Adventure Tales 6. H. Bedford-Jones

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СКАЧАТЬ that instant, Lavender, who had discovered the lights, out at the switch, flooded the room with light from every bulb; and at the same instant we crashed into the center table. The impact broke my opponent’s grasp; he sprang back, then leaped for the door. Two seconds later the fight was over, and the man called Wilcox was helpless on the floor. Lavender, cool and collected, had greeted the fellow’s spring with a straight right, shot forward with all the force of the trained back and loins that lay behind it. The blow was terrific, and the man dropped as if he had been pole-axed.

      Lavender stooped and studied the hard face for a moment, almost with pity. Then I heard the clink of handcuffs, and with a little shrug my friend rose to his feet.

      “Bernard Wilcox,” he said laconically. “Paroled convict—used to occupy this room. Planted his loot here and went to jail. Came back for it tonight.”

      He added with a grin, “R. I. P.” Then lighted a cigar and dropped into a chair to await the coming of Ashenhurst.

      V

      Twenty minutes later, Mr. Oakley Ashenhurst, wearing a highly decorative black eye and a wide smile, tramped upstairs at the head of an extraordinary procession. After him there entered the room two husky detectives, half-carrying between them what had once been the celebrated Bert Jordan of the “Famous Jordan Family,” and behind them stalked a tall, uniformed officer in whom I recognized Captain D’Arcy of the Lincoln Park station. Bringing up the rear was a motley of half-gowned, bathrobed citizens and citizenesses, among whom were the shrinking figures of old Mr. and Mrs. Harden and the two other roomers, elderly women with their hair in curl-papers. It was a sight to move the gods to laughter, and Lavender and I, being essentially human, lay back and laughed. D’Arcy, too, wore a broad grin.

      “Got him, I see,” said the police captain, with a nod to the prostrate Wilcox. He stooped over the man on the floor. “Yep, it’s Wilcox!”

      Bernard Wilcox, who had recovered his senses, glowered back with evil eyes.

      “And you, I see, have Jordan,” said Lavender pleasantly. “The others, I suppose, escaped?”

      “Yes,” answered D’Arcy with a frown. “Big auto all ready to pick up Jordan, over in the next block. He had to run through a passage to get to it, and they may have seen us nail Jordan in the passage; I don’t know. Anyway, all we saw when we got over there was a trail of dust and sound.”

      “Unimportant,” said Lavender, “although you’ll probably get them through Jordan. Our statue doesn’t seem as lively a cricket as he was a little while ago.”

      All eyes were turned back to the amazing figure of Bert Jordan of the “Famous Jordan Family.” He was an astonishing spectacle. From neck to ankle he was encased in dull white fleshings, above which his white, painted face, like that of a clown, now registered profound depression. His hair, elaborately whitened and held in place by a white net, had been curled in neat horns on his brow and temples, but at the moment it was much disordered. On his feet were white gloves of the sort worn by fashionable bathers in the sands of expensive bathing beaches. But the celebrated Bert Jordan had lost much of his “white” in his tussle with Ashenhurst and the police, and he now presented a very lugubrious appearance. I felt sorry for the fellow, and I think Lavender did, too.

      “Want to talk, Jordan?” inquired Lavender. “Might as well, you know.”

      Jordan grinned sheepishly. “Sure, I’ll talk,” he said, “What d’ya want to know?”

      “What did you soak Mr. Ashenhurst for?”

      “Dough!” replied Mr. Jordan promptly. “Plenty of dough!”

      “So I should imagine. Mr. Wilcox foot the bill?”

      “Whatever his name is,” said Jordan.

      “He’s a liar!” asserted Wilcox, from the floor, with a string of oaths.

      “Well, I’ll talk,” said Lavender. “I’m not a liar. There are some things I want to know. You were out of a job, Jordan, and you met this fellow Wilcox. He offered you a job. Good money in it. You fell for it. But how did you happen to run across Wilcox?”

      “Met him in the park up here, one day—near that damn fountain!”

      “I see! Of course, that would do it. I ought to have thought of that. Did you know Wilcox before that?”

      “He used to be in a circus where I was,” said Jordan, “but his name wasn’t Wilcox then. It was Brown.”

      “You’re a liar!” declared Wilcox savagely.

      “Hm-m!” grunted Lavender, “That pretty nearly tells me all I need to know. The statue, of course, suggested this crazy scheme to get Ashenhurst out of his room some night. Wilcox knew you were in the statue line, as it were, and so was born the great idea. He suggested it, of course?”

      “Sure,” said Jordan. “He said he wanted to get some guy’s goat, and when the guy ran out at me, I was to beat him up, toss him into the auto and take him off somewhere overnight.”

      “You had no objections, I suppose?”

      “Well,” hedged the circus performer, “I was pretty broke, and I needed the dough. But I didn’t like his dam fool scheme. I told him I’d go up and drag the guy out, if he wanted me to; or throw stones at his window until he chased me. I didn’t want to dress up. It seemed kinda foolish to me.”

      “Quite right,” smiled Lavender. “And what do you think of Wilcox—or Brown—now, Mr. Jordan?”

      Jordan looked suddenly significant. He turned his eyes on the recumbent Wilcox, almost stealthily. Then he looked at the police captain, and finally back at Lavender. After these elaborate preparations, he raised his forefinger and touched his temple, where a white curl now hung limply.

      “I think he’s coo-coo!” he said.

      “Excellent,” said Lavender. “So do I! I think, Captain, we shall have to make things as easy as possible for Mr. Jordan, who is, after all, only an erring person of temperament. If your men will remove both of these gentlemen now, we’ll let these good folks go to bed, and I’ll have a chat with you about this case.”

      When the prisoners had been removed, and the oaths of Bernard Wilcox had died away in the distance, Lavender resumed his tale.

      “Jordan is perfectly right, of course,” he said. “Wilcox is a bit touched. Nobody but a lunatic would have suggested such a scheme to get a man out of his room. The meeting with Jordan gave him the idea, no doubt; that and the proximity. of the statue.”

      He turned suddenly to Mrs. Harden, whose attire now had been augmented by a huge shawl,

      “Did you recognize this man Wilcox, Mrs. Harden?” he asked.

      “Yes, sir, I did! He’s the man upstairs they call Pomeroy!”

      “Pomeroy, eh? It had to be either Pomeroy or Peterson. I wasn’t able to see either of them, and so I couldn’t be sure. You see, Gilly, five years ago, before Mrs. Harden had this flat, this Wilcox-or Pomeroy—or Brown—or whatever his real name is-occupied the room now occupied by our friend Ashenhurst. He roomed with a very decent family named Dickson, but he himself was a СКАЧАТЬ