Earl Biggers - Seven Keys to Baldpate

“Well, what’s the sense in hiding ’em?” the large lady inquired.

“It ain’t hiding — it’s system,” explained Mr. Peters. “Something women don’t understand.” He came close to Mr. Magee, and whispered low: “You didn’t warn me there was another of ’em.”

“The last, on my word of honor,” Magee told him.

“The last,” sneered Mr. Peters. “There isn’t any last up here.” And with a sidelong glance at the new Eve in his mountain Eden, he turned away to the kitchen.

“Now,” whispered Magee to Miss Norton, “I’ll get you that package. I’ll prove that it was for you I fought and bled the mayor of Reuton. Watch for our chance — when I see you again I’ll have it in my pocket.”

“You mustn’t fail me,” she replied. “It means so much.”

Mr. Magee started for the stairs. Between him and them loomed suddenly the great bulk of Mr. Cargan. His hard menacing eyes looked full into Magee’s.

“I want to speak to you, young fellow,” he remarked.

“I’m flattered,” said Magee, “that you find my company so enchanting. In ten minutes I’ll be ready for another interview.”

“You’re ready now,” answered the mayor, “even if you don’t know it.” His tone was that of one correcting a child. He took Mr. Magee’s arm in a grip which recalled to that gentleman a fact the muckraking stories always dwelt on — how this Cargan had, in the old days, “put away his man” in many shady corners of a great city.

“Come over here,” said Cargan. He led the way to a window. Over his shoulder Magee noted the troubled eyes of Miss Norton following. “Sit down. I’ve been trying to dope you out, and I think I’ve got you. I’ve seen your kind before. Every few months one of ’em breezes into Reuton, spends a whole day talking to a few rats I’ve had to exterminate from politics, and then flies back to New York with a ten-page story of my vicious career all ready for the linotypers. Yes, sir — I got you. You write sweet things for the magazines.”

“Think so?” inquired Magee.

“Know it,” returned the mayor heartily. “So you’re out after old Jim Cargan’s scalp again, are you? I thought that now, seeing stories on the corruption of the courts is so plentiful, you’d let the shame of the city halls alone for a while. But — well, I guess I’m what you guys call good copy. Big, brutal, uneducated, picturesque — you see I read them stories myself. How long will the American public stand being ruled by a man like this, when it might be authorizing pretty boys with kid gloves to get next to the good things? That’s the dope, ain’t it — the old dope of the reform gang — the ballyhoo of the bunch that can’t let the existing order stand? Don’t worry, I ain’t going to get started on that again. But I want to talk to you serious — like a father. There was a young fellow like you once—”

“Like me?”

“Exactly. He was out working on long hours and short pay for the reform gang, and he happened to get hold of something that a man I knew — a man high up in public office — wanted, and wanted bad. The young fellow was going to get two hundred dollars for the article he was writing. My friend offered him twenty thousand to call it off. What’d the young fellow do?”

“Wrote the article, of course,” said Magee.

“Now — now,” reproved Cargan. “That remark don’t fit in with the estimate I’ve made of you. I think you’re a smart boy. Don’t disappoint me. This young fellow I speak of — he was smart, all right. He thought the matter over. He knew the reform bunch, through and through. All glory and no pay, serving them. He knew how they chased bubbles, and made a lot of noise, and never got anywhere in the end. He thought it over, Magee, the same as you’re going to do. ‘You’re on,’ says this lad, and added five figures to his roll as easy as we’d add a nickel. He had brains, that guy.”

“And no conscience,” commented Magee.

“Conscience,” said Mr. Cargan, “ain’t worth much except as an excuse for a man that hasn’t made good to give his wife. How much did you say you was going to get for this article?”

Mr. Magee looked him coolly in the eye.

“If it’s ever written,” he said, “it will be a two-hundred-thousand-dollar story.”

“There ain’t anything like that in it for you,” replied the mayor. “Think over what I’ve told you.”

“I’m afraid,” smiled Magee, “I’m too busy to think.”

He again crossed the office floor to the stairway. Before the fire sat the girl of the station, her big eyes upon him, pleadingly. With a reassuring smile in her direction, he darted up the stairs.

“And now,” he thought, as he closed and locked the door of number seven behind him, “for the swag. So Cargan would give twenty thousand for that little package. I don’t blame him.”

He opened a window and glanced out along the balcony. It was deserted in either direction; its snowy floor was innocent of footprints. Re-entering number seven, he knelt by the fireplace and dug up the brick under which lay the package so dear to many hearts on Baldpate Mountain.

“I might have known,” he muttered.

For the money was gone. He dug up several of the bricks, and rummaged about beneath them. No use. The fat little bundle of bills had flown. Only an ugly hole gaped up at him.

He sat down. Of course! What a fool he had been to suppose that such treasure as this would stay long in a hiding-place so obvious. He who had made a luxurious living writing tales of the chase of gems and plate and gold had bungled the thing from the first. He could hammer out on a typewriter wild plots and counter-plots — with a boarding-school girl’s cupid busy all over the place. But he could not live them.

A boarding-school cupid! Good lord! He remembered the eyes of the girl in blue corduroy as they had met his when he turned to the stairs. What would she say now? On this he had gaily staked her faith in him. This was to be the test of his sincerity, the proof of his devotion. And now he must go to her, looking like a fool once more — go to her and confess that again he had failed her.

His rage blazed forth. So they had “got to him”, after all. Who? He thought of the smooth crafty mountain of a man who had detained him a moment ago. Who but Cargan and Max, of course? They had found his childish hiding-place, and the money had come home to their eager hands. No doubt they were laughing slyly at him now.

Well, he would show them yet. He got up and walked the floor. Once he had held them up in the snow and spoiled their little game — he would do it again. How? When? He did not know. His soul cried for action of some sort, but he was up against a blind alley, and he knew it.

He unlocked the door of number seven. To go down-stairs, to meet the sweet eagerness of the girl who depended on him, to confess himself tricked — it took all the courage he had. Why had it all happened, anyhow? Confound it, hadn’t he come up here to be alone with his thoughts? But, brighter side, it had given him her — or it would give him her before the last card was played. He shut his teeth tightly, and went down the stairs.

Mr. Bland had added himself to the group about the fire. Quickly the eyes of Miss Norton met Magee’s. She was trembling with excitement. Cargan, huge, red, cheery, got in Magee’s path once more.

“I’ll annihilate this man,” thought Magee.

“I’ve been figuring,” said the mayor, “that was one thing he didn’t have to contend with. No, sir, there wasn’t any bright young men hunting up old Napoleon and knocking him in the monthly magazines. They didn’t go down to Sardinia and pump it out of the neighbors that he started business on borrowed money, and that his father drank more than was good for him. They didn’t run illustrated articles about the diamonds he wore, and moving pictures of him eating soup.”