Mary Regan E-Book

Leroy Scott

• Herausgeber: Librorium Editions
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

It was opening night of the new bill at the Grand Alcazar; and Clifford, as he waited alone at a little table for his host, almost unconsciously searched through the great restaurant of black-and-gold for Mary Regan—just as, almost unconsciously, he had been seeking her wherever he had been during the six months of agreed-upon silence since they had parted. He did not expect to see her here, hence felt no disappointment when his roving eyes did not come upon her. She had said she would write when she had thought it all out, and when she was ready to see him. Six months was a long time, but he believed in her word—and still waited, not once having sought to penetrate that utter privacy which she had asserted to be for her, at that time, life’s prime essential. But though keeping his word, he had often been impatient, and had often wondered.

Leseprobe

Mary Regan

By LEROY SCOTT© 2023 Librorium Editions

ISBN : 9782385743154

CONTENTS

I.

THE WORLD SITS DOWN TOGETHER

1

II.

THE RETURN OF MARY REGAN

11

III.

PETER LOVEMAN

20

IV.

AS MARY SEES HERSELF

34

V.

CLIFFORD HAS A NEW PURPOSE

47

VI.

MARY SHOWS HER HAND

55

VII.

NINA CORDOVA

70

VIII.

IN LOVEMAN’S LIBRARY

87

IX.

THE TEST OF LIFE

100

X.

THE GOLDEN DOORS

112

XI.

MARY PLANS ANEW

124

XII.

A GENTLEMAN OF PLEASURE

136

XIII.

MR. MORTON TAKES A HAND

149

XIV.

MARY FACES A CRISIS

159

XV.

LOVEMAN SHOWS HIS CLAWS

169

XVI.

THE STRINGS OF HUMAN NATURE

181

XVII.

THE OTHER WOMAN

193

XVIII.

HOW MAISIE JONES REACTED

206

XIX.

MARY THINKS THINGS OUT

215

XX.

CLIFFORD’S NEW ASSIGNMENT

225

XXI.

AT THE MIDNIGHT CAFÉ

238

XXII.

MARY MAKES AN OFFER

248

XXIII.

LOVEMAN’S FINAL PLEA

264

XXIV.

TWO PLEASANT GENTLEMEN

275

XXV.

A FATHER’S HOPE

282

XXVI.

HOW MARY’S DREAM CAME TRUE

295

XXVII.

JACK MAKES A RESOLUTION

315

XXVIII.

THE HOUSE OF MONSIEUR LE BAIN

324

XXIX.

CLIFFORD WAITS ON GUARD

336

XXX.

WHEN WOMEN NEVER TALK

344

XXXI.

WHEN OLD FOES GET TOGETHER

354

XXXII.

PLEASURE PRESENTS ITS BILL

363

XXXIII.

THE STUFF IN MARY REGAN

378

MARY REGAN

CHAPTER ITHE WORLD SITS DOWN TOGETHER

It was opening night of the new bill at the Grand Alcazar; and Clifford, as he waited alone at a little table for his host, almost unconsciously searched through the great restaurant of black-and-gold for Mary Regan—just as, almost unconsciously, he had been seeking her wherever he had been during the six months of agreed-upon silence since they had parted. He did not expect to see her here, hence felt no disappointment when his roving eyes did not come upon her. She had said she would write when she had thought it all out, and when she was ready to see him. Six months was a long time, but he believed in her word—and still waited, not once having sought to penetrate that utter privacy which she had asserted to be for her, at that time, life’s prime essential. But though keeping his word, he had often been impatient, and had often wondered.

Meditatively Clifford glanced over this great crowd of well-dressed diners. For him they were a vivid concentration, a cross-section, of life: of life as he, in his philosophy, and in the pursuit of his profession, had come to see it. Here were millionaires, many of them having made their easeful fortunes by dubious operations which shrewd counsel had steered just within the law; here were young men of moderate means, spending recklessly; here were society women of the younger and smarter set, with their escorts, sowing the seeds, though they dreamed it not, of possible scandal and possible blackmail; here were members of that breed of humans who are known as “sporting men”; here were the most finished types of professional crooks, many accompanied by the finished women of their own kind, but here and there with them a girl who had no idea of the manner of man with whom she ate and drank, and no idea of the end of this her pleasant adventure; and here were respectable mothers and their daughters, who were innocent of what sat at the next table; and here were out-of-town visitors who were visibly excited and exalted by the thought that they were seeing life—New York!—the real New York!

Clifford smiled sadly, rather grimly, to himself. These conglomerate guests were proof of what he had long held: that there was no distinct underworld, no distinct upperworld; that in ideas and personalities the two were always merging. This scene summarized what experience had made the basic idea of Clifford’s working philosophy: the great interrelation, the great interdependence, the great oneness of all humanity.

Looking over this mixture of all sorts, in which acquaintance was so easy to make, Clifford thought of the strange dramas that had their beginnings in the Grand Alcazar and establishments of its kind. Thus much had the dancing craze, though now receded from its earliest frenzy, and the practice of dining and eating midnight suppers in the showy restaurants, achieved: it had brought all sorts of persons, so long as they were well dressed, under the same roof and had set them down at the same or adjoining tables. Hardly since time began had that important requisite of great drama been so nearly perfect as in these restaurants—for people of different ideas and interests and moral standards to meet naturally upon a common ground....

A little man, swart of face, his mustache tightly waxed, and in the smartest evening dress that convention permits the male, paused and spoke to Clifford—a gentleman whom most of the patrons of the place knew, if they knew him at all, as Monsieur Le Bain. Though the master of this ornate pleasure palace, he spoke obsequiously.

Clifford liked to see the great little man squirm. “Police trouble you much here?” he asked.

“No, Bob,—I never see a policeman here, except when a captain or an inspector comes in to eat,” the great restaurateur said nervously.

“Not like the old days downtown—with their raids—eh, Joe?”

“Nothing of that sort—ever!” And with a quick look around that showed he feared some one might have overheard these sentences and guessed what lay behind them, he said something about being needed on his ballroom floor and hurried away.

Clifford watched the famous restaurateur, again smiling grimly. If these people here—the respectable ones at least—knew the record of Joe Gordon (which again was not the name given him at birth), knew from what places and occupations he had made his way to his eminence of foremost host and impresario of prandial entertainment—what a panic there would be! (Or would there be a panic?) Life was certainly strange!—with its emergencies, its juxtapositions, its crossing of threads—strange at least to him who was always seeing behind the scenes. Yes, life was certainly strange!...

Clifford’s meditations were interrupted by a hearty, “Hello, Bob,” and by a large hand gripping one of his.

“Hello, Uncle George. I’d begun to think—”

“Hold on, son,” and Clifford’s host halted the talk by raising one hand like a traffic policeman and with the other reaching for the dinner card. While the long order was being dictated, Clifford gazed impatiently across at his companion, wondering what this appointment was about. His host was a large man who once might have been bulbous, but who now had deflated little balloons of skin hanging beneath eyes and chin and jaws. His few short gray hairs were divided into two precisely equal portions; his eyebrows were entirely gone, and of eyelashes he had almost none; his eyes were smallish, gray, cunning, genial. He made Clifford fancy, with those eyes of his so good-naturedly cynical, and with his large, outstanding ears, that here might be a satyr who had forsaken gay forests for city and had at length grown into grandfatherly days.

“Well, now, Uncle George—what’s all this about?” Clifford demanded when the order was in.

“Not so fast, son,—not so fast,” slowly remonstrated Uncle George, who, as far as Broadway’s knowledge went, was no one’s Uncle George, but who was known by no other name. “Let’s wait until we’ve packed away some of the freight that waiter’s going to bring us.” He blinked his lashless lids, and drawled on. “It’s been a long time since I’ve seen you—six months. I just wanted to give you the once over, and ask you how was trade.”

“Trade’s good—considering.”

The old head nodded. “Yes, considering that you’re a detective who’s on the square. There’s not much chance for that sort, son,—not in this here widely advertised Christian civilization of ours. At least, not much chance to make a large private collection of coin.”

“I’m not in this primarily to make money. I thought you understood that.”

“You sure are a queer guy, son,” pronounced the old man. “I’ve heard you spiel off your ideas—you’re not primarily a thief-taker—you’re in this to help people out of the trouble. A hell of an idea for a detective!”

“You know as well as I do, Uncle George, that most of the people that get into trouble, or seem to be bad—well, they personally are not so much to blame. They’ve been born and raised in bad conditions—they’ve never had a chance—have never really been able to tell what was right or wrong, and have never had a chance to choose the right—”

“Come up for air, son,—come up for air,” cut in the old man. “Son, that’s nice music, but it’s all bunk. You’re an awful example of what a college education can do to a man. Now you just listen to your Uncle George. You know me—everybody knows me. I’ve been in about every crooked game known to the human race and the higher animals, including managing shows—and I’ve never been pinched because I was too clever for the coppers, and the coppers know it, too. I tell you I know life up and down and across the middle—and I tell you that we’ve all got a streak of crookedness—every damned one of us!”

“If that’s so,” smiled Clifford, “then why are you always helping crooks?”

“That’s just my human cussedness. I’ve retired from business—I’m one of these gentlemen farmers that have located on Broadway; but I don’t like to see any earnest young crook get a raw deal from the coppers, who are the rawest crooks of all.” The old man waved his left hand as though brushing such conversation aside. “But let’s get down to brass tacks—which means you and me. You and Bradley as great friends as ever?”

Despite himself Clifford flushed with chagrin. “Don’t try to be funny!”

“And, son, don’t be too sore. Bradley was one hell of a guy. He was the cleverest chief of detectives the Police Department ever had.”

“And the crookedest!”

“Sure, son,—didn’t I tell you us humans were all crooks!” the old man said appeasingly. “But, sure, there never was a crookeder chief of detectives than Bradley. You certainly showed nerve when you started out to get him—and you certainly showed your class when you finally trapped him, publicly, with the goods on. Only—”

“That’s it—only!” Clifford exclaimed sourly. “It’s quite some little word, that only.”

“Sure—only. Son,”—and the old man spoke gravely,—“I’m twice as old as you are, but you should know as well as I know that you really can’t get a copper. I mean a clever copper. Count the big coppers that have really been sent away—the smart boys, I mean—and you’ll see you have several fingers left to check up your laundry on. That was grand business you pulled on Bradley, and it showed all New York he was a crook. It was worth doing—God, yes! But I said to myself, as soon as I heard of the swell arrest you had made of him, that a classy guy like Bradley would have himself covered and would beat the case when it came to trial. And he sure did beat it!”

“On a technicality!” Clifford was still bitter at the manner in which his old enemy and old superior officer had slipped from what had seemed the sure clutches of the law.

“A technicality, sure. But it got him off, and what more does a crook ever ask for?”

“But he got reinstated in the Police Department!”

“But didn’t he retire right afterwards, claiming broken health? And don’t you and I know his real reason was that his old game was done for and that the public was wise to him? The big trouble with you, son,” the old man declared severely, “is that you want a one hundred per cent victory. The best you can hope for with a guy like Bradley is to split the thing fifty-fifty.”

“You seem to admire Bradley a lot!” half growled Clifford.

“I do. I hand it to the guy with brains wherever I meet him.”

“I don’t see how you can be friends with me, then!”

“You’re clever, too, son. You’re the only one I’ve ever figured might beat Bradley in a finish fight. And then you’re a queer party, Bob,—you’re square,” he drawled. “I’ve traveled up and down this world of he-and-she grafters, shoplifters, safeblowers, and sure-thing business men, and after it all you know it’s right pleasant to sit down in the shade of a square guy. And besides, son,” he added, “I said I admired Bradley because he was clever; I didn’t say I liked him as a friend. Now, you, Bob, somehow I like you.”

“Thanks, Uncle George.” There was a moment’s silence. “But that’s not what you got me here to tell me.”

“Perhaps not, son. But what’s the hurry? Queer, ain’t it,” he meditated, “how all the big cops, when they leave the Police Department, open a private detective agency? I hear Bradley’s doing great business since he started out as a private detective.”

“Licensed blackmailer—that’s what he is!”

“Sure, son, that’s what they all are. A client tells a private sleuth secrets, and retains him to get information about some other party—and is held up for a big fee. The sleuth gets the information, and then makes the second party pay by threatening to expose him—second hold-up; and then makes the first client pay again by threatening to expose the original secret—third hold-up. Oh, it’s a rich game Bradley’s switched into!”

“Once more, Uncle George—that’s not what you got me here to tell me.”

“Perhaps it’s not really so much I’ve got to tell you. Mebbe it’s occurred to you”—meditatively, slowly—“that since the big upset you gave him, Bradley isn’t exactly what you might call in love with you.”

“Not exactly.”

“Well, I heard it from a friend who’s got a friend who’s got a mother-in-law who listens to little birds—and the dope runs that Bradley is out to square matters with you.”

Clifford nodded. He had expected something of the sort.

“Did this little bird relay any information as to just what Bradley was going to do?”

“None that got to me. But, son, I’d keep my eyes pointed in all directions, and be careful of the friends I made, and be careful of the cases I got drawn into. It may be a long time coming, and God only knows in what direction it’ll come from. Bradley knows how to handle people so they never know they’re being handled—and he’s likely to hit you through almost any one. Look out, son. This is serious. There’ll be big doings.”

Clifford gazed steadily at the old worldling. Indeed, there must be something—and big!—or else Uncle George, whose general attitude in matters of morals, police, and criminals was one of genial laissez-faire, would not have brought him this warning. He knew from experience the craft and power of Bradley—his subtle patience in working out his designs, his patience in waiting apparently quiescent for the ripe moment—the swiftness and might with which he struck when the instant came to strike.

Automatically, swiftly, Clifford’s mind flashed forward in search of possible weapons, of direct and devious schemes, that the fertile-brained Bradley might be contriving against him.

CHAPTER IITHE RETURN OF MARY REGAN

Suddenly all conjectures concerning Bradley were swept utterly from his mind. Down the gilded red-carpeted stairway that led from what the Grand Alcazar termed its “ballroom de luxe,” there came—though this was not the figure Clifford first noted—a short, full-bodied, ornately dressed man, with a bald crown and a smile of engaging amiability. Beside him, and a half-head taller,—and this is what Clifford first saw,—walked a slender young woman, in an evening coat of rose velvet, her rounded throat gleaming a dusky marble from the soft shadows of the furred collar. Her face was the rose-tan of early autumn leaves, and her dark eyes gazed straight before her with a composure so complete that it seemed to announce a haughty indifference to all the world.

“Mary Regan!” ejaculated Clifford, stupefied.

Uncle George seemed not the least startled by Clifford’s exclamation. He turned—and then there was surprise enough in his voice:—

“Hello—Peter Loveman with her!”

Clifford, recovered from his brief paralysis, arose and hurried between the tables. But the pair had already turned into the entrance and did not note him. As Clifford came into the gilded and bepalmed lobby, he saw her, aided by four eager Grand Alcazar flunkeys and by Loveman, looking a grotesquely small grand opera impresario in his silk hat and fur coat, stepping into a closed car. By running Clifford could have caught her, or by calling he could have gained her attention. But at that instant he remembered the essence of their bargain, that he should make no attempt to seek her out until she sent for him. That remembrance checked him; the door closed upon the rose-velvet figure, the car slid off through Broadway’s incandescent brilliance, and she was gone.

Forgetful of where he was, Clifford stood bare-headed and stockstill in the lobby. Mary Regan’s sudden reappearance out of the silence, the vacancy, of six months’ absence, sent his mind flashing over the past, the present, the future, touching in chaotic wonderment the high spots of his strange relationship with her.... Daughter of that one-time famous cynic and famous master criminal, “Gentleman Jim” Regan, dead these five years, she had passed her girlhood in the cynical philosophy of the little court surrounding her father,—had made that philosophy her own,—and, grown into young womanhood, she had joined that great crime entrepreneur, her Uncle Joe Russell, in many of his more subtle enterprises. It was at the beginning of this career that Clifford’s life had come into contact with hers. Police Commissioner Thorne had ordered him to “cover” the pair. From the first Clifford had conceived the idea that her criminal point of view was not an expression of her true nature, but was a habit of mind developed in her by association: and he had proceeded upon the theory that a bigger rôle, than merely to make arrests, would be to arouse the real Mary Regan to her true self.... The conflicts between the two!—her hostility to him!—his ultimate success, or seeming success, when he had broken through her shell of defensive cynicism—and last of all, that parting scene down in Washington Square in the dusk of the on-coming dawn!...

He lived through that scene for a briefest moment—he was always living over that scene. He had told her that he loved her; and she, admitting that she loved him, had said, “But that doesn’t mean I can marry you.” “Then, what does it mean?” he had demanded. A look of decision had come into her face—how vividly he recalled every minutia of their one love-scene!—and she had said:—

“Before we can talk definitely about such things, I want to go off somewhere, alone, and think over what you have said about me. If I am not what I used to be—if I am really that different person you say I am, I want to get acquainted with myself. I seem so strange to myself, it all seems so strange. I hope you are right—but I must be sure—very sure—and so I am going away.”

“But when you come back?” he had cried.

“A lot may happen before that,” she had answered gravely. “A lot to you, and a lot to me.”

“But when you come back?” he had insisted.

“When I come back,” she had breathed quaveringly, “if you still think the same way about my being that sort of person—and if I find that it’s really true—”

And then his arms had closed about her and he had kissed her. But even as she had let him, she had murmured almost fearfully: “Remember—a lot—may happen—before then....”

Clifford’s mind leaped forward from that long-gone night to the present. And now she was back—back out of the unknown into which she had disappeared—and back without having sent him a word of any kind! What did it mean, this unannounced return? And what did it mean, her being in company with dapper little Peter Loveman?—man-about-town, and carrying behind that round, amiable smile the shrewdest legal brain of its variety in New York.

Clifford had in reality been standing in the gilded lobby for no more than a minute, though his mind had traversed so wide a space, when a gray-and-black town-car, with a long hood that suggested power ample for a racer, slowed down at the curb and a young man stepped out and hurried into the Grand Alcazar. Fifth Avenue tailors and hatters and haberdashers had equipped him with their best and costliest.

“Sink my ship if it’s not old Bob Clifford!” he cried, giving Clifford a slender, soft hand. “How’s the old boy?”

“Same as always. And how’s Jackie Morton? You’ve been missing for months.”

“I’ve a wonderful tale to unfold—but no time to unfold it now.”

There was that about him which begot an instant liking, though his face was not as strong as it might have been.

“Say—you won’t believe it—but listen. I’ve been on the wagon for seventeen weeks!”

“No!”

“Give you my word! Not a drop in seventeen ages! Had to, you know. My old man—say, he’s one old battleship!—steamed into New York and shut off supplies, and said unless I cut it all out and took a brace, there’d be no more shipments of munitions. Get the situation, don’t you?—case of a sixteen-inch gun shoved into my face and bein’ told it would go off if I didn’t reform. So look and behold and observe what’s happened—I’m reformed! Been off where milk’s all they shove ’cross the bar—isolated, and all that kind of thing—and been behavin’ in a way to make the Ten Commandments jealous. Honest to God, Clifford—”

Abruptly he checked this effervescence. “Say, seen Peter Loveman about here?”

“He’s just gone.”

“Alone?”

“I believe there was a young lady with him,” Clifford replied discreetly—wondering a little what young Morton’s business, if any, could be with the pair that had left.

Morton hesitated; then again was effervescent. “Was to have met him here—but there’s no tellin’ where he is. Come on—let’s have a drink.”

“But you are on the wagon.”

“I am. But I want to give you the grand sight of watchin’ me fall off.”

“You sit tight right where you are,” advised Clifford.

“Now, come on, don’t block traffic with a funeral,” pleaded the young fellow, slipping an arm through Clifford’s. “Just one drink!” Clifford shock his head; and Morton tried to draw him into the restaurant. “Just one little drink, Clifford,—one little drink after a Sahara of milk!”

“Mr. Morton!” a deep, brusque voice called from behind them.

They turned. A man, square of shoulders and deep of chest and with square, forceful face, was advancing toward them.

“Hello, Clifford,” he said.

“Hello, Bradley,” Clifford returned, trying to speak calmly—and for the briefest space these old enemies, who had so often been at grips, stared at each other, with hard, masked gazes.

Bradley turned to Clifford’s companion. “So you tried to give me the slip, Mr. Morton. I heard what you suggested to Clifford. But I guess you are keeping off the booze to-night.”

“Just look this large person over, Clifford,” mourned the young fellow; “and honest, ain’t it hell, my father wishing a party like Bradley on me for a nurse!”

“You need one all right!” Bradley said grimly.

“But even babies get let alone for an hour now and then,” protested the other.

“You forget that the size of my check from your father depends upon my keeping you and booze apart.”

Morton sighed. “You’re a sordid person, Bradley.”

“I might mention incidentally,” continued Bradley, “that your father has just come to town.”

“The devil!” Morton’s face filled with dismay. “I guess, then, it really is good-night, Clifford.” He took Bradley’s arm. “Come on, nursie; let’s hail the captain of my perambulator.”

Clifford watched the two go out, and again he had the sense that he was glimpsing into the complicated maze behind the brilliant surface of Big Pleasure. The relationship between that pair might be strange for any other period in the world’s history, but it was a definite, though small, phase of this great pleasure life—a gay young spender bridled and the reins put in the hands of a private officer. Clifford felt a moment’s uneasiness for young Morton: in what ways could Bradley not twist his client and protégé into predicaments that would bring him profit?

When Clifford regained his table, Uncle George regarded him with amazement. “I thought you had gone!”

“Gone where?”

“With or after Miss Regan.”

“Why?”

“I thought you were—well, I guess you get me. That being the case, I didn’t think you’d pass up the chance to be with her.”

Clifford hesitated, then spoke the truth: “The last time I saw Mary Regan, I promised not to speak to her until she sent for me.”

“And it was your promise that stopped you?” Uncle George asked incredulously.

“Yes.”

“You poor simp! I suppose you thought she’d be thinking of you, only you, with you out of her sight for six months—and that then there’d come a sweet little message like them they flash on the movie screens!”

Clifford did not reply. Uncle George had very nearly expressed his thought.

“No woman ever lived that could keep thinking of one man for six months, and him away!” Uncle George leaned closer, and spoke in a low voice. “See here, son,—while you’ve been keeping your promise and remaining strictly off the premises, what do you think the other people have been doing?”

“What other people?” cried Clifford, in quick alarm.

Uncle George ignored the question. “You think you’ve been an influence upon her. Mebbe so, son. Mebbe so. But she was twenty, and two or three more, before you ever saw her. Don’t you think those twenty years might have some influence with her, too?”

“What other people?” repeated Clifford.

Again Uncle George ignored the question. He looked at Clifford keenly, and spoke slowly.

“’While ago you asked me why I wanted to meet you here. Well, son, my chief reason was because I knew Mary Regan was going to be here—and because I thought, on seeing her, you’d wade right into the situation.”

“See here, George, what do you know?” Clifford cried sharply.

“Mighty little that’s definite,—and telling you that would be giving people away, and that’s against my principles,—and, besides, the little I know might only be misleading. But, son,”—the old man’s voice was grave,—“if you’re at all interested in that girl, you sure ought to be busy. And that’s all I can say.”

Abruptly Clifford stood up. “Thanks, Uncle George,—good-bye—” And he was gone.

CHAPTER IIIPETER LOVEMAN

Clifford’s first business was to make up for the opportunity he had just let slip, and find Mary Regan. At once he decided that his best source of information was her brother, “Slant-Face,” once a pickpocket of amazing skill, now the manager of a little motion-picture house. He turned uptown to Slant-Face’s theater.

On the way he was feverishly alive with questions. Clifford’s thoughts had really not been off Mary Regan from the moment he had seen her come down the stairway; and now Uncle George’s vague warning—he knew Uncle George would not have spoken even so indefinitely unless there existed a very real situation—banished all else from his mind. Why hadn’t Mary Regan sent him word? What was behind her return in such a manner? What decision had she come to in regard to herself during these months? What decision in regard to him?

And this danger that Uncle George had hinted at—did it rise chiefly from the plans and influence of other persons? And who might these other persons be? And what might be the danger? Or might the danger rise partly out of the complexities, the contradictions, of her own nature?—that nature which had always so baffled and eluded him. But the doubt which lay behind this last question seemed disloyal, and he forcibly drove it from his mind. Mary Regan, he emphatically told himself, was the woman he had believed her to be! She could explain everything. Whatever might be wrong was due to the unknown other persons.

Slant-Face’s theater, though the hour was only ten, was dark. He hurried to Slant-Face’s apartment; but Slant-Face was not there, and his wife knew nothing of his whereabouts. Downtown again, Clifford began a tour of Slant-Face’s hang-outs; and at length he found him standing alone at the end of the Knickerbocker bar, before him a glass of buttermilk—a slender, smartly dressed person, whose immobile, lean face was given a saturnine cast by the downward slant of the left corner of his mouth.

“I saw your theater was closed, Slant-Face,” said Clifford. “What’s the matter?”

“Bradley.”

“Bradley! How could he have anything to do with closing your theater?”

“Bradley hasn’t forgot my little part in your stunt that got him out of the Department. He just waited—and laid his plans. While films were being run off and the house was dark, he had pockets picked in my place, or had people say their pockets were picked—pulled this three times. What with my reputation, this was enough for the Commissioner of Licenses, and he closed my joint.”

“That’s pretty rank. Bradley certainly does have a long memory—and a long arm!”

“This is a five-reel picture, and it’s not all been run off yet,” half growled Slant-Face through his thin lips. “In the last reel, some one is going to get him!” He sipped his buttermilk, then abruptly: “Clifford, because of what you’ve done for me, I’ve played it straight for a year. The straight game don’t pay—not for me. So I’m through. I guess you understand what comes next.”

“See here, Slant-Face, don’t be—”

“I’m through!” There was the snap of absolute finality in the low, quiet voice.

Clifford knew that mere words could not change the decision made behind that lean, grim visage; so he turned to the matter that had brought him there.

“Have you seen your sister to-day?”

“Haven’t seen Mary in six months.”

“You mean you don’t know where she’s staying?” exclaimed Clifford.

“Down South in the woods somewhere,—God knows why,—doing a stretch of self-imposed solitary.”

The obviously honest answer sharpened Clifford’s already poignant uneasiness. “Slant-Face, I saw her an hour ago.”

“In New York?”

“At the Grand Alcazar.” And then he added: “She was with Peter Loveman.”

Even the stoic Slant-Face started. “With Peter Loveman!—the lawyer that beat Bradley’s case for him! What the devil does that mean?”

“Just what I’m wondering myself.”

“You mean you didn’t ask her anything—didn’t speak to her?”

“No.”

Slant-Face looked his bewilderment. He had had his own private guess at what had been the situation between Clifford and his sister. But he did not ask the “why” of this to him strange behaviour on Clifford’s part.

“Mary with Peter Loveman!” he repeated. “Either Mary is trying to put something across—in the old way, you understand; or else she’s—well, it looks like queer doings to me!”

“That’s why I looked you up. Some one should step in, and stop what’s under way. I supposed you knew where she was.”

“I’m going to begin to try to find out,” said Slant-Face. “And you?”

“Same here. By the way, would your Uncle Joe know anything?”

“Didn’t you know? He’s sold out everything here and bought himself a fruit farm in California.”

“Then there’s just one man we’re certain does know. That’s Loveman, and I’m going after Loveman. Let me know if you get next to anything, Slant-Face. So-long.”

Clifford and the once master pickpocket clasped hands.

“And Slant-Face,” Clifford added, “about that other matter—getting money in the old way. Don’t do it.”

“I’m not promising,” said Slant-Face quietly.

Clifford privately asked Police Commissioner Thorne to help in locating Mary Regan. Also he hunted up little Lieutenant Jimmie Kelly, one hundred and twenty pounds of grit and daring, head of the Tenderloin Squad that free-lanced through the hotels, restaurants, and resorts of Broadway, and of Jimmie he asked the same help. He himself, for two days and nights, now and then seeing Uncle George and Slant-Face, trailed Peter Loveman from office to courts and back again—and particularly about the restaurants and theaters and after-theater theaters, which comprised Loveman’s especial habitat.

But not again did Clifford see Loveman with Mary Regan. The second night, however, he did see Loveman with young Morton, and with the two a middle-aged man with a masterful face. Morton’s father, Clifford guessed.

And yet, though he saw nothing, all his senses assured him with growing insistence that great forces were at their hidden work—those subtle, complex forces that operate indirectly, patiently, with infinite cunning, behind the alluring and often innocent visage of brilliant Big Pleasure. And also he had a growing sense that this was not primarily a detective’s puzzle; but primarily a matter of the eternal human mystery of how human beings react, and how they may be artfully stimulated. He felt himself just a human being in the midst of a human problem whose outlines he could not yet discern.

On the third day of failure it came to Clifford that there was a chance—a bare chance—that Loveman had no design involving Mary Regan, and he decided to go openly to him. At Loveman’s lavish downtown offices he was told Loveman had telephoned he would not appear that morning. Twenty minutes later Clifford, after having sent in his card by the Japanese butler-valet, was in Loveman’s study. The room, the studio of an apartment designed for an artist, was furnished with a disordered luxury and culture which Clifford knew to be a genuine characteristic of the strange little notable on whom he waited. Here were rows and rows of first editions; old Dutch etchings, among them several original Rembrandts; a helter-skelter gallery of autographed photographs of favorite actresses. For a score of years, as Clifford knew, Loveman had not missed an important first night.

Whatever might be the outcome of this interview, Clifford knew that sometime, somehow, between him and Loveman there would be a conflict of wits. So he looked swiftly and curiously around the room, for concerning this room there were current many fables. This study, and not the downtown office, was said to be Loveman’s real workshop. Here were created those astute plans, in which the influence of Loveman was never traceable, that brought to his downtown office those big-fee’d domestic cases, to be fought brilliantly and sensationally in the courts or to be settled discreetly in private. He was New York’s ablest representative of a type of lawyer that modern social conditions have produced: a specialist in domestic affairs—and one, when profitable dissension or threatening scandal did not exist, who knew how to create such. It was gossiped that he kept a careful record of all tangled relations among the rich, of the details of every delicate situation, and watched and bided his time until at length the affair threatened to explode into a scandal—and then he acted. In this study there was a huge “Scandal File,” so gossip had it; but Clifford, looking about, saw no such fabled article of furniture.

At that moment Loveman entered, his tonsured head and rope-girdled dressing-gown giving him the appearance of a somewhat jolly and rakish monk.

“Good-morning, Clifford,” he exclaimed, cordially holding out his hand. “Mightily like a Christian of you, looking an old tramp up.”

“They told me at your office that you were sick.”

Loveman waved Clifford into a chair, took one himself and crossed his small, exquisitely slippered feet. “That’s what I told the office, but I didn’t tell ’em what sort of sickness it was. My boy,”—with a frank, engaging grin, which was one of the many qualities that made this strange man so popular,—“do you perceive any adequate excuse for a man of my supposedly sensible years starting in at 11.30 P.M. on a mixed-drink Marathon?”

“I can’t say,” smiled Clifford, “without a knowledge of the prior—”

“Don’t be legally cautious with an incautious lawyer. There was no excuse.” Loveman shook his round head solemnly. “There was provocation, though. You bet there was provocation. Were you at the opening last night of ‘Orange Blossoms’?”

“No.”

“Congratulations. It’s a dam’ rotten show! And Nina Cordova—she’s all there off the stage, pretty, and clever, and one wise little girl, don’t you forget it!—but a dam’ rotten star and the voice of a guinea-hen that’s got the quinsy. And it cost sixty thousand dollars to get the curtain up last night, and I put up twenty thousand dollars of that boodle. Tell me, oh, why”—with a quaver of mock self-sympathy—“am I always going out of my own line and letting myself be played as a sucker by some manager or actress that wants extra backing? Twenty thousand honest-to-God dollars! I kissed ’em good-bye the very minute Nina first opened that dam’ pretty mouth, and her first note rasped across the footlights! Ain’t I the boob!”

Clifford smiled at the grotesquely disconsolate figure, but did not answer; he knew no answer was expected. But while he smiled, waiting, part of his brain was remarking that these seemingly reckless ventures of Loveman were in truth sound investments on which, by the devious methods of his art, he later realized sumptuously. That twenty thousand, which would make the vain Nina regard him as her disinterested friend and adviser, wasn’t money thrown away—not in view of the whispered affair between the voiceless prima donna, and—

“Why should I be blowing my roll,” continued Loveman, “on these dam’ musical comedies—musical, say there’s some irony for you!—when what I’d have liked would have been to help back a show like ‘Justice.’ Or the Russian ballet. Nijinsky—there’s some artist for you!” His last words were vividly sincere; there was nothing more sincere about the little man than his admiration for the highest endeavors in art. “And yet my coin goes into ‘Orange Blossoms’! Is there an artistic Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde?—there is, and I’m the party—and that’s why my stomach, esophagus, palate, tongue, mouth, and all appertaining thereunto, are this A.M. composed of a faded and dusty Brussels carpet. But, my boy, you didn’t come here to listen to my woes. What can I do for you?”

His humorously bewailing manner had suddenly dropped from him; he was brisk and alert, and his over-large eyes were fixed upon Clifford keenly. Clifford knew that there was little chance of deceiving this holder of the threads of destiny in a direct encounter.

“I came here, Loveman, to ask you for the address of Mary Regan.”

Loveman looked puzzled. “Mary Regan—do I know her?”

Was there something behind this evasion? “You remember her if you remember getting Bradley off. She was in that case.”

“Oh, yes, I remember: slender—dark—handsome. But I haven’t seen her since the trial.”

“I don’t mean to call you anything, Loveman,—but I was told you were recently seen with her in public.”

“Where?”

“At the Grand Alcazar—for dinner—three nights ago.”

Loveman smiled. “You’ve caught me. I own up. But my fib was a gentleman’s lie.”

“How so?”

“She didn’t want it known that she was in New York.”

“Why not?”

“Search me. Perhaps just a girl’s whim.”

“Do you know where I can find her?”

“Haven’t the slightest idea. I was with her more or less by accident. I was taking care of her merely for a couple of hours—substituting for a friend of hers.”

Clifford felt sure the little man was lying; but he also felt sure he could get out of Loveman nothing Loveman preferred not to tell. All the brains of the Bar Association had not been able to do this when Loveman had been before that body on charges of unprofessional conduct.

“By the by, Clifford, what’s your interest in the young lady?”

“Her family heard she was back, and engaged me to locate her.”

Loveman, looking keenly at Clifford, did not betray whether or not he recognized this as prevarication. Clifford stood up.

“Well, as you were my only clue, I might as well give the matter up. Sorry to have bothered you. Good-morning.”

“Oh, you’ll find her—you have the reputation of doing whatever you start out to do. Don’t hurry away. I’ve got some new first editions I want to show you. But pardon me for just a moment.” He scratched a line upon a sheet of paper, rang, and handed the folded sheet to the Japanese butler, who silently withdrew. “Now!” he cried briskly, and began to talk enthusiastically over half a dozen stained and musty volumes.

Half an hour later the noiseless butler appeared, bearing a card. Loveman begged Clifford to excuse him, and withdrew—to reënter in five minutes.

“Something rather curious has just happened, Clifford. A gentleman with whom I’ve had some dealings just called—I had an inspiration—I made a suggestion, and— Well, let him speak for himself. Come right in!”

At this, through the door Loveman had left open, stepped the square, solid figure of Bradley.

“I believe you two are acquainted with each other,” remarked Loveman with his amiable briskness.

The two men nodded, and for a moment stood silent. Clifford tried to read Bradley’s purpose, but Bradley’s powerful face, with its small, brilliant eyes, was as controlled and reticent as in the days, now over a year gone, when Bradley used to give him orders at Police Headquarters.

“H’are you, Clifford.” The voice was the same even, heavy bass.

“First-class, Bradley.”

“Chairs, gentlemen,” put in Loveman; and when they were seated: “Shall I say it, Bradley, or will you?”

“I’ll say it.” Without preface, or reference to the past, Bradley was in the midst of things. “I’m building up a big business, Clifford. Another year or so, and it’ll be the biggest private detective agency in the country. It’s already getting too big for one man to manage; besides, there are certain kinds of cases that another man can handle better than I can. I’ve been looking over the field for the right man. Clifford, I’ve decided you’re this right man, and I want to ask you if you’d be willing to go into partnership.”