CHAPTER XXXI

TONY DOES HIS BIT

THINGS happened very rapidly in Jim Barrison’s rooms after he had made his hasty departure. Tony Clay stood for a moment, holding the telegram in his hand; and then, tossing it to Willie Coster, he made a jump for the telephone. There he called Spring 3100, and, getting his number, demanded Inspector Lowry in a voice that might have been the president’s for authority, and a Bloomingdale inmate’s for agitation.

“Now, now,” came the deep, official tones from the other end of the wire; “hold your horses, my friend! Is it an accident or a murder?”

“It’s probably both,” stormed Tony.

He had the inspector on the wire, and was pouring out his tale, trying his best to keep himself coherent with the ever-present picture in his brain of Jim in trouble. Tony was not one of the most inspired of detectives, but he was as good a friend as ever a man had, and he loved Jim.

It happened that Lowry had a weakness for Jim himself. Also, the story told by Tony was, though wild, certainly one to make any police official sit up and take notice. Ferrati’s, as has already been suggested, was not looked upon favorably by the police.

He told Tony Clay that he would come up to Ferrati’s himself with a couple of men.

“And we’ll stop for you,” he said, meaning to be most kind and condescending.

Tony retorted hotly: “I’m leaving for Ferrati’s now! I can’t wait for the police department to wake up!”

He hung up viciously and turned to face Willie Coster, also Tara, who, though less demonstrative than these Occidentals, was clearly about as anxious as either of them.

“Tara, get a taxi!” said Tony briefly.

“Immediate, honorable sir!”

Tara’s alacrity was rather pathetic. Willie Coster looked after him with a kindly nod.

“D’you know,” he remarked, in a low tone, “that Jap is just as keen to help Barrison as we are. You’ll find when we start out after him he won’t let himself be left behind.”

Tony turned to scowl at him in bewilderment.

“When ‘we’ start out after him!” he repeated. “You aren’t expecting to spring anything of that sort, are you?”

Willie Coster looked at him a moment only. Then his small, pinched face blazed suddenly into fiery red.

“Say,” he snapped, “do you think you’re the only he-man on the premises? And do you suppose that no one else is capable of a friendly feeling for Barrison, and a natural wish to help him out of a mess, except just your blessed self? Because, if that’s what you think, you forget it—quick!”

Tony felt abject, and would have apologized, too, but a snorting arose in the street below them, and Tara announced the taxi which, in some inscrutable way, he had maneuvered there in more than record time.

Tony recalled what Willie Coster had said.

“Tara,” he said abruptly, “you are fond of Mr. Barrison, I know.”

“Yes, sir,” Tara said.

“We think Mr. Barrison is in danger. We are going to see what we can do for him. Now remember, there isn’t a reason in the world why you should come too, only——”

The Jap spoke in his elaborately polite way:

“Honorably pardon, sir! There is reason.”

“But——” Tony was beginning, but he never finished. He saw the reason too plainly. Tara, like himself and like Willie, was too fond of Barrison to stay away. That was reason enough.

“All right, Tara, you come along!” he said, turning away. And his voice might have been a bit husky.

“Where, first?” said Coster, as they entered the taxicab. And there were three of them, too!

Tony gave the name of the hotel where Miss Templeton lived, which was not so far away. Once there, he left his companions in the taxi and went up alone to interview the lady. In his hand, tightly crumpled with the vehemence of his intense feeling, he kept the telegram which had come for Jim Barrison, signed with her initials.

He penciled a note to Miss Templeton which made her send for him as soon as she received it.

They knew each other, but she was so excited that she did hardly more than acknowledge his hasty bow.

“Mr. Clay,” she exclaimed, “what does it all mean? I know you would not have sent me this message without a reason! You say: ‘Mr. Barrison is in grave danger because of you. Will you help me to save him?’” She confronted Tony with pale cheeks and wide eyes. “Now, Mr. Clay, you know that such a thing is impossible! How could Mr. Barrison be in danger on my account without my knowing it? And I swear to you that I can think of nothing in all the world which could subject him to danger—because of me! Nevertheless, I cannot let a thing like this go—no woman could! If there is danger to Mr. Barrison, I should know it! If it is, in some way, connected with me, I should know it all the more, and care about it all the more! What is it?” Suddenly she dropped the rather haughty air which she had assumed and clasped her hands like a frightened child. “Oh, Mr. Clay, you know that I would do anything to help him! What is it? What is it?”

By way of answer, Tony handed her the telegram.

After she had read it, she held it in rigid fingers for a moment; it seemed they were not able to drop it. She looked at Tony Clay.

“And, receiving this,” she murmured faintly, “he—went?”

“He went,” answered the young man, “so fast that we could not stop him; though I, for one, suspected something shady, and had warned him he must be on his guard.”

It is probable that in all his life Tony Clay never understood the look that flamed in the woman’s face before him now. In that strange combination of emotions was pain and fear, but there was also joy and triumph.

“So he cared like that!” she murmured.

And then, before Tony Clay could even be sure that she had uttered the words, she had changed again to a practical and utilitarian person. She seized a long raincoat from the back of a chair and said immediately:

“I am ready. Shall we go?”

Tony glowered at her. Another one? Aloud he remarked:

“If you will merely testify that you did not send that telegram——”

She looked as though she would have liked to slap him in her exasperation.

“Of course I didn’t!” she raged. “But what has that to do with this situation? I thought you said he was—in danger?”

“I am afraid he is. Very well, ma’am; if you must come, you must. We have rather a larger crowd than I had expected at first.”

It was impossible for him to avoid an injured tone.

However they felt about it, Miss Templeton went with them. When the light of passing street lamps fell upon her face, it had the look of an avenging angel.

On the way, she insisted that Tony should tell them what had made him suspicious as to danger awaiting Barrison that night. And after a little hesitation he told—this:

“You know Jim had put me onto the Legaye end of the case—had suggested my talking to the maid, and all that. Well, I did it, and, as a matter of fact, I got in deeper than I expected to.” He looked at each of them defiantly, but no one seemed disposed to sit in judgment, so he continued: “Maria—she’s quite a nice girl, too, and don’t let anybody forget it—told me to-day that her lady was terrifically upset about something.”

“When was that?” demanded Coster.

“Late in the afternoon, just before I came to dinner—to the dinner that didn’t come off. Jim and I parted when he took a ride in Miss Legaye’s taxi, and he left me to come on to join him alone.”

“Did you come straight on?”

“Yes,” said Tony, “I did. But something happened on the way, and that has given me the clew to—to—what’s taking us out here.”

“Well, tell it, for Heaven’s sake!”

“Well, it seems,” said Tony unwillingly, yet with the evident realization that he was doing the right thing, “it seems that Miss Legaye was in the habit of going shopping with her maid—Maria—and of dropping her when she was tired—I mean when Miss Legaye was tired, not Maria—and leaving her to come on with packages and so on. She had done that to-day. Just after she and Jim Barrison had gone on, I met Maria, and I stayed with her, too”—defiantly—“until after the time I should have been at Jim’s rooms!”

“Not very long, was it?”

“Not more than half an hour, I’m sure.”

“And in that time, what could have happened that——”

“Nothing happened. Nothing could have happened. It was only that—that——” Tony swallowed hard, and then went on courageously: “She asked me when her mistress had gone home, and I told her just a few minutes before. Then she said she must telephone her, if we were to have a moment together. She said that she could easily make out an excuse. And, though I had no—no particular interest in Maria,” faltered poor Tony unhappily, “I couldn’t see what I could do to get out of that! And—and she did telephone, and when she came back from telephoning,” he said, speaking carefully, and evidently trying his best to make the thing sound as commonplace as possible, “she told me that her mistress had just come in, and that she was so excited she could scarcely speak, and she wanted Maria at once, and that she had told Maria that if ever she had cared anything about her, she must be prepared to stand by her now—and to hurry—hurry—hurry—hurry! That’s what poor Maria kept repeating to herself. And that’s what I had in my mind when I went into Jim’s rooms, for it was the last thing in my mind.

“I was afraid then and there of Miss Legaye’s doing something—queer—but before I had a chance to tell Jim what I thought—that message came, and he was off!”

Almost directly they were at Ferrati’s and confronting Ferrati himself, who looked alarmed at the sight of these visitors.

It required small astuteness to see that his party was an unexpected one, and that the unexpectedness was only rivaled by the lack of welcome.

Finding that ordinary and moderately courteous inquiries were only met with extreme haziness of perception, Tony saw that he would have to push his way in.

He glanced over his shoulder and saw that Willie Coster expected the same result; also that Tara looked mildly pleased. Doubtless he was pondering enjoyably upon jujutsu and what it could accomplish. Considered collectively, the party was not one to be ignored.

As though to put an exclamation point after the sound sense of the rest, Miss Templeton, who had been extremely quiet through it all, suddenly drew out a revolver from the pocket of her raincoat. Tony thrilled, for it was the one that he had seen her buy.

“Before we fight our way in,” she said amiably enough, “suppose we try just walking in? I don’t believe that these poor creatures will make much trouble.”

She smiled, not too pleasantly, at the poor creatures.

But they did!

They made so much trouble that it took the lot of them fifteen minutes to get to that dark inner room where Jim Barrison was imprisoned. By that time Lowry and three good men had arrived in a racing car, and by the same time, Tony Clay had been put out of business by two of Ferrati’s “huskies.”

“Never mind about me!” he had implored them. “Get Jim out!”

They did. And they found Jim blinking at them out of that awesome darkness, holding Kitty in an iron grip. He was rather white, but he tried to smile.

“Suppose you take her?” was his first utterance. “She’s one handful.”

Kitty, once in the hands of the officers, shrugged her shoulders and changed her tune.

“What a lot of fools you are!” she exclaimed contemptuously. “You had the clew in your hands a dozen times over! It was only to-day that this fellow got onto it, though, and so”—again she shrugged her shoulders—“I had to finish him, if I could, hadn’t I?”