Nor was Helen Chadwick one to display her feelings. She was a little thoroughbred, the type who smile bravely into the inscrutable depths of fate, meet Dame Fortune halfway and play the game of life with steady eyes and calm poise.
“Well, Ed, back again.”
The words were accompanied by a frank grin of perfect camaraderie. Despite her flapper dress, which displayed the charm of her perfect form, there was an entire lack of that stilted sex consciousness, that biological hypocrisy which tends to accentuate rather than conceal. She might have been just a good pal greeting a chum of her own sex.
“How’s tricks?” I asked, almost casually, meeting her mood.
She shrugged her shoulder and turned twinkling eyes toward me.
“The plot thickens. I understand from Mrs. Kemper that things are getting pretty hot. There’s one letter left and I guess that’s going to be pretty hard to get, isn’t it, Ed?”
And then I made a statement to cure which I could have cheerfully bitten off my tongue. Her casual, offhand manner had put me too much at my ease, and when she directed my thoughts to the gang of criminals who were drawing their net tighter and tighter in an effort to ruin her and to sweep me into their power, I unconsciously thought out loud.
“They’re after us,” I said. “It’s life or death, and our backs are to the wall, Helen. They’re strong and clever, diabolically clever, and we can’t tell just when they’ll strike.”
She whirled and the mask of mirth dropped from her eyes, and I saw her regarding me with concern.
“Are you in danger, Ed — that is, physical danger?”
I laughed lightly.
“I am always in danger if I let other people have their way. In this instance, as in the others, I don’t propose to let ’em.”
That was all. We had reached the spacious library and Mrs. Kemper motioned for me to be seated.
“Sprawl out, Ed, and have a cigarette with us,” she said, and then gave a worried glance at Helen.
Boob that I was, I had let her realize that more than the paper was at stake; that the game was life and death, and that it was coming to a showdown one way or the other.
There was a cough at my elbow, and I turned to see the impassive face of Riggs, the butler. His bearing was as stiff and proper as one could ask for, but there was a twinkle in his eye which showed me that the trusted servant was in on the secret, knew that Alexis Alexandrovitch, the man with the military bearing, the formfitting suit and the Van Dyke, was none other than Ed Jenkins, the Phantom Crook. Riggs and I had become quite well acquainted on my former visit, and I sprang up and gave him my hand. He was a splendid fellow, and I liked him. Servant or no servant, he was a regular man, and Ed Jenkins was certainly not a man to be snobbish.
Mrs. Kemper beamed her approval.
“Yes, Ed, we told him. We thought it would make it easier for you if you could let the bars down before Riggs. By the way, Riggs has a father coming from the East, a father whom he hasn’t seen for three years. You’ll want to be starting for the train soon, Riggs? Instruct the chauffeur to run you down in the blue car.”
Riggs smiled and bowed his thanks, one of the family, yet always in his proper place.
“He just got the telegram this morning,” said Mrs. Kemper. “I guess the old boy wanted to stage a little surprise.”
Riggs withdrew, grinning, and the conversation ran into small talk. A casual observer would hardly have thought that of that small party two of us were in the last trench, fighting a gang of organized criminals, while the other two had taken us in, knowing that by so doing they were inviting anything from notoriety to death.
So for an hour we talked of trivial things, cementing our friendship by the undercurrent of mutual understanding and confidence which flowed among us. And I liked it. I, Ed Jenkins, the creature of the shadows, the dweller of the underworld, sat there in the presence of three of the cleanest thoroughbreds that society could produce, reclining in a massive chair, amidst sumptuous furnishings, and watching the curl of cigarette smoke as it wound up toward the ceiling, outlined sharply against the formal, booklined walls.
Of a sudden Mrs. Kemper turned the conversation to the channels which had probably been in all of our minds.
“Ed, we can see that you’re setting a trap. You’re baiting it with — with yourself. Tomorrow night is a reception at which there will be a throng. I suppose the attempt will be made at that time. Do you suppose there is any danger before then?”
I squinted at the curling smoke and answered lazily, as though I were completely relaxed, enjoying every moment and without great thought of the morrow.
“Oh, I think not. That’ll be the logical time for a crook to try and either get what he is after or take the chance to slip in the house and hide.”
She nodded, and I glanced sideways at Helen, wondering whether I had managed to deceive her by my casual manner. As a matter of cold fact I felt that the attempt would be made before tomorrow. Time was short, and if I knew the gang with whom I was dealing, they would manage to strike at an unexpected time, at a moment when great precautions would not be taken. To their mind I was Alexis Alexandrovitch, a Russian with immensely valuable gems in my possession. At any moment I might reach a bargain with Loring Kemper, and then the gems would become part of the Kemper collection, stored in his safe, under his protection. Until then I would probably want to retain the physical possession of the gems. It was true that I had set the trap, and baited it with myself, but little did they dream of how I intended to spring that trap. Crook that I was, I was still too much of a gentleman to bring my fights into that home, even when I was, in a measure, making war on their behalf.
My inspection of Helen’s face told me nothing except that she had read more from my glance than from my words. What goes on back of the doll faces of these flappers is more than mortal man can read, anyway. I had seen her in action before, had seen her match her wits with a skillful crook, a ruthless criminal who had her in his power, and she had seemed more intent upon getting her mouth on straight with her pink-tipped little finger, as she gazed into the mirror of her vanity box, than in what was being said by this crook, and yet his words were bringing the structure of her very existence down about her ears like a house of cards.
The telephone shrilled, and there was a something jarring, almost hysterical, in the ringing of that bell. It was as though jangling discord had interrupted the harmonious flow of perfect understanding between us.
Loring Kemper himself answered it, drawling out a deep-throated “hello” into the transmitter, the receiver held lightly between the powerful fingers of his left hand.
And then, suddenly, I saw his fingers tighten, tighten until the skin showed white over the knuckles.
“Nothing can be done for him?” he asked, then waited a minute, and nodded.
“He was to have had his father with him… was to have met him at the train… all right… Tell him to come right out here. He’s uninjured, you say? Very well. Have him come out here, and get the best medical attention for the chauffeur. I’ll have my own doctor there inside of half an hour.”
Mrs. Kemper had arisen with wide eyes. Helen was watching her with a puzzled expression. I could feel my own eyes narrowing in spite of myself, could feel my lips tighten, and I strove to keep my face expressionless so that I could assume just the proper degree of sympathetic surprise when Loring Kemper should turn and tell us the news. It would never do for me to let them glimpse the savagery of my soul at the time. Had they caught upon my face a hint of the emotions which were seething within me at that time they would have known.