From Vincenzo’s we walked over toward Centre Street, where Kennedy and I left Luigi to return to his restaurant, with instructions to be at Vincenzo’s at half-past eleven that night.
We turned into the new police headquarters and went down the long corridor to the Italian Bureau. Kennedy sent in his card to Lieutenant Giuseppe in charge, and we were quickly admitted. The lieutenant was a short, full-faced, fleshy Italian, with lightish hair and eyes that were apparently dull, until you suddenly discovered that that was merely a cover to their really restless way of taking in everything and fixing the impressions on his mind, as if on a sensitive plate.
“I want to talk about the Gennaro case,” began Craig. “I may add that I have been rather closely associated with Inspector O’Connor of the Central Office on a number of cases, so that I think we can trust each other. Would you mind telling me what you know about it if I promise you that I, too, have something to reveal?”
The lieutenant leaned back and watched Kennedy closely without seeming to do so. “When I was in Italy last year,” he replied at length, “I did a good deal of work in tracing up some Camorra suspects, I had a tip about some of them to look up their records–I needn’t say where it came from, but it was a good one. Much of the evidence against some of those fellows who are being tried at Viterbo was gathered by the Carabinieri as a result of hints that I was able to give them–clues that were furnished to me here in America from the source I speak of. I suppose there is really no need to conceal it, though. The original tip came from a certain banker here in New York.”
“I can guess who it was,” nodded Craig.
“Then, as you know, this banker is a fighter. He is the man who organized the White Hand–an organization which is trying to rid the Italian population of the Black Hand. His society had a lot of evidence regarding former members of both the Camorra in Naples and the Mafia in Sicily, as well as the Black Hand gangs in New York, Chicago, and other cities. Well, Cesare, as you know, is Gennaro’s father-in-law.
“While I was in Naples looking up the record of a certain criminal I heard of a peculiar murder committed some years ago. There was an honest old music master who apparently lived the quietest and most harmless of lives. But it became known that he was supported by Cesare and had received handsome presents of money from him. The old man was, as you may have guessed, the first music teacher of Gennaro, the man who discovered him. One might have been at a loss to see how he could have an enemy, but there was one who coveted his small fortune. One day he was stabbed and robbed. His murderer ran out into the street, crying out that the poor man had been killed. Naturally a crowd rushed up in a moment, for it was in the middle of the day. Before the injured man could make it understood who had struck him the assassin was down the street and lost in the maze of old Naples where he well knew the houses of his friends who would hide him. The man who is known to have committed that crime–Francesco Paoli–escaped to New York. We are looking for him to-day. He is a clever man, far above the average–son of a doctor in a town a few miles from Naples, went to the university, was expelled for some mad prank–in short, he was the black sheep of the family. Of course over here he is too high-born to work with his hands on a railroad or in a trench, and not educated enough to work at anything else. So he has been preying on his more industrious countrymen–a typical case of a man living by his wits with no visible means of support.
“Now I don’t mind telling you in strict confidence,” continued the lieutenant, “that it’s my theory that old Cesare has seen Paoli here, knew he was wanted for that murder of the old music master, and gave me the tip to look up his record. At any rate Paoli disappeared right after I returned from Italy, and we haven’t been able to locate him since. He must have found out in some way that the tip to look him up had been given by the White Hand. He had been a Camorrista, in Italy, and had many ways of getting information here in America.”
He paused, and balanced a piece of cardboard in his hand. “It is my theory of this case that if we could locate this Paoli we could solve the kidnapping of little Adelina Gennaro very quickly. That’s his picture.”
Kennedy and I bent over to look at it, and I started in surprise. It was my evil-looking friend with the scar on his cheek.
“Well,” said Craig, quietly handing back the card, “whether or not he is the man, I know where we can catch the kidnappers to-night, Lieutenant.”
It was Giuseppe’s turn to show surprise now.
“With your assistance I’ll get this man and the whole gang to-night,” explained Craig, rapidly sketching over his plan and concealing just enough to make sure that no matter how anxious the lieutenant was to get the credit he could not spoil the affair by premature interference.
The final arrangement was that four of the best men of the squad were to hide in a vacant store across from Vincenzo’s early in the evening, long before anyone was watching. The signal for them to appear was to be the extinguishing of the lights behind the colored bottles in the druggist’s window. A taxicab was to be kept waiting at headquarters at the same time with three other good men ready to start for a given address the moment the alarm was given over the telephone.
We found Gennaro awaiting us with the greatest anxiety at the opera-house. The bomb at Cesare’s had been the last straw. Gennaro had already drawn from his bank ten crisp one-thousand-dollar bills, and already had a copy of _Il Progresso_ in which he had hidden the money between the sheets.
“Mr. Kennedy,” he said, “I am going to meet them to-night. They may kill me. See, I have provided myself with a pistol–I shall fight, too, if necessary for my little Adelina. But if it is only money they want, they shall have it.”
“One thing I want to say,” began Kennedy.
“No, no, no!” cried the tenor. “I will go–you shall not stop me.”
“I don’t wish to stop you,” Craig reassured him. “But one thing–do exactly as I tell you, and I swear not a hair of the child’s head will be injured and we “will get the blackmailers, too.”
“How?” eagerly asked Gennaro. “What do you want me to do?”
“All I want you to do is to go to Albano’s at the appointed time. Sit down in the back room. Get into conversation with them, and, above all, Signor, as soon as you get the copy of the _Bolletino_ turn to the third page, pretend not to be able to read the address. Ask the man to read it. Then repeat it after him. Pretend to be overjoyed. Offer to set up wine for the whole crowd. Just a few minutes, that is all I ask, and I will guarantee that you will be the happiest man in New York to-morrow.”
Gennaro’s eyes filled with tears as he grasped Kennedy’s hand. “That is better than having the whole police force back of me,” he said. “I shall never forget, never forget.”
As we went out Kennedy remarked: “You can’t blame them for keeping their troubles to themselves. Here we send a police officer over to Italy to look up the records of some of the worst suspects. He loses his life. Another takes his place. Then after he gets back he is set to work on the mere clerical routine of translating them. One of his associates is reduced in rank. And so what does it come to? Hundreds of records have become useless because the three years within which the criminals could be deported have elapsed with nothing done. Intelligent, isn’t it? I believe it has been established that all but about fifty of seven hundred known Italian suspects are still at large, mostly in this city. And the rest of the Italian population is guarded from them by a squad of police in number scarcely one-thirtieth of the number of known criminals. No, it’s our fault if the Black Hand thrives.”
We had been standing on the corner of Broadway, waiting for a car.
“Now, Walter, don’t forget. Meet me at the Bleecker Street station of the subway at eleven-thirty. I’m off to the university. I have some very important experiments with phosphorescent salts that I want to finish to-day.”
“What has that to do with the case?” I asked mystified.
“Nothing,” replied Craig. “I didn’t say it had. At eleven-thirty, don’t forget. By George, though, that Paoli must be a clever one–think of his knowing about ricin. I only heard of it myself recently. Well, here’s my car. Good-bye.”
Craig swung aboard an Amsterdam Avenue car, leaving me to kill eight nervous hours of my weekly day of rest from the _Star_.
They passed at length, and at precisely the appointed time Kennedy and I met. With suppressed excitement, at least on my part, we walked over to Vincenzo’s. At night this section of the city was indeed a black enigma. The lights in the shops where olive oil, fruit, and other things were sold, were winking out one by one; here and there strains of music floated out of wine-shops, and little groups lingered on corners conversing in animated sentences. We passed Albano’s on the other side of the street, being careful not to look at it too closely, for several men were hanging idly about–pickets, apparently, with some secret code that would instantly have spread far and wide the news of any alarming action.
At the corner we crossed and looked in Vincenzo’s window a moment, casting a furtive glance across the street at the dark empty store where the police must be hiding. Then we went in and casually sauntered back of the partition. Luigi was there already. There were several customers still in the store, however, and therefore we had to sit in silence while Vincenzo quickly finished a prescription and waited on the last one.
At last the doors were locked and the lights lowered, all except those in the windows which were to serve as signals.
“Ten minutes to twelve,” said Kennedy, placing the oblong box on the table. “Gennaro will be going in soon. Let us try this machine now and see if it works. If the wires have been cut since we put them up this morning Gennaro will have to take his chances alone.”
Kennedy reached over and with a light movement of his forefinger touched a switch.
Instantly a babel of voices filled the store, all talking at once, rapidly and loudly. Here and there we could distinguish a snatch of conversation, a word, a phrase, now and then even a whole sentence above the rest. There was a clink of glasses. I could hear the rattle of dice on a bare table, and an oath. A cork popped. Somebody scratched a match.
We sat bewildered, looking at Kennedy for an explanation.
“Imagine that you are sitting at a table in Albano’s back room,” was all he said. “This is what you would be hearing. This is my ‘electric ear’–in other words the dictograph, used, I am told, by the Secret Service of the United States. Wait, in a moment you will hear Gennaro come in. Luigi and Vincenzo, translate what you hear. My knowledge of Italian is pretty rusty.”
“Can they hear us?” whispered Luigi in an awe-struck whisper.
Craig laughed. “No, not yet. But I have only to touch this other switch, and I could produce an effect in that room that would rival the famous writing on Belshazzar’s wall–only it would be a voice from the wall instead of writing.”
“They seem to be waiting for someone,” said Vincenzo. “I heard somebody say: ‘He will be here in a few minutes. Now get out.'”
The babel of voices seemed to calm down as men withdrew from the room. Only one or two were left.
“One of them says the child is all right. She has been left in the back yard,” translated Luigi.
“What yard? Did he say?” asked Kennedy.
“No; they just speak of it as the ‘yard,'” replied Luigi.
“Jameson, go outside in the store to the telephone booth and call up headquarters. Ask them if the automobile is ready, with the men in it.”
I rang up, and after a moment the police central answered that everything was right.
“Then tell central to hold the line clear–we mustn’t lose a moment. Jameson, you stay in the booth. Vincenzo, you pretend to be working around your window, but not in such a way as to attract attention, for they have men watching the street very carefully. What is it, Luigi?”
“Gennaro is coming. I just heard one of them say, ‘Here he comes.'”
Even from the booth I could hear the dictograph repeating the conversation in the dingy little back room of Albano’s, down the street.
“He’s ordering a bottle of red wine,” murmured Luigi, dancing up and down with excitement.
Vincenzo was so nervous that he knocked a bottle down in the window, and I believe that my heart-beats were almost audible over the telephone which I was holding, for the police operator called me down for asking so many times if all was ready.
“There it is–the signal,” cried Craig. “‘A fine opera is “I Pagliacci.”‘ Now listen for the answer.”
A moment elapsed, then, “Not without Gennaro,” came a gruff voice in Italian from the dictograph.
A silence ensued. It was tense.
“Wait, wait,” said a voice which I recognized instantly as Gennaro’s. “I cannot read this. What is this 23-1/2 Prince Street?”
“No, 33-1/2. She has been left in the back yard,” answered the voice.
“Jameson,” called Craig, “tell them to drive straight to 33-1/2 Prince Street. They will find the girl in the back yard quick, before the Black Handers have a chance to go back on their word.”
I fairly shouted my orders to the police headquarters. “They’re off,” came back the answer, and I hung up the, receiver.
“What was that?” Craig was asking of Luigi. “I didn’t catch it. What did they say?”
“That other voice said to Gennaro, ‘Sit down while I count this.'”
“Sh! he’s talking again.”
“If it is a penny less than ten thousand or I find a mark on the bills I’ll call to Enrico, and your daughter will he spirited away again,” translated Luigi.
“Now, Gennaro is talking,” said Craig. “Good–he is gaining time. He is a trump. I can distinguish that all right. He’s asking the gruff-voiced fellow if he will have another bottle of wine. He says he will. Good. They must be at Prince Street now–we’ll give them a few minutes more, not too much, for word will be back to Albano’s like wildfire, and they will get Gennaro after all. Ah, they are drinking again. What was that, Luigi? The money is all right, he says? Now, Vincenzo, out with the lights!”
A door banged open across the street, and four huge dark figures darted out in the direction of Albano’s.
With his finger Kennedy pulled down the other switch and shouted: “Gennaro, this is Kennedy! To the street! _Polizia! Polizia!_”
A scuffle and a cry of surprise followed. A second voice, apparently from the bar, shouted, “Out with the lights, out with the lights!”
Bang! went a pistol, and another.
The dictograph, which had been all sound a moment before, was as mute as a cigar-box.
“What’s the matter?” I asked Kennedy, as he rushed past me.
“They have shot out the lights. My receiving instrument is destroyed. Come on, Jameson; Vincenzo, stay back, if you don’t want to appear in this.”
A short figure rushed by me, faster even than I could go. It was the faithful Luigi.
In front of Albano’s an exciting fight was going on. Shots were being fired wildly in the darkness, and heads were popping out of tenement windows on all sides. As Kennedy and I flung ourselves into the crowd we caught a glimpse of Gennaro, with blood streaming from a cut on his shoulder, struggling with a policeman while Luigi vainly was trying to interpose himself between them. A man, held by another policeman, was urging the first officer on. “That’s the man,” he was crying. “That’s the kidnapper. I caught him.”
In a moment Kennedy was behind him. “Paoli, you lie. You are the kidnapper. Seize him–he has the money on him. That other is Gennaro himself.”
The policeman released the tenor, and both of them seized Paoli. The others were beating at the door, which was being frantically barricaded inside.
Just then a taxicab came swinging up the street. Three men jumped out and added their strength to those who were battering down Albano’s barricade.
Gennaro, with a cry, leaped into the taxicab. Over his shoulder I could see a tangled mass of dark brown curls, and a childish voice lisped: “Why didn’t you come for me, papa? The bad man told me if I waited in the yard you would come for me. But if I cried he said he would shoot me. And I waited, and waited–”
“There, there, ‘Lina; papa’s going to take you straight home to mother.”
A crash followed as the door yielded, and the famous Paoli gang was in the hands of the law.
The Steel Door
BY ARTHUR B. REEVE
It was what, in college, we used to call “good football weather”–a crisp autumn afternoon that sent the blood tingling through brain and muscle. Kennedy and I were enjoying a stroll on the drive, dividing our attention between the glowing red sunset across the Hudson and the string of homeward-bound automobiles on the broad parkway. Suddenly a huge black touring-car marked with big letters, “P.D.N.Y.,” shot past.
“Joy-riding again in one of the city’s cars,” I remarked. “I thought the last Police Department shake-up had put a stop to that.”
“Perhaps it has,” returned Kennedy. “Did you see who was in the car?”
“No, but I see it has turned and is coming back.”
“It was Inspector–I mean, First Deputy O’Connor. I thought he recognized us as he whizzed along, and I guess he did, too. Ah, congratulations, O’Connor! I haven’t had a chance to tell you before how pleased I was to learn you had been appointed first deputy. It ought to have been commissioner, though,” added Kennedy.
“Congratulations nothing,” rejoined O’Connor. “Just another new deal–election coming on, mayor must make a show of getting some reform done, and all that sort of thing. So he began with the Police Department, and here I am, first deputy. But, say, Kennedy,” he added, dropping his voice, “I’ve a little job on my mind that I’d like to pull off in about as spectacular a fashion as I–as you know how. I want to make good, conspicuously good, at the start–understand? Maybe I’ll be ‘broke’ for it and sent to pounding the pavements of Dismissalville, but I don’t care, I’ll take a chance. On the level, Kennedy, it’s a big thing, and it ought to be done. Will you help me put it across?”
“What is it?” asked Kennedy with a twinkle in his eye at O’Connor’s estimate of the security of his tenure of office.
O’Connor drew us away from the automobile toward the stone parapet overlooking the railroad and river far below, and out of earshot of the department chauffeur. “I want to pull off a successful raid on the Vesper Club,” he whispered earnestly, scanning our faces.
“Good heavens, man,” I ejaculated, “don’t you know that Senator Danfield is interested in–”
“Jameson,” interrupted O’Connor reproachfully, “I said ‘on the level’ a few moments ago, and I meant it. Senator Danfield be–well, anyhow, if I don’t do it the district attorney will, with the aid of the Dowling law, and I am going to beat him to it, that’s all. There’s too much money being lost at the Vesper Club, anyhow. It won’t hurt Danfield to be taught a lesson not to run such a phony game. I may like to put up a quiet bet myself on the ponies now and then–I won’t say I don’t, but this thing of Danfield’s has got beyond all reason. It’s the crookedest gambling joint in the city, at least judging by the stories they tell of losses there. And so beastly aristocratic, too. Read that.”
O’Connor shoved a letter into Kennedy’s hand, a dainty perfumed and monogramed little missive addressed in a feminine hand. It was such a letter as comes by the thousand to the police in the course of a year, though seldom from ladies of the smart set:
* * * * *
Dear Sir: I notice in the newspapers this morning that you have just been appointed first deputy commissioner of police and that you have been ordered to suppress gambling in New York. For the love that you must still bear toward your own mother, listen to the story of a mother worn with anxiety for her only son, and if there is any justice or righteousness in this great city close up a gambling hell that is sending to ruin scores of our finest young men. No doubt you know or have heard of my family–the DeLongs are not unknown in Hew York. Perhaps you have also heard of the losses of my son Percival at the Vesper Club. They are fast becoming the common talk of our set. I am not rich, Mr. Commissioner, in spite of our social position, but I am human, as human as a mother in any station of life, and oh, if there is any way, close up that gilded society resort that is dissipating our small fortune, ruining an only son, and slowly bringing to the grave a gray-haired widow, as worthy of protection as any mother of the poor whose plea has closed up a little poolroom or low policy shop.
Sincerely, (Mrs.) JULIA M. DELONG.
P.S.–Please keep this confidential–at least from my son Percival.
J.M. DEL.
* * * * *
“Well,” said Kennedy, as he handed back the letter, “O’Connor, if you do it, I’ll take back all the hard things I’ve ever said about the police system. Young DeLong was in one of my classes at the university, until he was expelled for that last mad prank of his. There’s more to that boy than most people think, but he’s the wildest scion of wealth I have ever come in contact with. How are you going to pull off your raid–is it to be down through the skylight or up from the cellar?”
“Kennedy,” replied O’Connor in the same reproachful tone with which he had addressed me, “talk sense. I’m in earnest. You know the Vesper Club is barred and barricaded like the National City Bank. It isn’t one of those common gambling joints which depend for protection on what we call ‘ice-box doors.’ It’s proof against all the old methods. Axes and sledge-hammers would make no impression there.”
“Your predecessor had some success at opening doors with a hydraulic jack, I believe, in some very difficult raids,” put in Kennedy.
“A hydraulic jack wouldn’t do for the Vesper Club, I’m afraid,” remarked O’Connor wearily. “Why, sir, that place has been proved bomb-proof–bomb-proof, sir. You remember recently the so-called ‘gamblers’ war’ in which some rivals exploded a bomb on the steps? It did more damage to the house next door than to the club. However, I can get past the outer door, I think, even if it is strong. But inside–you must have heard of it–is the famous steel door, three inches thick, made of armor-plate. It’s no use to try it at all unless we can pass that door with reasonable quickness. All the evidence we shall get will be of an innocent social club-room down-stairs. The gambling is all on the second floor, beyond this door, in a room without a window in it. Surely you’ve heard of that famous gambling-room, with its perfect system of artificial ventilation and electric lighting that makes it rival noonday at midnight. And don’t tell me I’ve got to get on the other side of the door by strategy, either. It is strategy-proof. The system of lookouts is perfect. No, force is necessary, but it must not be destructive of life or property–or, by heaven, I’d drive up there and riddle the place with a fourteen-inch gun,” exclaimed O’Connor.
“H’m!” mused Kennedy as he flicked the ashes off his cigar and meditatively watched a passing freight-train on the railroad below us. “There goes a car loaded with tons and tons of scrap-iron. You want me to scrap that three-inch steel door, do you?”
“Kennedy, I’ll buy that particular scrap from you at–almost its weight in gold. The fact is, I have a secret fund at my disposal such as former commissioners have asked for in vain. I can afford to pay you well, as well as any private client, and I hear you have had some good fees lately. Only deliver the goods.”
“No,” answered Kennedy, rather piqued, “it isn’t money that I am after. I merely wanted to be sure that you are in earnest. I can get you past that door as if it were made of green baize.”
It was O’Connor’s turn to look incredulous, but as Kennedy apparently meant exactly what he said, he simply asked, “And will you?”
“I will do it to-night if you say so,” replied Kennedy quietly. “Are you ready?”
For answer O’Connor simply grasped Craig’s hand, as if to seal the compact.
“All right, then,” continued Kennedy. “Send a furniture-van, one of those closed vans that the storage warehouses use, up to my laboratory any time before seven o’clock. How many men will you need in the raid? Twelve? Will a van hold that many comfortably? I’ll want to put some apparatus in it, but that won’t take much room.”
“Why, yes, I think so,” answered O’Connor. “I’ll get a well-padded van so that they won’t be badly jolted by the ride down-town. By George! Kennedy, I see you know more of that side of police strategy than I gave you credit for.”
“Then have the men drop into my laboratory singly about the same time. You can arrange that so that it will not look suspicious, so far up-town. It will be dark, anyhow. Perhaps, O’Connor, you can make up as the driver yourself–anyhow, get one you can trust absolutely. Then have the van down near the corner of Broadway below the club, driving slowly along about the time the theatre crowd is out. Leave the rest to me. I will give you or the driver orders when the time comes.”
As O’Connor thanked Craig, he remarked without a shade of insincerity, “Kennedy, talk about being commissioner, you ought to be commissioner.”
“Wait till I deliver the goods,” answered Craig simply. “I may fall down and bring you nothing but a lawsuit for damages for unlawful entry or unjust persecution, or whatever they call it.”
“I’ll take a chance at that,” called back O’Connor as he jumped into his car and directed, “Headquarters, quick.”
As the car disappeared, Kennedy filled his lungs with air as if reluctant to leave the drive. “Our constitutional,” he remarked, “is abruptly at an end, Walter.”
Then he laughed, as he looked about him.
“What a place in which to plot a raid on Danfield’s Vesper Club! Why, the nurse-maids have hardly got the children all in for supper and bed. It’s incongruous. Well, I must go over to the laboratory and get some things ready to put in that van with the men. Meet me about half-past seven, Walter, up in the room, all togged up. We’ll dine at the Cafe Riviera to-night in style. And, by the way, you’re quite a man about town–you must know someone who can introduce us into the Vesper Club.”
“But, Craig,” I demurred, “if there is any rough work as a result, it might queer me with them. They might object to being used–”
“Oh, that will be all right. I just want to look the place over and lose a few chips in a good cause. No, it won’t queer any of your _Star_ connections. We’ll be on the outside when the time comes for anything to happen. In fact I shouldn’t wonder if your story would make you all the more solid with the sports. I take all the responsibility; you can have the glory. You know they like to hear the inside gossip of such things, after the event. Try it. Remember, at seven-thirty. We’ll be a little late at dinner, but never mind; it will be early enough for the club.”
Left to my own devices I determined to do a little detective work on my own account, and not only did I succeed in finding an acquaintance who agreed to introduce us at the Vesper Club that night about nine o’clock, but I also learned that Percival DeLong was certain to be there that night, too. I was necessarily vague about Kennedy, for fear my friend might have heard of some of his exploits, but fortunately he did not prove inquisitive.
I hurried back to our apartment and was in the process of transforming myself into a full-fledged boulevardier, when Kennedy arrived in an extremely cheerful frame of mind. So far, his preparations had progressed very favorably, I guessed, and I was quite elated when he complimented me on what I had accomplished in the meantime.
“Pretty tough for the fellows who are condemned to ride around in that van for four mortal hours, though,” he said as he hurried into his evening clothes, “but they won’t be riding all the time. The driver will make frequent stops.”
I was so busy that I paid little attention to him until he had nearly completed his toilet. I gave a gasp.
“Why, whatever are you doing?” I exclaimed as I glanced into his room.
There stood Kennedy arrayed in all the glory of a sharp-pointed moustache and a goatee. He had put on evening clothes of decidedly Parisian cut, clothes which he had used abroad and had brought back with him, but which I had never known him to wear since he came back. On a chair reposed a chimney-pot hat that would have been pronounced faultless on the “continong,” but was unknown, except among impresarios, on Broadway.
Kennedy shrugged his shoulders–he even had the shrug.
“Figure to yourself, monsieur,” he said. “Ze great Kennedy, ze detectif Americain–to put it tersely in our own vernacular, wouldn’t it be a fool thing for me to appear at the Vesper Club where I should surely be recognized by someone if I went in my ordinary clothes and features? _Un faux pas_, at the start? _Jamais!_”
There was nothing to do but agree, and I was glad that I had been discreetly reticent about my companion in talking with the friend who was to gain us entrance to the Avernus beyond the steel door.
We met my friend at the Riviera and dined sumptuously. Fortunately he seemed decidedly impressed with my friend Monsieur Kay–I could do no better on the spur of the moment than take Kennedy’s initial, which seemed to serve. We progressed amicably from oysters and soup down to coffee, cigars, and liqueurs, and I succeeded in swallowing Kennedy’s tales of Monte Carlo and Ostend and Ascot without even a smile. He must have heard them somewhere, and treasured them up for just such an occasion, but he told them in a manner that was verisimilitude itself, using perfect English with just the trace of an accent at the right places.
At last it was time to saunter around to the Vesper Club without seeming to be too indecently early. The theatres were not yet out, but my friend said play was just beginning at the club and would soon be in full swing.
I had a keen sense of wickedness as we mounted the steps in the yellow flare of the flaming arc-light on the Broadway corner not far below us. A heavy, grated door swung open at the practised signal of my friend, and an obsequious negro servant stood bowing and pronouncing his name in the sombre mahogany portal beyond, with its green marble pillars and handsome decorations. A short parley followed, after which we entered, my friend having apparently satisfied someone that we were all right.
We did not stop to examine the first floor, which doubtless was innocent enough, but turned quickly up a flight of steps. At the foot of the broad staircase Kennedy paused to examine some rich carvings, and I felt him nudge me. I turned. It was an enclosed staircase, with walls that looked to be of re-enforced concrete. Swung back on hinges concealed like those of a modern burglar-proof safe was the famous steel door.
We did not wish to appear to be too interested, yet a certain amount of curiosity was only proper.
My friend paused on the steps, turned, and came back.
“You’re perfectly safe,” he smiled, tapping the door with his cane with a sort of affectionate respect. “It would take the police ages to get past that barrier, which would be swung shut and bolted the moment the lookout gave the alarm. But there has never been any trouble. The police know that it is so far, no farther. Besides,” he added with a wink to me, “you know, Senator Danfield wouldn’t like this pretty little door even scratched. Come up, I think I hear DeLong’s voice up-stairs. You’ve heard of him, monsieur? It’s said his luck has changed. I’m anxious to find out.”
Quickly he led the way up the handsome staircase and into a large, lofty, richly furnished room. Everywhere there were thick, heavy carpets on the floors, into which your feet sank with an air of satisfying luxury.
The room into which we entered was indeed absolutely windowless. It was a room built within the original room of the old house. Thus the windows overlooking the street from the second floor in reality bore no relation to it. For light it depended on a complete oval of lights overhead so arranged as to be themselves invisible, but shining through richly stained glass and conveying the illusion of a slightly clouded noon-day. The absence of windows was made up for, as I learned later, by a ventilating device so perfect that, although everyone was smoking, a most fastidious person could scarcely have been offended by the odor of tobacco.
Of course I did not notice all this at first. What I did notice, however, was a faro-layout and a hazard-board, but as no one was playing at either, my eye quickly traveled to a roulette-table which stretched along the middle of the room. Some ten or a dozen men in evening clothes were gathered watching with intent faces the spinning wheel. There was no money on the table, nothing but piles of chips of various denominations. Another thing that surprised me as I looked was that the tense look on the faces of the players was anything but the feverish, haggard gaze I had expected. In fact, they were sleek, well-fed, typical prosperous New-Yorkers rather inclined to the noticeable in dress and carrying their avoirdupois as if life was an easy game with them. Most of them evidently belonged to the financial and society classes. There were no tragedies; the tragedies were elsewhere–in their offices, homes, in the courts, anywhere, but not here at the club. Here all was life, light, and laughter.
For the benefit of those not acquainted with the roulette-wheel–and I may as well confess that most of my own knowledge was gained in that one crowded evening–I may say that it consists, briefly, of a wooden disc very nicely balanced and turning in the center of a cavity set into a table like a circular wash-basin, with an outer rim turned slightly inward. The “croupier” revolves the wheel to the right. With a quick motion of his middle finger he flicks a marble, usually of ivory, to the left. At the Vesper Club, always up-to-date, the ball was of platinum, not of ivory. The disc with its sloping sides is provided with a number of brass rods, some perpendicular, some horizontal. As the ball and the wheel lose momentum the ball strikes against the rods and finally is deflected into one of the many little pockets or stalls facing the rim of the wheel.
There are thirty-eight of these pockets; two are marked “0” and “00,” the other numbered from one to thirty-six in an irregular and confusing order and painted alternately red and black. At each end of the table are thirty-six large squares correspondingly numbered and colored. The “0” and “00” are of a neutral color. Whenever the ball falls in the “0” or “00” the bank takes the stakes, or sweeps the board. The Monte Carlo wheel has only one “0,” while the typical American has two, and the Chinese has four.
To one like myself who had read of the Continental gambling-houses with the clink of gold pieces on the table, and the croupier with his wooden rake noisily raking in the winnings of the bank, the comparative silence of the American game comes as a surprise.
As we advanced, we heard only the rattle of the ball, the click of the chips, and the monotonous tone of the spinner: “Twenty-three, black. Eight, red. Seventeen, black.” It was almost like the boys in a broker’s office calling off the quotations of the ticker and marking them up on the board.
Leaning forward, almost oblivious to the rest, was Percival DeLong, a tall, lithe, handsome young man, whose boyish face ill comported with the marks of dissipation clearly outlined on it. Such a boy, it flashed across my mind, ought to be studying the possible plays of football of an evening in the field-house after his dinner at the training-table, rather than the possible gyrations of the little platinum ball on the wheel.
“Curse the luck!” he exclaimed, as “17” appeared again.
A Hebrew banker staked a pile of chips on the “17” to come up a third time. A murmur of applause at his nerve ran through the circle. DeLong hesitated, as one who thought, “Seventeen has come out twice–the odds against its coming again are too great, even though the winnings would be fabulous, for a good stake.” He placed his next bet on another number.
“He’s playing Lord Rosslyn’s system, to-night,” whispered my friend.
The wheel spun, the ball rolled, and the croupier called again, “Seventeen, black.” A tremor of excitement ran through the crowd. It was almost unprecedented.
DeLong, with a stiffed oath, leaned back and scanned the faces about the table.
“And ’17’ has precisely the same chance of turning up in the next spin as if it had not already had a run of three,” said a voice at my elbow.
It was Kennedy. The roulette-table needs no introduction when curious sequences are afoot. All are friends.
“That’s the theory of Sir Hiram Maxim,” commented my friend, as he excused himself reluctantly for another appointment. “But no true gambler will believe it, monsieur, or at least act on it.”
All eyes were turned on Kennedy, who made a gesture of polite deprecation, as if the remark of my friend were true, but–he nonchalantly placed his chips on the “17.”
“The odds against ’17’ appearing four consecutive times are some millions,” he went on, “and yet, having appeared three times, it is just as likely to appear again as before. It is the usual practice to avoid a number that has had a run, on the theory that some other number is more likely to come up than it is. That would be the case if it were drawing balls from a bag full of red and black balls–the more red ones drawn the smaller the chance of drawing another red one. But if the balls are put back in the bag after being drawn the chances of drawing a red one after three have been drawn are exactly the same as ever. If we toss a cent and heads appear twelve times, that does not have the slightest effect on the thirteenth toss–there is still an even chance that it, too, will be heads. So if ’17’ had come up five times to-night, it would be just as likely to come the sixth as if the previous five had not occurred, and that despite the fact that before it had appeared at all odds against a run of the same number six times in succession are about two billion, four hundred and ninety-six million, and some thousands. Most systems are based on the old persistent belief that occurrences of chance are affected in some way by occurrences immediately preceding, but disconnected physically. If we’ve had a run of black for twenty times, system says play the red for the twenty-first. But black is just as likely to turn up the twenty-first as if it were the first play of all. The confusion arises because a run of twenty on the black should happen once in one million, forty-eight thousand, five hundred and seventy-six coups. It would take ten years to make that many coups, and the run of twenty might occur once or any number of times in it. It is only when one deals with infinitely large numbers of coups that one can count on infinitely small variations in the mathematical results. This game does not go on for infinity–therefore anything, everything, may happen. Systems are based on the infinite; we play in the finite.”
“You talk like a professor I had at the university,” ejaculated DeLong contemptuously as Craig finished his disquisition on the practical fallibility of theoretically infallible systems. Again DeLong carefully avoided the “17,” as well as the black.
The wheel spun again; the ball rolled. The knot of spectators around the table watched with bated breath.
Seventeen won!
As Kennedy piled up his winnings superciliously, without even the appearance of triumph, a man behind me whispered, “A foreign nobleman with a system–watch him.”
“_Non_, monsieur,” said Kennedy quickly, having overheard the remark, “no system, sir. There is only one system of which I know.”
“What?” asked DeLong eagerly.
Kennedy staked a large sum on the red to win. The black came up, and he lost. He doubled the stake and played again, and again lost. With amazing calmness Craig kept right on doubling.
“The martingale,” I heard the men whisper behind me. “In other words, double or quit.”
Kennedy was now in for some hundreds, a sum that was sufficiently large for him, but he doubled again, still cheerfully playing the red, and the red won. As he gathered up his chips he rose.
“That’s the only system,” he said simply.
“But, go on, go on,” came the chorus from about the table.
“No,” said Kennedy quietly, “that is part of the system, too–to quit when you have won back your stakes and a little more.”
“Huh!” exclaimed DeLong in disgust. “Suppose you were in for some thousands–you wouldn’t quit. If you had real sporting blood you wouldn’t quit, anyhow!”
Kennedy calmly passed over the open insult, letting it be understood that he ignored this beardless youth.
“There is no way you can beat the game in the long run if you keep at it,” he answered simply. “It is mathematically impossible. Consider. We are Croesuses–we hire players to stake money for us on every possible number at every coup. How do we come out? If there are no ‘0’ or ’00,’ we come out after each coup precisely where we started–we are paying our own money back and forth among ourselves; we have neither more nor less. But with the ‘0’ and ’00’ the bank sweeps the board every so often. It is only a question of time when, after paying our money back and forth among ourselves, it has all filtered through the ‘O’ and ‘OO’ into the bank. It is not a game of chance for the bank–ah, it is exact, mathematical–_c’est une question d’arithmetique seulement, n’est-ce pas, messieurs?_”
“Perhaps,” admitted DeLong, “but it doesn’t explain why I am losing to-night while everyone else is winning.”
“We are not winning,” persisted Craig. “After I have had a bite to eat I will demonstrate how to lose–by keeping on playing.” He led the way to the cafe.
DeLong was too intent on the game to leave, even for refreshments. Now and then I saw him beckon to an attendant, who brought him a stiff drink of whiskey. For a moment his play seemed a little better, then he would drop back into his hopeless losing. For some reason or other his “system” failed absolutely.
“You see, he is hopeless,” mused Kennedy over our light repast. “And yet of all gambling games roulette offers the player the best odds, far better than horse-racing, for instance. Our method has usually been to outlaw roulette and permit horse-racing; in other words, suppress the more favorable and permit the less favorable. However, we’re doing better now; we’re suppressing both. Of course what I say applies only to roulette when it is honestly played–DeLong would lose anyhow, I fear.”
I started at Kennedy’s tone and whispered hastily: “What do you mean? Do you think the wheel is crooked?”
“I haven’t a doubt of it,” he replied in an undertone. “That run of ’17’ _might_ happen–yes. But it is improbable. They let me win because I was a new player–new players always win at first. It is proverbial, but the man who is running this game has made it look like a platitude. To satisfy myself on that point I am going to play again–until I have lost my winnings and am just square with the game. When I reach the point that I am convinced that some crooked work is going on I am going to try a little experiment, Walter. I want you to stand close to me so that no one can see what I am doing. Do just as I will indicate to you.”
The gambling-room was now fast filling up with the first of the theatre crowd. DeLong’s table was the centre of attraction, owing to the high play. A group of young men of his set were commiserating with him on his luck and discussing it with the finished air of roues of double their ages. He was doggedly following his system.
Kennedy and I approached.
“Ah, here is the philosophical stranger again,” DeLong exclaimed, catching sight of Kennedy. “Perhaps he can enlighten us on how to win at roulette by playing his own system.”
“_Au contraire_, monsieur, let me demonstrate how to lose,” answered Craig with a smile that showed a row of faultless teeth beneath his black moustache, decidedly foreign.
Kennedy played and lost, and lost again; then he won, but in the main he lost. After one particularly large loss I felt his arm on mine, drawing me closely to him. DeLong had taken a sort of grim pleasure in the fact that Kennedy, too, was losing. I found that Craig had paused in his play at a moment when DeLong had staked a large sum that a number below “18” would turn up–for five plays the numbers had been between “18” and “36.” Curious to see what Craig was doing, I looked cautiously down between us. All eyes were fixed on the wheel. Kennedy was holding an ordinary compass in the crooked-up palm of his hand. The needle pointed at me, as I happened to be standing north of it.
The wheel spun. Suddenly the needle swung around to a point between the north and south poles, quivered a moment, and came to rest in that position. Then it swung back to the north.
It was some seconds before I realized the significance of it. It had pointed at the table–and DeLong had lost again. There was some electric attachment at work.
Kennedy and I exchanged glances, and he shoved the compass into my hand quickly. “You watch it, Walter, while I play,” he whispered.
Carefully concealing it, as he had done, yet holding it as close to the table as I dared I tried to follow two things at once without betraying myself. As near as I could make out, something happened at every play. I would not go so far as to assert that whenever the large stakes were on a certain number the needle pointed to the opposite side of the wheel, for it was impossible to be at all accurate about it. Once I noticed the needle did not move at all, and he won. But on the next play he staked what I knew must be the remainder of his winnings on what seemed a very good chance. Even before the wheel was revolved and the ball set rolling, the needle swung about, and when the platinum ball came to rest Kennedy rose from the table, a loser.
“By George, though,” exclaimed DeLong, grasping his hand. “I take it all back. You are a good loser, sir. I wish I could take it as well as you do. But then, I’m in too deeply. There are too many ‘markers’ with the house up against me.”
Senator Danfield had just come in to see how things were going. He was a sleek, fat man, and it was amazing to see with what deference his victims treated him. He affected not to have heard what DeLong said, but I could imagine what he was thinking, for I had heard that he had scant sympathy with anyone after he “went broke”–another evidence of the camaraderie and good-fellowship that surrounded the game.
Kennedy’s next remark surprised me. “Oh, your luck will change, D.L.,”–everyone referred to him as “D.L.,” for gambling-houses have an aversion for real names and greatly prefer initials–“your luck will change presently. Keep right on with your system. It’s the best you can do to-night, short of quitting.”
“I’ll never quit.” replied the young man under his breath.
Meanwhile Kennedy and I paused on the way out to compare notes. My report of the behavior of the compass only confirmed him in his opinion.
As we turned to the stairs we took in a full view of the room.
A faro-layout was purchasing Senator Danfield a new touring-car every hour at the expense of the players. Another group was gathered about the hazard-board, deriving evident excitement, though I am sure none could have given an intelligent account of the chances they were taking. Two roulette-tables were now going full blast, the larger crowd still about DeLong’s. Snatches of conversation came to us now and then, and I caught one sentence, “DeLong’s in for over a hundred thousand now on the week’s play, I understand; poor boy–that about cleans him up.”
“The tragedy of it, Craig,” I whispered, but he did not hear.
With his hat tilted at a rakish angle and his opera-coat over his arm he sauntered over for a last look.
“Any luck yet?” he asked carelessly.
“The devil–no,” returned the boy.
“Do you know what my advice to you is, the advice of a man who has seen high play everywhere from Monte Carlo to Shanghai?”
“What?”
“Play until your luck changes if it takes until to-morrow.”
A supercilious smile crossed Senator Danfield’s fat face.
“I intend to,” and the haggard young face turned again to the table and forgot us.
“For Heaven’s sake, Kennedy,” I gasped as we went down the stairway, “what do you mean by giving him such advice–you?”
“Not so loud, Walter. He’d have done it anyhow, I suppose, but I want him to keep at it. This night means life or death to Percival DeLong and his mother, too. Come on, let’s get out of this.”
We passed the formidable steel door and gained the street, jostled by the late-comers who had left the after-theatre restaurants for a few moments of play at the famous club that so long had defied the police.
Almost gaily Kennedy swung along toward Broadway. At the corner he hesitated, glanced up and down, caught sight of the furniture-van in the middle of the next block. The driver was tugging at the harness of the horses, apparently fixing it. We walked along and stopped beside it.
“Drive around in front of the Vesper Club slowly,” said Kennedy as the driver at last looked up.
The van lumbered ahead, and we followed it casually. Around the corner it turned. We turned also. My heart was going like a sledge-hammer as the critical moment approached. My head was in a whirl. What would that gay throng back of those darkened windows down the street think if they knew what was being prepared for them?
On, like the Trojan horse, the van lumbered. A man went into the Vesper Club, and I saw the negro at the door eye the oncoming van suspiciously. The door banged shut.
The next thing I knew, Kennedy had ripped off his disguise, had flung himself up behind the van, and had swung the doors open. A dozen men with axes and sledge-hammers swarmed out and up the steps of the club.
“Call the reserves, O’Connor,” cried Kennedy. “Watch the roof and the back yard.”
The driver of the van hastened to send in the call.
The sharp raps of the hammers and the axes sounded on the thick brass-bound oak of the out-side door in quick succession. There was a scurry of feet inside, and we could hear a grating noise and a terrific jar as the inner, steel door shut.
“A raid! A raid on the Vesper Club!” shouted a belated passer-by. The crowd swarmed around from Broadway, as if it were noon instead of midnight.
Banging and ripping and tearing, the outer door was slowly forced. As it crashed in, the quick gongs of several police patrols sounded. The reserves had been called out at the proper moment, too late for them to “tip off” the club that there was going to be a raid, as frequently occurs.
Disregarding the melee behind me, I leaped through the wreckage with the other raiders. The steel door barred all further progress with its cold blue impassibility. How were we to surmount this last and most formidable barrier?
I turned in time to see Kennedy and O’Connor hurrying up the steps with a huge tank studded with bolts like a boiler, while two other men carried a second tank.
“There,” ordered Craig, “set the oxygen there,” as he placed his own tank on the opposite side.
Out of the tanks stout tubes led, with stop-cocks and gages at the top. From a case under his arm Kennedy produced a curious arrangement like a huge hook, with a curved neck and a sharp beak. Really it consisted of two metal tubes which ran into a sort of cylinder, or mixing chamber, above the nozzle, while parallel to them ran a third separate tube with a second nozzle of its own. Quickly he joined the ends of the tubes from the tanks to the metal hook, the oxygen-tank being joined to two of the tubes of the hook, and the second tank being joined to the other. With a match he touched the nozzle gingerly. Instantly a hissing, spitting noise followed, and an intense blinding needle of flame.
“Now for the oxy-acetylene blowpipe,” cried Kennedy as he advanced toward the steel door. “We’ll make short work of this.”
Almost as he said it, the steel beneath the blowpipe became incandescent.
Just to test it, he cut off the head of a three-quarter-inch steel rivet–taking about a quarter of a minute to do it. It was evident, though, that that would not weaken the door appreciably, even if the rivets were all driven through. Still they gave a starting-point for the flame of the high-pressure acetylene torch.
It was a brilliant sight. The terrific heat from the first nozzle caused the metal to glow under the torch as if in an open-hearth furnace. From the second nozzle issued a stream of oxygen under which the hot metal of the door was completely consumed. The force of the blast as the compressed oxygen and acetylene were expelled carried a fine spray and the disintegrated metal visibly before it. And yet it was not a big hole that it made–scarcely an eighth of an inch wide, but clear and sharp as if a buzz saw were eating its way through a three-inch plank of white pine. With tense muscles Kennedy held this terrific engine of destruction and moved it as easily as if it had been a mere pencil of light. He was easily the calmest of us all as we crowded about him at a respectful distance.
“Acetylene, as you may know,” he hastily explained, never pausing for a moment in his work, “is composed of carbon and hydrogen. As it burns at the end of the nozzle it is broken into carbon and hydrogen–the carbon gives the high temperature, and the hydrogen forms a cone that protects the end of the blowpipe from being itself burnt up.”
“But isn’t it dangerous?” I asked, amazed at the skill with which he handled the blowpipe.
“Not particularly–when you know how to do it. In that tank is a porous asbestos packing saturated with acetone, under pressure. Thus I can carry acetylene safely, for it is dissolved, and the possibility of explosion is minimized. This mixing chamber by which I am holding the torch, where the oxygen and acetylene mix, is also designed in such a way as to prevent a flash-back. The best thing about this style of blowpipe is the ease with which it can be transported and the curious uses–like the present–to which it can be put.”
He paused a moment to test the door. All was silence on the other side. The door itself was as firm as ever.
“Huh!” exclaimed one of the detectives behind me, “these new-fangled things ain’t all they’re cracked up to be. Now if I was runnin’ this show, I’d dynamite that door to kingdom come.”
“And wreck the house and kill a few people,” I returned, hotly resenting the criticism of Kennedy. Kennedy affected not to hear.
“When I shut off the oxygen in this second jet,” he resumed as if nothing had been said, “you see the torch merely heats the steel. I can get a heat of approximately sixty-three hundred degrees Fahrenheit, and the flame will exert a pressure of fifty pounds to the square inch.”
“Wonderful!” exclaimed O’Connor, who had not heard the remark of his subordinate and was watching with undisguised admiration. “Kennedy, how did you ever think of such a thing?”
“Why, it’s used for welding, you know,” answered Craig as he continued to work calmly in the growing excitement. “I first saw it in actual use in mending a cracked cylinder in an automobile. The cylinder was repaired without being taken out at all. I’ve seen it weld new teeth and build up old worn teeth on gearing, as good as new.”
He paused to let us see the terrifically heated metal under the flame.
“You remember when we were talking on the drive about the raid, O’Connor? A car-load of scrap-iron went by on the railroad below us. They use this blowpipe to cut it up, frequently. That’s what gave me the idea. See. I turn on the oxygen now in this second nozzle. The blowpipe is no longer an instrument for joining metals together, but for cutting them asunder. The steel burns just as you, perhaps, have seen a watch-spring burn in a jar of oxygen. Steel, hard or soft, tempered, annealed, chrome, or Harveyized, it all burns just as fast and just as easily. And it’s cheap too. This raid may cost a couple of dollars, as far as the blowpipe is concerned–quite a difference from the thousands of dollars’ loss that would follow an attempt to blow the door in.”
The last remark was directed quietly at the doubting detective. He had nothing to say. We stood in awe-struck amazement as the torch slowly, inexorably, traced a thin line along the edge of the door.
Minute after minute sped by, as the line burned by the blowpipe cut straight from top to bottom. It seemed hours to me. Was Kennedy going to slit the whole door and let it fall in with a crash?
No, I could see that even in his cursory examination of the door he had gained a pretty good knowledge of the location of the bolts imbedded in the steel. One after another he was cutting clear through and severing them, as if with a super-human knife.
What was going on on the other side of the door, I wondered. I could scarcely imagine the consternation of the gamblers caught in their own trap.
With a quick motion Kennedy turned off the acetylene and oxygen. The last bolt had been severed. A gentle push of the hand, and he swung the once impregnable door on its delicately poised hinges as easily as if he had merely said, “Open Sesame.” The robbers’ cave yawned before us.
We made a rush up the stairs. Kennedy was first, O’Connor next, and myself scarcely a step behind, with the rest of O’Connor’s men at our heels.
I think we were all prepared for some sort of gun-play, for the crooks were desperate characters, and I myself was surprised to encounter nothing but physical force, which was quickly overcome.
In the now disordered richness of the rooms, waving his “John Doe” warrant in one hand and his pistol in the other, O’Connor shouted: “You’re all under arrest, gentlemen. If you resist further it will go hard with you.”
Crowded now in one end of the room in speechless amazement was the late gay party of gamblers, including Senator Danfield himself. They had reckoned on toying with any chance but this. The pale white face of DeLong among them was like a spectre, as he stood staring blankly about and still insanely twisting the roulette wheel before him.
Kennedy advanced toward the table with an ax which he had seized from one of our men. A well-directed blow shattered the mechanism of the delicate wheel.
“DeLong,” he said, “I’m not going to talk to you like your old professor at the university, nor like your recent friend, the Frenchman with a system. This is what you have been up against, my boy. Look.”
His forefinger indicated an ingenious, but now tangled and twisted, series of minute wires and electro-magnets in the broken wheel before us. Delicate brushes led the current into the wheel. With another blow of his axe, Craig disclosed wires running down through the leg of the table to the floor and under the carpet to buttons operated by the man who ran the game.
“Wh-what does it mean?” asked DeLong blankly.
“It means that you had little enough chance to win at a straight game of roulette. But the wheel is very rarely straight, even with all the odds in favor of the bank, as they are. This game was electrically controlled. Others are mechanically controlled by what is sometimes called the ‘mule’s ear,’ and other devices. You _can’t_ win. There wires and magnets can be made to attract the little ball into any pocket the operator desires. Each one of those pockets contains a little electro-magnet. One set of magnets in the red pockets is connected with one button under the carpet and a battery. The other set in the black pockets is connected with another button and the battery. This ball is not really of platinum. Platinum is non-magnetic. It is simply a soft iron hollow ball, plated with platinum. Whichever set of electro-magnets is energized attracts the ball and by this simple method it is in the power of the operator to let the ball go to red or black as he may wish. Other similar arrangements control the odd or even, and other combinations from other push buttons. A special arrangement took care of that ’17’ freak. There isn’t an honest gambling-machine in the whole place–I might almost say the whole city. The whole thing is crooked from start to finish–the men, the machines–the–”
“That machine could be made to beat me by turning up a run of ’17’ any number of times, or red or black, or odd or even, over ’18’ or under ’18,’ or anything?”
“Anything, DeLong.”
“And I never had a chance,” he repeated, meditatively fingering the wires. “They broke me to-night. Danfield”–DeLong turned, looking dazedly about in the crowd for his former friend, then his hand shot into his pocket, and a little ivory-handled pistol flashed out–“Danfield, your blood is on your own head. You have ruined me.”
Kennedy must have been expecting something of the sort, for he seized the arm of the young man, weakened by dissipation, and turned the pistol upward as if it had been in the grasp of a mere child.
A blinding flash followed in the farthest corner of the room and a huge puff of smoke. Before I could collect my wits another followed in the opposite corner. The room was filled with a dense smoke.
Two men were scuffling at my feet. One was Kennedy. As I dropped down quickly to help him I saw that the other was Danfield, his face purple with the violence of the struggle.
“Don’t be alarmed, gentlemen,” I heard O’Connor shout, “the explosions were only the flash-lights of the official police photographers. We now have the evidence complete. Gentlemen, you will now go down quietly to the patrol-wagons below, two by two. If you have anything to say, say it to the magistrate of the night court.”
“Hold his arms, Walter,” panted Kennedy.
I did. With a dexterity that would have done credit to a pickpocket, Kennedy reached into Danfield’s pocket and pulled out some papers.
Before the smoke had cleared and order had been restored, Craig exclaimed: “Let him up, Walter. Here, DeLong, here are the I.O.U.’s against you. Tear them up–they are not even a debt of honor.”
The Great K.& A. Train Robbery
BY PAUL LEICESTER FORD
CHAPTER I
THE PARTY ON SPECIAL NO. 218
Any one who hopes to find in what is here written a work of literature had better lay it aside unread. At Yale I should have got the sack in rhetoric and English composition, let alone other studies, had it not been for the fact that I played half-back on the team, and so the professors marked me away up above where I ought to have ranked. That was twelve years ago, but my life since I received my parchment has hardly been of a kind to improve me in either style or grammar. It is true that one woman tells me I write well, and my directors never find fault with my compositions; but I know that she likes my letters because, whatever else they may say to her, they always say in some form, “I love you,” while my board approve my annual reports because thus far I have been able to end each with “I recommend the declaration of a dividend of —- per cent from the earnings of the current year.” I should therefore prefer to reserve my writings for such friendly critics, if it did not seem necessary to make public a plain statement concerning an affair over which there appears to be much confusion. I have heard in the last five years not less than twenty renderings of what is commonly called “the great K.& A. train robbery,”–some so twisted and distorted that but for the intermediate versions I should never have recognized them as attempts to narrate the series of events in which I played a somewhat prominent part. I have read or been told that, unassisted, the pseudo-hero captured a dozen desperadoes; that he was one of the road agents himself; that he was saved from lynching only by the timely arrival of cavalry; that the action of the United States government in rescuing him from the civil authorities was a most high-handed interference with State rights; that he received his reward from a grateful railroad by being promoted; that a lovely woman as recompense for his villainy–but bother! it’s my business to tell what really occurred, and not what the world chooses to invent. And if any man thinks he would have done otherwise in my position, I can only say that he is a better or a worse man than Dick Gordon.
Primarily, it was football which shaped my end. Owing to my skill in the game, I took a post-graduate at the Sheffield Scientific School, that the team might have my services for an extra two years. That led to my knowing a little about mechanical engineering, and when I felt the “quad” for good I went into the Alton Railroad shops. It wasn’t long before I was foreman of a section; next I became a division superintendent, and after I had stuck to that for a time I was appointed superintendent of the Kansas & Arizona Railroad, a line extending from Trinidad in Kansas to The Needles in Arizona, tapping the Missouri Western System at the first place, and the Great Southern at the other. With both lines we had important traffic agreements, as well as the closest relations, which sometimes were a little difficult, as the two roads were anything but friendly, and we had directors of each on the K. & A. board, in which they fought like cats. Indeed, it could only be a question of time when one would oust the other and then absorb my road. My headquarters were at Albuquerque, in New Mexico, and it was there, in October, 1890, that I received the communication which was the beginning of all that followed.
This initial factor was a letter from the president of the Missouri Western, telling me that their first vice-president, Mr. Cullen (who was also a director of my road), was coming out to attend the annual election of the K. & A., which under our charter had to be held in Ash Fork, Arizona. A second paragraph told me that Mr. Cullen’s family accompanied him, and that they all wished to visit the Grand Canon of the Colorado on their way. Finally the president wrote that the party travelled in his own private car, and asked me to make myself generally useful to them. Having become quite hardened to just such demands, at the proper date I ordered my superintendent’s car on to No. 2, and the next morning it was dropped off at Trinidad.
The moment No. 3 arrived, I climbed into the president’s special, that was the last car on the train, and introduced myself to Mr. Cullen, whom, though an official of my road, I had never met. He seemed surprised at my presence, but greeted me very pleasantly as soon as I explained that the Missouri Western office had asked me to do what I could for him, and that I was there for that purpose. His party were about to sit down to breakfast, and he asked me to join them: so we passed into the dining-room at the forward end of the car, where I was introduced to “My son,” “Lord Ralles,” and “Captain Ackland.” The son was a junior copy of his father, tall and fine-looking, but, in place of the frank and easy manner of his sire, he was so very English that most people would have sworn falsely as to his native land. Lord Ralles was a little, well-built chap, not half so English as Albert Cullen, quick in manner and thought, being in this the opposite of his brother Captain Ackland, who was heavy enough to rock-ballast a roadbed. Both brothers gave me the impression of being gentlemen, and both were decidedly good-looking.
After the introductions, Mr. Cullen said we would not wait, and his remark called my attention to the fact that there was one more place at the table than there were people assembled. I had barely noted this, when my host said, “Here’s the truant,” and, turning, I faced a lady who had just entered. Mr. Cullen said, “Madge, let me introduce Mr. Gordon to you.” My bow was made to a girl of about twenty, with light brown hair, the bluest of eyes, a fresh skin and a fine figure, dressed so nattily as to be to me after my four years of Western life, a sight for tired eyes. She greeted me pleasantly, made a neat little apology for having kept us waiting, and then we all sat down.
It was a very jolly breakfast-table, Mr. Cullen and his son being capital talkers, and Lord Ralles a good third, while Miss Cullen was quick and clever enough to match the three. Before the meal was over I came to the conclusion that Lord Ralles was in love with Miss Cullen, for he kept making low asides to her; and from the fact that she allowed them, and indeed responded, I drew the conclusion that he was a lucky beggar, feeling, I confess, a little pang that a title was going to win such a nice American girl.
One of the first subjects spoken of was train-robbery, and Miss Cullen, like most Easterners, seemed to take a great interest in it, and had any quantity of questions to ask me.
“I’ve left all my jewelry behind, except my watch,” she said, “and that I hide every night. So I really hope we’ll be held up, it would be such an adventure.”
“There isn’t any chance of it, Miss Cullen,” I told her; “and if we were, you probably wouldn’t even know that it was happening, but would sleep right through it.”
“Wouldn’t they try to get our money and our watches?” she demanded.
I told her no, and explained that the express and mail-cars were the only ones to which the road agents paid any attention. She wanted to know the way it was done: so I described to her how sometimes the train was flagged by a danger signal, and when it had slowed down the runner found himself covered by armed men; or how a gang would board the train, one by one, at way stations, and then, when the time came, steal forward, secure the express agent and postal clerk, climb over the tender, and compel the runner to stop the train at some lonely spot on the road. She made me tell her all the details of such robberies as I knew about, and, though I had never been concerned in any, I was able to describe several, which, as they were monotonously alike, I confess I colored up a bit here and there, in an attempt to make them interesting to her. I seemed to succeed, for she kept the subject going even after we had left the table and were smoking our cigars in the observation saloon. Lord Ralles had a lot to say about the American lack of courage in letting trains containing twenty and thirty men be held up by half a dozen robbers.
“Why,” he ejaculated, “my brother and I each have a double express with us, and do you think we’d sit still in our seats? No. Hang me if we wouldn’t pot something.”
“You might,” I laughed, a little nettled, I confess, by his speech, “but I’m afraid it would be yourselves.”
“Aw, you fancy resistance impossible?” drawled Albert Cullen.
“It has been tried,” I answered, “and without success. You can see it’s like all surprises. One side is prepared before the other side knows there is danger. Without regard to relative numbers, the odds are all in favor of the road agents.”
“But I wouldn’t sit still, whatever the odds,” asserted his lordship. “And no Englishman would.”
“Well, Lord Ralles,” I said, “I hope for your sake, then, that you’ll never be in a hold-up, for I should feel about you as the runner of a locomotive did when the old lady asked him if it was’nt very painful to him to run over people. ‘Yes, madam,’ he sadly replied: ‘there is nothing musses an engine up so.'”
I don’t think Miss Cullen liked Lord Ralles’s comments on American courage any better than I did, for she said–you take Lord Ralles and Captain Ackland into the service of the K. & A., Mr. Gordon, as a special guard?”
“The K. & A. has never had a robbery yet, Miss Cullen,” I replied, “and I don’t think that it ever will have.”
“Why not?” she asked.
I explained to her how the Canon of the Colorado to the north, and the distance of the Mexican border to the south, made escape so almost desperate that the road agents preferred to devote their attentions to other routes. “If we were boarded, Miss Cullen,” I said, “your jewelry would be as safe as it is in Chicago, for the robbers would only clean out the express and mail-cars; but if they should so far forget their manners as to take your trinkets, I’d agree to return them to you inside of one week.”
“That makes it all the jollier,” she cried, eagerly. “We could have the fun of the adventure, and yet not lose anything. Can’t you arrange for it, Mr. Gordon?”
“I’d like to please you, Miss Cullen,” I said, “and I’d like to give Lord Ralles a chance to show us how to handle those gentry; but it’s not to be done.” I really should have been glad to have the road agents pay us a call.
We spent that day pulling up the Raton pass, and so on over the Glorietta pass down to Lamy, where, as the party wanted to see Sante Fe, I had our two cars dropped off the overland, and we ran up the branch line to the old Mexican city. It was well-worn ground to me, but I enjoyed showing the sights to Miss Cullen, for by that time I had come to the conclusion that I had never met a sweeter or jollier girl. Her beauty, too, was of a kind that kept growing on one, and before I had known her twenty-four hours, without quite being in love with her, I was beginning to hate Lord Ralles, which was about the same thing, I suppose. Every hour convinced me that the two understood each other, not merely from the little asides and confidences they kept exchanging, but even more so from the way Miss Cullen would take his lordship down occasionally. Yet, like a fool, the more I saw to confirm my first diagnosis, the more I found myself dwelling on the dimples at the corners of Miss Cullen’s mouth, the bewitching uplift of her upper lip, the runaway curls about her neck, and the curves and color of her cheeks.
Half a day served to see everything in Santa Fe worth looking at, but Mr. Cullen decided to spend there the time they had to wait for his other son to join the party. To pass the hours, I hunted up some ponies, and we spent three days in long rides up the old Santa Fe trail and to the outlying mountains. Only one incident was other than pleasant, and that was my fault. As we were riding back to our cars on the second afternoon, we had to cross the branch road-bed, where a gang happened to be at work tamping the ties.
“Since you’re interested in road agents, Miss Cullen,” I said, “you may like to see one. That fellow standing in the ditch is Jack Drute, who was concerned in the D.& R.G. hold-up three years ago.”
Miss Cullen looked where I pointed, and seeing a man with a gun, gave a startled jump, and pulled up her pony, evidently supposing that we were about to be attacked. “Sha’n’t we run?” she began, but then checked herself, as she took in the facts of the drab clothes of the gang and the two armed men in uniform. “They are convicts?” she asked, and when I nodded, she said, “Poor things!” After a pause, she asked, “How long is he in prison for?”
“Twenty years,” I told her.”
“How harsh that seems!” she said. “How cruel we are to people for a few moments’ wrong-doing, which the circumstances may almost have justified!” She checked her pony as we came opposite Drute, and said, “Can you use money?”
“Can I, lyedy?” said the fellow, leering in an attempt to look amiable. “Wish I had the chance to try.”
The guard interrupted by telling her it wasn’t permitted to speak to the convicts while out of bounds, and so we had to ride on. All Miss Cullen was able to do was to throw him a little bunch of flowers she had gathered in the mountains. It was literally casting pearls before swine, for the fellow did not seem particularly pleased, and when, late that night, I walked down there with a lantern I found the flowers lying in the ditch. The experience seemed to sadden and distress Miss Cullen very much for the rest of the afternoon, and I kicked myself for having called her attention to the brute, and could have knocked him down for the way he had looked at her. It is curious that I felt thankful at the time that Drute was not holding up a train Miss Cullen was on. It is always the unexpected that happens. If I could have looked into the future, what a strange variation on this thought I should have seen!
The three days went all too quickly, thanks to Miss Cullen, and by the end of that time I began to understand what love really meant to a chap, and how men could come to kill each other for it. For a fairly sensible, hard-headed fellow it was pretty quick work, I acknowledge; but let any man have seven years of Western life without seeing a woman worth speaking of, and then meet Miss Cullen, and if he didn’t do as I did, I wouldn’t trust him on the tailboard of a locomotive, for I should put him down as defective both in eyesight and in intellect.
CHAPTER II
THE HOLDING-UP OF OVERLAND NO. 3
On the third day a despatch came from Frederic Cullen telling his father he would join us at Lamy on No. 8 that evening. I at once ordered 97 and 218 coupled to the connecting train, and in an hour we were back on the main line. While waiting for the overland to arrive, Mr. Cullen asked me to do something which, as it later proved to have considerable bearing on the events of that night, is worth mentioning, trivial as it seems. When I had first joined the party, I had given orders for 97 to be kicked in between the main string and their special, so as not to deprive the occupants of 218 of the view from their observation saloon and balcony platform. Mr. Cullen came to me now and asked me to reverse the arrangement and make my car the tail end. I was giving orders for the splitting and kicking in when No. 3 arrived, and thus did not see the greeting of Frederic Cullen and his family. When I joined them, his father told me that the high altitude had knocked his son up so, that he had to be helped from the ordinary sleeper to the special and had gone to bed immediately. Out West we have to know something of medicine, and my car had its chest of drugs: so I took some tablets and went into his state-room. Frederic was like his brother in appearance, though not in manner, having a quick, alert way. He was breathing with such difficulty that I was almost tempted to give him nitroglycerin, instead of strychnine, but he said he would be all right as soon as he became accustomed to the rarefied air, quite pooh-poohing my suggestion that he take No. 2 back to Trinidad; and while I was still urging, the train started. Leaving him the vials of digitalis and strychnine, therefore, I went back, and dined _solus_ on my own car, indulging at the end in a cigar, the smoke of which would keep turning into pictures of Miss Cullen. I have thought about those pictures since then, and have concluded that when cigar-smoke behaves like that, a man might as well read his destiny in it, for it can mean only one thing.
After enjoying the combination, I went to No. 218 to have a look at the son, and found that the heart tonics had benefited him considerably. On leaving him, I went to the dining-room, where the rest of the party were still at dinner, to ask that the invalid have a strong cup of coffee, and after delivering my request Mr. Cullen asked me to join them in a cigar. This I did gladly, for a cigar and Miss Cullen’s society were even pleasanter than a cigar and Miss Cullen’s pictures, because the pictures never quite did her justice, and, besides, didn’t talk.
Our smoke finished, we went back to the saloon, where the gentlemen sat down to poker, which Lord Ralles had just learned, and liked. They did not ask me to take a hand, for which I was grateful, as the salary of a railroad superintendent would hardly stand the game they probably played; and I had my compensation when Miss Cullen also was not asked to join them. She said she was going to watch the moonlight on the mountains from the platform, and opened the door to go out, finding for the first time that No. 97 was the “ender.” In her disappointment she protested against this and wanted to know the why and wherefore.
“We shall have far less motion, Madge,” Mr. Cullen explained, “and then we sha’n’t have the rear-end man in our car at night.”
“But I don’t mind the motion,” urged Miss Cullen, “and the flagman is only there after we are all in our rooms. Please leave us the view.”
“I prefer the present arrangement, Madge,” insisted Mr. Cullen, in a very positive voice.
I was so sorry for Miss Cullen’s disappointment that on impulse I said, “The platform of 97 is entirely at your service, Miss Cullen.” The moment it was out I realized that I ought not to have said it, and that I deserved a rebuke for supposing she would use my car.
Miss Cullen took it better than I hoped for, and was declining the offer as kindly as my intention had been in making it, when, much to my astonishment, her father interrupted by saying–
“By all means, Madge. That relieves us of the discomfort of being the last car, and yet lets you have the scenery and moonlight.”
Miss Cullen looked at her father for a moment as if not believing what she had heard. Lord Ralles scowled and opened his mouth to say something, but checked himself and only flung his discard down as if he hated the cards.
“Thank you, papa,” responded Miss Cullen, “but I think I will watch you play.”
“Now, Madge, don’t be foolish,” said Mr. Cullen, irritably. “You might just as well have the pleasure, and you’ll only disturb the game if you stay here.”
Miss Cullen leaned over and whispered something, and her father answered her. Lord Ralles must have heard, for he muttered something, which made Miss Cullen color up; but much good it did him, for she turned to me and said, “Since my father doesn’t disapprove, I will gladly accept your hospitality, Mr. Gordon,” and after a glance at Lord Ralles that had a challenging “I’ll do as I please” in it, she went to get her hat and coat. The whole incident had not taken ten seconds, yet it puzzled me beyond measure, even while my heart beat with an unreasonable hope; for my better sense told me that it simply meant that Lord Ralles disapproved, and Miss Cullen, like any girl of spirit, was giving him notice that he was not yet privileged to control her actions. Whatever the scene meant, his lordship did not like it, for he swore at his luck the moment Miss Cullen had left the room.
When Miss Cullen returned we went back to the rear platform of 97. I let down the traps, closed the gates, got a camp-stool for her to sit upon, with a cushion to lean back on, and a footstool, and fixed her as comfortably as I could, even getting a traveling-rug to cover her lap, for the plateau air was chilly. Then I hesitated a moment, for I had the feeling that she had not thoroughly approved of the thing and therefore she might not like to have me stay. Yet she was so charming in the moonlight, and the little balcony the platform made was such a tempting spot to linger on, while she was there, that it wasn’t easy to go. Finally I asked–
“You are quite comfortable, Miss Cullen?”
“Sinfully so,” she laughed.
“Then perhaps you would like to be left to enjoy the moonlight and your meditations by yourself?” I questioned. I knew I ought to have just gone away, but I simply couldn’t when she looked so enticing.
“Do you want to go?” she asked.
“No!” I ejaculated, so forcibly that she gave a little startled jump in her chair. “That is–I mean,” I stuttered, embarrassed by my own vehemence, “I rather thought you might not want me to stay.”
“What made you think that?” she demanded.
I never was a good hand at inventing explanations, and after a moment’s seeking for some reason, I plumped out, “Because I feared you might not think it proper to use my car, and I suppose it’s my presence that made you think it.”
She took my stupid fumble very nicely, laughing merrily while saying, “If you like mountains and moonlight, Mr. Gordon, and don’t mind the lack of a chaperon, get a stool for yourself, too.” What was more, she offered me half of the lap-robe when I was seated beside her.
I think she was pleased by my offer to go away, for she talked very pleasantly, and far more intimately than she had ever done before, telling me facts about her family, her Chicago life, her travels, and even her thoughts. From this I learned that her elder brother was an Oxford graduate, and that Lord Ralles and his brother were classmates, who were visiting him for the first time since he had graduated. She asked me some questions about my work, which led me to tell her pretty much everything about myself that I thought could be of the least interest; and it was a very pleasant surprise to me to find that she knew one of the old team, and had even heard of me from him.
“Why,” she exclaimed, “how absurd of me not to have thought of it before! But, you see, Mr. Colston always speaks of you by your first name. You ought to hear how he praises you.”
“Trust Harry to praise any one,” I said. “There were some pretty low fellows on the old team–men who couldn’t keep their word or their tempers, and would slug every chance they got; but Harry used to insist there wasn’t a bad egg among the lot.”
“Don’t you find it very lonely to live out here, away from old friends?” she asked.
I had to acknowledge that it was, and told her the worst part was the absence of pleasant women. “Till you arrived, Miss Cullen,” I said, “I hadn’t seen a well-gowned woman in four years.” I’ve always noticed that a woman would rather have a man notice and praise her frock than her beauty, and Miss Cullen was apparently no exception, for I could see the remark pleased her.
“Don’t Western women ever get Eastern gowns?” she asked.
“Any quantity,” I said, “but you know, Miss Cullen, that it isn’t the gown, but the way it’s worn, that gives the artistic touch.” For a fellow who had devoted the last seven years of his life to grades and fuel and rebates and pay-rolls, I don’t think that was bad. At least it made Miss Cullen’s mouth dimple at the corners.
The whole evening was so eminently satisfactory that I almost believe I should be talking yet, if interruption had not come. The first premonition of it was Miss Cullen’s giving a little shiver, which made me ask if she was cold.
“Not at all,” she replied. “I only–what place are we stopping at?”
I started to rise, but she checked the movement and said, “Don’t trouble yourself. I thought you would know without moving. I really don’t care to know.”
I took out my watch, and was startled to find it was twenty minutes past twelve. I wasn’t so green as to tell Miss Cullen so, and merely said, “By the time, this must be Sanders.”
“Do we stop long?” she asked.
“Only to take water,” I told her, and then went on with what I had been speaking about when she shivered. But as I talked it slowly dawned on me that we had been standing still some time, and presently I stopped speaking and glanced off, expecting to recognize something, only to see alkali plain on both sides. A little surprised, I looked down, to find no siding. Rising hastily, I looked out forward. I could see moving figures on each side of the train, but that meant nothing, as the train’s crew, and, for that matter passengers, are very apt to alight at every stop. What did mean something was that there was no water-tank, no station, nor any other visible cause for a stop.
“Is anything the matter?” asked Miss Cullen.
“I think something’s wrong with the engine or the roadbed, Miss Cullen,” I said, “and, if you’ll excuse me a moment, I’ll go forward and see.”
I had barely spoken when “bang! bang!” went two shots. That they were both fired from an English “express” my ears told me for no other people in this world make a mountain howitzer and call it a rifle.
Hardly were the two shots fired when “crack! crack! crack! crack!” went some Winchesters.
“Oh! what is it?” cried Miss Cullen.
“I think your wish has been granted,” I answered hurriedly. “We are being held up, and Lord Ralles is showing us how to–”
My speech was interrupted. “Bang! bang!” challenged another “express,” the shots so close together as to be almost simultaneous. “Crack! crack! crack!” retorted the Winchesters, and from the fact that silence followed I drew a clear inference. I said to myself, “That is an end of poor John Bull.”
CHAPTER III
A NIGHT’S WORK ON THE ALKALI PLAINS
I hurried Miss Cullen into the car, and, after bolting the rear door, took down my Winchester from its rack.
“I’m going forward,” I told her, “and will tell my darkies to bolt the front door: so you’ll be as safe in here as in Chicago.”
In another minute I was on my front platform. Dropping down between the two cars, I crept along beside–indeed, half under–Mr. Cullen’s special. After my previous conclusion, my surprise can be judged when at the farther end I found the two Britishers and Albert Cullen, standing there in the most exposed position possible. I joined them, muttering to myself something about Providence and fools.
“Aw,” drawled Cullen, “here’s Mr. Gordon, just too late for the sport, by Jove.”
“Well,” bragged Lord Ralles, “we’ve had a hand in this deal, Mr. Superintendent, and haven’t been potted. The scoundrels broke for cover the moment we opened fire.”
By this time there were twenty passengers about our group, all of them asking questions at once, making it difficult to learn just what had happened; but, so far as I could piece the answers together, the poker-players’ curiosity had been aroused by the long stop, and, looking out, they had seen a single man with a rifle standing by the engine. Instantly arming themselves, Lord Ralles let fly both barrels at him, and in turn was the target for the first four shots I had heard. The shooting had brought the rest of the robbers tumbling off the cars, and the captain and Cullen had fired the rest of the shots at them as they scattered, I didn’t stop to hear more, but went forward to see what the road agents had got away with.
I found the express agent tied hand and foot in the corner of his car, and, telling a brakeman who had followed me to set him at liberty, I turned my attention to the safe. That the diversion had not come a moment too soon was shown by the dynamite cartridge already in place, and by the fuse that lay on the floor, as if dropped suddenly. But the safe was intact.
Passing into the mail-car, I found the clerk tied to a post, with a mail-sack pulled over his head, and the utmost confusion among the pouches and sorting-compartments, while scattered over the floor were a great many letters. Setting him at liberty, I asked him if he could tell whether mail had been taken, and, after a glance at the confusion, he said he could not know till he had examined.
Having taken stock of the harm done, I began asking questions. Just after we had left Sanders, two masked men had entered the mail-car, and while one covered the clerk with a revolver the other had tied and “sacked” him. Two more had gone forward and done the same to the express agent. Another had climbed over the tender and ordered the runner to hold up. All this was regular programme, as I had explained to Miss Cullen, but here had been a variation which I had never heard of being done, and of which I couldn’t fathom the object. When the train had been stopped, the man on the tender had ordered the fireman to dump his fire, and now it was lying in the road-bed and threatening to burn through the ties; so my first order was to extinguish it, and my second was to start a new fire and get up steam as quickly as possible. From all I could learn, there were eight men concerned in the attempt, and I confess I shook my head in puzzlement why that number should have allowed themselves to be scared off so easily.
My wonderment grew when I called on the conductor for his tickets. These showed nothing but two from Albuquerque, one from Laguna, and four from Coolidge. This latter would have looked hopeful but for the fact that it was a party of three women and a man. Going back beyond Lamy didn’t give anything, for the conductor was able to account for every fare as either still in the train or as having got off at some point. My only conclusion was that the robbers had sneaked onto the platforms at Sanders; and I gave the crew a good dressing down for their carelessness. Of course they insisted it was impossible; but they were bound to do that.
Going back to 97, I got my telegraph instrument, though I thought it a waste of time, the road agents being always careful to break the lines. I told a brakeman to climb the pole and cut a wire. While he was struggling up, Miss Cullen joined me.
“Do you really expect to catch them?”
“I shouldn’t like to be one of them,” I replied.
“But how can you do it?”
“You could understand better, Miss Cullen, if you knew this country. You see every bit of water is in use by ranches, and those fellows can’t go more than fifty miles without watering. So we shall have word of them, wherever they go.”
“Line cut, Mr. Gordon,” came from overhead at this point, making Miss Cullen jump with surprise.
“What was that?” she asked.
I explained to her, and after making connections, I called Sanders. Much to my surprise, the agent responded. I was so astonished that for a moment I could not believe the fact.
“That is the queerest hold-up of which I ever heard,” I remarked to Miss Cullen.
“Aw, in what respect?” asked Albert Cullen’s voice, and, looking up, I found that he and quite a number of the passengers had joined us.
“The road agents make us dump our fire,” I said, “and yet they haven’t cut the wires in either direction. I can’t see how they can escape us.”
“What fun!” cried Miss Cullen.
“I don’t see what difference either makes in their chance of escaping,” said Lord Ralles.
While he was speaking, I ticked off the news of our being held up, and asked the agent if there had been any men about Sanders, or if he had seen any one board the train there. His answer was positive that no one could have done so, and that settled it as to Sanders. I asked the same questions of Allantown and Wingate, which were the only places we had stopped at after leaving Coolidge, getting the same answer. That eight men could have remained concealed on any of the platforms from that point was impossible, and I began to suspect magic. Then I called Coolidge, and told of the holding up, after which I telegraphed the agent at Navajo Springs to notify the commander at Fort Defiance, for I suspected the road agents would make for the Navajo reservation. Finally I called Flagstaff as I had Coolidge, directed that the authorities be notified of the facts, and ordered an extra to bring out the sheriff and posse.
“I don’t think,” said Miss Cullen, “that I am a bit more curious than most people, but it has nearly made me frantic to have you tick away on that little machine and hear it tick back, and not understand a word.”
After that I had to tell her what I had said and learned.
“How clever of you to think of counting the tickets and finding out where people got on and off! I never should have thought of either,” she said.
“It hasn’t helped me much,” I laughed, rather grimly, “except to eliminate every possible clue.”
“They probably did steal on at one of the stops,” suggested a passenger.
I shook my head. “There isn’t a stick of timber nor a place of concealment on these alkali plains,” I replied, “and it was bright moonlight till an hour ago. It would be hard enough for one man to get within a mile of the station without being seen, and it would be impossible for seven or eight.”
“How do you know the number?” asked a passenger.
“I don’t,” I said. “That’s the number the crew think there were; but I myself don’t believe it.”
“Why don’t you believe the men?” asked Miss Cullen.
“First, because there is always a tendency to magnify, and next, because the road agents ran away so quickly.”
“I counted at least seven,” asserted Lord Ralles.
“Well, Lord Ralles,” I said, “I don’t want to dispute your eyesight, but if they had been that strong they would never have bolted, and if you want to lay a bottle of wine, I’ll wager that when I catch those chaps we’ll find there weren’t more than three or four of them.”
“Done!” he snapped.
Leaving the group, I went forward to get the report of the mail agent. He had put things to right, and told me that, though the mail had been pretty badly mixed up, only one pouch at worst had been rifled. This–the one for registered mail–had been cut open, but, as if to increase the mystery, the letters had been scattered, unopened, about the car, only three out of the whole being missing, and those very probably had fallen into the pigeon-holes and would be found on a more careful search.
I confess I breathed easier to think that the road agents had got away with nothing, and was so pleased that I went back to the wire to send the news of it, that the fact might be included in the press despatches. The moon had set, and it was so dark that I had some difficulty in finding the pole. When I found it, Miss Cullen was still standing there. What was more, a man was close beside her, and as I came up I heard her say, indignantly–
“I will not allow it. It is unfair to take such advantage of me. Take your arm away, or I shall call for help.”
That was enough for me. One step carried my hundred and sixty pounds over the intervening ground, and, using the momentum of the stride to help, I put the flat of my hand against the shoulder of the man and gave him a shove. There are three or four Harvard men who can tell what that means and they were braced for it, which this fellow wasn’t. He went staggering back as if struck by a cow-catcher, and lay down on the ground a good fifteen feet away. His having his arm around Miss Cullen’s waist unsteadied her so that she would have fallen too if I