Vincent Starrett - The Blue Door

The voice was detached and cool, but not unfriendly. Honeywell, when he had recovered his own, answered.

“Who do you think we are?” he asked.

The two strangers laughed.

“Forget it now, boys,” continued their acquaintance of the barroom. “We weren’t either of us born yesterday. Big Ed was wise to you as soon as you opened your traps. If he’d had his way, you wouldn’t be going home to-night. You’re only doing your duty; I know that, and I ain’t unfriendly; but we’re making our living in our way, too, and all we want is to be let alone, see? There’s no harm in selling good liquor to good fellows, now, is there?”

“I see,” said Honeywell; “you think we are government detectives, do you?”

“Government, or state, or anti-saloon league, or whatever you are, you’ve had your warning,” said the taxi driver. “Next time there’ll be less talking.”

He climbed back into his seat and Silvernail jumped quickly into the body of the cab. The engine was still running. In a moment the car was in motion. It turned slowly, and Honeywell, straining his eyes in the darkness, saw that the license plate had been painted over. There was a dark line about the body of the cab, too, that was unfamiliar. It was, in point of fact, he realized quickly, not a Purple taxi at all, but a private cab of similar hue and build; an owl taxi, probably, trading on the color of the popular company whose name was in everybody’s mouth.

With a final shifting of gears, it moved off in the darkness, leaving the two friends to silence and their thoughts.

Their thoughts were neither pleasant nor printable.

The sun, rising early next morning after the rain, found the two adventurers soundly sleeping, and had been up a number of hours before either opened his eyes upon a lunatic world. The long, wet tramp through the night before a respectable taxicab could be encountered had had its inevitable effect upon the two friends; it had tired them so completely that sleep had overwhelmed them almost before they could undress.

About ten o’clock, however, Norway stirred, troubled by vague thoughts of the office, and, rolling over in bed, beheld the tousled head of Bartlett Honeywell outlined upon a sofa pillow. The story writer had spent the night upon a couch. Instantly Norway was wide awake, the details of the preceding evening livid in his mind. His vocal shudderings in the cold shower awoke Honeywell, who hastened to join his friend in the workaday world, however lunatic.

Some minutes later they descended to breakfast. Their plans had been perfected the night before, during that long, damp walk. They were through with private detecting: it was a delusion and a snare. The police should hear of these outrages, and that shortly.

Without difficulty, they gained the ear of a police captain and told their story. The officer smiled understandingly.

“Don’t those fellows do the damnedest things?” he asked. “I hear they have airships now, and fly the stuff over from Canada to some place in Michigan. Then they bring it down the lake and land it some place right under the noses of the government fellows. They’re sure getting cute. Well, gentlemen, I’ll do what I can to help you. I suppose you can find the place again where you met this fellow—what’s his name?—Goldstein?”

“Silvernail,” said Honeywell.

“Of course he lied about being a vaudeville actor,” continued the captain, “but he’s a bad actor , I’ll make a little bet on that. We’ll raid the place before they can get time to turn around, and maybe we’ll find a clew to your friend—what’s his name?—Emerson?”

“Pemberton,” said Honeywell.

“Whatever it is,” agreed the captain. “You fellows ’ll have to go along, see?”

He bustled about for some moments and came back with a square-shouldered, powerful fellow in plain clothes, who was introduced as Detective Sergeant Brady.

“Take a couple of men with you, Brady,” ordered the captain, “and get the whole gang.”

“Oughtn’t we to go at night, Captain?” asked Norway. “There’ll be a bigger crowd there at night.”

“Oh, we don’t want the customers,” grinned the officer. “They’re decent enough citizens, like yourselves. All they go there for is a drink. We want the fellows who run the place; the fellows behind the bar, and this Big Ed you were talking about.”

“How about the policeman who directed Mr. Norway?” queried Honeywell.

“Don’t you worry about him . That’s our job. He’ll get all that’s coming to him and then some. Leave that to me.”

A police car was waiting at the curb, and they all piled in, while a small crowd collected before the station to see them off. Honeywell dimly wondered how many bootleggers were in the throng.

Under the guidance of Norway, who sat beside the driver, the police car rapidly covered the distance to the scene of their adventure, and in an instant the whole posse was in motion. Two of the detectives scurried around to the back of the house, to interrupt any possible egress at that point, while Brady and the two adventurers proceeded up the stairway at the front.

At the door leading to the apartment, which seemed somewhat less blue than the night before, Brady hammered briskly and received no reply. He pounded again with the same result.

“Well,” said Detective Sergeant Brady, “down she comes!”

He flung himself sharply against the door frame and rebounded, rubbing his shoulder. “All together, boys,” he said; and the trio hurled itself in a knot at the withholding door.

Twice they repeated the performance, and then there were running steps inside and the bolts were withdrawn. The men who opened the door were Brady’s companions, who had effected an entrance at the rear. They grinned sheepishly and flung out empty hands to indicate the condition of the barroom.

Brady and the two adventurers pushed in and looked about them; but the place was vacant. Everything had been removed overnight. There was not even a clew to the illegal business that had been conducted there only a few hours before.

They returned, crestfallen, to the station, where they listened to a brief lecture from the captain.

“That’s the way it often happens, gentlemen,” said the officer sympathetically. “Maybe you got the wrong house, and maybe you didn’t. Maybe they got a tip-off and scuttled the ship; maybe they just suspected there’d be trouble after they kidnaped two American citizens. I don’t know. We’re up against that sort of thing all the time, you know, and there’s nothing we can do about it but try again. ‘Better luck next time’ is our motto, these days. Well, gentlemen, any time you get another hunch, look us up. We’re always glad to help.”

He relighted the stub of a frayed cigar and ushered the friends to the station door.

“Well?” asked Honeywell, cocking an eye at Norway as they stood on a corner a block removed from the police station.

“I think that captain tipped them off himself,” asserted Norway promptly. “The police are in this bootlegging business themselves, up to their necks.”

“No,” demurred the amateur detective. “They wouldn’t have had time to clean out that place between the time we left the station and the time we reached the apartment. I’m not defending the police; they may be as bad as you think they are. One of ’em certainly sent you and Pemberton to that first place with the blue door. But there’s something else behind all this, something big that’s blocking us. I’m beginning to think that something pretty serious has happened to Pemberton, and somebody’s afraid we are going to uncover it.” His lips set in a thin line. “Well, we are! I’m not through with this case yet, Norway. If they’ve killed Pemberton we’ll get the men who killed him. If they’re just keeping him locked up some place, we’ll find him, and he’ll have the evidence we need to put the others where they belong. That’s why Pemberton is missing. Somehow, somewhere, he got the goods on this gang—so the gang got Pemberton.”