Стюарт Стерлинг - The Black Lizard Big Book of Black Mask Stories

“Come on in here, Ed,” she said, and gave me her hand, leading the way into a small room which opened off the rear hall. “This is filled with wraps, but we can talk here for a minute... Oh, how I hoped I’d see you again, Ed.”

I patted her shoulder reassuringly, and she cuddled into the hollow of my arm with a little snuggly motion, as natural as though we’d been engaged for years.

“Ed, there’s a man by the name of Schwartz who holds one of those papers. He showed it to me, and it’s genuine, all right. He insists that I must use my influence to see that a jewelry exhibit given by the Down Town Merchants’ Exhibit is a success. He wants me to have Mrs. Kemper act as hostess and sponsor for the exhibit. Otherwise he threatens to use the paper against me, and expose Father, blacken his memory, give the story to the newspapers and all the rest.”

I did some rapid thinking.

“When do you get this paper?”

“As soon as Mrs. Kemper announces that she will act as hostess.”

“And will she?”

A voice from the doorway answered.

“She’ll do anything for Helen Chadwick. Ed, how are you? It’s a pleasure to greet you once more.”

I turned and looked into the smiling eyes of Edith Jewett Kemper, leader of the social world, head of the four hundred.

There was a certain wistful sadness in her face as she gave me her hand.

“Ed, you never took advantage of my invitation to come to my house for a visit. There are lots of people who would have given much for such an invitation. I like you, and my husband likes you — and Helen likes you.”

I bowed again.

“Thanks. I appreciate it, but to have a crook spending the week at your house might not appear to the best of advantage in the social columns of some of the papers.”

She shrugged her bare shoulders.

“The papers be damned. I have my standing sufficiently assured to do as I please.”

The conversation was getting a little too personal for me. Those were my friends, and yet they didn’t understand how impossible it was to maintain a friendship with a crook. I knew their sincerity, appreciated their interest, but I was a crook, a crook who was known from coast to coast. Ed Jenkins, the Phantom Crook, could have nothing in common with people such as these. The memory of a pleasant week-end, the haunting recollection of those soft eyes of Helen Chadwick’s, and a sense of gratitude — those were the ties that bound me to a world that was another existence from my own life, an environment foreign to me, a something separate and apart.

“How did you know I was here?”

She grinned at that.

“I happened to be standing near the front windows, and saw the butler as he went out — down and out. I fancied that would mean Ed Jenkins was calling, and I took the liberty of intruding long enough to say that I don’t like to be snubbed. You’re not using me right, Ed; and then there’s Helen.”

I nodded.

“Yes, there’s Helen,” I said. “It would be a fine endorsement for her future if the papers should learn that the Edward Gordon Jenkins who was with her for a visit at the house of the Kempers was none other than Ed Jenkins, the Phantom Crook. It would surely look well in print!”

Her eyes were soft, dreamy.

“There are things more important than reputation. One should not sacrifice all life for the sake of conventions, for social standing. Social position is merely a bauble, Ed, a pretty, glittering trinket that’s as cold as ice.”

I could feel the clinging girl press her face against my shoulder. The party was due to get all weeps if I didn’t strut my stuff and make a getaway.

“I’ve been thinking it over, and I want you to act as hostess for the jewel exhibit. See that Helen gets the paper, and then I’ll get in touch with you later. In the meantime, I’m on my way. There’s work to be done before sunrise.”

I gently broke away and started for the door.

Helen stood there, motionless. Mrs. Kemper made as though she would detain me, then thought better of it.

“So long, Ed,” called Helen, in a gay voice.

“Be good,” I told her.

Mrs. Kemper said nothing, but her eyes were moist, and, as I rounded the corner into the hallway, I saw the two women go into a clinch.

That was over.

The cold fog of the night felt cool and welcome on my face. I was commencing to know the truth. That sense of fierce protection which had come over me as I held Helen to me, that swift pounding of the pulse when I had first heard her voice... I put those thoughts behind me, firmly, resolutely. I was a crook. The girl was a thoroughbred. I shook myself out of my daze. There was work to be done, a necessity that I keep my wits clear. Through the foggy night there were crooks peering at the streets, closed cars circling about, cars that were filled with armed men. All crookdom was looking for Ed Jenkins. I had warned the head of the new-formed crime trust. Too much was at stake to take chances. War had been declared and no quarter would be asked or given. Single-handed, my wits were pitted against those of an organized underworld, and the safety and happiness of a girl who had shown friendship for Ed Jenkins was at stake.

The fog cleared my brain, and I began to think, to put together the pieces of the puzzle that had been placed in my hands. There would be a few thousand profit to be made from the jewelry exhibit, but the crook who had engineered that game would not be content with a paltry few thousand. It was intended to loot the exhibit, but how?

Then there was the girl with the mole. She had given her signal ten minutes after I had departed, and then, when the man had gone to her apartment, he had called off his gang without any delay. Without enough delay. Was it possible they suspected this girl with the mole of double-crossing them as far as I was concerned?

I swung down the street until I came to an all-night drug store, summoned a taxi, and took another look at the apartment house where Maude Enders lived. One look was enough. There was a light in the girl’s apartment, and a closed car before the door.

She had been summoned, this girl of mystery, this perfectly formed woman who was absolutely unconscious of any charm, who dwelt in a mental world, who thought swiftly and cleverly.

I spoke to the taxi driver and had him drive me around the block, stop at an alley and turn out the lights. From the alley I could see the light in the girl’s apartment.

Three minutes and the light snapped out.

The girl with the mole came out of the front door, leaning on the arm of a man who was bundled up in a heavy overcoat, and entered the car. I didn’t have to be a prophet to know that the girl was being taken to account, that she was a prisoner right then — a prisoner of the man on whose arm she was leaning, that she was being summoned to the headquarters of the crime trust.

I had almost overlooked that bet. A moment or two more and it would have been too late. I had intended to look up this Schwartz and have it out with him, but this was a better lead. It might result in almost anything.

The closed car moved off and I followed, followed in a way that made it virtually impossible to detect the car in which I was traveling, and in which a twenty-dollar bill had placed me in the driver’s seat with the uniformed chauffeur as a passenger.

I cut across in back of the car, swung around a block, headed behind it again, ran a block ahead and let it pass, followed for a ways, ducked through alleys, always watching the tail-light wherever possible, detouring where I was fairly sure of my ground — and then I lost it.

The car had turned off, where? I swung around the four sides of the block, saw a tail-light down a side street, swept past and knew that I had located my quarry.