Phil remained motionless. Whatever was happening ahead was none of his business, and he was a meddler in other peoples affairs only when assured of profit therefrom. And, too, he was not armed. Then he thought of the four hundred dollars in his pocket: his winnings in the poker game he had just left. He had been lucky thus far tonight; mightn’t his luck carry him a little further if he gave it the opportunity? He pulled his hat down firmly on his head and ran towards the lights.
The fog aided the headlights in concealing from him whatever was happening in the machines as he approached them, but he noticed that the engine of at least one was running. Then he skirted one of them, a roadster, cheeking his momentum by catching hold of a mudguard. For a fraction of a second he hung there, while dark eyes burned into his from a white face half hidden under a brawny hand.
Phil hurled himself on the back of the man to whom the hand belonged; his fingers closed around a sinewy throat. A white flame seared his eyeballs; the ground went soft and billowy under his feet, as if it were part of the fog. Everything — the burning eyes, the brawny hand, the curtains of the automobile-rushed toward him—
Phil sat up on the wet paving and felt his head. His fingers found a sore, swelling area running from above the left ear nearly to the crown. Both automobiles were gone. No pedestrians were in sight. Lights were shining through a few windows; forms were at many windows; and curious voices were calling questions into the fog. Mastering his nausea, he got unsteadily to his feet, though his desire was to lie down again on the cool, damp street. Hunting for his hat. he found a small handbag and thrust it into his pocket. He recovered his hat from the gutter, tilted it to spare the bruise, and set out for home, ignoring the queries of the pajamaed spectators.
Dressed for bed, and satisfied that the injury to his head was superficial, Phil turned his attention to the souvenir of his adventure. It was a small bag of black silk, trimmed with silver beads, and still damp from its contact with the street. He dumped its contents out on the bed. and a bundle of paper money caught his eye. He counted the bills and found they aggregated three hundred and fifty-five dollars. Pushing the bills into the pocket of his bath-robe, he grinned. “Four hundred I win and three hundred and fifty I get for a tap on the head — a pretty good night!”
He picked up the other articles, looked at them, and returned them to the bag. A gold pencil, a gold ring with an opal set in it, a woman’s handkerchief with a gray border and an unrecognizable design in one corner, a powder-box, a small mirror, a lip-stick, some hairpins, and a rumpled sheet of note-paper covered with strange, exotic characters. He smoothed out the paper and examined it closely, but could make nothing out of it. Some Asiatic language, perhaps. He took the ring from the bag again and tried to estimate its value. His knowledge of gems was small, but he decided that the ring could not be worth much — not more than fifty dollars at the most. Still, fifty dollars is fifty dollars. He put the ring with the money, lit a cigarette, and went to bed.
Chapter II
The Mysterious Advertisement
Phil awoke at noon. His head was still tender to the touch, but the swelling had gone. He walked downtown, bought early editions of the afternoon papers, and read them while he ate breakfast. He found no mention of the struggle on Washington street, and the Lost and Found columns held nothing pertaining to the bag. That night be played poker until daylight and won two hundred and forty-some dollars. In an all-night lunch-room he read the morning papers. Still nothing of the struggle, but in the classified section of the Chronicle:
LOST — Early Tuesday morning, Lady’s black silk bag trimmed with silver, containing money, ring, gold pencil, letter, etc. Finder may keep money if other articles are retuned to CHRONICLE OFFICE.
He grinned, then frowned, and stared speculatively at the advertisement. It had a queer look to it, this offer! The ring couldn’t be worth three hundred dollars. He took it from his pocket, shielding it with his hand from the chance look of anyone in the lunch-room. No; fifty dollars would be a big price. The pencil, powder-box, and lip-stick case were of gold; but a hundred and fifty dollars, say, would more than replace everything in the bag. The undecipherable letter remained — that must be some important item! A struggle between a woman and some men at four in the morning, nothing about it in the newspapers, a lost bag containing a paper covered with foreign characters, and then this generous offer — it might mean almost anything! Of course, the wisest plan would be either to disregard the advertisement and keep what he had found, or to accept this offer and send everything but the money to the Chronicle. Either way would be playing it safe; but when a man’s luck is running good he should crowd it to the limit. Times come, as every gambler knows, when a man gets into a streak of luck, when everything he touches proves fruitful; and his play then is to push his luck to a fare-you-well — make a killing while the fickle goddess is smiling. He thought of the men he had known who had paid for their timidity in the face of Chance’s favor — men who had won dollars where they might have won thousands, men who were condemned to be pikers all their lives through lack of courage to force their luck when it ran strong, an inability to rise with their stars. “And my luck’s running good,” he whispered to the ring in his hand. “A thousand smacks in two days, after the long dry spell I’ve been through.”
He returned the ring to his pocket and reviewed the chain of incidents leading up to the advertisement. Two facts that had lurked in his subconsciousness came out to face him: the shrieking voice had been musical even in its terror, and the eyes that had burned into his had been very beautiful, though he did not know what their owners other features might be like. Two influencing elements; but the question at hand was whether the monetary reward in keeping with any danger that might ensue could be expected. He made up his mind as he finished his coffee.
“I’ll sit in this racket, whatever it is, for a little while, anyway; and see what I can get myself.”
Chapter III
Matching Wits
At ten o’clock that morning Phil telephoned the office of the Chronicle, told the girl to whom he talked that he had found the bag but would return it to no One but its owner, and went back to bed. At two o’clock he got up and dressed. He returned the ring to the bag, with everything except the money, and went into the kitchen to prepare breakfast. He usually went out for his meals, but today he wanted to be sure that he would not miss whoever might telephone or call. He had scarcely finished his meal then the door-bell rang.
“Mr. Truax?”
Phil nodded and invited the caller in. The man who entered the flat was about forty years old, nearly as tall as Phil, and perhaps twenty-five pounds heavier. He was fastidiously groomed in clothes of a European cut, and a walking-stick was crooked over one arm.
He accepted a chair with a polite smile, and said, “I shall take but a moment of your time. It is about the bag that I have come. The newspaper informed me you had found it. He betrayed his foreignness more by the precision of his enunciation than by any accent.
“It is your bag?”
The caller’s red lips parted in a smile, baring twin rows of even white teeth.
“It is my niece’s, but I can describe it. A black silk bag of about this size” — indicating with his small, shapely hands — “trimmed with silver, and holding between three and four hundred dollars, a gold pencil, a ring — an opal ring — a letter written in Russian, and the powder and rouge accessories that one would expect to find in a young woman’s bag. Perhaps a handkerchief with her initial in Russian on it. That is the one you found?”