“How do you propose to prevent his marriage, and what do you know of Miss Hare?”
I shook my head.
“I won’t tell you a thing unless you promise to give me all the information I want, and keep me posted.”
His face darkened. “Such a proposition is unthinkable. It is an insult to a reputable attorney.”
I knew it, but I made the stall to keep him from finding out that I had all the information I wanted. I only wanted a general slant on Holton’s affairs, and, most of all, I wanted a chance to size up his attorney, to get acquainted with him so he would know me later.
“Stick an ad in the personal columns of the morning papers if you want to see me about anything,” I said as I made for the door.
He watched me meditatively. Until I had left the long, book-lined corridor, and emerged from the expensive suite of offices, I could still hear his fingers on the desk.
Rummy-tum-tum; rummy-tum-tum; rummy-tum-tummy-tum-tummy-tum-tum.
I went to a hotel, got a room and went to sleep. I was finished with my regular apartment. That was for the police.
At nine-forty-five I sneaked into the back door of Holton’s house, found one of the extra servants waiting for me, and was shown into a closet near the room where the banquet was taking place. The servant was a crook, but one I couldn’t place. I filed his map away for future reference, and he filed mine.
Ten minutes passed. I heard something that might or might not have been a muffled scream, shuffling footsteps going down the hall. Silence, the ringing of a bell.
I stepped to the door of the banquet room, and flung it wide. Standing there on the threshold I took in the scene of hectic gaiety. Holton and the cat-woman sat at the head of the table. Couples in various stages of intoxication were sprinkled about. Servants stood here and there, obsequious, attentive. A man sat slightly apart, a man who had his eyes riveted on the door of an ante-room. He was the detective from the insurance company.
For a minute I stood there, undiscovered.
The room was a clatter of conversation. The detective half arose, his eyes on the door of the ante-room. Holton saw me, stopped in the middle of a sentence, and looked me over.
“Who are you, and what do you want?”
I handed it out in bunches. “I’m Ed Jenkins, the phantom crook. I’ve got a part of what I want. I’ll come back later for the rest.”
The detective reached for his hip, and I slammed the door and raced down the corridor. Taking the front steps in a flying leap I jumped into the seat of the powerful speedster, noticed the roomy luggage compartment, the running engine, the low, speedy lines, slammed in the gear, slipped in the clutch, and skidded out of the drive as the detective started firing from the window.
I didn’t go direct to the beach house.
On a dark side-road I stopped the car, went back and opened up the luggage compartment and pulled out the bound and gagged girl. She was one I had never seen before, and she was mad. And she was the real Jean Ellery or else I was dumb.
I packed her around, parked her on the running board, took a seat beside her, left on the gag and the cords, and began to talk. Patiently, step by step, I went over the history of the whole case, telling her everything. When I had finished I cut the cords and removed the gag.
“Now either beat it, go ahead and scream, or ask questions, whichever you want,” I told her.
She gave a deep breath, licked her lips, wiped her face with a corner of her party gown, woefully inspected a runner in the expensive stockings, looked at the marks on her wrists where the ropes had bitten, smoothed out her garments and turned to me.
“I think you’re a liar,” she remarked casually.
I grinned.
That’s the way I like ’em. Here this jane had been grabbed, kidnapped, manhandled, jolted, forced to sit on the running board of a car and listen to her kidnapper talk a lot of stuff she naturally wouldn’t believe, and then was given her freedom. Most girls would have fainted. Nearly all of ’em would have screamed and ran when they got loose. Here was a jane who was as cool as a cucumber, who looked over the damage to her clothes, and then called me a liar.
She was a thin slip of a thing, twenty or so, big, hazel eyes, chestnut hair, slender figure, rosebud mouth, bobbed hair and as unattainable as a girl on a magazine cover.
“Read this,” I said, and slipped her the confession of the cat-woman.
She read it in the light of the dash lamp, puckered her forehead a bit, and then handed it back.
“So you are Ed Jenkins— Why should auntie have wanted me kidnapped?”
I shrugged my shoulders. “That’s what I want to know. It’s the one point in the case that isn’t clear. Want to stick around while I find out?”
She thought things over for a minute.
“Am I free to go?”
I nodded.
“Guess I’ll stick around then,” she said as she climbed back into the car, snuggling down next to the driver’s seat. “Let’s go.”
I got in, started the engine, and we went.
A block from the beach house I slowed up.
“The house is ahead. Slip out as we go by this palm tree, hide in the shadows and watch what happens. I have an idea you’ll see some action.”
I slowed down and turned my face toward her, prepared to argue the thing out, but there was no need for argument. She was gathering her skirts about her. As I slowed down she jumped. I drove on to the house, swung the car so it faced the door of the garage and got out.
I had to walk in front of the headlights to fit the key to the door of the garage, and I was a bit nervous. There was an angle of this thing I couldn’t get, and it worried me. I thought something was due to happen. If there hadn’t been so much money involved I’d have skipped out. As it was, I was playing my cards trying to find out what was in the hand of the cat-woman.
I found out.
As though the swinging of the garage door had been a signal, two men jumped out from behind a rosebush and began firing at the luggage compartment of the car.
They had shotguns, repeaters, and they were shooting chilled buckshot at deadly range through the back of that car. Five times they shot, and then they vanished, running like mad.
Windows began to gleam with lights, a woman screamed, a man stuck his head out into the night. Around the corner there came the whine of a starting motor, the purr of an automobile engine, the staccato barks of an exhaust and an automobile whined off into the night.
I backed the speedster, turned it and went back down the street. At the palm tree where I’d left the flapper I slowed down, doubtfully, hardly expecting to see her again.
There was a flutter of white, a flash of slim legs, and there she was sitting on the seat beside me, her eyes wide, lips parted. “Did you get hurt?”
I shook my head and jerked my thumb back in the direction of the luggage compartment.
“Remember, I wasn’t to stop or open that compartment until I got to the beach house,” I said.