Джон Данн: Detective Fiction Weekly. Vol. 44, No. 5, September 28, 1929

“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.”

“Sure thing,” Dan agreed.

All the way down to Twenty-Fourth Street they talked as fast as the words would come. Dan said just before they reached the spot: “My partner is wearing old clothes and a big beard that makes him look like he’s just over from the other side. You’ll see him.” And to the driver of the cab, Dan said: “Slow down when you pass Twenty-Fourth Street. I want to have a look around.”

As they went slowly past the spot, Barry saw the man whom Dan meant; it could be no one else. A tall, poorly dressed fellow, with a ragged beard that swept his chest, and a battered soft hat on the top of his head. He was leaning against a lamp-post, hand? jammed down in his pockets, eyes on the sidewalk, and he did not seem to have a thought in his mind on any subject save himself. He did not look up when the cab went by; could not have known that it was there.

Barry had been looking eagerly for some signal; and when none was given, and they were past, he was surprised to see Dan sit back with a look of satisfaction on his face. “That’s that,” Dan remarked. “Now for the hotel and that little celebration. I hope your drinks are good.”

“Supposed to be, old man. They cost enough. Look here — it’s none of my business, but what kind of signal did you get from that fellow? I was looking at him, and he didn’t make a move. Didn’t even know we were there I’ll bet.”

Dan chuckled. “You’d win the bet, too,” he declared. “I don’t think he did see us pass. He didn’t have to. If things were going one way, he was to stand there with his hands in his pockets. If they were not, his hands were to be down at his sides. That’s all there was to it.”

“I’ll be darned,” Barry said ruthfully.

The driver turned his head. “Where to now?” he asked.

“The Plaza,” Barry told him.

They went back by way of Seventh Avenue. At Thirty-Seventh Street they were stopped again by the change of lights. Barry was surprised to see Dan Brady suddenly cower back in his seat and hide his face.

“What’s the matter?” Barry asked in amazement.

From behind his hat, Dan retorted sharply: “There’s a man at the curb there who mustn’t see me! It’s Ivan Alexandranoff, one of the most deadly men in the country to-day. He’s part of the case I’m working on.”

Several people were standing at the curb, but Barry had no trouble in picking out the man. He was lounging there, smoking cigarette, looking idly at the traffic. He was a medium-sized man with a thin, smooth-shaved face, shadowed somewhat under a dark green fedora hat, whose brim was turned down in front. Barry caught a glimpse of extraordinarily small feet, almost like a woman’s, of soft hands, small and white and womanlike also, and a feline grace about the figure lounging there. He started to study the sharp features of Ivan Alexandranoff, but caught only a fleeting glimpse of a thin cruel mouth when the lights shifted and they went forward again.

Dan came out from behind the shelter of his hat, clapped it on his head, and took a deep breath of relief. “That was a close shave,” he said fervently. “I would have had a devil of a time explaining what I was doing here in the cab with you. You look too damned prosperous to be seen with me.”

“That chap struck me as being decidedly unusual,” Barry remarked thoughtfully. “I don’t know when I’ve seen a man who, well, lingers in my mind so. What’s his history?”

Dan thrust a cigarette between his lips and lighted it, and inhaled deeply before answering. When he did, his voice was solemn. “Blood,” Dan said. “That’s Ivan Alexandranoff’s story in a nutshell. Blood. He’s a spawn of the Russian trouble. We don’t know much about him and his beginnings before he floated to the top of the cesspool of murder, blood, and torture. What we do know is that he was one of Lenine’s right-hand men. Not one of the figure-heads whose pictures and histories were paraded around the world. He was too deadly for that.

“Ivan Alexandranoff was kept under cover, like a snake. Not many men in the inner circles of the party knew about him for a long time. But he was busy. The tales that have come out about his activities would make your blood run cold. He went out of the country shortly after Germany and the Allies signed the Peace Treaty. We know he was in France for a time, and then Italy, when Mussolini routed the unrest and took charge of things. Then he went to England.

“Always where he remained there was unrest, trouble, plots against the government. Down under the surface the Red Menace seethed and bubbled, spreading out through the land. But no trail of guilt ever led to the door of Ivan Alexandranoff.

“Finally he came to America.”

Dan inhaled again from the cigarette, and then said grimly: “The greatest, finest, most contented country in the history of the world only makes them envious We have everything but their rotten gospel of revolution, and ‘justice’ for the masses. So their worms are boring, boring—”

“You think that fellow is making trouble?” Barry asked.

“He is here,” Dan answered cryptically. “We haven’t anything concrete against him; but his record is enough. And there is no doubt that something is afoot. Something — we’ll drag it out in the light of day pretty soon. And then—” Dan fell silent, his face brooding, as though he was looking into the past and the future, seeing things that had best not be put into words.

Barry fell silent also, his mind filled with the memory of the man he had seen back there at the curb. Ivan Alexandranoff. Felinelike, sinister.

In Barry’s rooms at the Plaza they had a drink, and fell to yarning of old times. Lunch was sent up, and they ate it there, with a bottle of wine, and talked on.

Sight of his kit bags stirred Barry’s memory, and as they sat there, he told of the happening on board the ship.

Dan listened with interest. “That razor blade,” he asked at the last, “do you still have it?”

“I think so.” Barry got up and crossed the room, and felt in the pocket of the suit he had worn the day he came ashore. The box was there, just as he had picked it up and pocketed it when he left the cabin. He gave it to Dan.

Dan walked to the window with it, and stared at the shiny surface of the blade. “You have a good print here all right,” he said. “Unfortunately, it would be pretty hard to get any one to believe your story now. She could swear that you found the blade in the passage, or even in her room. She might reverse the charges against you.” He smiled slightly.

Barry shrugged. “I have no intention of doing anything about the matter. I would have proceeded at once if I had.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“I don’t know myself,” Barry admitted. “There was something about her. And she seemed to be in trouble anyway.”

Dan pursed his lips. “Probably a moll who travels the shipping lines all the time. She must have thought you had something valuable along.”

“But I didn’t. And there was no mark on my bags. That’s the only thing that she could have cut with the blade. She seemed to have plenty of time to cut if she had been minded to. Curtains were down, door locked, and all.”

“By me,” Dan said with a shake of his head, and he closed the box and handed it back. “You say the man who nabbed her was named Harris?”

“That’s what she called him. And he called her Olga. I couldn’t find out anything else.”