The Million-Dollar Suitcase. MacGowan Alice

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СКАЧАТЬ they say our boys did shoot craps a good deal over there. Well – uh – they were risking their lives."

      And that's as near as any of them came, I suppose, to understanding how a weariness of the little interweaving plans of tamed men had pushed Worth Gilbert into carelessly staking his birthright on a chance that might lend interest to life, a hazard big enough to breeze the staleness out of things for him.

      We were leaving the bank, Gilbert and I ahead, Cummings right at my boy's shoulder, the others holding back to speak together, (bitterly enough, if I am any guesser) when Worth said suddenly,

      "You mentioned in there it's being illegal for the bank to give up the pursuit of Clayte. Seems funny to me, but I suppose you know what you're talking about. Anyhow" – he was lighting another cigarette and he glanced sharply at Cummings across it – "anyhow, they won't waste their money hunting Clayte now, should you say? That's my job. That's where I get my cash back."

      "Oh, that's where, is it?" The lawyer's dry tone might have been regarded as humorous. We stood in the deep doorway, hunching coat collars, looking into the foggy street. Worth's interest in life seemed to be freshening moment by moment.

      "Yes," he agreed briskly. "I'm going to keep you and Boyne busy for a while. You'll have to show me how to hustle the payment for those Shylocks, and Jerry's got to find the suitcase, so I can eat. But I'll help him."

      Cummings stared at the boy.

      "Gilbert," he said, "where are you going? – right now, I mean."

      "To Boyne's office."

      We stepped out to the street where the line of limousines waited for the old fellows inside, my own battleship-gray roadster, pretty well hammered but still a mighty capable machine, far down at the end. As Worth moved with me toward it, the lawyer walked at his elbow.

      "Seat for me?" he glanced at the car. "I've a few words of one syllable to say to this young man – council that I ought to get in as early as possible."

      I looked at little Pete dozing behind the wheel, and answered,

      "Take you all right, if I could drive. But I sprained my thumb on a window lock looking over that room at the St. Dunstan."

      "I'll drive." Worth had circled the car with surprising quickness for so large a man. I saw him on the other side, waiting for Pete to get out so he could get in. Curious the intimate, understanding look he gave the monkey as he flipped a coin at him with, "Buy something to burn, kid." Pete's idea of Worth Gilbert would be quite different from that of the directors in there. After all, human beings are only what we see them from our varying angles. Pete slid down, looking back to the last at the tall young fellow who was taking his place at the wheel. Cummings and I got in and we were off.

      There in the machine, my new boss driving, Cummings sitting next him, I at the further side, began the keen, cool probe after a truth which to me lay very evidently on the surface. Any one, I would have said, might see with half an eye that Worth Gilbert had bought Clayte's suitcase so that he could get a thrill out of hunting for it. Cummings I knew had in charge all the boy's Pacific Coast holdings; and since his mother's death during the first year of the war, these were large. Worth manifested toward them and the man who spoke to him of them the indifference, almost contempt, of an impatient young soul who in the years just behind him, had often wagered his chance of his morning's coffee against some other fellow's month's pay feeling that he was putting up double.

      It seemed the sense of ownership was dulled in one who had seen magnificent properties masterless, or apparently belonging to some limp, bloodstained bundle of flesh that lay in one of the rooms. In vain Cummings urged the state of the market, repeating with more particularity and force what Whipple had said. The mines were tied up by strike; their stock, while perfectly good, was down to twenty cents on the dollar; to sell now would be madness. Worth only repeated doggedly.

      "I've got to have the money – Monday morning – ten o'clock. I don't care what you sell – or hock. Get it."

      "See here," the lawyer was puzzled, and therefore unprofessionally out of temper. "Even sacrificing your stuff in the most outrageous manner, I couldn't realize enough – not by ten o'clock Monday. You'll have to go to your father. You can catch the five-five for Santa Ysobel."

      I could see Worth choke back a hot-tempered refusal of the suggestion. The funds he'd got to have, even if he went through some humiliation to get them.

      "At that," he said slowly, "father wouldn't have any great amount of cash on hand. Say I went to him with the story – and took the cat-hauling he'll give me – should I be much better off?"

      "Sure you would." Cummings leaned back. I saw he considered his point made. "Whipple would rather take their own bank stock than anything else. Your father has just acquired a big block of it. Act while there's time. Better go out there and see him now – at once."

      "I'll think about it," Worth nodded. "You dig for me what you can and never quit." And he applied himself to the demands of the down-town traffic.

      "Well," Cummings said, "drop me at the next corner, please. I've got an engagement with a man here."

      Worth swung in and stopped. Cummings left us. As we began to worm a slow way toward my office, I suggested,

      "You'll come upstairs with me, and – er – sort of outline a policy? I ought to have any possible information you can give me, so's not to make any more wrong moves than we have to."

      "Information?" he echoed, and I hastened to amend,

      "I mean whatever notion you've got. Your theory, you know – "

      "Not a notion. Not a theory." He shook his head, eyes on the traffic cop. "That's your part."

      I sat there somewhat flabbergasted. After all, I hadn't fully believed that the boy had absolutely nothing to go on, that he had bought purely at a whim, put up eight hundred thousand dollars on my skill at running down a criminal. It sort of crumpled me up. I said so. He laughed a little, ran up to the curb at the Phelan building, cut out the engine, set the brake and turned to me with,

      "Don't worry. I'm getting what I paid for – or what I'm going to pay for. And I've got to go right after the money. Suppose I meet you, say, at ten o'clock to-night?"

      "Suits me."

      "At Tait's. Reserve a table, will you, and we'll have supper."

      "You're on," I said. "And plenty to do myself meantime." I hopped out on my side.

      Worth sat in the roadster, not hurrying himself to follow up Cummings' suggestion – the big boy, non-communicative, incurious, the question of fortune lost or won seeming not to trouble him at all. I skirted the machine and came round to him, demanding,

      "With whom do you suppose Cummings' engagement was?"

      "Don't know, Jerry, and don't care," looking down at me serenely. "Why should I?" He swung one long leg free and stopped idly, half in the car, half out.

      "What if I told you Cummings' engagement was with our friend Dykeman – only Dykeman doesn't know it yet?"

      Slowly he brought that dangling foot down to the pavement, followed it with the other, and faced me. Across the blankness of his features shot a joyous gleam; it spread, brightening till he was radiant.

      "I get you!" he chortled. "Collusion! They think I'm standing in with Clayte – Oh, boy!"

      He СКАЧАТЬ