Dead Men’s Letters

Laugh That Off

All of my life I’ve been in one scrape after another, and it doesn’t feel natural to settle down to a safe existence. As a crook that’s known to three nations, wanted in six states, but enjoying immunity from extradition from the State of California because of a technicality, I can’t call on the law for protection. The hand of the law is against me. It can’t take me out of the state of California because I’m not a “fugitive from justice” within the meaning of the law, but every crook in the state feels licensed to pick on me, and the cops are just waiting to get a chance to hang something on me.

That’s where I stand. I get no protection — and I don’t want any. I have to be a law unto myself and I’m glad of it. God knows I’d hate to be one of the machine-like wage slaves that put in their lives earning tax money for the politicians to spend. City taxes for the city politicians, county taxes for the county politicians, State taxes for the ones a little higher up, and then, if they save anything out of all that smear, the government levies a tax on their income for the national politicians to spend. In addition to all of that they get hit all along the line with sales taxes, license taxes, automobile and luxury taxes, gasoline and mileage taxes, poll taxes, school taxes, tariffs, street assessments, taxes on perfumes, taxes on drugs, taxes on moving picture shows, and I hear they’re figuring on putting a tax on near beer to make the expense of prohibition enforcement.

Well, I should worry. The law doesn’t protect me. I’m outside of the machinery of man-made government and I have to be my own law, my own tax collector. The crooks all try to frame me or double-cross me and the cops sit back and watch ’em with a smile. Let one crook kill another off.

From my last two scrapes I’d picked up a dog that’s part police dog, part hound of some sort or other, and part something else. He’s a big brute, and he’d been raised the same way I had — watching every man, living on and by his wits. Also I’d acquired some twenty thousand dollars from a couple of San Diego crooks who tried to bunko me; and I figured it wouldn’t be long before they’d get on my trail and try to get back that twenty thousand bucks or take it out of my hide.

Taken all in all I wasn’t advertising where I was living in the want-ad column of the Sunday newspaper. I didn’t want any visitors, and that meant everybody.

I’d been taking a stroll out through Golden Gate park, and came back feeling braced and refreshed, the fog rolling in from the ocean, the air crisp and bracing with that life-giving thrill which is all San Francisco’s own. Bobo, that’s the dog, had gone racing on ahead of me up the stairs while I came sauntering on behind.

When I got to the door of the apartment I knew there was something wrong, some strange odor or other that the dog could detect. He was standing before the door, his nose down to the crack at the bottom, and his feet spread wide apart, tail straight out behind, hair bristling.

That would probably mean someone in the apartment, and I stood still for a minute thinking things over. The California police didn’t have anything on me. Not that I hadn’t pulled anything, but the stuff I’d pulled had all been cases of where some crook was trying to trim me and I’d simply beat him to it. I figured the crooks couldn’t squeal. They’d lay for me and try to get vengeance all right but they wouldn’t squeal to the law. Their hands were tied by the same rope that tied mine.

I walked forward, inserted my key, opened the door a crack, and looked at Bobo.

“Go on in, boy,” I said, then closed the door as the huge, tawny dog slipped eagerly within. I waited outside, smiling. If there was anyone in that apartment he was due for a little real excitement. Bobo was a crook’s dog and proud of it. I’d spent a little time and a lot of patience training him, and he knew his onions, that dog.

I’d even trained him so that he knew if anyone was trying to follow me. I’d spent a month at Del Monte getting small boys to follow us around. I’d show Bobo I was trying to keep out of sight, and he spotted the idea almost from the start. After that I’d trained him so no one could follow him when he was coming to me. He was some dog and he knew what I wanted and did it. He’d watch my face and sometimes I’m satisfied could read my mind. Just the flicker of an eyelash was all he needed. You see he’d been a social outcast himself, and he’d learned in the school of experience. That was why he recognized a kindred spirit in me, and why he knew instinctively what to do.

There was a scratching and pawing in the apartment, but no sounds of a merry-go-’round, so I opened the door and walked in. There on the carpet was an envelope and the dog was scratching at it with his paw, sniffing of it, and then scratching again. Evidently some messenger had picked the lock and placed the envelope on the floor where I’d be sure and see it.

Oh well, it’s all in a lifetime.

“Bring it here, Bobo,” I said, and he got an edge of it in his mouth and brought it over.

The note within was typewritten, and there wasn’t very much to it.

“GO SEE DON G. HERMAN AT ONCE,” it said and the message was unsigned.

I sighed. Lord! How many times I’d had things put up to me in just that way. Some politician wanted a crook to do a piece of dirty work, some local king of the underworld wanted to get in touch with me, usually on some double-crossing scheme or other. They didn’t want to be connected up with me later, so they’d choose some dramatic stunt like this to get in touch with me. At that, though, this one worried me a little, because I didn’t figure anyone knew where I was holding out.

I’d heard of Don G. Herman, a big time political crook. He was rumored to have blackmailed a dozen of the prominent men in San Francisco at different times and to have a world of political power obtained from the same source. I didn’t owe Don G. Herman anything and I didn’t intend to, but I did figure I’d find out who his messenger was.

I called the dog over and let him smell good and long at the envelope and sheet of paper within.

“Just remember that smell, old boy,” I told him.

He looked up inquiringly, ears thrust forward, head on one side, tail wagging slowly from side to side.

I shook my head. “No. Not to follow. Just to remember.”

I don’t know whether he got me or not, but there was no harm in trying. I got up and put on my hat, beckoned to the dog and we went back out. In the outer doorway I turned to Bobo.

“Wait there a minute. — Down.”

He crouched and waited, watching me as I stepped out onto the sidewalk.

Dusk was falling and there was a thick fog rolling in and settling down. Occasionally a machine would slip past with the lights on, a pedestrian or two walked on up or down the hill. There was a skinny runt standing with his coat collar turned up leaning against the mailbox in the middle of the block, and I’d have spotted him as the messenger, always supposing the messenger was sticking around.

As far as that was concerned, I’d have bet ten to one the man that delivered that message was where he could see me, right then. In the first place a man who delivers one of those mysterious messages likes to stick around and see how the other fellow takes it, and, in the second place, Don G. Herman was probably wondering whether I was going to call me a taxi and start for his house.

After a minute or two I called out the dog, speaking in a low voice: “Go hunt ’em out, Bobo.”

I spoke over my shoulder, not looking at the dog. I’d trained him not to stand near me or act as though he knew me at all unless I looked at him, and when he came out and saw me standing erect, looking out over the traffic on Bush Street, he just stuck his tail up in the air and went pattering around the street like a stray dog looking for garbage cans.

He swung over toward the figure at the mailbox the first thing, barely brushed against him, then ran off down the street, stopped at the corner, looked back, saw that I was still standing straight and erect, and ran across the street, nosing around automobiles and doorways.

I wondered whether I’d made a poor guess on the bird at the mailbox or whether Bobo didn’t understand what I wanted. I was watching the dog out of the corner of my eye, musing, speculating, when, suddenly, his tail stiffened and his head lowered. He was in front of a little cigar stand at the corner, and there was a well-dressed, heavyset bird standing at the counter, talking with the boss. He had all the earmarks of a man who had just picked out his favorite brand of cigar and was chinning the boss while he lit it.

Bobo walked stiff legged up to this bird, took a wiff at his leg, then half-turned to me and whined. I walked casually down the street and whistled to Bobo when I was well around the corner. For once I was fooled. That bird at the cigar stand looked like a bank president. I couldn’t imagine a guy like that playing messenger boy.

I walked around the block, and ducked into a drug store where I got a private detective agency on the telephone. Believe me, one of the nicest things a crook can have is a private detective agency. I patronized this one as a Mr. Green, and that was all the name they knew me under. They’d seen my checks, but they’d never seen my face, and I didn’t intend that they should. They got all instructions over the telephone, a check on the first of the month and it worked satisfactorily all around. They figured I was a lawyer somewhere, and I let ’em figure.

“Shoot a man out to corner of Bush and Polk streets,” I barked into the telephone, “and do it right now. There’s a heavyset bird in a light colored hat, brown suit, pearl gray tie and tan shoes. He’s about forty-five years old, has a double chin, gray eyes. He’s at the cigar stand on the corner, and if he’s still there when your man gets there, follow him and find out who he really is. Then let me know where he goes and what he does. If your man gets out there after he’s gone, forget it. This is Harry Green talking, and you can charge me.”

I hung up the telephone right afterwards. That was the order, and they could take it or leave it.

I walked back to the corner. Yep, the guy was still at the cigar stand. He wasn’t following me on any casual strolls, but was sticking around and watching the apartment. That was something funny in itself. Maybe he’d figured I was just walking around the block, and then again maybe he was watching for something else. One thing was certain, I’d trust Bobo’s nose and that was the bird that had either written or delivered that message.

I loafed around for ten minutes, and then a small coupe slid around the corner and parked. A kid got out, took a rubber around, spotted the bird at the cigar stand and then climbed back in the coupe.

I stuck around, the man at the cigar stand stuck around, and the kid from the detective agency stuck around. There was another ten minutes of it while the light faded, and then a rough looking figure came driving up in an old, rusty car and the heavy set bird bowed to the man at the cigar counter and got in the machine. They drove up to Van Ness and turned the corner with the little coupe slipping through traffic right behind.

I didn’t expect the kid would get any too much dope on that bird, but I figured I’d shaken my own shadow for a while, anyway. I was just a little nervous. Bobo was a great pal, a big help, but a big dog is something of a tag for a man, and I saw I was going to be labelled if I wasn’t careful. I had no doubt they’d located me through the dog. Well, there was one thing, Bobo was trained to keep clear if I got in any real jam, and they could follow him until the cows came home for all the good it’d do them. I went upstairs, kicked off my shoes, read for a while, and went to sleep. Bobo slept at the foot of the bed and never stirred, which was a good sign.

The next morning I rang up the detective agency and found that the party they’d shadowed for me was a man named E. C. Simpson, and he lived in an apartment out in the panhandle district.

I laughed at the dick that made the report.

“That’s the name he’s going under,” I told him. “I want to know who he really is.”

The voice at the other end of the line was courteous. “You think he’s going under an assumed name, Mr. Green?”

I snorted. “Hell’s bells, get wise. Plant a machine in front of his apartment with a good photographer in it and get some pictures that’ll show his face. Get his description and photo and then take it up into the rogues’ gallery. If that bird ain’t a crook I’ll eat my hat. I’ll call you up again this afternoon, Get busy.”

I chuckled a bit as I hung up the telephone. I was playing a hunch, but that name Simpson didn’t seem to fit that bird. Also he’d picked the lock of my apartment like an expert. I went out to the beach, laid in the sand, watched the breakers roll in, and did a little thinking. I wanted rest, and I didn’t propose to let any political crook get me all stirred up.

That afternoon I came in, took a shower, shaved, changed my clothes, and read a little bit, then started out for dinner. Before I left I called up the detective agency. The manager himself came to the phone and he was all excited.

“I’ve located him” he said. “We have all the dope on him right here in the office. He’s Jim Gilvray, better known as Big Front Gilvray, and he’s one of the best in the country on jewels. They say he works on assignments and never monkeys with commercial stuff, but always goes after nationally known gems on orders from big fences. As a result he’s never been convicted, because the stuff he takes never gets on the market. He lifts some famous gem for a customer, gets his pay in cash, and keeps his own counsel. He’s reported to work in with some big fence somewhere, but the police have never been able to find out who or where. He’s a suspicious bird, and I think he spotted our shadow this afternoon. He slipped out somewhere in a car and the shadow lost him. I’m having them keep watch of the apartment house, though.”

I laughed.

“You needn’t. He won’t be back, not if he’s the kind of a bird you’ve described.”

There was a moment’s hesitation over the telephone while the manager thought that over.

“What do you want us to do?” he asked.

“Send in your bill to the same address as before,” I shot back and hung up.

So I’d had a visit from Big Front Gilvray had I? He’d delivered that note in person, and the only reason he’d done that was because he and Don G. Herman were playing a game so blamed deep they wouldn’t even trust a messenger. It was going to be good this time. I made up my mind I’d accept the invitation and call on Don G. Herman. Either that bird was going to come clean, or he was going to be inconvenienced.

Naturally, I didn’t send in my card when I called on Don G. Herman. Being I was what I was, and knowing what I knew, I took a little advantage of him.

His house was set back in a big yard, a sign of the affluence of its former owners, before the fire, and the desire of the present owner for privacy. All right. He was no more set on privacy than I was. Almost anything might transpire at our little interview, and I didn’t want to have any advance publicity cramp my style.

I slipped over the fence about nine o’clock, and Bobo was right behind me, walking slow and stiff-legged, knowing as well as I did that we were trespassing on another man’s property, and likely to run into trouble almost any time. We got into the grounds without any trouble, and walking around a bit and watching Bobo, convinced me that they didn’t have any outside guards.

I made the round of the house and paused before a window that had a patch of light behind it, shining through a drawn shade. That was the only place on the ground floor where there was any light except the front hall. I couldn’t figure the place out exactly, but I had plenty of time.

While I was waiting outside this window I heard the jangle of a bell at the front of the house, and a chair scraped back in the room above me, while steps hurried to the front of the house.

I figured that there was only one person on the ground floor, that I hadn’t heard any talking, so that he or she had been alone in that lighted room, and that, having gone to answer the door, the coast was clear, so I slipped out a little jimmy, pried open the window, and took a look inside.

Luck was playing with me, and it was as well it was, for I wasn’t feeling any too gentle toward politicians just then, and if I’d poked my nose into a room where Don G. Herman was holding forth there might have been trouble.

The room was like an office, sort of a combination den and office. I’d heard he had one in his house, and that he did a good part of his work there. I’d also heard that there were lots of secret comings and goings, and that the servants were put in the back of the house every night, within call of a buzzer that was on the desk if Herman needed ’em, but well out of the way if he didn’t. So I hadn’t been taking any very great chances after all.

I turned to Bobo.

“Wait there and stand guard. — Watch,” I said, and climbed through the window. I knew Bobo would stand guard down there, and if need be he’d come through that window, glass and all, like it wasn’t there.

There was a big rolltop desk in the corner, and I made for that. How I do love rolltop desks in corners. The place back of them is just made for hiding in an emergency, and if anything happens you can always reach down and jerk the man that’s sitting at ’em out of his chair onto the floor.

About the time I got parked I heard voices coming my way.

“It was very nice of you to call, Miss Chadwick. I appreciate the courtesy of giving me your first evening on your return from college.”

The voice was oily and smooth, too damned smooth. I didn’t like it, and I placed it, as being the personal property of Don G. Herman, right at the start.

The girl’s voice had the ripple of youth in it, but there was something strained about it, a subtle something, fear or anxiety, I couldn’t tell which.

“Your note said it was something about father?”

They were in the office now, and Oily Voice dodged the question for a moment.

“Please be seated, Miss Chadwick. You cannot imagine my grief at learning of the death of your father. I sent my condolences and flowers, but I hesitated to intrude any business matters upon you or your mother until you had recovered from the shock. It’s been three months now, and you have graduated from college. I feel that you will understand the urgency which requires me to take the matter up at this time, just as you will appreciate the delicacy of my feelings in waiting this long.”

Wow! That was some speech. He talked as though he’d learned it by heart. I risked discovery by taking a peek out between a couple of books that stood on the top of the desk.

Herman was a big man, bigger than I’d expected. He sat at the rolltop desk, his thick, strong fingers drumming on the top while he watched the girl. He had a face that seemed to be crisscrossed with ten million wrinkles, a skin that was parchment-like in texture, a smile that caused wrinkles to ripple and twist clear back to his collar button, and his head was so bald it reminded me of the dome on the State Capitol building. There was just a fringe of hair above his ears, and the ears started close to his head at the bottom, but flared way out at the top. His lips were thick and spongy, he had a double chin, and was a huge figure of a man. For all his fat, the wrinkles on his face gave him the appearance of having lost flesh.

His eyes were the most striking feature about him. They were big and wide, and he seemed to hold them wide open by a conscious muscular effort. He gave the impression of having schooled the muscles of his eyes to register childlike innocence and candor.

The girl was flapper, all flapper. She’d come out here into the house of this thick lipped politician without so much as a second thought, and she sat back in her chair, her short skirt disclosing a couple of fancy garters, a little bare knee, and a pair of legs that would have won a beauty prize anywhere. Her waist was cut low, and her hat was stuck on at a saucy angle while her eyes played hide and seek around the brim. With it all, she was as cool as a cucumber, and gave the impression of being a girl who could take care of herself any time or any place.

“I believe it was some business transaction you had with father?” she asked, and this time there was just a little note of panic in her voice. I caught it and I’m satisfied Herman caught it. Sitting there with her waist low in front, her dress short all around, her lips rouged and mouth raspberried, she was deadly afraid of something.

Don Herman fairly dripped oily suavity.

“Perhaps you won’t mind if I ask you a few questions before I break into the business, Miss Chadwick… I believe you knew your father’s habits very well. Did you ever know of any particular habit of his in giving promissory notes?”

She nodded, plainly puzzled.

“Why yes. I think lots of persons knew of that habit of his. He had a big book of printed forms, and he always filled out the notes from that book. Even when he was borrowing from a bank he’d never use one of the bank forms, but he’d take his book up there and make out the note. Father was very peculiar in many ways and he’d read of persons who had note forms that could be manipulated around so the amounts could be increased, and then discounted. But more than any other reason for it, he liked to be different.”

Herman beamed.

“Exactly, exactly, and now, if you will pardon me for a moment.”

He stepped over to the corner, and I watched him like a hawk. I notice that as he got to the corner he stooped down as though to pick up something from the floor, then he threw a picture to one side and disclosed the dials of a heavy safe. Lord there was enough nickel on there to dazzle the eyes. It seemed to be a regular bank vault.

A minute later and he had flung the door to one side, and reached within. He took out some papers and came over to the girl.

“Do you recognize this?”

She looked at the paper, then stifled an exclamation.

“Why, yes. It’s a note, one of father’s notes, payable to you, and it’s for ten thousand dollars.”

Don G. Herman held his eyes wide open by an effort, but his spongy lips came together as his thick tongue darted out with a licking motion, and wetted them.

“Would you say that was his handwriting?”

She was a little thoroughbred, and she nodded her head. “That’s his handwriting all right.”

Herman came to the desk and settled back in his chair. Satisfaction seeming to ooze out all over him. I got a good close look at that note.

“Now have you any idea of the consideration for that note?”

I could see he was getting ready to spring something, and the girl must have known it, too. Her face was white, but she wasn’t going to let any damn crook get anything on her or see that she was worried. She opened one of those square vanity boxes and started in sticking some more raspberry lipstick on her mouth.

“Why, no,” she said, watching her reflection in the mirror.

“It was political graft,” said Herman.

She took her little finger and smeared the red around into a cupid’s bow.

“I don’t believe it, but it doesn’t make any difference. That note’ll be paid from the estate. I’d rather mother didn’t know. I tell you what I’ll do. If you’ll hold that note and don’t present it in court when the estate’s being closed, I’ll give you my note for eleven thousand and take up my note as soon as the estate’s closed.”

“You don’t want it to appear that your father had any business dealings with me?” Herman asked in his oily tones.

She laid down the mirror, looked at him straight, and handed it to him straight.

“My father lived a square life. He was honest and square. If you got a note from him it was probably blackmail. You know it, and I know it, and there’s no use fooling around pretending to be polite. The world would think my father was mixed up in some sort of graft if you ever presented that note in the estate. It would kill my mother. You know all that, and that’s why you got me to come here. Now what is it you want?”

With that she snapped her vanity box shut, recrossed her legs so the other knee got the glare of the electric light, and smiled as sweet as a little angel.

I could see that she had taken Herman a little off his feet, but he came back quick.

“You are right, Miss Chadwick. I want something. I’m coming to it in a minute. Perhaps I might as well be frank with you. That note did represent a sort of blackmail, a little business arrangement between your father and myself. He always fought me in politics, you know, and used to denounce me in speeches. The fact that I hold his genuine note would come as a blow to some of your highbrow society friends, wouldn’t it?”

She didn’t answer the question directly because it was apparent. From what Herman had said, I could get the picture. — A prominent man, standing for all that was straight in politics and civic government, part of the inner circle of exclusive society, he dies and his estate has a genuine note presented by a political crook and blackmailer, a schemer of schemes, a collector of graft… It was all too plain. What was bothering me was the point the girl was evidently thinking over, for she shot it at him in her next question.

“What I can’t understand was why father ever gave you the note. Why didn’t he pay you in cash if he owed you any money, or if he wanted to pay you for anything?”

He walked over toward her with his thick, spongy lips twisted in a smile, his bald head glistening in the electric light, and let her have it, straight from the shoulder.

“Because, Miss Chadwick, this note was only one of a series. There were nine others all for the same amounts, due at varying dates, and they represented a grand total of one hundred thousand dollars!”

That was that.

She got slowly to her feet at that shot, her hand creeping up to her throat. Short skirts, low waist and all, she looked more than ever like a kid.

“Pardon,” he said. “I think I hear the telephone in the hallway,” and with that he glided out of the room.

Why he left I couldn’t figure, unless he was going into another room from which he had a secret peekhole into his little office. Probably he wanted to spy on the kid when she thought herself alone.

She stood there for a second after he left, then she slowly crumpled in the chair. After a little bit she raised her eyes and spoke as naturally as though she were speaking to me: “Father, what’s it all about, and what do you want me to do? It’ll kill mother, and ruin your good name, blot your memory. Also it’ll take nearly all of the estate. Help me, dad, and I’ll try to see it through.”

There were tears glistening in each eye, but she didn’t let her mouth quiver any. There came the sound of steps, and Herman was back. He looked at her narrowly, but she’d blinked the tears back, and was fixing up a corner of her mouth with that little finger again.

“I always get my mouth lopsided,” she grinned up at him over the top of the mirror.

She was so cool she made a cucumber look like a tamale.

He was puzzled.

“As I said. There’s something I want.”

She stuck a dab of powder on her cheek.

“Yeah?”

He licked his thick lips.

“Yes. Something I want you to do for me.”

“Well, shoot. Spill it. Get it off your chest and see if you breathe any lighter.”

He hesitated, caught his breath, started to speak, drummed on the desk, then got up and bowed.

“Not tonight. Some time soon I will call you again. I’ll think it over in the meantime. Now if you’ll leave me, I’ve got another appointment in a few minutes.”

She got up and let her eyes wander around under her hat brim.

“You aren’t going to present those notes just yet, that is, present ’em to the administrator?”

He shook his glistening head.

“Not until I ask you to do something for me.”

She nodded, brightly.

“That’s the spirit. You know I might happen to do it.”

With that she threw him a glance back over her shoulder and tripped down the hall. He tagged along after her, and I beat it back out of the window. Somehow, I didn’t want him to know I’d overheard that conversation.

I picked up Bobo and slipped around through the shadows. At the front door she called “Good night” in that little flapper tone of hers, and skipped on down the steps and out into the darkness.

He stood outlined against the lighted hallway for a second, then closed the door. As he did so, she leaned back against one of the iron posts in the fence, and sobbed her heart out. J stood there, motioning to Bobo to keep quiet, listening to the sound of those heartbreaking sobs, waiting for her to get her cry out and beat it.

After five or ten minutes she straightened, gulped, and went off down the street.

I walked up the steps to the front door and rang the bell.

There were steps in the hall, a light flashed over my head, and a cautious voice inquired through a little sort of a peekhole:

“Who is it?”

“Ed Jenkins.”

Silence for a moment.

“What Jenkins?”

“The Phantom Crook,” I told him, spitting the words out. I’d strained a point calling on the big cheese in the first place, and I didn’t propose to stand out there in the night swapping courtesies.

I’d parked Bobo around the corner of the steps where he could be called, but where he was out of sight. I might need the dog before the interview was over. What Herman wanted was more than I knew, but I gathered he didn’t have these private interviews at night to give out charity — not after what I’d heard.

The door swung open.

“Come in, Mr. Jenkins.”

He didn’t make any attempt to hand me any salve, or do any greeting. He simply asked me in, slammed the door behind me and led the way into his study. So much, at least, was in his favor.

I sat down in the chair the girl had occupied, looked at the room from the other angle than when I’d been behind the desk, saw that he’d closed the safe and moved back the picture, crossed my legs and leaned back.

He looked at me for a long minute, then grunted:

“You’re the Phantom Crook?”

I nodded.

“Ed Jenkins, himself?”

I nodded again and let it go at that.

He sighed. “You don’t look like it. You look almost like a kid. Your record shows that you’ve been up a couple of times, are wanted in half a dozen states, and tricked ’em into dragging you into California so you could keep ’em from dragging you out again.”

I made no move, not even a nod. I just looked at him, expectantly.

“You earned your title because of the uncanny ability you showed at slipping through their fingers,” he went on. “Also it’s said of you that you can open any safe and not leave a mark on it. You’ve got something on the ball the others haven’t got, some method of getting the combination, of manipulating the tumblers.”

There was a question in his voice when he stopped this time, but that was all the good it did him.

“You’re the one that asked this interview,” I told him, shortly. “I came to listen.”

He moistened his lips again, reached for a cigar, and wrapped the spongy softness of his mouth around it, struck a match, exhaled a smoke cloud, inspected the end of the cigar, squirmed a bit, then got down to business.

“Know who I am?”

“A little.”

“Know enough to know that I can get what I want in politics?”

“You always have, according to reports.”

“All right, Jenkins, how’d you like to have complete pardons from every state where there’s a warrant for your arrest?”

I had to grip the sides of the chair to keep my face from showing my emotion. God! How would it feel to be able to wander free, to live as any other citizen, to call a cop when someone got rough, not to be always on the hide? I was afraid to dwell on the idea. I’d been a social outcast since I could remember. The world had always been against me, and I’d fought back, for Ed Jenkins is the sort that fights back…

“It can’t be done,” I said shortly.

He nodded his ponderous head, his lips twisted into a thick smile.

“Sure it can. Easiest thing in the world. I’ll prove it to yuh when the time comes.”

I sat back listening.

“It’s like this,” he went on when he saw I wasn’t going to make any great contribution to the evening’s conversation. “There is a man who is going to get in his possession a paper of which I want a copy made. I don’t care about having the original, but I do want an exact copy. I want to know what’s in that paper.”

He waited, and I waited.

“The name of the man is — Loring Kemper.”

He leaned forward as he shot that at me, waiting to see if I’d give him any clue to my thoughts by my facial expression.

It took him nearly ten seconds to decide he’d drawn a blank, and, when he was convinced of that, I noticed an expression of satisfaction creep into his eyes.

“Here’s the situation, Jenkins. I’m educated, polished after a fashion. I use better English than most of the society leaders, but I don’t get by with them. They can’t see me at all. I’m an outcast. Money I have, position I have, prestige I have, power I have, but I can’t get in with a certain social set. All of my life I’ve got what I wanted. Now it suits me to have the social recognition that’s been denied me. The contents of this paper are important. The man who knows the contents of that paper can make society here in San Francisco recognize him.”

I thought that over, turning it over and over in my mind in the silence which followed. I’d heard of stunts like that, but I didn’t believe in ’em. Still there was that interview with Helen Chadwick… At any rate all of this was nothing in my young life. I looked up.

“Well?”

“Well,” he replied, and his wide open pussyfooting eyes bored into mine. “You’re going to the house of Loring Kemper as a guest, and you’re going to get the paper I want out of his safe, make a photographic copy and return the original. When you get that photographic copy you can turn it over to me when, and only when I give you complete pardons from every state that has a warrant out for you.”

I looked him over again to make sure he wasn’t crazy.

“Why me?” I asked, casually, making conversation, leading him on.

“Because,” he shot back, “you are educated. When occasion requires you can pass yourself off as a social gentleman, you won’t pull a boner in the house of this multimillionaire social leader; and again because you can open the safe where that paper’ll be kept, make a photograph and get the paper back without anyone ever knowing the safe has been sprung.”

I laughed at that, laughed long and loud. He tickled me, this Don G. Herman.

“That’s fine,” I said. “It sure sounds like the original fairy tale of Cinderella and the slipper. You’re some little fairy godmother, all right, but, if you’re the social outcast you claim, if you can’t get in with society, how are you going to get me, Ed Jenkins, known from one end of the country to the other as ‘The Phantom Crook,’ how are you going to get me an invitation to spend a few days as the house guest of Loring Kemper, the leader of the ultra select of the ultra select?”

I grinned up at him as I handed him that little poser.

He leaned forward.

“You will be received in that house as the man you will be, not as the man you have been. You will be received by Mr. Loring Kemper, and by his wife, Edith Jewett Kemper, not as Ed Jenkins, but as Edward Gordon Jenkins, the husband of Helen Chadwick, daughter of H. Bolton Chadwick, deceased, and of Elsie Chadwick, his widow. Now then, damn you, LAUGH THAT OFF!”

Once in a while I’ve misjudged a man. I don’t do it very often. In my line of work a man can’t make very many mistakes, either in observation or in character reading. This was one of my mistakes. I’d sized up Don G. Herman as an ordinary crooked, politician, a high-grade blackmailer, a pussyfooter.

He was all of those things all right. But he was more. The man was a power and he was a devil. As he shot that last at me his mask slipped off and his eyes squinted into two narrow slits. For a long moment I saw him as he was. The rest of his face was the same, flabby cheeks, spondy lips, thick formless mouth, coarse nose, and all; but those eyes… If ever there were twin devils that peered out from a recess of hell, from a throne of power, they peered out then from those eyes.

A moment and it was gone. He had caught himself, and his muscles forced his eyes wide open, giving them his ordinary credulous, wide-eyed innocent expression of cherubic fatuity.

I got to my feet and gave him look for look.

“Like hell I will,” I said, and then I added as I started for the door, “Laugh that off.”

He kept his expression of beaming frankness.

“Oh yes you will,” he replied. “I’ve just made the proposition. I haven’t used any of the various means I have of making you accept it yet.”

I paused at the door.

“Listen, Herman, let me warn you. Don’t try to force me, and don’t try to double-cross me. People who pull those stunts have a habit of getting in bad somewhere along the line.”

He laughed, a warped twisting of his flabby lips.

“You think I’m that crude? Do you think I was so foolish as to tell you all of this, to ask you to do this unless I had with me the means of enforcing my requests?”

I wanted to see what he had up his sleeve, and stopped.

“Yes?” I said, inquiringly.

He arose and bowed me to the door, along the hall, and out into the night.

“Yes,” he said as the door slammed, and there was something of mockery in his voice.

I didn’t like my first interview with Don G. Herman, San Francisco millionaire, politician, blackmailer, king of the underworld. I walked half a block before I whistled to Bobo so that he could shortcut across the yard and jump the fence to me. I didn’t care about any watching eyes seeing the dog that had been guarding the front steps during the interview.

I went back to my apartment and thought things over — thought over the whole proposition, the series of ten notes, thought over the look I had seen come over Herman’s face. The more I thought of the thing the less I liked it. I came to the conclusion that I would hear more of Don G. Herman, and I also came to the conclusion that unless he looked sharp and watched his step he would see and hear more of Ed Jenkins, the phantom crook. I don’t like to have people try to slip anything over on me.

The next afternoon I took a walk. At first I’d thought of giving ’em all the slip, — simply vanishing into thin air, and then I decided against it. After all, even with my criminal record and all, I wasn’t going to be stampeded by no damned politician. I’d hold my ground — until the going got rough, anyway. I wouldn’t pull any of my phantom tricks until the necessity arose, and when I did, someone would pay for my time and trouble.

I got back into the apartment about dusk, and knew there was something wrong as soon as I got in the door. Bobo bristled up, braced his feet, growled slightly and looked up at me, his lips working back from his teeth.

I knew what he had on his mind. Someone had been in the apartment and his scent still clung to things. Probably it was the heavyset bird that posed for the time being as E. C. Simpson, more generally known as Big Front Gilvray.

I took a good look around and things seemed to be in order, all apple pie like. That didn’t sound so good to me, somehow. I commenced to think I knew the answer.

I called Bobo to me and went over everything in the apartment, letting him smell of everything I could pick up. He didn’t seem to get the idea at first. He acted as though I wanted to play with him, and he’d try and grab the things I held up. After a bit he saw I was in deadly earnest, and then he commenced to look puzzled, wondering what I was holding the things up in front of his nose for. He smelled ’em, though. He couldn’t help himself, not with the nose that dog’s got.

It took me an hour and a half patiently running through everything I could think of. I had him smell everything moveable in the blamed apartment. Finally I got a hunch I should have had earlier in the evening. I got an extra pair of heavy walking shoes and held them to his nose. They were blamed near the only things that he hadn’t sniffed at that.

Right then and there I got action. The dog was looking puzzled, almost bored, trying to figure out what it was all about. The left shoe went past his nose leaving him bored as ever. When the right shoe got within a couple of inches of his face he seemed to get the idea all at once, and jumped to his feet, his lips curling back over his teeth, and he growled.

I looked at the shoe. That was what the visitor had been after. I wondered if he had taken it and left a footprint somewhere, a footprint that would be used to send me to the gallows if I didn’t knuckle under to Herman.

The dog grabbed the shoe in his teeth and began to paw at it. I took it away from him and carefully looked it over once more, looking for any signs of fresh earth on it, any bloodstains. When a man is in my profession — if you choose to call it that — the price of safety, of freedom, of life itself, is eternal vigilance, and the ability to concentrate on the problem in hand without overlooking any bets.

It was the dog that gave the solution I’d eventually have arrived at, anyhow. He grabbed the shoe again, held it firmly and determinedly with his paws as though it had been a big bone, twisted his great jaws around until he had his powerful back teeth fastened in it, gave a wrench, and pulled off the outer layer of leather. The heel beneath had been skilfully hollowed out, filled with cotton, and, in the cotton, reposed three diamonds. They weren’t particularly large, but they were big enough to be worth a pretty penny, and an examination showed me that they were perfectly matched. Evidently they were a part of some finely selected necklace, or rather had been a part of it. The necklace had been lifted and the stones pried from their settings. Those three, so perfectly matched for size, color and fire would serve as a positive identification.

I sat there with the stones in my hand, looking at the coruscations that emanated from them, and thinking of just where I’d have been if the police had raided my apartment and found those things concealed in the heel of that shoe.

Bobo lay on the floor, the dismantled shoe between his paws, looking as proud of himself as a turkey the day before Thanksgiving, and slowly wagging his tail. I could hear it thump, thump on the floor, slowly, rhythmically.

I guess it was that which finally aroused me to action. It sounded like a step on the stairs. Right then I was facing a term in prison, stolen gems in my hand and a criminal record that stretched across the entire span of the United States behind me.

I got up and took down one of the curtains, unrolled it, took the spring out of the roller, dropped the gems within the cavity, crowded back the spring with a little more tension on it and readjusted the curtain. Then I took three buttons, put them in with the cotton, stuffed the whole back in the heel, and nailed the patch on again. At any rate whoever planted that little surprise for Ed Jenkins was going to be out the price of three dandy diamonds.

I hadn’t much more than put the diamonds where I felt they would be safe and planted the buttons in the shoe, than there came a knock on the door. I wondered if it was the police coming to make a search in response to an anonymous tip. I didn’t think it would be, not just then, but figured Herman would hold that plant as a last resort. Probably he’d try several other methods first, then he’d get me pinched for having pulled the job of lifting the necklace those three stones came from, and then pull some political wires to get me out when I agreed to his terms. There was just one flaw in his plans. I didn’t propose to be taken in the first place.

I flung open the door, holding Bobo back, and found there was a uniformed chauffeur with a note. The note was typewritten and signed.

“Go on back to the car. I’ll be down in a minute,” I told the chauffeur. After all, I might as well give this crook all the rope he wanted. After finding those three diamonds I began to feel that he was going to bring some trouble on himself. I don’t care how much of a devil he is, or how ruthless, the man that tries to hang a crime on Ed Jenkins wants to watch his step.

I parked Bobo in back of the door where I knew he’d make things hot for anyone who tried to enter the apartment, and put on my overcoat. I hardly ever carry a gun. I can do more with my wits than I can with a gun, and a cop can pinch you for carrying a gun. He can’t pinch you for having your wits about you.

The chauffeur had a good car, and knew his business.

We slipped through traffic in short order, bowled through the streamers of thick fog, and drew up before Don G. Herman’s great, dark yard with the black outline of the house looming above, broken only by a yellow square of light where the hall window gave forth the gleam within.

I went up the steps as though I was a regular caller and before I could ring the bell the door was thrown open and Herman, himself stood bowing upon the threshold.

“Come in, Mr. Jenkins. Come in. It is indeed a pleasure to have you accept my invitation so promptly and willingly.”

His spongy lips were twisted all over his face, and I let him do the talking. He seemed to like it.

“Jenkins, I think you went off at half cock last night. You didn’t hear all of my proposition, and you seemed to think I might be trying to double-cross you.”

I thought of the diamonds in my shoe heel, but said nothing. He had something to spill, and I wasn’t going to take part in the social preliminaries.

“Now look here, Jenkins,” He leaned forward, putting one of his chubby fingers on my knee, “I’m on the square with you. The putting through of this enterprise is going to cost me a lot of money. It will mean more in the way of a money sacrifice than you can ever imagine.”

I thought of the ten promissory notes for ten thousand each, and took it out in thinking. If he played square with that jane, and the notes weren’t clever forgeries it was a cinch it was going to cost him something.

“Now you’ve got an idea that the paper isn’t worth all of this trouble, that maybe I’m using you as a cat’s paw because of your criminal record. That isn’t so. I’m willing to give you any guarantee of my good faith you may need.

“All I want you to do is to be within that house on a certain date — the date that Kemper receives the paper in question, and to make a photographic copy of it. I’ll arrange to have you provided with all the necessary equipment, and I’ll see that you get in the house on the proper footing to have the general run of the premises and no questions asked. Of course, the marriage will be a little sudden, and the social circles will be stirred up a bit. You two will have to stage an elopement and throw in a lot of romance. Perhaps the Kempers are the only ones who would invite you unsight unseen, but it happens that both Kemper and his wife are nuts over Helen Chadwick, and anything she does is all right with them. I’ll arrange the invitation all right.

“Here’s something else. I’m going to put myself absolutely in your hands. Here’s a statement all in my handwriting and signed by me to the effect that you are entering my employ and that I have commissioned you to enter Kemper’s house in accordance with the plan I have outlined and go through his safe — that in all of this you are my agent. Now I wouldn’t be willing to play into your hands with a statement like that unless I was on the square with you would I?”

I shook my head. “No, you wouldn’t,” I said aloud, and to myself I multiplied it by one hundred. If he’d give me a statement like that in his own handwriting he’d be eighteen kinds of a damn fool, to say nothing of having given me the whip hand and all the rest of it.

He nodded, a nod of satisfaction.

“That’s the satisfactory part of playing the game with a man who has brains, Jenkins. You can see just where I’d be with a statement like that in your hands. I’d have to play square. All right. Here you are. Read it at your leisure, and then tell me if you don’t feel I’m on the square.

“I’m going to tell you one thing more. That girl Helen Chadwick’s one peachy looking girl. She’s about twenty-two, a regular flapper, bright as a dollar, smart as a whip, and she’ll make you a good wife, Jenkins. I’ll see to that. She’ll make you a good wife. There’s many a man would go through hell’s fire for the chance…”

His spongy lips were twisting and working, but he broke off when he saw my eyes.

“No offense, of course, Jenkins. No offense. After all, I’m speaking of your future wife. Ha! Ha! Ha!”

I looked him in the eyes.

“Herman, I’ve warned you once, and now I’m going to warn you twice. Don’t try to double-cross me. I’m not looking for trouble, but I don’t want to have anyone try to slip anything over on me. I’ve got a brittle disposition.”

He looked at me with his wide-eyed, innocent attitude.

“Why, Jenkins, I’m one of the best friends you’ve ever had. Think of it. Just for a few minutes nice, clean work and I’m going to see that you get pardoned. I’m going to see that you marry into one of the most prominent and exclusive of families, that you have a beautiful young girl as your own… of course the marriage will be annulled afterward, or there’ll be a divorce granted, but you’d ought to get something out of that, and you’ll have the honeymoon, you know…”

I held up my hand.

“You’ve had my warning, never mind the rambling around, and I’m going to tell you one thing more. I’m not sensitive, and I’m a crook, but I am a gentleman, and don’t want you mentioning anything more about that marriage. Now I’m going and you can think that over. You’ve had your second warning, and it’s the last.”

He didn’t like the tone of my voice and he almost blew up at that last. I could see the muscles around his eyes quiver as he started to lose his temper, and show me the devil that was in him again, but he managed to keep them wide open.

“All right. Now I’m going to say something, Jenkins. I’ve been square with you. You won’t realize how square until you read that paper. All I’ve got from you in return is a lot of wisecracks and threats. Now let me say something. If you do as I say, well and good. You’ll find I’m a square shooter, and the best man to work with you ever had, also the most grateful.

“BUT, you turn me down on this, or you make any more of those wisecracks, and see what happens to you. Now laugh that off.”

For a few minutes we stood there eye to eye. He was mad clear through, holding his eyes wide and innocent looking by an effort. I was just beginning to get that cold rage that comes up within me at intervals when someone is trying a dirty double cross. For two pins he’d have been my meat right then. Not murder, for I don’t care for murder, but I’d match wits with him, outguess him at the finish and leave him in the toils of the law, fast in the trap he’d laid for me… But I shook off the feeling. After all he’d been warned. I’d handed it to him straight and I was going to turn him down cold on his proposition. After that it was up to him. If anything should happen and a squad of detectives came to look through my apartment, and chanced to look in the heel of that shoe… Oh well, then Don G. Herman was going to find that he’d stirred up a rattlesnake.

He recovered himself first.

“Now Jenkins, you think this over. My chauffeur will drive you back and then you can read over that statement. Take tomorrow and think it over, and come tomorrow night at nine and give me your answer, your final answer. If you’re not here at nine sharp I’ll know that you have turned me down and that’ll be final. Understand, that’ll be final.”

I nodded curtly, said goodnight and left.

He’d overlooked one thing and that was that if I wasn’t going to throw in with him in his scheme he’d left a signed statement in my hands that would enable me to substantiate my story if I should tell all that had transpired. I knew he wasn’t that foolish. There were two answers to that. One of them was that he intended to have me murdered before I could use the statement, the other was… Oh well, there was no use crossing my bridges before I came to them. Because of the trap of the three diamonds I felt that it wasn’t murder that he had in mind. I’d look into the other when I had the time.

The chauffeur deposited me at the corner next to my apartment, but didn’t drive up to the door. I grinned at that. At the start Herman had been so afraid of having any contact with me that he’d used a clever, high-up crook to do a simple little thing like delivering a message to me. Something had brought about a change in him. He even sent his chauffeur for me. I wondered if it was the planting of those three diamonds.

I let myself in, accepted the eager caresses of Bobo, put on my slippers and stretched out on the couch. Leisurely I unfolded the statement he had given me. It was loaded with dynamite all right.

It was written in a strong, bold handwriting in purple ink, and the signature wound up with a flourish. It had been handed to me by Don G. Herman himself, and — I smiled, got up, slipped into my pajamas, took a novel, and read myself to sleep.

Shortly after ten the next morning I appeared at the office of the City and County Clerk, and asked for the records of the great register. I wanted to look up the registration card of a party who lived in a certain block in a certain precinct.

After a little delay I got what I wanted. When they left me alone I ran though the cards until I came to that of Don G. Herman. He gave his age as forty-eight, his party affiliation as Republican, and he signed his name, a flowing signature with a flourish at the end.

I took the statement from my pocket and compared the signature and handwriting. I was right. The handwriting on that statement wasn’t that of Don G. Herman. It didn’t even look anything like Herman’s handwriting.

Oh, well, that was just what I expected. It had to either be that way or that he intended to have me murdered before I could ever use that statement. Of course, he figured that I’d fall for the thing being in his handwriting because he gave it to me himself. That’s almost the same as seeing a man write a thing.

I figured I knew about all there was to know to the plot right there, but I was wondering whether I’d better go hand that bird a jolt or pretend to fall into his trap and then find some way of either stealing the bait or of letting Herman get his fingers caught when the trap was sprung.

I went back to the apartment to think things over a bit while I browsed through the morning paper. It was little things like this that showed me I was getting tired of chasing around the country with the hand of every man against me, having to be constantly on my guard. There was a time when I wouldn’t have cared, when I would have gone and sat on a bench in the park all by myself and made up my mind in ten minutes. Now I wanted to have a little apartment where I could call myself at home, have a dog at my feet, a newspaper and leisure to think things out carefully.

It was a sure sign I was commencing to slow down in one way, but I made up for it by doing more accurate thinking. I could look back over a lot of hotheaded mistakes I’d made in the last few years, mistakes that the Ed Jenkins of today would never repeat. I could remember a lot of situations I’d had a hard time working my way out of that would have been easy pickings now.

I was disturbed in my meditations by a gentle knock on the door. Bobo stiffened, took a long sniff, looked up at me inquiringly, but didn’t show his teeth.

I hurried over and opened the door.

There was a girl standing there in the hallway, a little flapper with one of the low, narrow-brimmed hats that sets down on the forehead with just a few curls or bangs peeping out at the sides, and her eyes were playing hide-and-go-seek with me all around the brim of that hat.

I bowed.

“Come, in, madame. What can I do for you?”

It was Helen Chadwick, but it wouldn’t do for me to let her think I recognized her.

She walked right in, and, while I was turning to close the door, stepped over to Bobo and thrust out her dainty hand so the tips of her fingers were right in front of his nose.

She’d done it before I could do anything more than gasp, then, while I was getting my breath to warn her away, she gave a little ripple of her shoulder and her hand dropped on the top of the dog’s head. If there was ever a one-man dog in the world it was this same Bobo, and I held my breath waiting for the fireworks, and wondering if I had bandages and iodine handy.

I got fooled. Bobo stiffened for a minute, then slowly relaxed and looked inquiringly up at me, standing perfectly still under the girl’s hand. She knew dogs, that girl.

She saw the expression on my face.

“Oh, don’t be worried, Mr. Jenkins. I’m all right. You can make friends with almost any dog if you let him smell the tips of your fingers before you try to pet him. Dogs go by scent, and they don’t like to have strangers thrust on them any more than people do. After they become convinced you’re a friend it’s different, and a dog can tell almost what you’re thinking about by smelling your hand, can’t you, doggie?”

In indicated a chair.

“What’s his name?”

“Bobo.”

She laughed, a low, rippling laugh.

“That’s a nice name. You’re a good dog, Bobo.”

With that she gave him one final pat on his head, and blamed if he didn’t wag his tail a bit. She took the chair and Bobo came over and sat by me, looking at the girl.

She heaved a sigh, settled back, crossed her legs and gave me a peep of a fancy garter, ducked her head so her hat brim was just cuting the tops of her eyes, hesitated a bit, then: “I’m Helen Chadwick.”

I arose and bowed.

“You seem to already have my name, Miss Chadwick. I am Ed Jenkins, at your service, and pleased to meet you. What can I do for you?”

She watched me for a minute, then smiled.

“You can marry me this afternoon,” she said, “that is, if you really want to do something for me.”

Damn these flappers, anyway. For once in my life I’d had one slipped over the plate and a strike called before I even had the bat in my hand. I’d expected a lot of tears, maybe a few hysterics, a lot of protestations that she could never, never yield to Herman’s demands and would I please advise her what to do, and couldn’t I prevail upon Mr. Herman to do different, and all of the rest of the old line of chatter, and here the kid sits down, and I say formally “what can I do for you,” expecting that this will be the opening gun in the campaign that’ll wind up by having her throwing hysterics all over the apartment and talking about the power of love, the sanctity of the marriage vows, the blackmailing Herman, and all the rest of it, and she comes back with a casual statement that I can marry her that afternoon.

She had me off first base all right, but I don’t think she knew it. Maybe I blinked my eyes a bit, maybe not. I know my self-possession turned a flip-flop. But it landed on its feet in time for me to say, quite casually.

“At about what time this afternoon, Miss Chadwick?”

She looked at her wrist watch.

“Oh, suppose we go get the license about four o’clock, get married at five, say, and go see Herman after we’ve had dinner.”

I thought that over.

“Herman, of course, has told you to call on me?”

She shook her head.

“Nope. I’m doing this on my own. Of course, Herman has insisted on the marriage as you probably know, but that’s neither here nor there. He has me in a position where I just about have to do what he wants — not for my own sake, but for that of my mother — and he’s demanded that we get married.

“He told me this morning that he was afraid you were going to balk on the proposition, and that there was no alternative as far as I was concerned. Either I had to marry you or I could take the consequences, or rather mother could. Naturally, I ran out here to see you, and make sure you didn’t act up at the last minute. Herman gave me the address when I asked for it, and I suppose he knew what I wanted it for, but he didn’t suggest in any way that I come.”

Herman was a foxy bird, all right. He’d taken the precaution of telling this jane that I was not going to play the game, and putting her salvation right straight up to her. I determined to break through that damned air of casual flippancy the jane had. I didn’t believe she looked on the marriage with quite that saucy indifference, particularly after what I’d seen of her when Herman left the room that night at the study.

“So you really want this marriage to take place?”

She grinned, a frank, almost boyish grin. “Good gosh! Have I got to do the proposing and everything? What do you suppose I came around here for? I’ve often thought of my marriage, you know, girls dream a bit about those things, and I’ve always thought of a big church wedding” (her tone grew a bit wistful here) “but I never anticipated having any trouble with a bridegroom who was going to act stubborn. That’s why I dropped around here, to see that you didn’t get rusty at the last minute.”

She beat me. I leaned forward.

“Look here, Miss Chadwick…”

She held up her hand.

“Oh, call me Helen, Ed. Seeing we’ll be man and wife by night, you sound too blamed formal.”

“All right then, Helen; why are you so keen about this marriage?”

She stared straight at me.

“Oh, a variety of reasons. Some of ’em are private and you wouldn’t be interested in them. The rest of them are the usual ones, love at first sight, and all that; and then, I like your dog. A man who picks a dog like that must have something pretty much to him. You see I can read dogs. Can’t I, Bobo? Come over here, boy.”

Damned if he didn’t go to her. I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it.

She bent over him, patting his head, while I looked at the top of her hat, the long, tapering hand, and the garter that always managed to be just barely visible. She was a flapper with a vengeance. And then I saw something else. There was a gleam of light as the reflection of the windows caught on a big, glistening tear that dropped below that hat and stuck on the dog’s head. She patted him casually, putting her hand over the tear, and if I hadn’t been watching sharply I wouldn’t have seen it.

“Helen, do you know what this marriage is going to lead to? Do you know that this man Herman is a crook, a crook of the worst type? Do you know that he’d get you in the devil of a mess without a qualm? Why, girl, after you’d married me your life will be ruined. You can get a divorce, have it annulled or anything you like, but your whole life will be ruined.”

She kept her head down, patting the dog.

“Oh, it’s not that bad. Divorces are fashionable these days. I’m young, and I’m fancy-free, as the old saying has it. How does it go — ‘footloose and fancy-free’ — and there’s mother. Mother isn’t strong and… and… well, I can’t explain it, only to say that I’m in a position where I’d do nothing, anything, to keep this man, Herman, from doing what he might do. He could kill my mother, kill her of heartbreak. He could ruin the memory of my father, when Dad isn’t here to defend himself.”

I thought things over for a minute. Of course, I knew that Herman wouldn’t hesitate a minute to use those notes, nor would he hesitate to ruin the memory of H. Bolton Chadwick, or bring about the death of the widow. There was a fixity of purpose, a ruthlessness of power in those eyes of his when he had dropped the mask for that brief second. The man would stop at nothing.

I tried to get a fatherly attitude with the girl, to make my tone kindly.

“Listen, Helen, I’m not going to marry you, or rather, I’m not going to allow you to marry me. I suggest you go to some competent lawyer and tell him all of the circumstances; tell him just what it is that Herman is holding over you, tell him the whole story, and then see what he advises.”

She looked up at that, and she had managed to get her tears back. Her eyes looked at little swimmy, but they were clear and bright.

“Thanks for that, Ed,” she said simply. “I’ve been to father’s lawyer, and I find that he has known of the particular club that Herman is holding over my head. He has known of it and feared it. If father’d lived he’d have straightened the thing out all right, but he had to die just when his affairs were all tangled up… I’m sorry, Ed, but there’s nothing more that can be done. I’ve got to go through with it.”

She looked at me dreamily for a second or two and then went on, casually, impersonally: “I’d come prepared to hate you, and to go through with it, anyhow. You’d never even have known I hated you; I’d have been that good a sport, because it wasn’t you that made the proposition. Thank God, I can get along without that hate in my heart. You’re clean, Ed, and you’re a gentleman, regardless of what else you may be. I can tell a man from his dog, as well as his manner.”

I fought back a desire to put my hand on her shoulder. The blamed little kid was such a dead game sport, such a regular little fellow, that I found myself getting sympathetic in spite of myself. The only time she’d lost control of herself and dropped a tear or two she’d taken good care that I hadn’t seen her, or thought she had. I’d been expecting the jane would pass the buck up to me to get her out of her difficulty, would cry, and mumble things about death being preferable to dishonor, and what should she do, Oh, my God, what should she do, and all the rest of it. Here came this quiet little sport, put the cards down on the table, and even ducked her head when she felt the weeps coming.

“Well,” I said finally, “I’m not going to let you marry me, but I’ll see what can be done about helping you out.”

She shook her head, quickly, fiercely.

“Ed, please, please, don’t make it harder. You can’t understand what it’s all about, and there’s nothing you can do. Ed, I’ve been square. I’ve seen a lot of life, but I’ve played on the square. I’ve been saving myself for the man I was to love, and you don’t know, you can’t know what it means, but there’s no other way out. There’s nothing you or anyone else can do. I’ve got to go ahead with it. Please, please don’t make it any harder. I’m old enough to know my own mind. I know what I’m up against. You’re just going to add more to my burden than I can stand if I have to beg or plead with you.”

“Suppose you tell me about the hold this man, Herman, has on you?” I suggested.

Again she shook her head.

“There’s nothing you can do. If you want to work for my own best interests you’ll go ahead with the thing.”

I sat silent for a moment, thinking what it meant to the kid, thinking what a dirty dog Herman was to have got her in such a trap. I couldn’t offer to help her with those notes unless she told me about ’em, though. She misunderstood my silence.

“Come on, Ed,” she said with a smile, “I’ll make you a good wife, won’t burn the toast, bring your coffee in bed and all that.”

There was just a touch of ironic mockery in her tone.

I let her have it in bunches.

“Helen, I’m a crook, known from one end of the country to the other, wanted in several states. I know why you’re doing this thing, in part, anyway. It won’t add to the standing of your family if you marry a crook.”

She considered the toe of her shoe for a second or two, then looked up.

“I know all about that, Ed. One thing you want to remember is that you’re a gentleman. Being a gentleman is something that’s inside of one. It’s different from polish, manners or environment. It’s sort of an instinct. It’s being a good sportsman, a thoroughbred. I don’t think anyone will ever know about your criminal record, and I’m relying on you to save me all of that you can.”

The conversation was getting too squishy for me.

“Look here,” I told her. “I’m a man, a man who’s batted around from hell to Halifax and back again. You’ve kept referring to the fact that I’m a gentleman. The whole damned conversation is getting too highbrow to suit me. Why I should be running around trying to save girls from their own folly is more than I know. I’m a crook, and I’m not working for Don G. Herman, or anybody else, neither am I running any institution for brokenhearted flappers. You’ve got your chance to spill the beans and give me the lowdown on the thing. Otherwise, if you want to keep the lead it’s your move.”

She got up, smiling brightly.

“Then that’s settled. You’ll marry me this afternoon.”

Take it from me, the bird that said you can’t argue with a woman knew ’em like a book.

“You come back at eight o’clock tonight,” I told her.

“Maybe you’d better take me to dinner,” she said. “Now that we’re engaged I don’t feel backward about asking.”

“You go to thunder,” was my gentlemanly retort. “I’ll meet you here at eight o’clock, and I’m going to be busy between now and then.”

“Be sure and have the license,” she called back from the doorway. “Bye bye… be a good doggie, Bobo.”

Cheerily, lightly her voice rang back from the hall and she was gone. Bobo looked up at me his tail wagging slowly from side to side. I guess he’d caught the ring of decision in my voice, and knew there was action ahead. Me, I was mad. Don G. Herman had taken up too damned much of my time. I’d warned the man twice, and he’d kept on trying to double-cross me. Now he could take the consequences.

I clamped on my hat, took up my walking stick that had a regular burglar’s kit concealed in it, to say nothing of a small, finely tempered blade, and went down into the wholesale jewelry district.

Big Front Gilvray was in on the thing, and that meant one thing and one thing alone — jewels, big jewels, probably one or more jewels of rare value.

Down there in the district where crooks are not supposed to be welcome there is a big wholesaler who knows Ed Jenkins, and his reasons to remember the Phantom Crook. I’d had some professional dealings with him, dealings that were on the square, also I’d given him a few tips. He was a big man, and he’d do a great deal for me. It isn’t often that I ask favors, but when I do I ask ’em right.

I went into his office, and, after one glance at my face he dismissed his secretary and turned around to me.

His name doesn’t make any difference. He was and is a big man, one who stands high in the business world of San Francisco, a man whose name is one to juggle with in the jewelry game.

“I want to know the lowdown on Loring Kemper,” I told him.

He looked up thoughtfully. “Why, he’s a mighty fine fellow, one of the leaders of the social element here, one might say the head of the four hundred, he and his wife. They have lots of money, and he’s a square shooter.”

“I waved my hand.”

“Nix on that stuff. I’ve had that drummed into me so much lately that I know it by heart. What I want to know is what jewels he’s got, rather what particular jewel he’s got that’s worth a small fortune.”

The man seated at the desk before me jumped a bit and surveyed me through the tops of his glasses. For a long minute he studied my face. If he saw anything there he was welcome to it.

“Loring Kemper’s a client of mine, Jenkins,” he said at length. “I know you for a crook, a master crook. I am under some personal obligations to you, but my professional duty comes first and foremost. However, I know you are a man of honor, strange and inconsistent as it may seem when I say that I know you for a master criminal. Now tell me, on your word of honor, would I be violating the spirit of my professional ethics if I answered that question?”

I got mad.

“Listen, I’ve heard more highbrow talk in the last two days than I’ve ever heard in my life before, and I’ve had more people tell me what a highly moral, gentlemanly crook I was. For God’s sake quit using this highbrow language and cuss a little bit, and then answer my question. I’ll promise you that I won’t abuse the confidence to the detriment of your client.”

He still hesitated a minute, then relaxed.

“Well, Jenkins, the truth of the matter is that we recently purchased a very valuable jewel for Mr. Kemper. The thing was stolen some time ago from one of the collections of royal gems. You can guess the name of the nation. Further than this I can’t make any disclosures. The whole thing is very much of a secret, and I can’t tell you more without violating a very sacred confidence. However, you can see my position, also that of my client. Right at present it mustn’t be known that Mr. Kemper is the owner of the jewel in question, or rather that he has it in his possession. Right now it’s stolen property. Of course, it’s a case where possession is nine points of the law. Within a short time there should be an opportunity to purchase the legal title for a nominal consideration. The man who has actual possession of the gem can probably secure a confirmation of title for a fraction of its value. Until then it is, one might say, anybody’s property.”

I shook my head.

“That isn’t what I want to know. I want to know what sort of a gem this is, and what it looks like, and where it’s kept. Can you give me that information?”

“No, Jenkins, absolutely not,” his tone was firm and final. Knowing my man as I knew him, I knew that he meant it.

“Not even if I should tell you that it was imperative that you give me the information in the best interests of your client?”

He drummed for a moment on the desk, then again shook his head.

“I’m sorry, but it can’t be done. I must hold inviolate the confidences of my client.”

I gave him a once over, cold, calm, careful.

“If I became a client of yours would you protect my confidences to the same extent?”

“Why certainly.”

“Even if the information I should disclose became of the greatest value to one of your other clients?”

He thought for a moment, then nodded.

“I should protect the confidences of one of my clients, regardless of who might benefit by the information.”

I got up and extended my hand.

“All right. Since you won’t give me the information I want I’ll have to go to the trouble of getting it myself.”

He laughed.

“There are some things even you can’t get, Jenkins, and this is one of them.”

“Maybe,” I said as I walked out. I was mad. I’d never been so fed up on this damned talk of ethics, of honor, virtue and all of the highbrow stuff in all my life. I wanted to go down in the underworld for a while just to get the sound of the highbrow talk out of my ears. I was getting as bad as the rest of ’em. Bah!

Three years ago and I’d have never given the thing a thought besides trying to figure some way to make mine out of it. Now the blamed flapper worried me. I went home and tried to sleep and didn’t make a very good job of it. I had need for all the sleep I could get.

Promptly at eight o’clock I heard steps in the hallway, saw Bobo’s tail give a wag or two, and then there came a gentle knock on the door.

I opened it to see Helen Chadwick standing there with a suitcase in her hand.

“Hello, Ed. Did you get the license all right? This has to be an elopement, you know. I told mother I was spending the night with some girlfriends, so I brought my baggage along.”

I didn’t answer the question directly.

“Put your grip in here, and we’ll go take a ride,” was all the answer I gave her.

She nodded, handed me the grip, and looked at the dog. “Hello, Bobo. Come on over here, boy.”

He trotted over to her and stood there, wagging his tail while she patted his head. I had a machine waiting downstairs, and I took the girl to it, stepped on the starter and headed into the traffic of Van Ness.

I’ll say one thing for that flapper. She knew when to talk and when to keep quiet. She saw after one glance at my face, that I had my mind made up and, after that, she didn’t say a word, just cuddled down there in the seat, looking tiny and helpless, her little face stuck up in the face of Fate, her hand resting on the dog’s head, and her eyes straight ahead.

I commenced to realize that she derived a lot of comfort from the dog. She was going through hell, and she was too game to say much. She wouldn’t even let me guess what was going on in her mind, but she let down the bars with the dog, and clung to him for sympathy. Bobo understood, and perhaps it was that which had impressed him from the first. The man who says a dog hasn’t some psychic sense which enables him to understand the emotional states of the person he comes in contact with, is a man who doesn’t know dogs.

Herman, himself, welcomed us at the door. I’d given him a ring earlier in the afternoon and told him we’d be out. I hadn’t told him anything else, and I could see that he was curious.

We went back into the little study, and I did the talking.

“I’ll take this thing on one condition,” I told him, “and that is that I don’t marry the girl. She can get me invited to the Kemper’s for a weekend as a very dear friend; perhaps she may have to let on that we’re engaged; but I won’t go through with the thing as her husband, and that’s final.”

He looked me over, his big, full-moon eyes, speculating a bit, turning things over in his mind. The girl had given one little gasp, and was sitting forward on the edge of the chair.

“Jenkins, you puzzle me,” said Herman at length. “Your record doesn’t show that you’re a bit mushy or soft-boiled. Frankly, it doesn’t make much difference to me, only I thought the idea would appeal to you more if there was to be a marriage. You have a taste for the bizarre, the unusual, and I felt that I’d got to dress up something out of the way to interest you in it at all. It suits me all right if you go out there in any capacity, provided only that you can spend several days and nights in the house, and have the run of the place as a guest.

“In other words, if it ever comes out that there was anything unusual happened there (and Miss Chadwick doesn’t know what I have in mind for you to do), I don’t want it to also happen that you will immediately be suspected. You are to be there as a guest, and an honored guest, one who has the entire place at his disposal.

“Miss Chadwick, do you think that you can arrange to have an invitation to the Kempers’ with Mr. Jenkins as a very dear friend?”

She nodded, her eyes fastened on my face instead of his.

“If we were engaged I could,” she said quietly, almost softly.

He waved his hand.

“That’s a detail for you folks to settle. Here are your instructions. Today is Friday. You are to arrange things so that you enter the Kemper home on Saturday afternoon and stay there over Saturday, Sunday and Monday. On Sunday night between eleven and twelve Mr. Jenkins is to have Mr. Kemper engaged in conversation. On Monday night he is to do the work I have assigned to him, picking his own time.

“Miss Chadwick, by the time you have been there up to midnight on Sunday I’ll know that you have gone though with your part of the bargain, and if you’ll come out here any time after that I’ll make an… er… adjustment with you of the matters which are between us. In fact, you can come between one and two in the morning if you wish.

“That’s all there is to it, except you people are not to compare notes in any way. Those are your instructions. You both are to profit if you carry them out, and you both are liable to a penalty if you fail me or try to double-cross me.”

I thought the situation over for a minute.

“Of course you’re on the square with us?”

He twisted his thick lip into a leer.

“Certainly.”

“All right,” I said as I rose and gave my arm to the girl. “We understand each other perfectly, then.”

He bowed us out into the night, and I could see he was thinking. Somehow, somewhere I had given him an inkling that I was working on a definite plan, and it made him uneasy. I could see him standing there in the door long after we had closed the gate. He was there when I started the car and drove away.

“You’ll have to take me out to the house now, Ed,” said the girl. “It’s going to be sudden enough as it is, but I don’t want to shock my circle too much. I wonder if you’d mind meeting mother tonight, and posing as a friend who met me while I was in college?”

I sighed. I was in for it and I knew it.

“All right,” I came back listlessly. My mind was far away.

She put her hand on mine.

“And, Ed, I want you to know that I think that was the whitest, squarest thing that you did tonight. I can’t begin to thank you. You are… well, Ed, you’re just a thoroughbred, and that’s all there is to it.”

I kept my eyes on the road ahead. If my ears were any judge, the kid was nearer a breakdown than she’d ever been when she was with me before, and I didn’t want any sobbing female woman on my shoulder.

She gave me the directions and I drove her out to her house.

Her mother was a stately dowager with kindly eyes, a face that was calm with stem pride and lined with grief. A look at the color of her skin showed that she wouldn’t stand very much in the line of a shock.

The kid pulled it off in nice shape. She’d been out to see her friends and had just happened to run into me on the street in front of my hotel. I’d just got in and insisted on paying a more formal call, but she’d kidnapped me and taken me out for her mother to meet.

Mother was curious, but she held it back nicely, acting the stately hostess. I sat there and swapped small talk with a chocolate cup between thumb and forefinger, little finger sticking straight out and a postage stamp napkin stuck on my knee. I felt like hell.

The girl shot me a glance once, a glance filled with amusement. I guess she could read my thoughts after a fashion. It sure was a devil of a note for Ed Jenkins, the Phantom Crook, to be sitting there in the drawing-room of the Chadwick home, sipping chocolate and acting as though I liked it. If that kid thought she could read my mind, though, she was as crazy as a bald-headed Esquimo. I knew what was ahead of me from midnight on. No one else did.

At length the evening drew to a close. Mother excused herself after a while and left us alone. Bobo made himself at home in front of the fire and the girl and I swapped a little talk in a low tone. I got up to go and she came to the door with me.

In the hall I felt her warm bare arms go around my neck.

“Thanks, Ed,” she said, and kissed me on the cheek.

It had been one hell of a while since any jane that amounted to anything had done that. I thrilled at the strangeness of it. She was one game little scout.

Hang these flappers, anyway. They’re always doing things contrary to schedule. You think they’re all froth, daring clothes, modem slush and selfishness, and all of a sudden they show some depth of feeling that makes a man feel as though he’s in the presence of something sacred.

I shook of the mushy feeling as I stepped on the throttle and roared into the fog. I had work ahead. A lot was going to depend on Ed Jenkins, and I didn’t propose to fall down on the job. For once I was going to cut loose, throw my immunity to the winds and smash the California Penal Code all to hell.

I drove to a storage plant and got out a light trunk that had been accumulating dust for a spell. I had some new dry batteries in my car.

From the storage place I went out to Loring Kemper’s and left the car parked in a dark side street. The registration of that car, by the way, had been handled by an expert. Anyone who could have deduced anything from it was welcome.

I strapped a bulky object on my back and started in, slipping through the shadows, Bobo at my heels, his ears shot forward, tail erect and rigid, every sense alert, guarding me against surprises with his keen senses, ten times better than a bodyguard of five scouts could have done.

The Kemper house was dark, the grounds covered with deep gloom and silence. I knew there was a watchman from the way Bobo acted. Spotting him before he spotted me was my job. Finally it was a pipe that did it. I can smell a pipe for a mile, and when he lit up, I didn’t have much difficulty in locating him.

He was one of the sort who are faithful plodders and considered his job more or less one of routine detail.

After he got planted for a quiet smoke I managed to handle a back window so that no one was the wiser. I picked a low one because I wanted Bobo in with me, and I went about it carefully because I suspected a burglar alarm of some sort. There wasn’t any. Apparently Kemper trusted to his honest watchman.

Once within the huge house I had to go easy. The gleam of a flashlight on one of the windows would show to the watchman outside. A single stumble would prove my undoing. I worked cautiously in rubber-soled shoes, giving an occasional flash from my shielded light in a doubtful place. I worked for an hour and a half before I found the safe. When I located the combined study and den I figured I was close to it, but I had to go over every inch of the walls before I found it.

I guess I was about the first to work out a radio amplifying apparatus for opening safes. The construction of it is nobody’s business, but it works. When I connect up that box and get the tubes in my ears the whirring of the lock mechanism as I twirl the combination sounds like a packet of firecrackers. The click of a tumbler sounds like the explosion of a cannon.

As I’d come to the proper point by sound alone, I’d put the flashlight on long enough to get the number on the combination. When I got through I had the combination of one of the finest private safes I’ve seen in a long while.

The inner, steel door I had to pick, but I can do anything with a lock anybody else in the business can, and that’s saying a lot.

The private papers and all that I passed up without even a look. There were some gem cases in there that looked like miscellaneous odds and ends, and I let them go. It was the big, worn jewel case that interested me. I opened it, turned the beam of the light on what lay within, and then gasped. I’m used to jewels, particularly other people’s, but I had to catch my breath at what was in that case. There was a sparkle of fire that flared up into my face and seemed to even sear my brain. The light from the flash was magnified a thousand percent, split up into a million rays that flashed and glittered, and from deep within seemed to be a great pool of limpid, liquid fire. I didn’t know the name of the gem, but it sure was one of those that had a name, a name and a history.

I stuck it in my pocket, closed the safe, and cautiously worked my way out of the house. Getting out of the grounds without being detected was more simple, but a trifle tedious. The cool of the night that comes just before dawn was making the watchman uneasy and cold, and he was tramping about, taking deep breaths, keeping his spirits up and peering sharply about. However, we made it all right.

I sent the dog ahead to scout around the car, and he reported the coast clear by returning with wagging tail. He seemed to know that we’d pulled a coup. I drove home, concealed the apparatus where it would be safe for the time being, shaved, bathed, and went out for breakfast.

At nine o’clock I walked in on my jeweler friend.

“Hello, Jenkins. Are you back for some more information?” he grinned. “Because you’re out of luck. I came to the conclusion I’d talked too blamed much the other time. Don’t know what possessed me to spread out and give you so much information.”

I sat down.

“I don’t want any information. I want service. I want a fair imitation made of a gem, and I want it quick.”

He looked at me speculatively.

“A large gem?”

I nodded.

“A particularly large gem?”

Again I nodded.

He sighed. “Jenkins, you have a diabolically clever method of getting information. I’ve told you too much now. I’ll make you an imitation of the gem provided you have the gem to copy from, and not otherwise. In other words I won’t make you a copy of any gem that is described in catalogues of collections, but only of some particular gem that you have in your possession.”

“That’s fair,” I told him; “and I can get men started on it right away?”

“Provided you have the gem,” he said with a smile.

I flipped the gem case on the table.

“All right, then. Make me a copy of the gem that’s in there, and I don’t care if it’s a rough job. I must have it quick.”

He gasped when he saw the case, opened it, and his jaw began to sag. The breath went out of him like a punctured tire.

“Ed, for God’s sake, man, do you know what you have… Why… why… that’s the one we sold Kemper. That’s the… My God, man, there’ll be a commotion over this.”

I shook my head.

“There won’t be if your men get busy and rush me a copy.”

He got a little of his composure back and studied his finger-nails intently for a few seconds.

“Look here, Ed. Are you stealing that?”

I got sore at all the conversation.

“Stealing is the present participle,” I came back. “If there was anything wrong about the method by which it came into my possession you’d better use the verb ‘have stole.’ Now can this damned highbrow chatter and get me started with a little service or there’s likely to be some fireworks that I don’t want to go off just yet.”

He sighed, rang for his secretary, asked her to have a certain man step in, and then sat waiting, drumming on his desk.

The man who came in with an apron over his clothes, a skull cap and piercing gray eyes was a German, and he knew the gems. The boss slipped over the jewel case.

“Rush out an imitation of that and make the best job you can, and do it quick. We want case and all copied.”

The man knew the gem in a second. But he didn’t betray his knowledge by the quiver of a muscle. He took the case, nodded and vanished through the glass door.

“Come back this afternoon,” said my friend, wiping the perspiration from his forehead.

“I’ll be back at noon,” I told him. “You can have it ready by that time.”

He fidgeted.

“It’d relieve my mind a lot if you’d tell me what’s the inside of all this, Ed. As it is, we’re virtually receivers for stolen property.”

I grinned.

“Well, you told me it was stolen property in the first place, and that it’s the second time you’ve handled it. Also, as I remember it, you said the person having possession of the gem could probably get title confirmed a little later for a nominal sum.”

With that I got up and left him.

At my apartment I got a message from Helen to call her on the telephone. When I got her she told me she was coming right down. I gathered that meant something important. I hadn’t been able to get much sleep, but then, that was the fortune of war.

Helen looked as chic and happy as though a big load had been lifted from her mind.

“I broke the news to mother,” she told me, “and I rang up Mrs. Kemper. You know the Kempers have always been sort of foster parents of mine, and right away Mrs. Kemper became wild to give you the once over. She insisted, simply insisted, on our coming out there for the weekend. I told her we would.”

Her eyes danced up into mine.

“You’re some little manipulator,” I told her, seeing that was the obvious comment.

“Of course, it’s a secret,” she went on, babbling like a brook. “I’ve made ’em promise they won’t tell a soul. The Kempers invited mother, too, but mother can’t come. She’s keeping pretty quiet yet.

I told her I accepted you last night, so you’ve got to run out to the house and explain to mother. I think she’ll give you her blessing…”

The kid’s voice trailed off into silence.

For a long time she looked down at the floor, then shrugged her shoulders. “I hate to think of putting one over on mumsy like this, but it’s all in a lifetime,” she said, and almost immediately went back to her happy, carefree attitude.

That call to receive “mumsy’s” blessing was one of the worst half-hours that have ever been my lot to spend. I’ve done lots of funny things in my life, and I’ve had some moments when there’s been mighty gloomy prospects ahead, but… Oh, well, it finally ended. All things of that sort have to end.

I broke away from Helen and went back to the jeweler’s. The original and copy were ready for me. The copy wasn’t so much, but it was pretty fair. It would fool a man in a half-light, and it might fool a casual observer, but it wouldn’t bother a collector very long. I halfway suspected my jeweler friend with some of his fine ethical sense had made me an inferior copy on purpose, but I didn’t have either the time or the inclination to argue. He watched me out of the door with a worried look on his face. I hoped his fine sense of ethics hadn’t prompted him to ring up Loring Kemper and ask any questions about the jewel. There was one danger right then, and that was that they might discover the loss. If they did I’d have to change my plans. However, it was a good even-money bet that no one would notice it.

Helen and I arrived at the house about two, and I got a real welcome. Mrs. Kemper was one of the sort that can understand human nature. Like all of that type, she realized that wings didn’t grow on mortals. She studied me for a long and rather uncomfortable minute. What she saw in my face she kept to herself.

Loring Kemper was a man of sincerity, hobbies, and individuality. He was about fifty and his face was tanned a deep brown from outdoor life. He was fond of golf, crazy about surf bathing, a collector of jewels, a lover of horses and dogs, and he cared nothing whatever for cards, social pastimes or chatter. He was a man of strange moods, deep silences and outspoken ideas.

He, too, looked me over, shook hands, and didn’t say much.

Half an hour after I was settled in my room I got the chance I wanted, tiptoed to the study, twirled the knobs on the safe and put back the original gem. The copy I retained.

As an engaged man, I was a good crook. I tried to mix in things, to keep away from the situations a young, engaged couple would ordinarily be expected to get into. That little vixen of a girl didn’t see things that way.

“We’ve got to act natural, the way engaged couples are supposed to act,” she whispered, as she slipped up close to me, took the back of my hand and rubbed it against her cheek. From the porch I saw the keen eyes of Mrs. Kemper watching us. While there were lots of servants and social secretaries, we were the only house guests, and the hostess had ample opportunity to observe us. Right at the start I saw she was going to take good care to exercise her opportunities.

Bobo made a hit.

On company behaviour, he sensed that he shouldn’t eat up everyone that came close to him, but he had a dignified way of showing that he wasn’t going to be pawed over, at that. When someone would come close to him with those cooing noises that women make over strange dogs and cats, Bobo would stand with legs braced, eyes straight ahead, and neck rigid. He didn’t growl, but no one laid a hand on him. No one, that is except Helen. He seemed to have adopted her. He’d come to her call and seemed to be happy when he was near her.

Kemper looked the dog over, made no effort to touch him as his wife and her social secretary had done, then commented drily: “He’s a queer mixture. He’s a cur and a gentleman, a mixed breed of a thoroughbred. There’s something that dog’s learned in the hard school of knocks that has stayed with him. He wants his freedom, that boy, and he’s not overly fond of humans. Am I right, Bobo?”

The dog looked up at the sound of his name and for a long minute his eyes looked into those of Loring Kemper’s, then his tail wagged, just a little, and just once or twice, then he lowered his eyes and remained as immovable as a statue.

Kemper chuckled.

“A thoroughbred has pride, sort of a family heritage, but it takes a cur to learn. That dog’s had a past, and he has some responsibilities with his new master that are on his mind all the time. You’ll pardon me, Jenkins, but he acts as though he was trying to protect you against the world for some reason or other.”

The man’s shrewd, twinkling eyes suddenly darted up under his bushy brows and bored into mine.

He may have seen something in my face. He was a wonder if he did. I returned his glance with a bored air of courtesy. “I like him, but I don’t know much about dogs,” I said idly. “He’s a good pal, but I don’t think he’s overly intelligent.”

Kemper’s shoulders heaved, and he chuckled broadly, then changed the subject. I’ll say one thing for Loring Kemper. He sure knew how to read a dog’s character.

On Sunday morning a message was left for me by a man who simply left the note and a package. The note was unsigned. The package contained a specially built camera. I read the note.

“The paper is a letter signed by George Smith, and will be in the safe. Insert it in the paper holder in the camera, screw the connection into a light socket, leave for fifteen seconds, then unscrew and return the letter to its place. The camera will be called for later.”

I chuckled at that. The situation was so obvious that it was absurd. Here was I, Ed Jenkins, nationally, yes, internationally known as a crook, staying as a guest at a house which contained one of the most valuable gems which had ever come to America. It was a gem that only collectors could aim at or afford, a gem the possession of which was taboo until certain governmental changes had become established. It was too important and incriminating to be even left in a safe deposit box. The only safety in its possession lay in the secrecy surrounding that possession.

If anything should happen to that gem while I was there at the house… Oh well, it was so simple there was no need to follow it out. When a nationally known crook visits a house and a valuable gem disappears from that house, anyone can add the two and the two and make four. It was so apparent that the letter was a myth, and that the reason given me for being there by Herman was a fake that they hadn’t even bothered to make their instructions about the letter sound reasonable. No instructions for photographing both sides of the sheet, no description as to the nature or length of the letter, and not even a plausible sounding name for the signer of it. I wouldn’t have been surprised if the camera was even without a lens. Bah, this Don G. Herman made me sick. I’d have laughed myself to death over him if it hadn’t been for that glimpse I had of his eyes when the mask slipped from his face, and he showed in his true colors. The man was a devil.

On Sunday night from eleven to twelve I was supposed to detain Kemper in conversation. I knew what that meant. Bah, a ten-year-old kid would have known what that meant.

At ten-thirty Sunday night I slipped up to the study, spun the tumblers of the safe and took out the gem. I slipped the copy back in place of the original and went down to hunt Kemper. I wanted to give myself plenty of margin.

I talked dogs with him from eleven to twelve.

Helen had retired about ten-thirty.

Kemper was hard to talk to that night. He kept his eyes on mine and listened. Damn the man! He would do nothing except listen. I talked dog psychology to him until I thought I should go crazy. The clock boomed out midnight, and I excused myself, asked him if he were turning in, and tried to keep the note of interest from my voice.

He looked out at the night, stretched his great arms above his shoulders and said he guessed he’d take a turn through the garden first.

I breathed a prayer of relief and skipped upstairs, dashed into that study, twirled the knobs of the safe and flung open the door. The gem case was gone.

I pulled the original out of my pocket, stuck it back in its place and went down stairs again. I found Kemper out near the fence.

“Say by the way, you’ll pardon my asking it, but is there anything of value in the house tonight?”

He turned and looked me over.

“Why yes,” he drawled, paused a maddening interval and added, “Helen is here, you know.”

I didn’t know whether I was supposed to laugh or look serious. Damn this high society stuff, anyway.

“I saw a man slinking along the fence as I looked out of my bedroom window,” I exclaimed, “and if there’s anything of value in the house I’d suggest you take especial steps to keep it safe tonight.”

In the starlight I could see his rugged face twist into a smile. “You saw the watchman,” he said shortly.

I still hesitated.

“Good-night, Jenkins.”

“Good-night,” I said and turned.

I walked in the front door, through the long hall and out the back door. It was a good thing the garage was a ways from the house and facing a down grade. I slid my car out, coasted down the incline, kicked in the clutch near the foot and purred away into the darkness. I’d noticed that there was dark space where one of the other cars should have been, but I couldn’t be bothered. I had Bobo sticking with me, parked down close to the floor, whining from time to time with sheer excitement. The dog read my moods better than a mind reader. I guess animals pick up thoughts from scent, from the sound of the voice. There must be something to this psychic wave stuff, after all.

I hoped I’d reach Herman’s in time, but I couldn’t be sure. I had to take my chance. I drove like the devil himself, skidded around the corner three blocks below the great, gloomy grounds, kicked out the clutch, shut off the motor, coasted as far as I dared, and then slipped out from behind the wheel, snapped my fingers to the dog, and we went over the fence together.

Bobo scouted on ahead, swiftly gliding through the shadows like an owl, sniffing the ground and the air. In a few minutes he returned, tail up, head cocked on one side, a sure sign that the coast was clear. I made for the window I’d jumped a few nights ago.

There was a light in Herman’s study, and before I’d been under the window ten seconds he heard something that sent him down the hall with quick steps.

I slipped in the window and behind the desk, waiting.

I heard the slam of the front door, the sound of steps, and then Herman’s voice, and in the voice was a note of disappointment.

“Well, young lady, you certainly don’t believe in waiting. I have some other people I’m waiting for, so you’ll have to be brief.”

It was Helen, a Helen that was strangely beautiful. Her lips were parted, her eyes shining, her hair streaming out from under her hat.

“Mr. Herman, I’ve lived up to my part of the bargain. The rest is between you and Jenkins. I want the notes.”

He nodded.

His thick lips twisted a bit, and then he walked over to the safe. Once more I noticed him stoop and saw his hand dart down. Then he swung back the picture and spun the dials on the safe.

He came back with a paper.

“Here you are, my dear.”

The girl reached eagerly up, then suddenly stiffened.

“There’s only one note there. You have ten.”

He bowed, silently acquiescing.

“But you were to give me all,” she said, and for the first time since I had known her there was a note of near hysteria in her voice.

He smiled, a thick flabby leer, and shook his head.

“Oh, no. I said I’d give you the note. You may have understood that I’d give them all to you, but you misunderstood me. I couldn’t give them all up. No, young lady, you have earned one, and one alone. There are nine others. From time to time I shall ask you to do other things for me. You will not refuse. Here, take this note and run along.”

She jumped to her feet, eyes blazing.

“You crook! You dirty, cheap, double-crossing crook!”

His eyes slipped again, closed until they were mere slits from which peered forth the devil of his nature.

“Take that note and beat it before I count three or you won’t get it at all. You’re in my power and you’ll do just as I say, and do it for nine times more. Any of those notes would kill your mother, ruin your father’s memory. Let’s have it understood here and now. You’re going to do as I say. You’re mine, body and soul, and I dispose of either as I wish.”

With that she struck him, a blow that sounded like a pistol shot.

Staggered, he stepped back, and she struck him again, not the blows of a child, not the slaps of a woman, but the double-fisted punches of a fighter. Then she turned to the safe.

Herman staggered back into the chair and wiped the blood from his mouth, and then he laughed. The safe was closed.

“I took the precaution of only seeming to open it, Cutie,” he taunted. “I had the note in my pocket. The others are in there safe and sound, and you’ll pay for this. Think it over. You’ve taken the first step. After tonight I’ve got another hold on you. Ed Jenkins is stealing Kemper’s collection of gems. Even now there’s a squad of police at the house. You’re an accomplice, an accessory if I breathe one word. I have political power, my dear. Jenkins is going to jail. Your name’s going through the mud if it ever gets out that you announced your engagement to a crook, even if you did try to keep it a secret. Also one word from me, and you’ll be thrown into a cell as an accomplice. Your explanation of where and how you met Jenkins will be interesting.”

She looked at him, white to the lips.

“You did this… you did this to… to Ed!” she breathed, then turned and ran down the hall. From without came the sound of a racing motor, the clash of gears, and the sound of a machine speeding through the night.

At his desk Don G. Herman sat leering in thick lipped triumph, holding the note.

There followed a silence, a silence broken only by the clacking of the office clock as it measured the seconds of eternity. Out in the night a girl was racing to save me from a frame-up, beneath the window without there crouched a dog, ears cocked forward, teeth bared, waiting for a signal from his master to sink those teeth in the throat of the crook at the desk.

By an effort I controlled myself and waited while the minutes passed. Herman returned the note to the safe, chuckling the while.

There came once more the sound of a car. Don G. Herman arose to his feet and hurried to the outer door. There was a greeting, the triumphant laugh of the politician, and Big Front Gilvray swaggered into the office, followed by the political crook.

“Took it hook, line and sinker,” gloated Gilvray. “The big sap was holding Kemper in conversation while I slipped in, used the combination we’d picked up from the secretary, opened the safe and pulled out the jewel.”

Herman clapped his hand on his leg, laughing silently, his thick, spongy lips drawn clean back from his yellow fangs.

“And he’s supposed to be the master crook of them all. The sucker. The poor, doddering sucker. You’ve arranged to have the police tipped off?”

Gilvray nodded. “Sure. Let’s let him get it all in one jolt.”

“Let’s take a look at that sparkler. I’ve always wanted to see one of those famous boys.”

Gilvray took off his coat. Beneath his arm was a leather sack, and from this sack he produced a jewel case and opened it. There came the gleam of reflected light.

“Gosh!” exclaimed Herman, “look at the size of it!”

He reached for the case, took it in his hand, peered at the gem with greed stamped all over his features. His moon eyes closed once more and his face set in an expression of cunning avarice.

“Say, couldn’t we make more by holding this ourselves?”

Gilvray smiled. “I’d thought of that but it can’t be done. It’s no good right now to anyone but a collector, and our best bet is to turn it into cash. Remember that it was my er… er… customer that tipped me off to where it was. He’d know we were holding out on him if… SAY, FOR GOD’S SAKE LET ME SEE THAT GEM!”

The trained eye of the gem man had noticed something in the appearance of the jewel, even at that distance, in that uncertain light. He snatched it.

For along moment he said nothing. He didn’t need to. His jaw sagged, and the breath wheezed out of his lungs in one deep, despairing gasp.

Herman leaned forward, watching alternately the jewel and Gilvray’s face.

“Framed, by God!” exclaimed Gilvray after a minute.

Herman recovered his presence of mind first.

“Find Jenkins,” he said shortly. “Let’s hope he hasn’t been arrested yet. He’s probably in his apartment. If he stayed at the Kemper house he’d be pinched, and he may be wise enough to start to duck. It’s a long shot, but let’s go.”

Together they raced from the room.

I walked out from behind the desk and pulled a pad of blank promissory notes from my pocket. They were forms such as are sold in stationery stores in book form, the same sort as the note Herman had shown to the girl the night I first hid behind the desk. I’d managed to get a fair look at that note after he showed it to her.

I had a small, pocket edition of my safe opener with me. I hoped I wouldn’t have to waste time by going after the big one. With all the care of a physician listening to the heart of a wealthy patient I listened to the inner workings of that safe. First, however, I solved the mystery of the little switch near the floor. The safe was insulated, and I don’t know how many volts were running through it. There was a copper plate set in the floor in front of the safe and I figured an ordinary crook would be pretty well toasted after touching the metal knob of the safe.

Herman was a fairly slick crook. He was half-smart.

The safe opened after fifteen minutes, and I located the Chadwick notes ten seconds later. Cooly, calmly, I took them over to Herman’s desk. Carefully, I traced each one of them. The signatures I traced from one particular note. Handwriting experts can tell a traced signature because the signatures of any man are never exactly identical. When two signatures compare absolutely they are tracings. In order to make a real amateurish job of it I used a fine pencil to make the first tracing, and then went over it with ink. I can do nearly anything with a pen, and I let my hand jiggle just enough so that the pencil mark underneath would show under a good microscope. To the naked eye on casual inspection the notes looked good.

When I had finished I put the copies in the safe, closed the door and took the originals with me. I went out of the window and felt Bobo jumping on me in an ecstasy of joy. He’d been pretty nervous with all that scuffling and running of feet in the room above.

We went across to the car, climbed behind the wheel and headed back for Kempers. Helen Chadwick was waiting for me at the garage. When I switched out the lights she ran forward. The first intimation I had of her presence was when Bobo’s tail began to go slap, slap against my leg. A moment later I saw her standing white against the shadow of a hedge.

“Ed, oh, Ed,” she whispered.

I got out of the car and went to her.

“Oh, Ed I’m so sorry. I’m afraid I’m partly responsible. They’ve double-crossed you some way, and the police are coming. Herman… Herman said that he was sending you to jail.”

I reached out with my arm and she snuggled up against it, her face upturned. “Run, Ed. Run away and beat them to it. I came to warn you.”

I laughed a bit, and I could feel a catch in my throat with that laugh.

“Forget it, Helen. Let’s go to the house.”

Bobo whined uneasily, running to and fro in front of me. I knew his danger sign and dropped my arm from the girl’s shoulders. Somewhere down the road a siren whined, and then from the darkness behind there came a beam of light sharply outlining me.

“One move, Jenkins, and we shoot.”

I elevated my hands casually. After all they were going to go some if they got anything on me.

“Come on into the house, men,” said someone from the dark yard, and Loring Kemper walked out into the circle of light as casually as though he always sat up all night.

We trooped into the house, and from the way the cops surrounded and watched me I could tell that the Chief didn’t propose to have Ed Jenkins slip through his fingers. The phantom crook had acquired too great a reputation. The men had been ordered to shoot to kill at the first move, and they were itching for a chance. There where they were safe because of their numbers, each and every man of them wanted to be the first, wanted to be able to strut around as the man who had killed the famous Ed Jenkins. We walked into the library.

“Look at your safe, Mr. Kemper,” said the officer in charge, his voice deep, impressive and important.

Kemper led the procession upstairs. We watched him while he opened the safe and examined the contents.

“Everything’s in order,” he said simply as he straightened and turned to the officers.

A bomb dropped in their midst would not have caused greater consternation. At length one of them found his voice.

“Do you know that this man who has been imposing on your hospitality is the greatest crook in the United States?”

It was a woman’s voice who answered him. We all turned to see Mrs. Edith Kemper standing there, fully gowned, calm, cool, collected.

“We certainly do not know it,” she said. “Mr. Jenkins has been suspected of crime, has been framed up a number of times, but is absolutely square and honest. He is innocent of all the charges which have been made against him, and he is not wanted for any crime in California. My attorney is on his way out here and will appear for Mr. Jenkins if you care to make any charge. I will go his bond in any amount.”

The officer looked at her, his eyes sticking out of his head until they seemed to catch the reflection of the light from all four sides.

“You… you know who he is, and yet he is here in this house!”

“Why certainly. Mr. Jenkins is a friend of the family, and I admire and respect him greatly. We have constantly been after him to pay us a visit and are proud and honored that he has done so.”

The woman was magnificent as she stood there, a calm smile of amusement flickering about her lips, good humored tolerance for official stupidity in her drawling voice. At her side stood Helen, her arm about the older woman’s waist. Bobo was crouching, tense in the background, listening with anxious ears, ready to fight or run as his master should indicate.

Loring Kemper stifled a yawn.

“Really, gentlemen. It is late, and if you have nothing further…”

The telephone rang, a harsh, imperative ring.

Kemper answered it, then motioned to the officer in charge. That bewildered individual placed the receiver to his ear, listened intently for a moment, then snorted.

“Three buttons in the heel of a shoe!” he exclaimed, “oh go on home. We’re all being framed by someone who is trying to make a goat of the department or else we’re goin’ dippy. Buttons, eh? That’s a hell of a place to keep buttons, but we ain’t had no report of a big button robbery lately. Go on home. Forget it.”

He hung up, turned, looked me over, shook his head dubiously, then motioned to the men. “Come on, boys.”

They turned and trooped out, their heavy footfalls clattering and clumping down the stairs and into the night.

I turned to Mrs. Kemper. She was smiling graciously.

“Oh you children,” she said, and shook her head. “Of course I have a very abnormal memory for faces. I study features. I recognized Mr. Jenkins as soon as I saw him, as the man who had been featured in one of the Sunday Supplements some time ago as the famous Phantom Crook. Nothing would be more natural than that I should watch the safe. You see there is a place back of the bookcase where one can stand and, by moving one of the books, see through the glass door. When Mr. Jenkins was by himself I always managed to be behind that case.

“I saw Mr. Jenkins substitute the imitation gem tonight and was about to make some complaint to the police when I determined to await developments. At least there was no need for alarm until he tried to leave the house. Then I saw another man enter the house and steal the imitation. I commenced to get a glimmering of an idea, and when Mr. Jenkins returned and replaced the original I felt that he was a gentleman who appreciated the obligations of a guest.

“Shortly afterward the police telephoned that they had a tip there was something wrong in the house and were coming out. I welcomed the suggestion. I thought perhaps they had captured the man who stole the imitation.”

Kemper, himself, smiled.

“You know, Jenkins, for a man who was supposed to know nothing of a dog’s psychology, you talked quite fluently on the subject while holding my attention between eleven and twelve.”

The girl watched them narrowly, looking from one to the other, apparently in a daze. I bowed and smiled.

“In that case I need not detain you any longer. Explanations are cumbersome and embarrassing. I think, though, I’d leave that gem in the private safe of your jeweler for the next few weeks. I am familiar with that safe. It is a good one.”

Kemper grinned. “High recommendation,” he said briefly.

“As for you, Helen. Please trust me to this extent. Go tomorrow with the administrator of your father’s estate, the best handwriting expert in the city, your lawyer and a notary public, also have a special representative from the district attorney’s office. Go to Don G. Herman, ask him if he has any claim against your father’s estate. If he has, demand that he produce the evidence thereof and swear to the claim then and there. Have the handwriting expert make an examination of those notes.”

She watched me, white, wide-eyed.

“Ed, how in the world did you ever know of those notes? It can’t be done, Ed. They are genuine. I know I found a confidential letter from my father. It was worrying over them that hastened his death.” I frowned at her.

“Helen, please promise me that you will do as I say.”

Mrs. Kemper studied my face.

“She will do just as you have suggested, Ed,” she said, and there was something of respect, almost of awe in her voice. Again I bowed.

“Under those circumstances I’ll be going. I am glad to have been of some slight service, and, the same time, to have protected myself against the machinations of a couple of crooks.”

Kemper extended his hand.

“You know, Jenkins, you’ve done a lot for me. I’m not good at words. Can there by any question of compensation, a check for a few thousand?”

I had no need to answer the question. His wife flashed him one look, and answered for me.

“You forget, Loring, that Mr. Jenkins is a gentleman, a gentleman who has been our guest. I can only suggest this, Mr. Jenkins… oh, I’m going to call you Ed, and be done with it… if you ever are hard pressed for a hotel, or if you can ever spare us the time, we shall be only too glad to have you run out here any time and stay as long as you can. I feel quite sure you will be safe from any petty annoyances here.”

Damn it, she meant it! I smiled at the thought, and I’ve chuckled over it since, Ed Jenkins, wanted by the police, dodging justice, and actually being the house guest of Mr. and Mrs. Loring Kemper, the most select of the ultra select of San Francisco society.

“We really want you, Ed,” she said.

I grinned as I started for the stairs.

“You haven’t said good bye to your sweetheart, Ed,” came the flapper tones of Helen Chadwick, and the next minute she was in my arms, a bundle of flying little femininity.

“Please don’t go. Stay with us here for a few days.” The words came in a whisper. I gently unlocked her arms.

“Folks, I appreciate your hospitality, but, after all I am a crook, and known as such. I’d suggest you fire your secretary, and now, good-night.”

I walked down the stairs, keeping my head well to the front. From behind me came a quick sob. Bobo stayed behind for a minute, whining, trying to attract my attention, but I walked on out into the night. A good kid has no business getting mixed up with a crook. After a minute the dog came on the run. From behind me came Mrs. Kemper’s voice.

“Ed, I want you to visit us again—”

I closed the door and noticed the first streaks of dawn coming in the east. I’d send over for my baggage. Right then I wanted to get away. Being a free-lance crook has its advantages, but my chest felt a trifle heavy as I swung in behind the steering wheel.

I laid low until the evening papers came out, then I read the headlines—.

I read the article that followed with some considerable satisfaction, then I sent Don G. Herman a wire care of the county jail. It was brief and to the point, and it was sent collect.

“LAUGH THAT OFF,” it said, and I didn’t sign it. I didn’t need to.