CHAPTER XXVIII

A STRANGE SUMMONS

IT was barely an hour later, and Lowry and Barrison sat together in the inspector’s office. Before them lay the letter which Kitty Legaye had given Jim, side by side with the threatening letter which had come to the Mirror Theater. The handwriting, as was to be foreseen, was identical. There, too, lay the photograph “swiped” by the reporter Lucas, showing the two young faces, so easily recognized now as the likenesses of Rita Blankley and Kitty. There was the pistol with its odd, non-committal initial, which had been identified as Rita’s.

A telegram was handed to Lowry, and, after reading it, he passed it to Jim. It was signed with an initial only, obviously one of the inspector’s regular men, and came from Indianapolis. It read:

“The Blankleys?” asked Barrison.

“Sure. They’ll be here to-morrow, and then I guess the case’ll be over.”

Just as Barrison was leaving the office, the inspector said casually:

“By the bye, Jim—if you want to take a look at the place where the Blankleys lived, here’s the address on a card. I’d like you to go round there and have a look. You’re the sort of fellow who gets on with people better than the regular officers. Will you?”

“Rather!”

Jim went off with his card, wondering just what the inspector meant. “The sort of fellow who gets on with people!” That sounded as though there were people on the premises whom the inspector had failed to pump satisfactorily. He decided to “take a look” without delay.

It turned out to be quite the usual type of furnished rooming house, kept by a faded, whining woman, with hair and skin all the same color.

It seemed that she had a boy—thirteen he was, though he looked younger. He went to school mostly, but he was a good deal more useful when he stayed away. “And what was the good of schooling to the likes of him?” said she.

Barrison refrained from shaking her till her teeth rattled, and soothingly extracted the rest.

Freddy, who appeared to be a sharp youngster from what she said, could always turn a pretty penny by acting as messenger boy for the “ladies and gents” in the house. Some of them were actors; more of them were not. It was fairly evident that the place was largely patronized by denizens of the shady side of society. Before Jim was done with the woman, he had ascertained that Freddy had more than once acted as messenger for the Blankleys, for whom, by the bye, she had a sincere respect. She said they were “always refined in their ways,” and paid cash.

Barrison remembered that Roberts, the stage doorkeeper, had reported that the threatening letters had been delivered by a street urchin. He asked to see Freddy, but he was at school—for a wonder. His mother appeared to resent the fact, and to look upon it as so many hours wasted.

She promised that the evening would find him free to talk to the gentleman as much as the gentleman desired. Barrison had given her a dollar to start with, and promised another after he had conferred with Freddy.

When he left, he had an unsatisfied instinct that he had somehow missed something Lowry had expected him to get. The unseen Freddy was in his mind as he went uptown—in his mind to such an extent that he spoke of him to Tony Clay when he met him on Broadway and accepted that youth’s urgent pleading to go to a place he knew of where they could get a good drink. The boy was in his mind when, on coming out of the café, they found themselves stormbound by crosstown traffic and looking in at the windows of Kitty Legaye’s taxicab.

Her charming, white-skinned face framed in its short black veil and black ruff, lighted to intense interest as she caught sight of them.

“Have you any news?” she cried, in carefully subdued excitement.

Barrison could not bring himself to tell her that the police had caught up with her sister, and that she was on her way back to face her accusers. Kitty saw his hesitation, and thought it might be because Clay was present.

“Let me give you a lift!” she said impulsively.

Barrison accepted, after a second’s cogitation. “Go on to my rooms, Tony,” he said. “I’ll be there shortly.”

He got into the machine with Miss Legaye, and said to her gravely, as they began to move again:

“Tell me, please, Miss Legaye, you had no intercourse with your sister since she came to New York—I mean until you sent her the money, and she answered you?”

“None!” she said quickly and frankly.

“Did your letter come by mail or by a messenger boy?”

She started, and looked at him in surprise. “By mail,” she replied. “Why?”

“Perfect nonsense,” he said, really feeling that the impulse which had made him speak was an idle one. “I’ve found a boy who did a lot of errands for her, and I wondered if you could identify him, that’s all.”

She shook her head; though it was getting dusk, he could see her dark eyes staring at him.

“I don’t know anything about that,” she said. “What sort of a boy, and what do you expect to prove by him?”

“He’s merely a witness,” Barrison hastened to explain. “You see, the—the letter you let me have corresponds exactly in writing to the letters that came to Mortimer, threatening him. We think this is the boy who carried Mrs. Blankley’s messages while she was in New York. That’s all. You see, though it’s a small link, it is one that we can’t entirely overlook.”

“Have you seen him?” she asked.

“No; I am to see him to-night,” said Barrison. “And—Miss Legaye, I must tell you”—he hesitated, for he was a kind-hearted fellow—“I ought to warn you that you may have an unpleasant ordeal ahead of you. Your sister and her husband are—coming back to New York.”

She was silent for half a minute.

“Thank you,” she said. “You have been very good to—warn me. I don’t think you will ever know how glad I am to have met you this afternoon, Mr. Barrison.”

He did not pretend to understand her. As they had gone several blocks, he said good night with more warmth and consideration than he had ever expected to feel for Kitty Legaye, and, alighting from the taxi, made his way directly to his rooms.

He found Willie Coster awaiting him there, with his hair standing on end, and an expression of blank and rather appalled astonishment on his mild countenance.

“Say!” he cried, as Jim entered. “I went to call on the gov’nor this afternoon, and—he’s sailed for London to put on three or four plays! And I’m out of a job! Now, what do you think of that?”

Barrison stood still in the center of the room and nodded his head slowly. So Dukane had heard the warnings in the air, and had slipped away! Well, it was only a matter of time! They had nothing criminal against him, but—the story would not make a pleasant one, as noised abroad about the greatest theatrical manager of America. Eventually, it would come out. However, meanwhile he had gone. He was sorry for Willie; sorry for the hundreds of actors and other employees who would suffer. It looked from what Willie had to tell that Dukane’s exit had been a complete and clean-cut one. He had closed up his office, put his road companies in subordinate hands, and—cleared out.

“And I—who have been with him all these years—don’t even get a company!” complained poor Willie.

Barrison remembered what Dukane had said to him about not being able to afford to consider any man personally. For some reason he had chosen to forget Willie Coster, and, true to form, he had forgotten him!

Tony Clay came in then. It was half past seven, nearly an hour later, when Tara reminded them politely of dinner.

“We’ll go out somewhere,” said Jim, rising and stretching himself. “You two shall be my guests. I feel that this case is practically over, and when I’m through with a case I feel like Willie after a first night—I want to relax. I don’t want—at least not necessarily—to get drunk, but I do want to——”

Oddly enough, it was Tony Clay who interrupted him in a queer, abrupt sort of voice. He sounded like a man who hated to speak, but who was driven to it in spite of himself.

“Look here, you fellows,” he said, “don’t let’s go out for dinner to-night.”

“Why not?” demanded Barrison, in astonishment. “I thought you were always on the first call for a feed, Tony!”

“Oh, well, maybe I am. And—I know you think me an awful duffer in lots of ways, Jim, but—I have a hunch that perhaps——”

“That what?” demanded Jim, as he paused.

“That something is going to happen!” declared Tony defiantly. “Now call me a fool if you like! I shan’t mind a bit, because I dare say I am one. But that’s my hunch, and I’m going to stick to it. I don’t know whether it’s something good or something darned bad, but—if something doesn’t turn up before another hour’s out, I miss my guess!”

They laughed at him, but they stayed.

“Tony,” said Barrison, after the lights were lighted and Tara had gone to prepare dinner, “you have something more than a hunch to go on. What is it? Out with it!”

“Well,” said Tony unwillingly, “maybe I have something, but it’s too vague for me to explain, yet. Only—I’d be just as pleased if we three stuck together to-night. That’s all.”

The boy spoke earnestly, and Barrison looked at him in real wonder.

“Tony,” he said, “if you really know anything——”

The bell rang, and Tara brought in a telegram.

Barrison tore it open and read:

Barrison gazed at the words in dazed stillness for a moment; then seized his hat.

“Stop, Jim!” cried Tony urgently. “You must tell us—you must tell me—what is the matter?”

Barrison shook his head as he dashed to the door.

“I can’t tell any one anything!” he cried, as he went. “I am needed. Isn’t that enough for any man?”

He was gone, and the door had slammed after him.

Tony quickly picked up the telegram which had fluttered to the floor. “Didn’t I warn him?” he muttered.