Part 27 (2/2)
”After you had what?”
”Blindfolded her. Oh, I kept my promise,” she added, reading the expression on his face. ”There was no force used, and no violence. She suffered herself to be blindfolded--indeed, I did the blinding myself.
Well, after she had been blindfolded with a thick silk handkerchief I watched her, and I saw that while with one hand she groped her way about, she kept the other hand constantly clutched upon this locket, as though to make sure of the safety of something there. So then I was sure; but I was made doubly sure by her actions while I was tying her hands behind her. And then, after I had her tied and helpless, I could experiment further--and I did--and again my experiment convinced me I was on the right track.”
”Yes--but tying her hands--didn't she resist that?”
”No; you see, she let me tie her hands too. It was a part of a game.
They all played it.”
”Some of the others were blinded, eh?”
”All of them were; every single one of them was. They still are, I imagine, providing my cousin is doing her part--and I am sure she is.
There'll be no suspicion of the truth, even after their eyes are unhooded. Claire has her explanations all ready. They'll miss this girl of course and wonder what has become of her, but the explanation provides for that: She was taken with a sudden indisposition and slipped away with me, not wis.h.i.+ng to spoil the fun by staying on after she began to feel badly. That's the story they'll be told, and there's no reason why they shouldn't accept it as valid either. See! She's coming to.”
”Then I'll get out and leave you to attend to her. Keep her here in this room until she's better, and then you may send her back to her hotel.
You might tell her that there is to be no prosecution and no unpleasant notoriety for her if only she keeps her mouth shut about all that's happened. Probably she'll be only too glad to do that, for I figure she has learned a lesson.”
”You won't want to question her, then, after she has been revived?”
”It's quite unnecessary. I have the other ends of the case in my hands.
And besides I must go outside to meet our dear friend Geltmann when he arrives. He should be driving up to the house pretty soon--I had a telephone message five minutes ago telling me to expect him shortly. So I'm going out to break some sad news to him on the sidewalk. He doesn't know it yet, but he's starting to-night on a long, long trip; a trip that will take him clear out of this country--and he won't ever, ever be coming back.
”But I'll call on you to-morrow, if I may--after I've seen to getting him off for the West. I want to thank you again in behalf of the Service for the wonderful thing you've done so wonderfully well. And I want to hear more from you about that game you played.”
”I'll do better than that,” she promised: ”I'll let you read about it in a book--an old secondhand book, it is; you saw it yesterday. Maybe I can convert you to reading old books; they're often full of things that people in your line should know.”
”Lady,” he said reverently, ”you've made a true believer of me already.”
CHAPTER IX
THE BULL CALLED EMILY
We were sitting at a corner table in a certain small restaurant hard by where Sixth Avenue's L structure, like an overgrown straddlebug, wades through the restless currents of Broadway at a sharpened angle. The dish upon which we princ.i.p.ally dined was called on the menu _Chicken a la Marengo_. We knew why. Marengo, by all accounts, was a mighty tough battle, and this particular chicken, we judged, had never had any refining influences in its ill-spent life. From its present defiant att.i.tude in a cooked form we figured it had pipped the sh.e.l.l with a burglar's jimmy and joined the Dominecker Kid's gang before it shed its pin-feathers. There were two of us engaged in the fruitless attack upon its sinewy tissues--the present writer and his old un-law-abiding friend,--Scandalous Doolan.
For a period of minutes Scandalous wrestled with the thews of one of the embattled fowl's knee-joints. After a struggle in which the honours stood practically even, he laid down his knife and flirted a thumb toward a bottle of peppery sauce which stood on my side of the table.
”Hey, bo,” he requested, ”pa.s.s the liniment, will you? This sea gull's got the rheumatism.”
The purport of the remark, taken in connection with the gesture which accompanied it, was plain enough to my understanding; but for the nonce I could not cla.s.sify the idiom in which Scandalous couched his request.
It could not be Underworld jargon; it was too direct and at the same time too picturesque. Moreover, the Underworld, as a rule, concerns itself only with altering such words and such expressions as strictly figure in the business affairs of its various crafts and pursuits. Nor to me did it sound like the language of the circus-lot, for in such case it probably would have been more complex. So by process of elimination I decided it was of the slang code of the burlesque and vaudeville stage, with which, as with the other two, Scandalous had a thorough acquaintance. I felt sure, then, that something had set his mind to working backward along the memory-grooves of some one or another of his earlier experiences in the act-producing line of endeavour, and that, with proper pumping, a story might be forthcoming. As it turned out, I was right.
”Where did you get that one, Scandalous?” I asked craftily. ”Your own coinage, or did you borrow it from somebody else?”
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