Then she did look slightly surprised, before she smiled sarcastically at Harris. “You might ask him,” she suggested.
Harris shot another glance at Barry. “Are you?” he asked bluntly.
Barry smiled also — he was enjoying himself. “You might,” he informed Harris politely, “ask the young lady that.”
Harris flushed slightly, and frowned. He chewed on the cigar for a moment, and then said to Barry: “I guess you’d better come up and see the captain also.”
Barry raised his eyebrows.
“Sorry,” he drawled, “but you have another guess coming. I know of no business that requires me to visit the captain. He can come and see me if he cares to; or you can take me forcibly — if you care to.”
The girl, Olga, laughed softly, with appreciation.
“There you are, Harris,” she gibed. “Think that over for a minute.”
Harris grinned ruthfully. “If that’s the way he feels about it, he can stay here,” he said. “But I guess you’ll come along and have a little talk, won’t you?”
“If you insist, certainly. Why not? And I’ll leave the door of my room unlocked if it will make you feel any better. Come along.”
No one paid any more attention to Barry as they went down the hall. He stood there in the doorway for some moments, trying to piece together what he had seen. He had said nothing to the authorities about her being in his room, and yet they had come for her. She had not seemed the slightest bit worried that he would report her. Probably she thought he could not prove a charge, knowing nothing of the razor blade.
Barry didn’t know himself as he stood there, why it was that he did not report her. All he realized was that he did not care to. Presently he closed the door behind him, locking it this time, and went back up on the deck.
He remained up on the deck until the boat shut off steam and the busy little tugs took her, and warped her into the dock, and the gangplank went down, and the first exodus began. In that time he had seen no sign of the girl in black. He wondered, as he went down to his cabin, what they had done with her, and for what offense.
The door of her cabin was closed. He knocked. There was no answer. Barry shrugged, rang for a steward, and presently went down to the customs line. There was no trouble about his scanty luggage. The inspector he drew had served him before, and nodded as soon as Barry came up. They had several pleasant minutes of conversation while the government man did his duty. And then Barry was free to go. He did, to the Plaza, where he usually stayed while in town.
The next few days the Leviathan, the girl in black, and all that had happened, faded gradually back in his mind. He spoke about it several times to friends, and they agreed it was interesting; and so it gradually became old news, uninteresting, and due to be forgotten.
Chapter III
Secret Service
The morning of his fourth day ashore, Barry took a taxi in front of the Plaza and ordered the driver to take him down town to his bank. They were held up at Forty-Second and the Avenue. For no reason at all, Barry looked out the window on the left, at the taxi alongside them. And his eyes opened wide, and a broad smile came across his face, and he uttered a shout that brought the head of his driver around as though worked by strings.
“Dan!” Barry shouted across at the other cab. “Dan Brady!”
A face peered at him — a face he had not seen for all of four years. Dan Brady, army buddy, good sport, friend! Good old Dan Brady, who was all of thirty-two years of age by now.
Dan’s reply came clearly over the cacophony of the busiest corner of the busiest city in all the world. “Barry! You son-of-a-gun! Come over here!”
The lights flashed again; traffic started forward. Barry shoved a bill at the driver of his cab. “Never mind the trip. Changed my mind,” he called, and opened the door and leaped out, running the risk of getting knocked down by the onward surge of the traffic.
Dan Brady opened the door of his cab just as it started to move. Barry leaped in, the door slammed — and they sat there pumping each other’s hands.
“Dan, you no-account, what have you been doing with yourself?”
“How’s the worthless, idle rich these days?”
Thus they insulted each other enthusiastically, grinning from ear to ear. For there had been a time when they were better than brothers to each other, and the years that had passed had done little to erase that feeling. Buddies, friends — then and now. The fact that they hadn’t seen each other for years made little difference. They were both the kind that could part casually in Piccadilly, and meet years later in Zanzibar just as casually.
As the cab rolled down Fifth Avenue they sat there and brought the last four years up to date. Barry had not a great deal to tell. “Just been hanging around,” he said ruthfully. “Doing nothing for my country or myself. Here to-day, there to-morrow. How’s it been with you?”
Dan Brady was a stocky, open-faced chap, who looked most of the time like a great big innocent boy just in from the country. Other times, when he needed a shave, and was dressed in old clothes, with a sullen look about his mouth, a cigarette drooping from one corner, and a cap pulled low, he appeared a rather bad customer. Unless one looked very closely, one would never see the keenness in his eyes, the brains that were plentiful in his skull.
He grinned now, this Dan Brady, and answered Barry’s question with a shrug. “Still at the same old game,” he declared. “Secret Service. Watchdog of the Treasury, the President, and what have you.”
“I tried to get hold of you last year,” Barry told him. “My telegram to the Treasury brought the information that they did not know where you were.”
“In China,” Dan said briefly. “There was a tricky case that ran all around the world. Had several of us working on it. They didn’t want our whereabouts to be known — although as a matter of fact, they didn’t know themselves half the time.”
“Sounds interesting,” Barry said with a trace of envy in his voice.
“It was.”
“Stuff like that gets me all hipped up. I want to be in on it.”
“Why not try to make the grade?” Dan grinned.
And Barry grinned ruthfully. “I might get by for a few months, but I couldn’t stick the grind. What’s on your program now? Let’s get away and take a little boat trip, or an auto trip, or blow the lid off in some way.”
Dan shook his head regretfully.
“Sounds nice, old man,” he admitted. “But I’m tied down tighter than a circus tent for the main show. There’s a big case on, and I’m doing most of the work.”
Barry noted for the first time that Dan’s clothes were not very new, and they certainly needed pressing. So did Dan’s face need a shave — and his finger nails were actually dirty and untrimmed. That, from Dan Brady, who had been fastidious in the muck of the war, was proof that something was afoot. “Can you tell?” Barry asked.
“ ’Fraid not,” Dan said regretfully. “It’s heap big medicine, and the Lord help some folks if we don’t make good on it.”
“Here’s hoping, if it’s that bad.”
“Sure is.”
“Maybe I’m gumming up some of your work now,” Barry declared quickly.
“No. I was just riding down to Eighth Avenue and Twenty-Fourth Street to see if my partner has shown up there yet, I won’t even talk to him if he has. We have a code of signals, and I’ll read them as we go past.”
“And then what?”
“Nothing till this evening,” Dan declared.
“Come around to the hotel with me as soon as you get the dope from your partner and we’ll have a little celebration. There’s lots to talk over.”