The note was unsigned. It didn’t need a signature. I had jarred old Icy-Eyes out of his calm. I grinned, took a pencil from my pocket and started to scribble an answer, and then those words of Helen Chadwick’s came to my mind. I chuckled and scribbled my message of defiance on the back of the note.
“COME AND GET IT,” I wrote, and handed the paper back to the boy.
“The answer is on the back,” I told him, and, with that I started on my way, knowing that they would try to follow me, knowing also that I must thrust aside the ways of civilized society and vanish within the shadows, knowing that this conflict with the icy-eyed criminal would never cease until one of us had written “In Full of Account” against the life of the other. But in the meantime I had turned the tables, had got the police guessing, and had seen Helen Chadwick again — that joyous little flapper who was such a baffling combination of vivacious frivolity and courageous fortitude, that girl who was commencing to be so much in my thoughts.
Let Icy Eyes come and get it. He would find a warm reception waiting him.
In Full of Account
The man at the door bowed suavely, his fat face looking like crinkled lard.
“Mr. Philip Conway, I believe. I had quite a hard time locating you, Mr. Conway.”
I stood to one side and motioned him in.
“Come in and have a chair,” I urged, and I said it only because I had caught a glimpse of the house detective prowling around a corner of the corridor.
He strutted into the room with that complacent self-satisfaction which men with fat necks usually assume when they think they have pulled something clever.
“Ah, yes,” he went on, when I had closed and locked the door, “Mr. Philip Conway, whose real name is Ed Jenkins, more generally known to the police of a dozen states as The Phantom Crook. I had a devil of a time finding you, Ed Jenkins.”
His eyes had narrowed like a cat’s, and he was watching my face. On one thing he was right. He certainly had had a devilish time finding me, and I was at a loss to know how he’d done it, but I wasn’t going to let him see so much as a flicker of surprise in my expression. I had been very much incognito when I picked that hotel, and I would gamble that I hadn’t been followed.
“Sit down,” was what I said, and then added, just to jar his self complacency a bit, “I was rather expecting you, you know.”
The fatuous smile dropped from his face like a chunk of hot lead from a piece of lard.
“You what?” he yelled.
“Expected you,” I repeated with a smile.
The eyes were wide open now, bulging. I had jarred him all right.
The telephone rang; and with the sound, I was rigid with suspicion. That was too much of a coincidence. No one had business with me. No one was supposed to know where I was. Philip Conway was merely a man of mystery who had dropped into the Colisades Hotel and secured a room with bath.
The telephone was fastened to the wall. To answer it and talk into the mouthpiece I would have to turn my back to my visitor. That probably was part of the plan — to get this fat slob in the room and then have me turn my back for a minute or two. Not to answer the telephone would be to confess fear, to let him see that I was afraid, and I didn’t propose to give him that advantage.
Without seeming to do so consciously, I managed to angle toward the telephone so that I could keep a watch on my visitor. As I lifted the receiver I bowed and faced him.
“Excuse me,” I said to him, and to the telephone transmitter, “Hello!”
A woman’s voice answered, a voice which was shrill with terror, hysterical with fear.
“Ed, don’t…”
That was as far as she got. There was a scream, the sound of a blow, a jarring fall, and then a series of thudding sounds which could have been made by the receiver at the other end of the line as it dangled back and forth, knocking against the wall.
I did not so much as bat an eyelash. Still half turned toward my visitor, I carried on a one-sided conversation as though the call were part of a program which had already been blocked out.
“That’s quite all right,” I said. “He’s here now, but I’m glad you called. Thank you. Good-bye.”
I hung up the receiver and turned to my guest.
“Now just what was it you had in mind?” I asked.
His mouth was sagging open and his face was two shades whiter. Score one for me. It was plain that he was not privy to that telephone call. It had been coincidence after all. I had thought so when I heard the voice. There had only been two words, and they were shrieked in high-pitched terror, but the voice had been that of the woman with the mole on her left hand, the woman I knew as Maude Enders, and I had been warned against her by a man who had paid for the warning with his life.
She was a mystery, this girl with the mole. There was a master crook who was after me, who meant murder, and she was, beyond doubt, a member of his gang, and yet she had seemed to side with me. Once or twice she had evidently betrayed the interests of her master in order to take steps which she had fancied were necessary to save my life — and yet I had been warned against her by the Weasel, and the Weasel had been riddled with bullets from a curtained death-car while the words of warning were still warm on his lips.
“My name is Wallace, Walter Wallace,” my caller lied nervously, “but, perhaps if you are so familiar with me and my visit you know my errand?”
This last was a subtle dig, an attempt to call my bluff.
I yawned while he anxiously watched my face.
“I thought you might be able to tell me better than to have me piece together the information I already have — thought it might be better for you, that is; but since I know the general nature of your mission, I can save the time of both of us by giving you a direct and immediate answer. The answer is NO, absolutely NO!”
I snapped out that last and glared at him.
I could see beads of perspiration upon his fat forehead, and, just then, the telephone rang again.
This time I answered it with more confidence. The previous ring had shown that a telephone call was no part of the program of Walter Wallace, whatever other tricks he might have up his sleeve.
It was the bell captain.
“A special delivery letter, sir.”
“Send it up,” I answered, and hung up.
By the time I had the door unlocked and open, I could hear the bell boy coming down the corridor. I flipped him half a dollar, and looked at the envelope. It was addressed to “Mr. Philip Conway, Room 456, Colisades Hotel,” and it was in the handwriting of the girl with the mole.
Quickly I slit the envelope and read the message.
“Ed, they are trying to murder you, and they know your hiding place. Secretly leave your hotel and meet me at eleven o’clock tonight in the alley back of Lip Sing’s. There I can tell you much that you want to know.
I thrust the note back into my pocket and returned to my guest.
“Look here, Jenkins,” he said with a forceful manner that was meant to be bluster, but barely hid the fear that was creeping into his eyes, “you can’t turn this thing down like that. It ain’t right… it ain’t… er… safe.”
I sneered openly.
“Nothing is unsafe for me, except that it would really be more dangerous to accept than to reject the proposition.”
I was talking in circles, seeking to keep within character, to let him believe that I knew all about him, all about his errand, and I was getting thoroughly sick of the whole business. Also I would have to get into action pretty sudden. If the gang I was fighting knew where I was located, — and the special delivery letter and telephone call was proof enough of that, — I would have to start getting under cover, and blamed quick. I had no time to waste bandying words with fat men.