“But what are you talking about?” they demanded.
“Do you think I’ll tell you?” asked Sherman scornfully.
They protested that they were fully as hostile toward Knowlton as he could possibly be, and suggested that he might find their assistance useful. Sherman admitted that they were possibly correct.
“Well, then, what is it?” they demanded. “Where’s the trap?”
Still Sherman hesitated. He knew perfectly well that he could easily perfect his plans and carry them out without assistance; but he had a reason, and a strong one, for letting the Erring Knights in on it. The question was, would anyone of them warn Knowlton? He glanced again keenly around the circle of faces, and said for a feeler:
“I know enough to put him behind the bars.”
“What’s the dope?” asked Dougherty, frowning.
“Counterfeiting,” replied Sherman, evidently satisfied with his scrutiny.
“Round ones?”
“No. Paper.”
He was immediately besieged with questions:
“Was it tens? He always had ’em.”
“How do you know?”
“Is he in with the aristocrats?”
“Does he make it or sow it?”
“He gets it from a Western gang, through a guy called Red Tim,” said Sherman. “They’ve been closing in on ’em for two months, and Red Tim beat it last night. He can’t be found this morning, though he was seen on Broadway at midnight. That makes it harder for us.”
“How?” inquired Dougherty.
“It makes it harder to get anything on him,” Sherman explained. “Red Tim was probably the only one that ever saw Knowlton. He would have peached in a minute; but now he’s gone, and the only way to get anything on Knowlton is to catch him with the goods on. And you’d be taking a chance. If you grabbed him he might happen to be clean.”
“But that has nothing to do with us,” Dougherty objected. “We don’t want to grab him.”
“No, I suppose you want him to make his getaway,” Sherman sneered.
Dougherty stared at him.
“What else would we want?” he demanded. “Do you think we want to peach? No, thank you. We may be none too good, but we won’t hang a guy up, no matter who he is. Anyway, we want him to beat it. Ain’t that what we’ve been after all along — to get him away from here? All we’ve got to do is to see that he does make his getaway.”
Sherman’s face was a study. Filled with chagrin at having miscalculated and with rage at the possible frustration of his designs, he controlled himself with difficulty.
“And you think that will work?” he demanded, while his voice trembled. “How would you go about it?”
“Easee,” put in Dumain. “We tell heem either he goes or we what you call eet report. We tell heem what we know. We prove eet to heem. Zen he goes. No more Knowlton.”
“Sure,” Sherman sneered. “How easy! No more Knowlton, eh? Do you know what he’d do? He’d go home, burn up all his nice little paper, come back, and tell us to go to the deuce.”
“Veree well,” Dumain agreed. “Zen we make heem go. We would no longer what you call fool wiz heem. Because now we know he ees no fit for her.”
“You tried that once before. Did he go? If it hadn’t been for me bringing him down with a piece of bronze he’d have gone out laughing at us,” Sherman retorted. “I tell you, the only thing to do is to lock him up.”
But at this there was a general clamor. On this point the Erring Knights, with the exception of Sherman, seemed to be all of one mind. They would not “peach.”
What they contemplated doing was perhaps a species of blackmail — but we are getting into deep water. With them it was no subtle question of ethics; it was simply an instinctive belief that one was excusable and the other was not.
Sherman found himself the sole member of a helpless minority. He argued and pleaded and threatened, but they were immovable. Too late he realized his mistake in having taken the others into his confidence, and, while prolonging the discussion as far as possible, his brain was busily working to discover a way to retrieve his error.
If he persisted he saw plainly that the others would turn against him and warn Knowlton. Craftily he sought to recover the lost ground.
He began slowly to yield to the others’ arguments, and he perceived that they were swallowing the bait.
“I owe him no more than you do,” he said in answer to a question from Dumain.
“Then why are you so anxious to see him jugged?” Dougherty demanded.
“I’m not,” replied Sherman with a show of exasperation. “All I want is to get him away from here. My way is sure and yours isn’t.”
“But it is,” put in Driscoll. “Dumain and I have been responsible for letting it go as far as it has, but do you think we’ll do it again? Anyway, what does it matter what you want? We’ll do as we please.”
“That’s right,” said Sherman bitterly. “I do all the work and furnish the information, and this is what I get. Sure, what does it matter what I want?”
“Well, you’re right about that,” Dougherty admitted. “But we can’t see this other thing — we simply can’t do it. And our way is just as good if we stick.”
“But you won’t stick.”
“What about it, boys?” Dougherty queried.
There came a chorus of oaths and protestations to the effect that John Knowlton would now, then, and forever find the lobby of the Lamartine extremely uninhabitable.
Sherman appeared to weaken.
“Go slow, go slow, or they’ll suspect,” he was saying to himself.
The others pressed harder and assaulted him from all sides at once. Finally, “Well, have it your own way,” he said with a shrug of the shoulders.
The others applauded.
“But there’s one thing I want to say,” Sherman continued, “and that is, don’t say anything to Knowlton till tomorrow.”
“And why?” said Dougherty.
“Because I’ve got a private detective on his trail, and I want to call him off. And there’s another reason, which you don’t need to know. What are you going to do — wait till he shows up here?”
“What do you think?”
“I’d wait for him here till tomorrow night, and then, if he hasn’t come, go to his rooms. But remember, not a word till tomorrow.”
“All right,” Dougherty agreed. “And now, who’ll be spokesman?”
Sherman rose to his feet, glancing at his watch.
“Count me out,” he said, turning to go. “That’s your job. Dougherty. See you later.”
He sauntered carelessly into the lobby, spoke to Lila and the Venus at the cigar stand, then wandered out into the street.
For a block he strolled along slowly, glancing in at the shop windows, and now and then to the rear. But as soon as he had rounded a corner, out of sight of the hotel, he broke into long, rapid strides.
He had made one mistake, he told himself; he would not make another.
His first thought, after the visit of his detective the night before, was to immediately betray Knowlton to the police. But it was certain that whoever betrayed Knowlton would earn the undying hatred of Lila Williams, and Sherman had therefore sought to bestow that office on one of the Erring Knights.
And they — fools, he said scornfully — had decided to speak to Knowlton instead.
But there was still a chance. He had gotten Dougherty to agree to wait until the following day, and before that time he hoped to have the game in his own hands, if only Dougherty would stick to his agreement, and there was no reason to think otherwise.
He hastened his step. At the subway station on Twenty-third Street he boarded a downtown train.