take down these orders.”

The King of the Street was himself once more, and I marveled again at
the quickness and clearness of his directions. I was to buy one hundred
shares of this stock, sell five hundred of that stock, buy one thousand
of another in blocks of one hundred, and sell the same in a single block
at the last session.

“And the last thing you do,” he continued, “buy every share of Omega
that is offered. There'll be a big block of it thrown on the market, and
more in the afternoon. Buy it, whatever the price. There's likely to
be a big slump. Don't bid for it--don't keep up the price, you
understand--but get it.”

“If somebody else is snapping it up, do I understand that I'm not to bid
over them?”

“You're not to understand anything of the kind,” he said, with a little
disgust in his tone. “You're to get the stock. You've bought and sold
enough to know how to do that. But don't start a boom for the price. Let
her go down. Sabe?”

I felt that there was deep water ahead.

“Perfectly,” I said. “I think I see the whole thing.”

The King of the Street looked at me with a grim smile.

“Maybe you do, but all the same you'd better keep your money out of this
little deal unless you can spare it as well as not. Well, get back to
your room. You've got your check-book all right?”

Alone once more I was in despair of unraveling the tangle in which I
was involved. I felt convinced that Doddridge Knapp was the mover in the
plots that sought my life. He had, I felt sure, believed me dead, and
was startled into fear at my unheralded appearance. Yet why should
he trust me with his business? I could not doubt that the buying and
selling he had given to my care were important. I knew nothing about the
price of stocks but I was sure that the orders he had given me involved
many thousands of dollars. Yet it might be--the thought struck home to
me--that the credit had not been provided for me, and my checks on the
Nevada Bank would serve only to land me in jail.

The disturbed condition of the books attracted my attention once more.
The volumes were scattered over the desk and thrown about the room
as though somebody had been seeking for a mislaid document. I looked
curiously over them as I replaced them on the shelves. They were
law-books, California Reports, and the ordinary text-books and
form-books of the attorney. All bore on the fly-leaf the name of Horace
H. Plymire, but no paper or other indication of ownership could I find.

I wondered idly who this Plymire might be, and pictured to myself some
old attorney who had fallen into the hands of Doddridge Knapp, and
had, through misfortune, been forced to sell everything for the mess of
pottage to keep life in him. But there was small time for musing, and I
went out to do Doddridge Knapp's bidding in the stock-gambling whirlpool
of Pine Street.

There was already a confused murmur of voices about the rival exchanges
that were the battlegrounds of millionaires. The “curbstone boards”
 were in session. The buyers who traded face to face, and the brokers who
carried their offices under their hats, were noisily bargaining,
raising as much clamor over buying and selling a few shares as the most
important dealer in the big boards could raise over the transfer of as
many thousands.

It was easy to find Bockstein and Eppner, and there could be no
mistaking the prosperity of the firm. The indifference of the clerks to
my presence, and the evident contempt with which an order for a hundred
shares of something was being taken from an apologetic old gentleman
were enough to assure me of that.

Bockstein and Eppner were together, evidently consulting over the
business to be done. Bockstein was tall and gray-haired, with a stubby
gray beard. Eppner was short and a little stooped, with a blue-black
mustache, snapping blue-black eyes, and strong blue-black dots over his
face where his beard struggled vainly against the devastating razor.
Both were strongly marked with the shrewd, money-getting visage. I set
forth my business.

“You wand to gif a larch order?” said Bockstein, looking over my
memoranda. “Do you haf references?”

“Yes,” echoed Eppner. “References are customary, you know.” He spoke in
a high-keyed voice that had irritating suggestions in it.

“Is there any reference better than cash?” I asked.

The partners looked at each other. “None,” they replied.

“How much will secure you on the order?”

They named a heavy margin, and the sum total took my heart into my
mouth. How large a balance I could draw against I had not the faintest
idea. Possibly this was a trap to throw me into jail as a common
swindler attempting to pass worthless checks. But there was no time to
hesitate. I drew a check for the amount, signed Henry Wilton's name, and
tossed it over to Bockstein.

“All ridt,” said the senior partner. “Zhust talk it ofer vit Misder
Eppner. He goes on der floor.”

I knew well enough what was wanted. My financial standing was to be
tested by the head of the firm, while the junior partner kept me amused.

Eppner was quick to take my ideas. A few words of explanation, and he
understood perfectly what I wanted.

“You have not bought before?” It was an interrogation, not an assertion.

“Oh, yes,” I said carelessly, “but not through you, I believe.”

“No, no, I think not. I should have remembered you.”

I thought this might be a favorable opportunity to glean a little
information of what was going on in the market.

“Are there any good deals in prospect?” I ventured.

I could see in the blue-black depths of his eyes that an unfavorable
opinion he had conceived of my judgment was deepened by this question.
There was doubtless in it the flavor of the amateur.

“We never advise our customers,” was the high-keyed reply.

“Certainly not,” I replied. “I don't want advice--merely to know what is
going on.”

“Excuse me, but I never gossip. It is a rule I make.”

“It might interfere with your opportunities to pick up a good bargain
now and then,” I suggested, as the blue-black man seemed at a loss for
words.

“We never invest in stocks,” was the curt reply.

“Excellent idea,” said I, “for those who know too much or too little.”

Eppner failed to smile, and could think of nothing to say. I was a
little abashed, notwithstanding the tone of haughty indifference I took.
I began to feel very young before this machine-like impersonation of the
market.

Bockstein relieved the embarrassment of the situation by coming in out
of breath, with a brave pretense of having been merely consulting a
customer in the next room.

“You haf exblained to Misder Eppner?” he inquired. “Den all is done.
Here is a card to der Board Room. If orders you haf to gif, Eppner vill
dake dem on der floor. Zhust gif him der check for margin, and all is
vell.”

At the end of this harangue I found myself outside the office, with
Bockstein's back waddling toward the private room where the partners
were to have their last consultation before going to the Board.

My check had been honored, then, and Bockstein had assured himself of
my solvency. In the rebound from anxiety, I swelled with the pride of a
capitalist--on Doddridge Knapp's money.

In the Board Room of the big Exchange the uproar was something
astonishing. The confusion outside had given me a suggestion that the
business of buying and selling stocks was carried on in a somewhat less
conventional manner than the trade in groceries. But it had not quite
prepared me for the scene in the Exchange.

The floor was filled with a crowd of lunatics, howling, shaking fists,
and pushing and scrambling from one place to another with the frenzy of
a band of red men practising the scalp dance by the bright glow of the
white man's fire-water. A confused roar rose from the mob, and whenever
it showed signs of flagging a louder cry from some quarter would renew
its strength, and a blast of shouts and screams, a rush of struggling
men toward the one who had uttered the cry, and a waving of fists, arms,
and hats, suggested visions of lynching and sudden death.

After a little I was able to discover a method in the outbreaks of
apparent lunacy, and found that the shouts and yells and screams, the
shaking of fists, and the waving of arms were merely a more or less
energetic method of bidding for stocks; that the ringing of gongs and
the bellow of the big man who smiled on the bear-garden from the high
desk were merely the audible signs that another stock was being called;
and that the brazen-voiced reading of a roll was merely the official
announcement of the record of bargains and sales that had been going on
before me.

It was my good fortune to make out so much before the purchase of the
stocks on my order list was completed. The crisis was at hand in which
I must have my wits about me, and be ready to act for myself. Eppner
rushed up and reported the bargains made, handing me a slip with the
figures he had paid for the stocks. He was no longer the impassive
engine of business that he had appeared in the back room of his
office. He was now the embodiment of the riot I had been observing. His
blue-black hair was rumpled and on end. His blue-black eyes flashed with
animation. The blue-black dots that showed where his beard would be if
he had let it were almost overwhelmed by the glow that excitement threw
into his sallow cheeks.

“Any more orders?” he gasped. He was trembling with excitement and
suppressed eagerness for the fray.

“Yes,” I shouted above the roar about me. “I want to buy Omega.”

He gave a look that might have been a warning, if I could have read
it; but it was gone with a shrug as though he would say, “Well, it's no
business of mine.”

“How much?” he asked. “Wait!”

He started away at a scream from the front, but returned in a moment. He
had bought or sold something, but I had not the least idea what it was,
or which he had done.

“It's coming!” he yelled in my ear.

The gong rang. There was a confused cry from the man at the big desk.
And pandemonium let loose.

I had thought the riot that had gone before as near the climax of noise
as it was possible to get. I was mistaken. The roar that followed the
call was to the noise that had gone before as is the hurricane to the
zephyr. There was a succession of yells, hoots, cries and bellows; men
rushed wildly at each other, swung in a mad dance, jumped up and down;
and the floor became a frantic sea of fists, arms, hats, heads, and all
things movable.

“Omega opens at sixty-five,” shouted Eppner.

“Bid sixty,” I shouted in reply, “but get all you can, even if you have
to pay sixty-five.”

Eppner gave a bellow, and skated into a group of fat men, gesticulating
violently. The roar increased, if such a thing were possible.

In a minute Eppner was back, perspiring, and I fancied a trifle worried.

“They're dropping it on me,” he gasped in my ear. “Five hundred at
sixty-two and one thousand at sixty. Small lots coming fast and big ones
on the way.”

“Good! Bid fifty-five, and then fifty, but get them.”

With a roar he rushed into the midst of a whirling throng. I saw twenty
brokers about him, shouting and threatening. One in his eagerness jumped
upon the shoulders of a fat man in front of him, and shook a paper under
his nose.

I could make out nothing of what was going on, except that the
excitement was tremendous.

Twice Eppner reported to me. The stock was being hammered down stroke by
stroke. There was a rush to sell. Fifty-five--fifty-three--fifty, came
the price--then by leaps to forty-five and forty. It was a panic. At
last the gong sounded, and the scene was over. Men staggered from
the Exchange, white as death, some cursing, some angry and red, some
despairing, some elate. I could see that ten had lost for one who had
gained.

Eppner reported at the end of the call. He had bought for me twelve
thousand five hundred shares, over ten thousand of them below fifty. The
total was frightful. There was half a million dollars to pay when the
time for settlement came. It was folly to suppose that my credit at the
Nevada was of this size. But I put a bold face on it, gave a check for
the figure that Eppner named, and rose.

“Any more orders?” he asked.

“Not till afternoon.”

As I passed into the street I was astonished at the swift transformation
that had come over it. The block about the Exchange was crowded with a
tossing throng, hundreds upon hundreds pushing toward its fateful doors.
But where cheerfulness and hope had ruled, fear and gloom now vibrated
in electric waves before me. The faces turned to the pitiless, polished
granite front of the great gambling-hall were white and drawn, and on
them sat Ruin and Despair. The men were for the most part silent, with
here and there one cursing; the women, who were there by scores, wept
and mourned; and from the multitudes rose that peculiar whisper of
crowds that tells of apprehension of things worse to come. And this, I
must believe, was the work of Doddridge Knapp.




CHAPTER X

A TANGLE OF SCHEMES


Doddridge Knapp was seated calmly in my office when I opened the door.
There was a grim smile about the firm jaws, and a satisfied glitter in
the keen eyes. The Wolf had found his prey, and the dismay of the sheep
at the sight of his fangs gave him satisfaction instead of distress.

The King of the Street honored me with a royal nod.

“There seems to have been a little surprise for somebody on the Board
this morning,” he suggested.

“I heard something about it on the street,” I admitted.

“It was a good plan and worked well. Let me see your memoranda of
purchases.”

I gave him my slips.

He looked over them with growing perplexity in his face.

“Here's twelve thousand five hundred shares of Omega.”

“Yes.”

“You paid too much for that first lot.” He was still poring over the
list.

“It's easier to see that now than then,” I suggested dryly.

“Humph! yes. But there's something wrong here.” He was comparing my list
with another in his hand.

“There!” I thought; “my confounded ignorance has made a mess of it.”
 But I spoke with all the confidence I could assume: “What's the matter,
now?”

“Eleven thousand and twelve thousand five hundred make twenty-three
thousand five hundred; and here are sales of Omega this morning of
thirty-three thousand eight hundred and thirty.” He seemed to be talking
more to himself than to me, and to be far from pleased.

“How's that? I don't understand.” I was all in the dark over his
musings.

“I picked up eleven thousand shares in the other Boards this morning,
and twelve thousand five hundred through you, but somebody has taken in
the other ten thousand.” The King of the Street seemed puzzled and, I
thought, a little worried.

“Well, you got over twenty-three thousand shares,” I suggested
consolingly. “That's a pretty good morning's work.”

The King of the Street gave me a contemptuous glance.

“Don't be a fool, Wilton. I sold ten thousand of those shares to
myself.”

A new light broke upon me. I was getting lessons of one of the many ways
in which the market was manipulated.

“Then you think that somebody else--”

The King of the Street broke in with a grim smile.

“Never mind what I think. I've got the contract for doing the thinking
for this job, and I reckon I can 'tend to it.”

The great speculator was silent for a few moments.

“I might as well be frank with you,” he said at last. “You'll have to
know something, to work intelligently. I must get control of the Omega
Company, and to do it I've got to have more stock. I've been afraid of a
combination against me, and I guess I've struck it. I can't be sure yet,
but when those ten thousand shares were gobbled up on a panicky market,
I'll bet there's something up.”

“Who is in it?” I asked politely.

“They've kept themselves covered,” said the King of the Street, “but
I'll have them out in the open before the end. And then, my boy, you'll
see the fur fly.”

As these words were uttered I could see the yellow-gray goatee rise like
bristles, and the fangs of the Wolf shine white under the yellow-gray
mustache.

“I've got a few men staked out,” he continued slowly, “and I reckon I'll
know something about it by this time to-morrow.” There was the growl of
the Wolf in his voice.

“Now for this afternoon,” he continued. “There's got to be some sharp
work done. I reckon the falling movement is over. We've got to pay for
what we get from now on. I've got a man looking after the between-Board
trading. With the scare that's on in the chipper crowd out there, I look
to pick up a thousand shares or so at about forty.”

“Well, what's the program?” I asked cheerfully.

“Buy,” he said briefly. “Take everything that's offered this side of
seventy-five.”

“Um--there's a half-million wanted already to settle for what I bought
this morning.”

The bushy brows drew down, but the King of the Street answered lightly:

“Your check is good for a million, my boy, as long as it goes to settle
for what you're ordered to buy.” Then he added grimly: “I don't think
you'd find it worth much for anything else.”

There was a knock at the door beyond, and he hastily rose.

“Be here after the two-thirty session,” he said. And the Wolf, huge and
masterful, disappeared with a stealthy tread, and the door closed softly
behind him.

A million dollars! My check honored for unlimited amounts! Doddridge
Knapp trusting me with a great fortune! I was overwhelmed, intoxicated,
with the consciousness of power.

Yet this was the man who had brought death to Henry Wilton, and
had twice sought my life in the effort to wrest from me a packet of
information I did not have. This was the man whose face had gleamed
fierce and hateful in the lantern's flash in the alley. This was the man
I had sworn to bring to the gallows for a brutal crime. And now I was
his trusted agent, with control, however limited, of millions.

It was a puzzle too deep for me. I was near coming to Mother Borton's
view that there was something uncanny about Doddridge Knapp. Did two
spirits animate that body? What was the thread that should join all
parts of the mystery into one harmonious whole?

I wondered idly who Doddridge Knapp's visitor might be, but as I could
see no way of finding out, and felt no special concern over his identity
or purposes, I rose and left the office. As I stepped into the hall
I discovered that somebody had a deeper curiosity than I. A man was
stooping to the keyhole of Doddridge Knapp's room in the endeavor to
see or hear. As he heard the sound of my opening door he started up,
and with a bound, was around the turn of the hall and pattering down the
stairs.

In another bound I was after him. I had seen his form for but a second,
and his face not at all. But in that second I knew him for Tim Terrill
of the snake-eyes and the murderous purpose.

When I reached the head of the stairs he was nowhere to be seen, but
I heard the patter of his feet below and plunged down three steps at
a time and into Clay street, nearly upsetting a stout gentleman in my
haste. The street was busy with people, but no sign of the snake-eyed
man greeted me.

Much disturbed in mind at this apparition of my enemy, I sought in vain
for some explanation of his presence. Was he spying on Doddridge Knapp?
Did he not stand on a better footing with his employer than this? He
was, I must suppose, trusted with the most secret and evil purposes of
that strange man, and should be able to speak with him on even terms.
Yet here he was, doing the work of the merest spy. What wickedness was
he planning? What treachery was he shaping in his designs on the man
whose bread he was eating and whose plans of crime he was the chief
agent to assist or execute?

I must have stood gaping in the street like a countryman at a fair as I
revolved these questions in my mind without getting an answer to them,
for I was roused by a man bumping into me roughly.

I suspected that he had done it on purpose, but I begged his pardon and
felt for my watch. I could find none of my personal property missing,
but I noticed the fellow reeling back toward me, and doubled my fist
with something of an intention to commit a breach of the peace if he
repeated his trick. I thought better of it, and started by him briskly,
when he spoke in a low tone:

“You'd better go to your room, Mr. Wilton.” He said something more that
I did not catch, and, reeling on, disappeared in the crowd before I
could turn to mark or question him.

I thought at first that he meant the room I had just left. Then it
occurred to me that it was the room Henry had occupied--the room in
which I had spent my first dreadful night in San Francisco, and had not
revisited in the thirty hours since I had left it.

The advice suited my inclination, and in a few minutes I was entering
the dingy building and climbing the worn and creaking stairs. The place
lost its air of mystery in the broad sunshine and penetrating daylight,
and though its interior was as gloomy as ever, it lacked the haunting
suggestions it had borrowed from darkness and the night.

Slipped under the door I found two notes. One was from Detective Coogan,
and read:

“Inquest this afternoon. Don't want you. Have another story. Do you want
the body?”

The other was in a woman's hand, and the faint perfume of the first note
I had received rose from the sheet. It read:

“I do not understand your silence. The money is ready. What is the
matter?”

The officer's note was easy enough to answer. I found paper, and,
assuring Detective Coogan of my gratitude at escaping the inquest, I
asked him to turn the body over to the undertaker to be buried at my
order.

The other note was more perplexing. I could make nothing of it. It was
evidently from my unknown employer, and her anxiety was plain to see.
But I was no nearer to finding her than before, and if I knew how to
reach her I knew not what to say. As I was contemplating this state of
affairs with some dejection, and sealing my melancholy note to Detective
Coogan, there was a quick step in the hall and a rap at the panel. It
was a single person, so I had no hesitation in opening the door, but
it gave me a passing satisfaction to have my hand on the revolver in my
pocket as I turned the knob.

It was a boy, who thrust a letter into my hand.

“Yer name Wilton?” he inquired, still holding on to the envelope.

“Yes.”

“That's yourn, then.” And he was prepared to make a bolt.

“Hold on,” I said. “Maybe there's an answer.”

“No, there ain't. The bloke as gave it to me said there weren't.”

“Well, here's something I want you to deliver,” said I, taking up my
note to Detective Coogan. “Do you know where the City Hall is?”

“Does I know--what are yer givin' us?” said the boy with infinite scorn
in his voice.

“A quarter,” I returned with a laugh, tossing him the coin. “Wait a
minute.”

“Yer ain't bad stuff,” said the boy with a grin. I tore open the
envelope and read on the sheet that came from it:

“Sell everything you bought--never mind the price. Other orders off. D.
K.”

I gasped with amazement. Had Doddridge Knapp gone mad? To sell twelve
thousand five hundred shares of Omega was sure to smash the market,
and the half-million dollars that had been put into them would probably
shrink by two hundred thousand or more if the order was carried out.

I read the note again.

Then a suspicion large enough to overshadow the universe grew up in my
brain. I recalled that Doddridge Knapp had given me a cipher with which
he would communicate with me, and I believed, moreover, that he had no
idea where I might be at the present moment.

“It's all right, sonny,” I said. “Trot along.”

“Where's yer letter?” asked the boy, loyally anxious to earn his
quarter.

“It won't have to go now,” I said coolly. I believed that the boy meant
no harm to me, but I was not taking any risks.

The boy sauntered down the hall, singing _My Name Is Hildebrandt
Montrose_, and I was left gazing at the letter with a melancholy smile.

“Well, I must look like a sucker if they think I can be taken in by a
trick like that,” was my mental comment. I charged the scheme up to my
snake-eyed friend and had a poorer opinion of his intelligence than I
had hitherto entertained. Yet I was astonished that he should, even with
the most hearty wish to bring about my downfall, contrive a plan
that would inflict a heavy loss on his employer and possibly ruin him
altogether. There was more beneath than I could fathom. My brain
refused to work in the maze of contradictions and mysteries, plots and
counterplots, in which I was involved.

I took my way at last toward the market, and, hailing a boy to whom I
intrusted my letter to Detective Coogan, walked briskly to Pine Street.




CHAPTER XI

THE DEN OF THE WOLF


The street had changed its appearance in the two or three hours since
I had made my way from the Exchange through the pallid, panic-stricken
mob. There were still thousands of people between the corner of
Montgomery Street and Leidesdorff, and the little alley itself was
packed full of shouting, struggling traders. The thousands were broken
into hundreds of groups, and men were noisily buying and selling, or
discussing the chances of the market when the “big Board” should open
once more. But there was an air of confidence, almost of buoyancy, in
place of the gloom and terror that had lowered over the street at noon.
Plainly the panic was over, and men were inspirited by a belief that
“stocks were going up.”

I made a few dispositions accordingly. Taking Doddridge Knapp's hint, I
engaged another broker as a relief to Eppner, a short fat man, with the
baldest head I ever saw, a black beard and a hook-nose, whose remarkable
activity and scattering charges had attracted my attention in the
morning session.

Wallbridge was his name, I found, and he proved to be as intelligent as
I could wish--a merry little man, with a joke for all things, and a flow
of words that was almost overwhelming.

“Omega? Yes,” chuckled the stout little broker, after he had assured
himself of my financial standing. “But you ought to have bought this
morning, if that's what you want. It was hell popping and the roof
giving 'way all at once.” The little man had an abundant stock of
profanity which he used unconsciously and with such original variations
that one almost forgot the blasphemy of it while listening to him. “You
ought to have been there,” he continued, “and watched the boys shell 'em
out!”

“Yes, I heard you had lively times.”

“Boiling,” he said, with coruscating additions in the way of speech and
gesture. “If it hadn't been for Decker and some fellow we haven't had a
chance to make out yet the bottom of the market would have been resting
on the roof of the lower regions.” The little man's remark was slightly
more direct and forcible, but this will do for a revised version.

“Decker!” I exclaimed, pricking up my ears. “I thought he had quit the
market.”

As I had never heard of Mr. Decker before that moment this was not
exactly the truth, but I thought it would serve me better.

“Decker out of it!” gasped Wallbridge, his bald head positively
glistening at the absurdity of the idea. “He'll be out of it when he's
carried out.”

“I meant out of Omega. Is he getting up a deal?”

The little broker looked vexed, as though it crossed his mind that he
had said too much.

“Oh, no. Guess not. Don't think he is,” he said rapidly. “Just wanted
to save the market, I guess. If Omega had gone five points lower, there
would have been the sickest times in the Street that we've seen since
the Bank of California closed and the shop across the way,”--pointing
his thumb at the Exchange,--“had to be shut up. But maybe it wasn't
Decker, you know. That's just what was rumored on the Street, you know.”

I suspected that my little broker knew more than he was willing to tell,
but I forbore to press him further; and giving him the order to buy all
the Omega stock he could pick up under fifty, I made my way to Eppner.

The blue-black eyes of that impassive agent snapped with a glow of
interest when I gave him my order to sell the other purchases of the
morning and buy Omega, but faded into a dull stare when I lingered for
conversation.

I was not to be abashed.

“I wonder who was picking up Omega this morning?” I said.

“Oh, some of the shorts getting ready to fill contracts,” he replied in
his dry, uninterested tones.

“I heard that Decker was in the market for the stock,” I said.

The blue-black eyes gave a flash of genuine surprise.

“Decker!” he exclaimed. Then his eyes fell, and he paused a moment
before replying in his high inflexible voice. “He might be.”

“Is he after Omega, or is he just bracing up the market?”

“Excuse me,” said Eppner with the cold reflection of an apologetic tone,
“but we never advise customers. Are you walking over to the Exchange?”

In the Exchange all was excitement, and the first call brought a roar of
struggling brokers. I could make nothing of the clamor, but my nearest
neighbor shouted in my ear:

“A strong market!”

“It looks that way,” I shouted back. It certainly was strong in noise.

I made out at last that prices were being held to the figures of the
morning's session, and in some cases were forced above them.

The excitement grew as the call approached Omega. There was an electric
tension in the air that told of the anxious hopes and fears that
centered in the coming struggle. The stock was called at last, and I
looked for a roar that would shake the building and a scene of riot on
the floor that would surpass anything I had witnessed yet.

It failed to come. There was almost a pause in the proceedings.

I caught a glimpse of Doddridge Knapp across the room, looking on with a
grim smile on the wolf jaws and an apparently impassive interest in the
scene. I marveled at his coolness when his fortune, perhaps, turned on
the events of the next five minutes. He gave no sign, nor once looked in
my direction.

The clamor on the floor began and swelled in volume, and a breath of
visible relief passed over the anxious assembly.

Wallbridge and Eppner made a dive at once for a yelling broker, and
a cold chill ran down my back. I saw then that I had set my brokers
bidding against each other for the same stock.

“Great Mammon!” I thought. “If Doddridge Knapp ever finds it out, what a
circus there will be!”

“She's going up!” said my neighbor with a shout of joy. He owned none of
the stock, but like the rest of the populace he was a bull on principle.

I nodded with a dubious attempt to imitate his signs of satisfaction.

Forty-five--forty-seven--fifty-five--it was going up by leaps. I blessed
the forethought that had suggested to me to put a limit on Wallbridge
and stop the competition between my agents at fifty. The contest grew
warmer. I could follow with difficulty the course of the proceedings,
but I knew that Omega was bounding upward.

The call closed amid animation; but the excitement was nothing compared
to the scene that had followed the fall in the morning. Omega stood at
eighty asked, and seventy-eight bid, and the ship of the stock gamblers
was again sailing on an even keel. Some hundreds had been washed
overboard, but there were thousands left, and nobody foresaw the day
when the market would take the fashion of a storm-swept hulk, with only
a chance survivor clinging here and there to the wreckage and exchanging
tales of the magnificence that once existed.

The session was over at last, and Wallbridge and Eppner handed me their
memoranda of purchases.

“You couldn't pick Omega off the bushes this afternoon, Mr. Wilton,”
 said Wallbridge, wiping his bald head vigorously. “There's fools at all
times, and some of 'em were here and ready to drop what they had; but
not many. I gathered in six hundred for you, but I had to fight for it.”

I thanked the merry broker, and gave him a check for his balance.

Eppner had done some better with a wider margin, but all told I had
added but three thousand one hundred shares to my list. I wondered how
much of this had been sold to me by my employer. Plainly, if Doddridge
Knapp was needing Omega stock he would have to pay for it.

There was no one to be seen as I reached Room 15. The connecting door
was closed and locked, and no sound came from behind it. I turned
to arrange the books, to keep from a bad habit of thinking over the
inexplicable. But there was nothing exciting enough, in the statutes
or reports of court decisions or text-books, to cover up the questions
against which I had been beating in vain ever since I had entered this
accursed city.

An hour passed, and no Doddridge Knapp. It was long past office hours.
The sun had disappeared in the bank of fog that was rolling up from the
ocean and coming in wisps and streamers over the hills, and the light
was fast failing.

Just as I was considering whether my duty to my employer constrained
me to wait longer, I caught sight of an envelope that had been slipped
under the door. I wondered, as I hastily opened it and brought its
inclosure to the failing light, how it could have got there. It was
in cipher, but it yielded to the key with which Doddridge Knapp had
provided me. I made it out to be this:

  “Come to my house to-night.
   Bring your contracts with you.
     Knapp.”

I was thrown into some perplexity by this order. For a little I
suspected a trap, but on second thought this seemed unlikely. The office
furnished as convenient a place for homicidal diversions as he could
wish, if these were in his intention, and possibly a visit to Doddridge
Knapp in his own house would give me a better clue to his habits and
purposes, and a better chance of bringing home to him his awful crime,
than a month together on the Street.

The clocks were pointing past eight when I mounted the steps that led
to Doddridge Knapp's door. Doddridge Knapp's house fronted upper Pine
Street much as Doddridge Knapp himself fronted lower Pine Street. There
was a calmly aggressive look about it that was typical of the owner. It
defied the elements with easy strength, as Doddridge Knapp defied the
storms of the market. I had the fancy that even if the directory had not
given me its position I might have picked it out from its neighbors by
its individuality, its impression of reserve force.

I had something of trepidation, after all, as I rang the bell, for I
was far from being sure that Doddridge Knapp was above carrying out his
desperate purposes in his own house, and I wondered whether I should
ever come out again, once I was behind those massive doors. I had taken
the precaution to find a smaller revolver, “suitable for an evening
call,” as I assured myself, but it did not look to be much of a
protection in case the house held a dozen ruffians of the Terrill brand.
However, I must risk it. I gave my name to the servant who opened the
door.

“This way,” he said quietly.

I had hardly time as I passed to note the large hall, the handsome
staircase, and the wide parlors that hung rich with drapery, but in
darkness. I was led beyond and behind them, and in a moment was ushered
into a small, plainly-furnished room; and at a desk covered with papers
sat Doddridge Knapp, the picture of the Wolf in his den.

“Sit down, Wilton,” said he with grim affability, giving his hand. “You
won't mind if an old man doesn't get up.”

I made some conventional reply.

“Sorry to disappoint you this afternoon, and take up your evening,” he
said; “but I found some business that needed more immediate attention.
There was a little matter that had to be looked after in person.” And
the Wolf's fangs showed in a cruel smile, which assured me that the
“little matter” had terminated unhappily for the other man.

I airily professed myself happy to be at his service at any time.

“Yes, yes,” he said; “but let's see your memoranda. Did you do well this
afternoon?”

“No-o,” I returned apologetically. “Not so well as I wished.”

He took the papers and looked over them carefully.

“Thirty-one hundred,” he said reflectively. “Those sales were all right.
Well, I was afraid you couldn't get above three thousand. I didn't get
more than two thousand in the other Boards and on the Street.”

“That was the best I could do,” I said modestly. “They average at
sixty-five. Omega got away from us this afternoon like a runaway horse.”

“Yes, yes,” said the King of the Street, studying his papers with drawn
brows. “That's all right. I'll have to wait a bit before going further.”
 I bowed as became one who had no idea of the plans ahead.

“And now,” said Doddridge Knapp, turning on me a keen and lowering gaze,
“I'd like to know what call you have to be spying on me?”

I opened my eyes wide in wonder.

“Spying? I don't understand.”

“No?” said he, with something between a growl and a snarl. “Well, maybe
you don't understand that, either!” And he tossed me a bit of paper.

I felt sure that I did not. My ignorance grew into amazement as I read.
The slip bore the words:

  “I have bought Crown Diamond. What's the limit?
    Wilton.”

“I certainly don't understand,” I said. “What does it mean?”

“The man who wrote it ought to know,” growled Doddridge Knapp, with his
eyes flashing and the yellow-gray mustache standing out like bristles.
The fangs of the Wolf were in sight.

“Well, you'll have to look somewhere else for him,” I said firmly. “I
never saw the note, and never bought a share of Crown Diamond.”

Doddridge Knapp bent forward, and looked for an instant as though he
would leap upon me. His eye was the eye of a wild beast in anger. If
I had written that note I should have gone through the window without
stopping for explanations. As I had not written it I sat there coolly
and looked him in the face with an easy conscience.

“Well, well,” he said at last, relaxing his gaze, “I almost believe
you.”

“There's no use going any further, Mr. Knapp, unless you believe me
altogether.”

“I see you understand what I was going to say,” he said quietly. “But if
you didn't send that, who did?”

“Well, if I were to make a guess, I should say it was the man who wrote
this.”

I tossed him in turn the note I had received in the afternoon, bidding
me sell everything.

The King of the Street looked at it carefully, and his brows drew lower
and lower as its import dawned on him. The look of angry perplexity
deepened on his face.

“Where did you get this?”

I detailed the circumstances.

The anger that flashed in his eyes was more eloquent than the outbreak
of curses I expected to hear.

“Um!” he said at last with a grim smile. “It's lucky, after all, that
you had something besides cotton in that skull of yours, Wilton.”

“A fool might have been caught by it,” I said modestly.

“There looks to be trouble ahead,” he said, “There's a rascally gang
in the market these days.” And the King of the Street sighed over
the dishonesty that had corrupted the stock gamblers' trade. I smiled
inwardly, but signified my agreement with my employer.

“Well, who wrote them?” he asked almost fiercely. “They seem to come
from the same hand.”

“Maybe you'd better ask that fellow who had his eye at your keyhole when
I left the office this noon.”

“Who was that?” The Wolf gave a startled look. “Why didn't you tell me?”

“He was a well-made, quick, lithe fellow, with an eye that reminded me
of a snake. I gave chase to him, but couldn't overhaul him. He squirmed
away in the crowd, I guess.”

The last part of my tale was unheard. At the description of the
snake-eyed man, Doddridge Knapp sank back in his chair, the flash of
anger died out of his eyes, and his mind was far away.

Was it terror, or anxiety, or wonder, that swept in shadow across
his face? The mask that never gave up a thought or purpose before the
changing fortunes of the market was not likely to fail its owner here. I
could make nothing out of the page before me, except that the vision of
Terrill had startled him.

“Why didn't you tell me?” he said at last, in a steady voice.

“I didn't suppose it was worth coming back for, after I got into the
street. And, besides, you were busy.”

“Yes, yes, you were right: you are not to come--of course, of course.”

The King of the Street looked at me curiously, and then said smoothly:

“But this isn't business.” And he plunged into the papers once more.
“There were over nine thousand shares sold this afternoon, and I got
only five thousand of them.”

“I suppose Decker picked the others up,” I said.

The King of the Street did me the honor to look at me in amazement.

“Decker!” he roared. “How did you--” Then he paused and his voice
dropped to its ordinary tone. “I reckon you're right. What gave you the
idea?”

I frankly detailed my conversation with Wallbridge. As I went on, I
fancied that the bushy brows drew down and a little anxiety showed
beneath them.

I had hardly finished my account when there was a knock at the door, and
the servant appeared.

“Mrs. Knapp's compliments, and she would like to see Mr. Wilton when you
are done,” he said.

I could with difficulty repress an exclamation, and my heart climbed
into my throat. I was ready to face the Wolf in his den, but here was
a different matter. I recalled that Mrs. Knapp was a more intimate
acquaintance of Henry Wilton's than Doddridge Knapp had been, and I saw
Niagara ahead of my skiff.

“Yes, yes; quite likely,” said my employer, referring to my story
of Wallbridge. “I heard something of the kind from my men. I'll know
to-morrow for certain, I expect. I forgot to tell you that the ladies
would want to see you. They have missed you lately.” And the Wolf
motioned me to the door where the servant waited.

Here was a predicament. I was missed and wanted--and by the ladies. My
heart dropped back from my throat, and I felt it throbbing in the lowest
recesses of my boot-heels as I rose and followed my guide.




CHAPTER XII

LUELLA KNAPP


As the door swung open, my heart almost failed me. If there had been a
chance of escape I should have made the bolt, then and there.

I had not counted on an interview with the women of Doddridge Knapp's
family. I had, to be sure, vaguely foreseen the danger to come from
meeting them, but I had been confident that it would be easy to avoid
them. And now, in the face of the emergency, my resources had failed me,
and I was walking into Mrs. Knapp's reception-room without the glimmer
of an idea of how I should find my way out.

Two women rose to greet me as I entered the room.

“Good evening,” said the elder woman, holding out her hand. “You have
neglected us for a long time.” There was something of reproach as well
as civility in the voice.

Mrs. Doddridge Knapp, for I had no doubt it was she who greeted me, was
large of frame but well-proportioned, and stood erect, vigorous, with
an air of active strength rare in one of her years. Her age was, I
supposed, near forty-five. Her face was strong and resolute, yet it was
with the strength and resolution of a woman, not of a man. Altogether
she looked a fit mate for Doddridge Knapp.

“Yes,” I replied, adjusting my manner nicely to hers, “I have been very
busy.”

As she felt the touch of my hand and heard the sound of my voice, I
thought I saw a look of surprise, apprehension and hesitation in her
eyes. If it was there it was gone in an instant, and she replied gaily:

“Busy? How provoking of you to say so! You should never be too busy to
take the commands of the ladies.”

“That is why I am here,” I interrupted with my best bow. But she
continued without noting it:

“Luella wagered with me that you would make that excuse. I expected
something more original.”

“I am very sorry,” I said, with a reflection of the bantering air she
had assumed.

“Oh, indeed!” exclaimed the younger woman, to whom my eyes had turned
as Mrs. Knapp spoke her name. “How very unkind of you to say so, when I
have just won a pair of gloves by it. Good evening to you!” And she held
out her hand.

It was with a strong effort that I kept my self-possession, as for the
first time I clasped the hand of Luella Knapp.

Was it the thrill of her touch, the glance of her eye, or the magnetism
of her presence, that set my pulses beating to a new measure, and gave
my spirit a breath from a new world? Whatever the cause, as I looked
into the clear-cut face and the frank gray eyes of the woman before
me, I was swept by a flood of emotion that was near overpowering my
self-control.

Nor was it altogether the emotion of pleasure that was roused within me.
As I looked into her eyes, I had the pain of seeing myself in a light
that had not as yet come to me. I saw myself not the friend of Henry
Wilton, on the high mission of bringing to justice the man who had
foully sent him to death. In that flash I saw Giles Dudley hiding under
a false name, entering this house to seek for another link in the chain
that would drag this girl's father to the gallows and turn her life to
bitterness and misery. And in the reflection from the clear depths of
the face before me, I saw Imposter and Spy written large on my forehead.

I mastered the emotion in a moment and took the seat to which she had
waved me.

I was puzzled a little at the tone in which she addressed me. There was
a suggestion of resentment in her manner that grew on me as we talked.

Can I describe her? Of what use to try? She was not beautiful, and
“pretty” was too petty a word to apply to Luella Knapp. “Fine
looking,” if said with the proper emphasis, might give some idea of
her appearance, for she was tall in figure, with features that were
impressive in their attractiveness. Yet her main charm was in the light
that her spirit and intelligence threw on her face; and this no one can
describe.

The brightness of her speech did not disappoint the expectation I had
thus formed of her. It was a finely-cultivated mind that was revealed
to me, and it held a wit rare to woman. I followed her lead in the
conversational channel, giving but a guiding oar when it turned toward
acquaintances she held in common with Henry Wilton, or events that had
interested them together.

Through it all the idea that Miss Knapp was regarding me with a hidden
disapproval was growing on me. I decided that Henry had made some
uncommon blunder on his last visit and that I was suffering the penalty
for it. The admiration I felt for the young woman deepened with every
sentence she spoke, and I was ready to do anything to restore the good
opinion that Henry might have endangered, and in lieu of apology exerted
myself to the utmost to be agreeable.

I was unconscious of the flight of time until Mrs. Knapp turned from
some other guests and walked toward us.

“Come, Henry,” she said pointedly, “Luella is not to monopolize you all
the time. Besides, there's Mr. Inman dying to speak to her.”

I promptly hated Mr. Inman with all my heart and felt not the slightest
objection to his demise; but at her gesture of command I rose and
accompanied Mrs. Knapp, as a young man with eye-glasses and a smirk came
to take my place. I left Luella Knapp, congratulating myself over my
cleverness in escaping the pitfalls that lined my way.

“Now I've a chance to speak to you at last,” said Mrs. Knapp.

“At your service,” I bowed. “I owe you something.”

“Indeed?” Mrs. Knapp raised her eyebrows in surprise.

“For your kind recommendation to Mr. Knapp.”

“My recommendation? You have a little the advantage of me.”

I was stricken with painful doubts, and the cold sweat started upon me.
Perhaps this was not Mrs. Knapp after all.

“Oh, perhaps you didn't mean it,” I said.

“Indeed I did, if it was a recommendation. I'm afraid it was
unconscious, though. Mr. Knapp does not consult me about his business.”

I was in doubt no longer. It was the injured pride of the wife that
spoke in the tone.

“I'm none the less obliged,” I said carelessly. “He assured me that he
acted on your words.”

“What on earth are you doing for Mr. Knapp?” she asked earnestly,
dropping her half-bantering tone. There was a trace of apprehension in
her eyes.

“I'm afraid Mr. Knapp wouldn't think your recommendations were quite
justified if I should tell you. Just get him in a corner and ask him.”

“I suppose it is that dreadful stock market.”

“Oh, madam, let me say the chicken market. There is a wonderful
opportunity just now for a corner in fowls.”

“There are a good many to be plucked in the market that Mr. Knapp will
look after,” she said with a smile. But there was something of a worried
look behind it. “Oh, you know, Henry, that I can't bear the market. I
have seen too much of the misery that has come from it. It can eat up a
fortune in an hour. A dear friend saw her home, the house over her
head, all she possessed, go in a breath on a turn of the cards in that
dreadful place. And her husband left her to face it with two little
children. The coward escaped it with a bullet through his head, after he
had brought ruin on his home and family.”

She shuddered as she looked about her, as though in fancy she saw
herself turned from the palace into the street.

“Mr. Knapp is not a man to lose,” I said.

“Mr. Knapp is a strong man,” she said with a proud straightening of her
figure. “But the whirlpool can suck down the strongest swimmer.”

“But I suspect Mr. Knapp makes whirlpools instead of swimming into
them,” I said meaningly.

“Ah, Henry,” she said sadly, “how often have I told you that the best
plan may come to ruin in the market? It may not take much to start a
boulder rolling down the mountain-side, but who is to tell it to stop
when once it is set going?”

“I think,” said I, smiling, “that Mr. Knapp would ride the boulder and
find himself in a gold mine at the end of the journey.”

“Perhaps. But you're not telling me what Mr. Knapp is doing.”

“He can tell you much better than I.”

“No doubt,” she said with a trace of sarcasm in her voice.

“And here he comes to do it, I expect,” I said, as the tall figure of
the King of the Street appeared in the doorway opposite.

“I'm afraid I shall have to depend on the newspapers,” she said.
“Mr. Knapp is as much afraid of a woman's tongue as you are. Oh,” she
continued after a moment's pause, “I was going to make you give an
account of yourself; but since you will tell nothing I must introduce
you to my cousin, Mrs. Bowser.” And she led me, unresisting, to a short,
sharp-featured woman of sixty or thereabouts, who rustled her silks, and
in a high, thin voice professed herself charmed to see me.

She might have claimed and held the record as the champion of the
conversational ring. I had never met her equal before, nor have I met
one to surpass her since.

Had I been long in the city? She had been here only a week. Came from
down Maine way. This was a dear, dreadful city with such nice people and
such dreadful winds, wasn't it? And then she gave me a catalogue of the
places she had visited, and the attractions of San Francisco, with a
wealth of detail and a poverty of interest that was little less than
marvelous.

Fortunately she required nothing but an occasional murmur of assent in
the way of answer from me.

I looked across the room to the corner where Luella was entertaining
the insignificant Inman. How vivacious and intelligent she appeared!
Her face and figure grew on me in attractiveness, and I felt that I was
being very badly used. As I came to this point I was roused by the sound
of two low voices that just behind me were plainly audible under the
shrill treble of Mrs. Bowser. They were women with their heads close in
gossip.

“Shocking, isn't it?” said one.

“Dreadful!” said the other. “It gives me the creeps to think of it.”

“Why don't they lock him up? Such a creature shouldn't be allowed to go
at large.”

“Oh, you see, maybe they can't be sure about it. But I've heard it's a
case of family pride.”

I was recalled from this dialogue by Mrs. Bowser's fan on my arm,
and her shrill voice in my ear with, “What is your idea about it, Mr.
Wilton?”

“I think you are perfectly right,” I said heartily, as she paused for an
answer.

“Then I'll arrange it with the others at once,” she said.

This was a bucket of ice-water on me. I had not the first idea to what I
had committed myself.

“No, don't,” I said. “Wait till we have time to discuss it again.”

“Oh, we can decide on the time whenever you like. Will some night week
after next suit you?”

I had to throw myself on the mercy of the enemy.

“I'm afraid I'm getting rather absent-minded,” I said humbly. “I
was looking at Miss Knapp and lost the thread of the discourse for a
minute.”

“That's what I was talking about,” she said sharply,--“about taking her
and the rest of us through Chinatown.”

“Yes, yes. I remember,” I said unblushingly. “If I can get away from
business, I'm at your service at any time.”

Then Mrs. Bowser wandered on with the arrangements she would find
necessary to make, and I heard one of the low voices behind me:

“Now this is a profound secret, you know. I wouldn't have them know for
the world that any one suspects. I just heard it this week, myself.”

“Oh, I wouldn't dare breathe it to a soul,” said the other. “But I'm
sure I shan't sleep a wink tonight.” And they moved away.

I interrupted Mrs. Bowser to explain that I must speak to Mrs. Knapp,
and made my escape as some one stopped to pass a word with her.

“Oh, must you go, Henry?” said Mrs. Knapp. “Well, you must come again
soon. We miss you when you stay away. Don't let Mr. Knapp keep you too
closely.”

I professed myself happy to come whenever I could find the time, and
looked about for Luella. She was nowhere to be seen. I left the room a
little disappointed, but with a swelling of pride that I had passed the
dreaded ordeal and had been accepted as Henry Wilton in the house
in which I had most feared to meet disaster. My opinion of my own
cleverness had risen, in the language of the market, “above par.”

As I passed down the hall, a tall willowy figure stepped from the shadow
of the stair. My heart gave a bound of delight. It was Luella Knapp. I
should have the pleasure of a leave-taking in private.

“Oh, Miss Knapp!” I said. “I had despaired of having the chance to bid
you good night.” And I held out my hand.

She ignored the hand. I could see from her heaving bosom and shortened
breath that she was laboring under great agitation. Yet her face gave no
evidence of the effort that it cost her to control herself.

“I was waiting for you,” she said in a low voice.

I started to express my gratification when she interrupted me.

“Who are you?” broke from her lips almost fiercely.

I was completely taken aback, and stared at her in amazement with no
word at command.

“You are not Henry Wilton,” she said rapidly. “You have come here with
his name and his clothes, and made up to look like him, and you try to
use his voice and take his place. Who are you?”

There was a depth of scorn and anger and apprehension in that low voice
of hers that struck me dumb.

“Can you not answer?” she demanded, catching her breath with excitement.
“You are not Henry Wilton.”

“Well?” I said half-inquiringly. It was not safe to advance or retreat.

“Well--! well--!” She repeated my answer, with indignation and disdain
deepening in her voice. “Is that all you have to say for yourself?”

“What should I say?” I replied quietly. “You make an assertion. Is there
anything more to be said?”

“Oh, you may laugh at me if you please, because you can hoodwink the
others.”

I protested that laughter was the last thing I was thinking of at the
moment.

Then she burst out impetuously:

“Oh, if I were only a man! No; if I were a man I should be hoodwinked
like the rest. But you can not deceive me. Who are you? What are you
here for? What are you trying to do?”

She was blazing with wrath. Her tone had raised hardly an interval of
the scale, but every word that came in that smooth, low voice was heavy
with contempt and anger. It was the true daughter of the Wolf who stood
before me.

“I am afraid, Miss Knapp, you are not well tonight,” I said soothingly.

“What have you done with Henry Wilton?” she asked fiercely. “Don't try
to speak with his voice. Drop your disguise. You are no actor. You are
no more like him than--”

The simile failed her in her wrath.

“Satyr to Hyperion,” I quoted bitterly. “Make it strong, please.”

I had thought myself in a tight place in the row at Borton's, but it was
nothing to this encounter.

“Oh, where is he? What has happened?” she cried.

“Nothing has happened,” I said calmly, determining at last to brazen it
out. I could not tell her the truth. “My name is Henry Wilton.”

She looked at me in anger a moment, and then a shadow of dread and
despair settled over her face.

I was tempted beyond measure to throw myself on her mercy and tell all.
The subtle sympathy that she inspired was softening my resolution. Yet,
as I looked into her eyes, her face hardened, and her wrath blazed forth
once more.

“Go!” she said. “I hope I may never see you again!” And she turned and
ran swiftly up the stair. I thought I heard a sob, but whether of anger
or sorrow I knew not.

And I went out into the night with a heavier load of depression than I
had borne since I entered the city.




CHAPTER XIII

A DAY OF GRACE


The wind blew strong and moist and salt from the western ocean as I
walked down the steps into the semi-darkness of Pine Street. But it was
powerless to cool the hot blood that surged into my cheeks in the tumult
of emotion that followed my dismissal by Luella Knapp. I was furious at
the poor figure I had cut in her sight, at the insults I had been forced
to bear without reply, and at the hopelessness of setting myself right.
Yet, more than all was I sick at heart at the dreadful task before me.
My spirit was bleeding from every stab that this girl had dealt me; yet
I had to confess that her outburst of rage had challenged my admiration
even more than her brightness in the hour that had gone before. How
could I go through with my work? How could I bear to overwhelm her with
the sorrow and disgrace that must crush on her if I proved to the world
the awful facts that were burned on my brain?

Resolve, shame, despair, fought with each other in the tumult in my mind
as I passed between the bronze lions and took my way down the street. I
was called out of my distractions with a sudden start as though a bucket
of cold water had been thrown over me. I had proceeded not twenty feet
when I saw two dark forms across the street. They had, it struck me,
been waiting for my appearance, for one ran to join the other and both
hastened toward the corner as though to be ready to meet me.

I could not retreat to the house of the Wolf that loomed forbiddingly
behind me. There was nothing to do but to go forward and trust to
my good fortune, and I shifted my revolver to the side-pocket of my
overcoat as I stepped briskly to the corner. Then I stopped under the
lamp-post to reconnoiter.

The two men who had roused my apprehensions did not offer to cross the
street, but slackened their pace and strolled slowly along on the
other side. I noted that it seemed a long way between street-lamps
thereabouts. I could see none between the one under which I was standing
and the brow of the hill below. Then it occurred to me that this
circumstance might not be due to the caprice of the street department of
the city government, but to the thoughtfulness of the gentlemen who were
paying such close attention to my affairs. I decided that there were
better ways to get down town than were offered by Pine Street.

To the south the cross-street stretched to Market with an unbroken array
of lights, and as my unwary watchers had disappeared in the darkness, I
hastened down the incline with so little regard for dignity that I found
myself running for a Sutter Street car--and caught it, too. As I swung
on to the platform I looked back; but I saw no sign of skulking figures
before the car swept past the corner and blotted the street from sight.

The incident gave me a distaste for the idea of going back to Henry
Wilton's room at this time of the night. So as Montgomery Street was
reached I stepped into the Lick House, where I felt reasonably sure that
I might get at least one night's sleep, free from the haunting fear of
the assassin.

But, once more safe, the charms of Luella Knapp again claimed the major
part of my thoughts, and when I went to sleep it was with her scornful
words ringing in my ears. I awoke in the darkness--perhaps it was in but
a few minutes--with the confused dream that Luella Knapp was seized in
the grasp of the snake-eyed Terrill, and I was struggling to come to her
assistance and seize him by his hateful throat. But, becoming calm from
this exciting vision, I slept soundly until the morning sun peeped into
the room with the cheerful announcement that a new day was born.

In the fresh morning air and the bright morning light, I felt that I
might have been unduly suspicious and had fled from harmless citizens;
and I was ashamed that I had lacked courage to return to Henry's room
as I made my way thither for a change of clothes. I thought better of my
decision, however, as I stepped within the gloomy walls of the house
of mystery, and my footfalls echoed through the chilling silence of
the halls. And I lost all regret over my night's lack of courage when
I reached my door. It was swung an inch ajar, and as I approached I
thought I saw it move.

“I'm certain I locked it,” was my inward comment.

I stopped short and hunted my revolver from my overcoat pocket. I was
nervous for a moment, and angry at the inattention that might have cost
me my life.

“Who's there?” I demanded.

No reply.

I gave a knock on the door at long reach.

There was no sound and I gave it a push that sent it open while
I prudently kept behind the fortification of the casing. As no
developments followed this move, I peeped through the door in cautious
investigation. The room was quite empty, and I walked in.

The sight that met my eyes was astonishing. Clothes, books, papers, were
scattered over the floor and bed and chairs. The carpet had been partly
ripped up, the mattress torn apart, the closet cleared out, and every
corner of the room had been ransacked.

It was clear to my eye that this was no ordinary case of robbery. The
search, it was evident, was not for money and jewelry alone, and bulkier
property had been despised. The men who had torn the place to pieces
must, I surmised, have been after papers of some kind.

I came at once to the conclusion that I had been favored by a visit from
my friends, the enemy. As they had failed to find me in, they had looked
for some written memoranda of the object of their search.

I knew well that they had found nothing among the clothing or papers
that Henry had left behind. I had searched through these myself, and the
sole document that could bear on the mystery was at that moment fast in
my inside pocket. I was inclined to scout the idea that Henry Wilton had
hidden anything under the carpet, or in the mattress, or in any secret
place. The threads of the mystery were carried in his head, and the
correspondence, if there had been any, was destroyed.

As I was engaged in putting the room to rights, the door swung back, and
I jumped to my feet to face a man who stood on the threshold.

“Hello!” he cried. “House-cleaning again?”

It was Dicky Nahl, and he paused with a smile on his face.

“Ah, Dicky!” I said with an effort to keep out of my face and voice the
suspicions I had gained from the incidents of the visit to the Borton
place. “Entirely unpremeditated, I assure you.”

“Well, you're making a thorough job of it,” he said with a laugh.

“Fact is,” said I ruefully, “I've been entertaining angels--of the black
kind--unawares. I was from home last night, and I find that somebody has
made himself free with my property while I was away.”

“Whew!” whistled Dicky. “Guess they were after you.”

I gave Dicky a sidelong glance in a vain effort to catch more of his
meaning than was conveyed by his words.

“Shouldn't be surprised,” I replied dryly, picking up an armful of
books. “I'd expect them to be looking for me in the book-shelf, or
inside the mattress-cover, or under the carpet.”

Dicky laughed joyously.

“Well, they did rather turn things upside down,” he chuckled. “Did they
get anything?” And he fell to helping me zealously.

“Not that I can find out,” I replied. “Nothing of value, anyhow.”

“Not any papers, or anything of that sort?” asked Dicky anxiously.

“Dicky, my boy,” said I; “there are two kinds of fools. The other is the
man who writes his business on a sheet of paper and forgets to burn it.”

Dicky grinned merrily.

“Gad, you're getting a turn for epigram! You'll be writing for the
_Argonaut_, first we know.”

“Well, you'll allow me a shade of common sense, won't you?”

“I don't know,” said Dicky, considering the proposition doubtfully. “It
might have been awkward if you had left anything lying about. But if you
had real good sense you'd have had the guards here. What are you paying
them for, anyhow?”

I saw difficulties in the way of explaining to Dicky why I had not
ordered the guards on duty.

“Oh, by the way,” said Dicky suddenly, before a suitable reply had
come to me; “how about the scads--spondulicks--you know? Yesterday was
pay-day, but you didn't show up.”

I don't know whether my jaw dropped or not. My spirits certainly did.

“By Jove, Dicky!” I exclaimed, catching my breath. “It slipped my mind,
clean. I haven't got at our--ahem--banker, either.”

I saw now what that mysterious money was for--or a part of it, at all
events. What I did not see was how I was to get it, and how to pay it to
my men.

“That's rough,” said Dicky sympathetically. “I'm dead broke.”

It would appear then that Dicky looked to me for pay, whether or not he
felt bound to me in service.

“There's one thing I'd like explained before a settlement,” said I
grimly, as I straightened out the carpet; “and that is the little
performance for my benefit the other night.”

Dicky cocked his head on one side, and gave me an uneasy glance.

“Explanation?” he said in affected surprise.

“Yes,” said I sternly. “It looked like a plant. I was within one of
getting a knife in me.”

“What became of you?” inquired Dicky. “We looked around for you for an
hour, and were afraid you had been carried off.”

“That's all right, Dicky,” I said. “I know how I got out. What I want to
know is how I got in--taken in.”

“I don't know,” said Dicky anxiously. “I was regularly fooled, myself. I
thought they were fishermen, all right enough, and I never thought that
Terrill had the nerve to come in there. I was fooled by his disguise,
and he gave the word, and I thought sure that Richmond had sent
him.” Dicky had dropped all banter, and was speaking with the tone of
sincerity.

“Well, it's all right now, but I don't want any more slips of that sort.
Who was hurt?”

“Trent got a bad cut in the side. One of the Terrill gang was shot. I
heard it was only through the arm or leg, I forget which.”

I was consumed with the desire to ask what had become of Borton's, but
I suspected that I was supposed to know, and prudently kept the question
to myself.

“Well, come along,” said I. “The room will do well enough now. Oh,
here's a ten, and I'll let you know as soon as I get the rest. Where can
I find you?”

“At the old place,” said Dicky; “three twenty-six.”

“Clay?” I asked in desperation. Dicky gave me a wondering look as though
he suspected my mind was going.

“No--Geary. What's the matter with you?”

“Oh, to be sure. Geary Street, of course. Well, let me know if anything
turns up. Keep a close watch on things.”

Dicky looked at me in some apparent perplexity as I walked up the stair
to my Clay Street office, but gave only some laughing answer as he
turned back.

But I was in far from a laughing humor myself. The problem of paying the
men raised fresh prospects of trouble, and I reflected grimly that
if the money was not found I might be in more danger from my unpaid
mercenaries than from the enemy.

Ten o'clock passed, and eleven, with no sign from Doddridge Knapp, and I
wondered if the news I had carried him of the activities of Terrill and
of Decker had disarranged his plans.

I tried the door into Room 16. It was locked, and no sound came to my
ears from behind it.

“I should really like to know,” I thought to myself, “whether Mr.
Doddridge Knapp has left any papers in his desk that might bear on the
Wilton mystery.”

I tried my keys, but none of them fitted the lock. I gave up the
attempt--indeed, my mind shrank from the idea of going through my
employer's papers--but the desire of getting a key that would open the
door was planted in my brain.

Twelve o'clock came. No Doddridge Knapp had appeared, and I sauntered
down to the Exchange to pick up any items of news. It behooved me to be
looking out for Doddridge Knapp's movements. If he had got another agent
to carry out his schemes, I should have to prepare my lines for attack
from another direction.

Wallbridge was just coming rapidly out of the Exchange.

“No,” said the little man, mopping the perspiration from his shining
head, “quiet as lambs to-day. Their own mothers wouldn't have known the
Board from a Sunday-school.”

I inquired about Omega.

“Flat as a pancake,” said the little man. “Nothing doing.”

“What! Is it down?” I exclaimed with some astonishment.

“Lord bless you, no!” said Wallbridge, surprised in his turn. “Strong
and steady at eighty, but we didn't sell a hundred shares to-day.
Well, I'm in a rush. Good-by, if you don't want to buy or sell.” And he
hurried off without waiting for a reply.

So I was now assured that Doddridge Knapp had not displaced me in the
Omega deal. It was a recess to prepare another surprise for the Street,
and I had time to attend to a neglected duty.

The undertaker's shop that held the morgue looked hardly less gloomy in
the afternoon sun than in the light of breaking day in which I had
left it when I parted from Detective Coogan. The office was decorated
mournfully to accord with the grief of friends who ordered the coffins,
or the feelings of the surviving relatives on settling the bills.

“I am Henry Wilton,” I explained to the man in charge. “There was a body
left here by Detective Coogan to my order, I believe.”

“Oh, yes,” he said: “What do you want done with it?”

I explained that I wished to arrange to have it deposited in a vault for
a time, as I might carry it East.

“That's easy done,” he said; and he explained the details. “Would you
like to see the body?” he concluded. “We embalmed it on the strength of
Coogan's order.”

I shrank from another look at the battered form. The awfulness of the
tragedy came upon me with hardly less force than in the moment when
I had first faced the mangled and bleeding body on the slab in the
dead-room. Again I saw the scene in the alley; again his last cry for
help rang in my ears; again I retraced the dreadful experiences of the
night, and stood in the dim horror of the morgue with the questioning
voice of the detective echoing beside me; and again did that wolf-face
rise out of the lantern-flash over the body of the man whose death it
had caused.

The undertaker was talking, but I knew not what he said. I was shaking
with the horror and grief of the situation, and in that moment I renewed
my vow to have blood for blood and life for life, if law and justice
were to be had.

“We'll take it out any time,” said the undertaker, with a decorous
reflection of my grief upon his face. “Would you like to accompany the
remains?”

I decided that I would.

“Well, there's nothing doing now. We can start as soon as we have sealed
the casket.”

“As soon as you can. There's nothing to wait for.”

The ride to the cemetery took me through a part of San Francisco that I
had not yet seen. Flying battalions of fog advanced swiftly upon us as
we faced the West, and the day grew pale and ghostlike. The gray masses
were pouring fast over the hills toward which we struggled, and the
ranks thickened as we drew near the burial-place.

I paid little attention to the streets through which we passed. My mind
was on the friend whose name I had taken, whose work I was to do. I
was back with him in our boyhood days, and lived again for the fleeting
minutes the life we had lived in common; and the resolve grew stronger
on me that his fate should be avenged.

And yet a face came between me and the dead--a proud face, with varying
moods reflected upon it, now gay, now scornful, now lighted with
intelligence and mirth, now blazing with anger. But it was powerless
to shake my resolve. Not even Luella Knapp should stand between me and
vengeance.

“There's the place,” said the undertaker, pointing to the vault. “I'll
have it opened directly.”

The scene was in accord with my feelings. The gray day gave a somber
air to the trees and flowers that grew about. The white tombstones and
occasional monuments to be seen were sad reminders of mortality.

Below me stretched the city, half-concealed by the magic drapery of the
fog that streamed through it, turning it from a place of wood and stone
into a fantastic illusion, heavy with gloom and sorrow.

It was soon over. The body of Henry Wilton was committed to the vault
with the single mourner looking on, and we drove rapidly back in the
failing light.

I had given my address at the undertaker's shop, and the hack stopped in
front of my house of mystery before I knew where we were. Darkness had
come upon the place, and the street-lamps were alight and the gas was
blazing in the store-windows along the thoroughfares. As I stepped out
of the carriage and gazed about me, I recognized the gloomy doorway and
its neighborhood that had greeted me on my first night in San Francisco.

As I was paying the fare, a stout figure stepped up to me.

“Ah, Mr. Wilton, it's you again.”

I turned in surprise. It was the policeman I had met on my first night
in San Francisco.

“Oh, Corson, how are you?” I said heartily, recognizing him at last.
I felt a sense of relief in the sight of him. The place was not one to
quiet my nerves after the errand from which I had just come.

“All's well, sor, but I've a bit of paper for ye.” And after some
hunting he brought it forth. “I was asked to hand this to ye.”

I took it in wonder. Was there something more from Detective Coogan? I
tore open the envelope and read on its inclosure:

  “Kum tonite to the house. Shure if youre life is wurth savein.

    “Muther Borton.”




CHAPTER XIV

MOTHER BORTON'S ADVICE


I studied the note carefully, and then turned to Policeman Corson.

“When did she give you this--and where?”

“A lady?” said Corson with a grin. “Ah, Mr. Wilton, it's too sly she is
to give it to me. 'Twas a boy askin' for ye. 'Do you know him?' says
he. 'I do that,' says I. 'Where is he?' says he. 'I don't know,' says
I. 'Has 'e a room?' says he. 'He has,' says I. 'Where is it?' says he.
'What's that to you?' says I--”

“Yes, yes,” I interrupted. “But where did he get the note?”

“I was just tellin' ye, sor,” said the policeman amiably. “He shoves the
note at me ag'in, an' says he, 'It's important,' says he. 'Go up there,'
says I. 'Last room, top floor, right-hand side.' Before I comes to
the corner up here, he's after me ag'in. 'He's gone,' says he. 'Like
enough,' says I. 'When'll he be back?' says he. 'When the cows come
home, sonny,' says I. 'Then there'll be the divil to pay,' says he. I
pricks up my ears at this. 'Why?' says I. 'Oh, he'll be killed,' says
he, 'and I'll git the derndest lickin',' says he. 'What's up?' says I,
makin' a grab for him. But he ducks an' blubbers. 'Gimme that letter,'
says I, 'and you just kite back to the folks that sent you, and tell
them what's the matter. I'll give your note to your man if he comes
while I'm on the beat,' says I. I knows too much to try to git anything
more out of him. I says to meself that Mr. Wilton ain't in the safest
place in the world, and this kid's folks maybe means him well, and might
know some other place to look for him. The kid jaws a bit, an' then does
as I tells him, an' cuts away. That's half an hour ago, an' here you
are, an' here's your letter.”

I hesitated for a little before saying anything. It was with quick
suspicion that I wondered why Mother Borton had secured again that
gloomy and deserted house for the interview she was planning. That
mystery of the night, with its memories of the fight in the bar-room,
the escape up the stair, the fearsome moments I had spent locked in the
vacant place, came on me with nerve-shaking force. It was more likely to
be a trap than a meeting meant for my advantage. There was, indeed, no
assurance that the note was written by Mother Borton herself. It might
well be the product of the gentlemen who had been lending such variety
to an otherwise uninteresting existence.

All these considerations flashed through my mind in the seconds of
hesitation that passed before my reply to Policeman Corson's account.

“That was very kind of you. You didn't know what was in the letter
then?”

“No, sor,” replied Corson with a touch of wounded pride. “It's not me as
would open another man's letter, unless in the way of me duty.”

“Do you know Mother Borton?” I continued.

“Know her? know her?” returned Corson in a tone scornful of doubt on
such a point. “Do I know the slickest crook in San Francisco? Ah,
it's many a story I could tell you, Mr. Wilton, of the way that ould
she-divil has slipped through our fingers when we thought our hands
were on her throat. And it's many of her brood we have put safe in San
Quentin.”

“Yes, I suppose so,” said I dryly. “But the woman has done me a
service--saved my life, I may say--and I'm willing to forget the bad in
her.”

“That's not for me to say, sor; but there's quare things happens, no
doubt.”

“This note,” I continued, “is written over her name. I don't know
whether it came from her, or not; but if she sent it I must see her. It
may be a case of life or death for me.”

“An' if it didn't come from her?” asked the policeman shrewdly.

“Then,” said I grimly, “it's likely to be a case of death if I venture
alone.”

“I'll tell you what, Mr. Wilton,” said Corson after a pause. “If you'll
wait a bit, I'll go with you--that is, if there isn't somebody else
you'd like better to have by your side to-night. You don't look to have
any of your friends about.”

“Just the thing,” I said heartily. “There's no one I'd rather have.
We'll go down as soon as we can get a bite to eat.”

“I'll have to wait a bit, sor, till my relief comes. He'll be along
soon. As for getting a bite, you can't do better than wait till you get
to Mother Borton's. It's a rough place, but it's got a name for good
cooking.”

I was bewildered.

“I guess there's not much to be got in the way of eating in the house.
There was nothing left in it yesterday morning but the rats.” I spoke
with considerable emphasis.

“That's square, now,” he said, looking to see if there was a jest behind
the words. “But 'twas all there when McPherson and I put a club to
a drunk as was raising the Ould Nick in the place and smashing the
bottles, not six hours ago. When we took him away in the ixpriss wagon
the ould woman was rowling out those long black curses in a way that
would warm the heart of the foul fiend himself.”

There was some fresh mystery about this. I held my tongue with the
reflection that I had better let it straighten itself out than risk a
stumble by asking about things I ought to know.

Corson's relief soon appeared. “It's a nasty night,” he said, buttoning
up his overcoat closely, as Corson gave him a brief report of the
situation on the beat.

“It's good for them as likes it dark,” said Corson.

“It's just such a night as we had when Donaldson was murdered. Do you
mind it?”

“Do I mind it? Am I likely to forgit it? Well, a pleasant time to you,
me boy. Come along, sor. We'd better be moving. You won't mind stepping
up to the hall with me, will ye, while I report?”

“Certainly not,” I said with a shiver, half at the grim suggestion of
murder and half at the chill of the fog and the cutting wind that blew
the cold vapor through to the skin.

“You've no overcoat,” said Corson. “We'll stop and get one. I'll have
mine from the station.”

The silence of the house of mystery was no less threatening now than on
the night when Henry Wilton was walking through the halls on the way
to his death. But the stout-hearted policeman by my side gave me
confidence, and no sign showed the presence of an enemy as I secured
Henry's heavy overcoat and the large revolver he had given me, and we
took our way down the stairs.

A short visit to the grimy, foul-smelling basement of the City Hall,
where a few policemen looked at me wonderingly, a brisk walk with the
cutting wind at our backs and the fog currents hurrying and whirling in
eddies toward the bay, and I felt rather than saw that we were in the
neighborhood of the scene of my adventures of a night that had come so
near costing me my life. I could not be certain of my bearings, but I
trusted to the unconscious guidance of Corson, with a confused idea
that we were bearing away from the place. Then with relief combined
with bewilderment, I saw the lantern sign give forth its promise of the
varied entertainment that could be had at Borton's.

“Here we are,” said Corson.

We pushed open the door and entered. The place had the same appearance
as the one to which I had been taken by Dicky Nahl.

“A fine night, Mother Borton,” said Corson cheerily, as he was the first
to enter, and then added under his breath, “--for the divil's business.”

Mother Borton stared at him with a black look and muttered a curse.

“Good evening,” I hastened to say. “I took the liberty to bring a
friend; he doesn't come as an officer to-night.”

The effect on the hag's features was marvelous. The black scowl
lightened, the tight-drawn lips relaxed, and there was a sign of
pleasure in the bright eyes that had flashed hatred at the policeman.

“Ah, it's you, is it?” she said sharply, but with a tone of kindness in
her greeting. “I didn't see ye. Now sit down and find a table, and I'll
be with ye after a bit.”

“We want a dinner, and a good one. I'm half-starved.”

“Are ye, honey?” said the woman with delight.

“Then it's the best dinner in town ye shall have. Here, Jim! Put these
gentlemen over there at the corner table.”

And if the cooking was not what we could have had at the Maison Dorée
and the service was a little off color, neither of us was disposed to be
critical.

“It's not the aristocracy of stoile ye get here,” said Corson, lighting
his pipe after the coffee, “but it's prime eating.”

I nodded in lazy contentment, and then started up in remembrance of the
occasion of our being in this place as the shadow of Mother Borton fell
across the table. Her keen eyes fixed on me and her sharp beak nodding
toward me gave her the uncanny aspect of a bird of prey, and I felt a
sinking of courage as I met her glance.

“If you will go upstairs,” she said sourly. “You know the way. I guess
your friend can spare you.”

“Is there anything that can't be told before him?” I asked.

The features of the old woman hardened.

“You'll be safer in my care than in his,” she said, with warning in her
tone.

“Yes, yes, I know I am safe here, but how is it with my friend if I
leave him here? We came together and we'll go together.”

The crone nodded with a laugh that ended in a snarl.

“If the gang knew he was here there would be more fun than you saw the
other night.”

“Don't worry about me, Mr. Wilton,” said Corson with a grin. “I've stood
her crowd off before, and I can do it again if the need comes. But I'd
rather smoke a poipe in peace.”

“You can smoke in peace, but it's not yourself you can thank for it,”
 said Mother Borton sharply. “There'll be no trouble here to-night. Come
along.” And the old woman started for the door.

“Are you sure you're all right?” asked Corson in a low voice. “There's
men gone up those stairs that came down with a sheet over them.”

“It's all right--that is, unless there's any danger to you in leaving
you here.”

“No. Go ahead. I'll wait for ye. I'd as lief sit here as anywheres.”

I hastened after Mother Borton, who was glowering at me from the
doorway, and followed her footsteps in silence to the floor above. There
was a dim light and a foul smell in the upper hall, both of which came
from a lamp that burned with a low flame on a bracket by the forward
stair. There were perhaps a dozen doors to be seen, all closed, but
all giving the discomforting suggestion that they had eyes to mark my
coming.

Mother Borton walked the passage cautiously and in silence, and I
followed her example until she pushed open a door and was swallowed up
in the blackness. Then I paused on the threshold while she lighted a
candle; and as I entered, she swiftly closed and locked the door behind
me.

“Sit down,” she said in a harsh voice, motioning me to a chair by the
stand that held the candle. Then this strange creature seated herself
in front of me, and looked steadily and sternly in my face for a full
minute. The gaze of the piercing, deep-sunken eyes of the old hag, the
evil lines that marked the lean, sharp features, gaining a still more
sinister meaning from the wavering, flickering light thrown upon
her face by the candle, gave me a feeling of anything but ease in my
position.

“What have you done that I should help you?” she broke forth in a harsh
voice, her eyes still fixed on my face.

“I really couldn't say,” I replied politely. “You have done me one or
two services already. That's the best reason I know why you should do me
another.”

The hard lines on the face before me relaxed at the sound of my voice,
and the old woman nodded approvingly.

“Ay, reason enough, I guess. Them as wants better can find it
themselves. But why did you sneak out of the house the other night like
a cop in plain clothes? Didn't I go bail you were safe? Do you want any
better word than mine?” she had begun almost softly, but the voice grew
higher and harsher as she went on.

“Why,” I said, bewildered again, “the house sneaked away from me--or, at
least you left me alone in it.”

“How was that?” she asked grimly. And I described graphically my
experience in the deserted building.

As I proceeded with my tale an amused look replaced the harsh lines of
suspicion on Mother Borton's face.

“Oh, my lud!” she cried with a chuckle. “Oh, my lud! how very green
you are, my boy. Oh ho! oh ho!” And then she laughed an inward,
self-consuming laugh that called up anything but the feeling of
sympathetic mirth.

“I'm glad it amuses you,” I said with injured dignity.

“Oh, my liver! Don't you see it yet? Don't you see that you climbed into
the next house back, and went through on to the other street?” And she
relapsed into her state of silent merriment.

I felt foolish enough as the truth flashed over me. I had lost my
sense of direction in the strange house, and had been deceived by the
resemblance of the ground plan of the two buildings.

“But what about the plot?” I asked. “I got your note. It's very
interesting. What about it?”

“What plot?”

“Why, I don't know. The one you wrote me about.”

Mother Borton bent forward and searched my face with her keen glance.

“Oh,” she said at last, “the one I wrote you about. I'd forgotten it.”

This was disheartening. How could I depend on one whose memory was thus
capricious?

“Yes,” said I gloomily; “I supposed you might know something about it.”

“Show me the note,” she said sharply.

I fumbled through my pockets until I found it. Mother Borton clutched
it, held it up to the candle, and studied it for two or three minutes.

“Where did you get it?”

I described the circumstances in which it had come into my possession,
and repeated the essentials of Corson's story. Mother Borton's sharp,
evil face was impassive during my recital. When it was done she
muttered:

“Gimme a fool for luck.” Then she appeared to consider for a minute or
more.

“Well?” said I inquiringly.

“Well, honey, you're having a run of the cards,” she said at last.
“Between having the message trusted to a fool boy, and having a cop
for your friend, an' maybe gitting this note before you're expected to,
you're setting here genteel-like having agreeable conversation along
with me, instead of being in company you mightn't like so well--or maybe
floating out toward Fort Point.”

“So you didn't write it?” I said coolly. “I had an idea of the kind.
That's why my friend Corson is smoking his pipe down stairs.”

Mother Borton gave me a pleased look and nodded. I hoped I had made her
regret the cruel insinuation in her application of the proverb to me as
the favorite of fortune.

“I see,” I said. “I was to be waylaid on the road here and killed.”

“Carried off, more likely. I don't say as it wouldn't end in killin' ye.
But, you see, you'd be of mighty small use in tellin' tales if you was
dead; but you might be got to talk if they had ye in a quiet place.”

“Good reasoning. But Henry Wilton was killed.”

“Yes,” admitted Mother Borton; “they thought he carried papers, and
maybe they ain't got over the idea yit. It's jest as well you're here
instid of having a little passear with Tom Terrill and Darby Meeker and
their pals.”

“Well,” said I, as cheerfully as I could under the depressing
circumstances, “if they want to kill me, I don't see how I can keep them
from getting a chance sooner or later.”

Mother Borton looked anxious at this, and shook her head.

“You must call on your men,” she said decidedly. “You must have guards.”

“By the way,” I said, “that reminds me. The men haven't been paid, and
they're looking to me for money.”

“Who's looking to you for money?”

“Dicky Nahl--and the others, I suppose.”

“Dicky Nahl?”

“Why, yes. He asked me for it.”

“And you gave it to him?” she asked sharply.

“No-o--that is, I gave him ten dollars, and told him he'd have to wait
for the rest. I haven't got the money from the one that's doing the
hiring yet, so I couldn't pay him.”

Mother Borton gave an evil grin, and absorbed another inward laugh.

“I reckon the money'll come all right,” said Mother Borton, recovering
from her mirth. “There's one more anxious than you to have 'em paid, and
if you ain't found out you'll have it right away. Now for guards, take
Trent--no, he's hurt. Take Brown and Porter and Barkhouse and Fitzhugh.
They're wide-awake, and don't talk much. Take 'em two and two, and never
go without 'em, night or day. You stop here to-night, and I'll git 'em
for you to-morrow.”

I declined the proffered hospitality with thanks, and as a compromise
agreed to call for my bodyguard in the early morning. Rejoining Corson,
I explained Mother Borton's theory of the plot that had brought me
thither.

“She's like to be right,” said the policeman. “She knows the gang. Now,
if you'll take my advice, you'll let the rats have your room for this
night, and come along up to some foine hotel.”

The advice appeared good, and fifteen minutes later Corson was drinking
my health at the Lick House bar, and calling on the powers of light and
darkness to watch over my safety as I slept.

Whether due to his prayers or not, my sleep was undisturbed, even by
dreams of Doddridge Knapp and his charming but scornful daughter; and
with the full tide of life and business flowing through the streets
in the morning hours I found myself once more in Mother Borton's dingy
eating-room, ordering a breakfast.

Mother Borton ignored my entrance, and, perched on a high stool behind
the bar and cash-drawer, reminded me of the vulture guarding its prey.
But at last she fluttered over to my table and took a seat opposite.

“Your men are here,” she said shortly. And then, as I expressed my
thanks, she warmed up and gave me a description by which I should know
each and led me to the room where, as she said, they were “corralled.”

“By the way,” I said, halting outside the door, “they'll want some
money, I suppose. Do you know how much?”

“They're paid,” she said, and pushed open the door before I could
express surprise or ask further questions. I surmised that she had
paid them herself to save me from annoyance or possible danger, and my
gratitude to this strange creature rose still higher.

The four men within the room saluted me gravely and with Mother Borton's
directions in mind I had no hesitation in calling each by his name. I
was pleased to see that they were robust, vigorous fellows, and soon
made my dispositions. Brown and Barkhouse were to attend me during
daylight, and Fitzhugh and Porter were to guard together at night. And,
so much settled, I hastened to the office.

No sign of Doddridge Knapp disturbed the morning, and at the noon hour
I returned to the room in the house of mystery that was still my only
fixed abode.

All was apparently as I had left it, except that a letter lay on the
table.

“I must get a new lock,” was my comment, as I broke the seal. “This
place is getting too public when every messenger has a key.” I was
certain that I had locked the door when Corson and I had come out on the
evening before.

The letter was from my unknown employer, and read:

“Richmond has paid the men. Be ready for a move at any moment. Leave
your address if you sleep elsewhere.”

And now came three or four days of rest and quiet after the merry life I
had been leading since my arrival in San Francisco.

No word did I get from Doddridge Knapp. I kept close watch of the stock
market, and gossiped with speculators and brokers, for I wished to know
at once if he had employed another agent. My work would lie in another
direction if such should prove to be the case. But there was no movement
in Omega, and I could hear no hint of another deal that might show a
trace of his dexterous hand. “Quiet trading,” was the report from all
quarters.

“Fact is,” said Wallbridge on the fourth day, trying to look doleful, “I
haven't made enough this week to pay for the gas--and I don't burn any.”

In the interval I improved my time by getting better acquainted with
the city. Emboldened by my body-guard, I slept for two nights in Henry's
room, and with one to watch outside the door, one lying on a mattress
just inside, and a new lock and bolt, I was free from disturbance.

Just as I had formed a wild idea of looking up Doddridge Knapp in his
home, I came to the office in the morning to find the door into Room 16
wide open and the farther door ajar.

“Come in, Wilton,” said the voice of the King of the Street; and I
entered his room to find him busied over his papers, as though nothing
had occurred since I had last met him.

“The market has had something of a vacation.” I ventured, as he failed
to speak.

“I have been out of town,” he said shortly. “What have you done?”

“Nothing.”

He gave a grunt of assent.

“You didn't expect me to be buying up the market, did you?” The
yellow-gray mustache went up, and the wolf-fangs gleamed from beneath.

“I reckon it wouldn't have been a very profitable speculation,” he
replied.

Then he leaned back in his chair and looked meditatively at the wall.

“It was for one fellow, though,” he continued, mellowing as he mused in
his recollections. “It was at the time of the Honest Injun deal--I guess
you don't remember that. It must have been ten years ago. Well, I had
a fellow named--why, what was his name?--oh, Riggs, or Rix, I forget
which,--and he was handling about a hundred thousand dollars for me. We
had Honest Injun run up from one dollar till it was over twenty dollars
a share. I had to go up to Nevada City, and left ten thousand shares
with him with orders to sell at twenty-five.”

“Yes,” I said, as the King of the Street paused and seemed inclined to
drop the story. “At twenty-five.”

“Well,” he continued at this encouragement, “when I came back, Honest
Injun was down to ten cents, or somewhere around there, which was just
about as I expected. Riggs comes up to me as proud as a spotted pup, and
tells me that he'd sold at thirty dollars, and cleared fifty thousand
more than I'd expected.”

“A pretty good deal,” I suggested.

“It happened that way, but it wouldn't happen so once in ten years. The
stock had gone up to thirty-one or thirty-two before it broke, and he
had sold just in time.”

“Did he get a reward?” I asked, as my employer appeared to wait for an
observation from me.

“He did,” said the Wolf with a growl. “I discharged him on the spot. And
hanged if I didn't tell him that the fifty thousand was his--and let
him have it, too. Oh, he was playing in great luck! That combination
wouldn't come twice in a thousand years. The next man who tried it went
to jail,” he added with a snap of the jaws.

“Quite correct,” I said. “Orders must be obeyed.”

“Just remember that,” he said significantly. “Have you heard anything
more of Decker?”

“I've heard enough to satisfy me that he's the man who got the Omega
stock.”

“What other deal is he in?” asked the King of the Street.

“I don't know.”

The King of the Street smiled indulgently.

“Well, you've got something to learn yet. I'll give you till next week
to find the answer to that question.”

I was convinced from his air that he had information on both these
points himself, and was merely trying my knowledge.

“I'll not be back before next Wednesday,” he concluded.

“Going away again?” I asked in surprise.

“I'm off to Virginia City,” he replied after considering for a little.
“I'm not sure about Omega, after all--and there's another one I want to
look into. You needn't mention my going. When I come back we'll have a
campaign that will raise the roof of every Board in town. No orders till
then unless I telegraph you. That's all.”

The King of the Street seemed straightforward enough in his statement
of plans, and it did not occur to me to distrust him while I was in his
presence. Yet, once more in my office, with the locked door between, I
began to doubt, and tried to find some hidden meaning in each word and
look. What plan was he revolving in that fertile brain? I could not
guess. The mystery of the great speculator was beyond my power to
fathom. And we worked, each in ignorance of the other's purposes, and
went the appointed road.




CHAPTER XV

I AM IN THE TOILS


“Welcome once more, Mr. Wilton,” said Mrs. Doddridge Knapp, holding out
her hand. “Were you going to neglect us again?”

“Not at all, madam,” said I with unblushing mendacity. “I am always at
your command.”

Mrs. Knapp bowed with regal condescension, and replied with such
intimations of good will that I was glad I had come. I had vowed I would
never set foot again in the place. The hot blood of shame had burned my
cheeks whenever I recalled my dismissal from the lips of the daughter of
the house. But I had received a letter from Mrs. Bowser, setting forth
that I was wanted at the house of Doddridge Knapp, and her prolixity
was such that I was unable to determine whether she, or Mrs. Knapp, or
Luella, wished to see me. But as all three appeared to be concerned in
it I pocketed pride and resentment, and made my bow with some nervous
quavers at the Pine Street palace.

As I was speaking I cast my eyes furtively about the room. Mrs. Knapp
interpreted my glance.

“She will be in presently.” There was to my ear a trace of mocking
laughter in her voice as she spoke, but her face betokened only a
courteous interest.

“Thanks--I hope so,” I said in a little confusion. I wished I knew
whether she meant Luella or Mrs. Bowser.

“You got the note?” she asked.

“It was a great pleasure.”

“Mrs. Bowser wished so much to see you again. She has been singing your
praises--you were such an agreeable young man.”

I cursed Mrs. Bowser in my heart.

“I am most flattered,” I said politely.

There was a mischievous sparkle in Mrs. Knapp's eye, but her face was
serenely gracious.

“I believe there was some arrangement between you about a trip to see
the sights of Chinatown. Mrs. Bowser was quite worried for fear you had
forgotten it, so I gave her your address and told her to write you a
note.”

I had not been conscious of expecting anything from my visit, but at
this bit of information I found that I had been building air-castles
which had been invisible till they came tumbling about my ears. I could
not look for Miss Knapp's company on such an expedition.

“Oh,” said I, with an attempt to conceal my disappointment, “the matter
had slipped my mind. I shall be most happy to attend Mrs. Bowser, or to
see that she has a proper escort.”

We had been walking about the room during this conversation, and at this
point had come to an alcove where Mrs. Knapp motioned me to a seat.

“I may not get a chance to talk with you alone again this evening,” she
continued, dropping her half-bantering tone, “and you come so little
now. What are you doing?”

“Keeping out of mischief.”

“Yes, but how?” she persisted. “You used to tell me everything. Now you
tell me nothing.”

“Mr. Knapp's work--” I began.

“Oh, of course I don't expect you to tell me about that. I know Mr.
Knapp, and you're as close-mouthed as he, even when he's away.”

“I should tell you anything of my own, but, of course, another's--”

“I understand.” Mrs. Knapp, sitting with hands clasped in her lap, gave
me a quick look. “But there was something else. You were telling me
about your adventures, you remember. You told me two or three weeks ago
about the way you tricked Darby Meeker and sent him to Sierra City.” And
she smiled at the recollection of Darby Meeker's discomfiture.

“Oh, yes,” I said, with a laugh that sounded distressingly hollow to my
ears. “That was a capital joke on Meeker.”

Here was a fine pack of predicaments loosed on my trail. It was with
an effort that I kept my countenance, and the cold sweat started on my
forehead. How much had Henry told of his business? Had he touched on it
lightly, humorously, or had he given a full account of his adventures to
the wife of the man with whose secrets he was concerned, and whose evil
plans had brought him to his death? The questions flashed through my
mind in the instant that followed Mrs. Knapp's speech.

“How did it turn out?” asked Mrs. Knapp with lively interest. “Did he
get back?”

I decided promptly on a judicious amount of the truth.

“Yes, he got back, boiling with wrath, and loaded to the guards with
threats--that is, I heard so from my men. I didn't see him myself, or
you might have found the rest of it in the newspaper.”

“What did he do? Tell me about it.” Mrs. Knapp gave every evidence of
absorbed interest.

“Well, he laid a trap for me at Borton's, put Terrill in as advance
guard, and raised blue murder about the place.” And then I went on to
give a carefully amended account of my first night's row at Borton's,
and with an occasional question, Mrs. Knapp had soon extorted from me a
fairly full account of my doings.

“It is dreadful for you to expose yourself to such dangers.”

I was privately of her opinion.

“Oh, that's nothing,” said I airily. “A man may be killed any day by a
brick falling from a building, or by slipping on an orange peel on the
crossing.”

“But it is dreadful to court death so. Yet,” she mused, “if I were a man
I could envy you your work. There is romance and life in it, as well
as danger. You are doing in the nineteenth century and in the midst
of civilization what your forefathers may have done in the days of
chivalry.”

“It is a fine life,” I said dryly. “But it has its drawbacks.”

“But while you live no one can harm the child,” she said. There was
inquiry in her tone, I thought.

I suppressed a start of surprise. I had avoided mention of the boy.
Henry had trusted Mrs. Knapp further than I had dreamed.

“He shall never be given up by me,” I replied with conviction.

“That is spoken like a true, brave man,” said Mrs. Knapp with an
admiring look.

“Thank you,” I said modestly.

“Another life than yours depends on your skill and courage. That must
give you strength,” she said softly.

“It does indeed,” I replied. I was thinking of Doddridge Knapp's life.

“But here come Luella and Mrs. Bowser,” said Mrs. Knapp. “I see I shall
lose your company.”

My heart gave a great bound, and I turned to see the queenly grace of
Luella Knapp as she entered the room in the train of Mrs. Bowser.

Vows of justice and vengeance, visions of danger and death, faded away
as I looked once more on the mobile, expressive face of the girl who had
claimed so great a share of my waking thoughts and filled my dreams
from the first moment her spirit had flashed on mine. I rose and my eyes
followed her eagerly as I stood by the curtain of the alcove, oblivious
of all else in the room.

Was it fancy, or had she grown paler and thinner since I had last seen
her? Surely those dark hollows under her eyes that told of worry and
lost sleep were not there when her brightness had chained my admiration.
I could guess that she was grieving for Henry, and a jealous pang shot
through my heart. She gave no glance in my direction as she walked into
the room and looked about her. I dreaded her eye as I hungered for a
look.

“Luella!” called Mrs. Knapp. I fancied she gave a low, musical laugh as
she spoke, yet a glance showed me that her face was calm and serious.
“Luella, here is some one you will like to see.”

Luella Knapp turned and advanced. What was the look that lighted up her
face and sparkled from her eyes? Before I could analyze the magnetic
thrill that came from it, it was gone. A flush passed over her face and
died away as she came.

“You honor our poor house once more?” she said, dropping a mock
courtesy. “I thought you had deserted us.”

I was surprised at this line of attack, and for a moment my little
army of ideas was thrown into confusion. I felt, rather than heard, the
undertone that carried the real meaning of her words.

“Not I,” said I s

Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/7788