Detective Fiction Weekly. Vol. 139, No. 6, September 14, 1940

Counter-espionage is no work for a blind man but Troup’s disability was peculiar.

I

Ordinarily the thin young man depended for guidance upon a Seeing-Eye dog, a great German Shepherd trained in the delicate art of interpreting a blind man’s wishes, protecting his master from dangers to be met at every street corner, every crossing.

This afternoon, however, the thin man had a human companion. With her hand on his elbow he crossed Fountain Street in a lull between lines of traffic, his white cane gleaming boldly in the sunlight.

“Headache?” the girl asked softly.

He smiled, shook his head.

“You ought to rest, you know,” she protested. “You’ve been going it pretty hard.”

There were no outward appearances of infirmity about the young man. He was pale, perhaps, and slightly drawn with fatigue, but unless one looked at him closely, very closely, the tiny lenses covering his eyes appeared to be the eyes themselves — dark brown and quite alive.

Yet the white cane was no ruse, and the pressure of the girl’s hand on his arm was no affectation. Tony Troup had been pronounced incurably blind by at least six medical experts.

The gray building into which the girl led him was the city morgue. To the short, baldish man in charge she said, “This is Mr. Beiderman. Lieutenant Driscoll said he would telephone you that we were coming.”

The fellow nodded, said it was all right and led them down a gray corridor. Everything here was gray, the girl thought, and everything was ominously quiet. Presently she and Tony Troup stood in a room that smelled unpleasantly of stale air and disinfectant, and of other things less easily labeled.

The girl shuddered slightly as the baldish man rolled a slab from one of the bins. “It’s queer,” she thought, “how you always notice a dead man’s feet first.”

“Mr. Beiderman,” she said.

Tony Troup turned his head toward her. “Yes?”

She took his hand and guided it to the dead man’s face. The face was not unattractive except for its unnatural blue-gray hue, its blotches of purple where blood had coagulated beneath the skin. The man was small, perhaps thirty-five years old.

Tony Troup’s fingertips traced his features, moved searchingly over the lips, the eyes, the forehead. He frowned. The baldish man intently stared at him as though unwilling to believe that a blind man could see through a set of fingertips, no matter how sensitive.

Tony shook his head. “It isn’t John,” he said, sighing. “We should be thankful, I suppose, but this awful uncertainty—”

The baldish man looked at the girl and she nodded. He covered the corpse and pushed the slab back on its rollers. In silence he led “Mr. Beiderman and nurse” back to his office.

“You’ve been very kind,” the girl said. “Thank you.”

“Not at all, lady.”

She steered Tony to the door. They went out. Not until they were across the street, moving in a line of pedestrians on the opposite sidewalk, did Tony speak. He said then, “It was Kirby, wasn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“I thought so. That mole at the corner of his mouth — Pat, we’ve work to do now.”

“You don’t believe he was the victim of a hit-and-run driver?”

“Not,” Tony told her, “of any ordinary hit-and-run driver. It could be possible, of course, but I prefer to believe otherwise. You see, he—”

Pat Delevan’s hand was suddenly wrenched from his arm, leaving him without guidance. He stopped short. Off balance, Pat uttered a little gasp as she teetered on the curb and then stumbled into the gutter.

The man who had shouldered her aside had stopped a few feet farther on and was looking back, not at her but at Tony. Pat opened her mouth to call him a clumsy fool. She closed it again abruptly — not because the man turned quickly away when her gaze fell upon him, but for another reason entirely. Frowning a little, she caught Tony’s arm again.

Not until then did Tony Troup’s tension vanish. Pat’s little gasp of fright had stiffened him, caused every muscle in his thin six-foot frame to quiver. That was one of the curses, or the advantages, of being blind. You became hypersensitive to impressions, to sounds, and in Tony’s case, to any threat of danger.

“What the devil happened?”

“That man, Tony! I’ve seen him before. I’m sure of it! He deliberately bumped me, then looked back—”

Tony’s sensitive lips formed a scowl. He sensed the note of alarm in his companion’s voice, and knew better than to make light of it. His months of association with Patricia Delevan had brought him very close to her; closer, perhaps, because of his affliction, than might have resulted under more ordinary circumstances. Though rather young for this sort of thing, and rather too attractive, Pat was remarkably level-headed.

“I think,” Tony said, “we’d better head for Newport. Kirby was killed near the naval station there. If you don’t mind another dose of driving, Pat—”

He was tired when they reached the car. Sinking gratefully onto the seat, he pressed a hand against his eyes for an instant and shook his head as if to clear the vision which he did not possess. Pat glanced at him with concern, but said nothing.

Expertly handling the wheel, she guided the big sedan through Providence traffic, reaching out to tip the sunshade so that Tony’s face, white and strained, lay in shadow. She knew what his headaches could do to him.

He said presently, “What was the fellow like?”

“Short,” she answered thoughtfully. “About five-six, but heavy, chunky, with big shoulders. A swarthy face, dark eyes, bushy brows. Low forehead, but wide. I know I’ve seen him before.”

“Any peculiarity of walk?”

“No—”

He was silent. Traffic thinned and the road became a wide highway. The Mount Hope Bridge, high and white against a lowering sun, was behind them when he spoke again. Then it was to himself, in an old habit he had of talking his thoughts aloud.

“Odd that we had only one report in nearly two weeks. Not like Kirby at all. Efficient, usually — and quick to get results.”

The silence came back and then he repeated aloud, from memory, Kirby’s lone report. “Task difficult because so many of Newport’s social lights maintain stables of titled foreigners in their homes. Place overrun with possibilities. Have worked an ‘in’ through the Caldwells, local biggies, at whose affairs I’ve managed to meet a number of persons — including one Harstmann, a German with admitted Nazi leanings; one questionable Frenchman named d’Ethier; one apparently freelance soldier of fortune, Erfurt, who appears to know much. My rooms ransacked third night here. Erfurt makes frequent visits to Portsmouth but is clever — I have yet to learn his destination. All for now.”

Pat marveled at his uncanny memory. The report had been received two days ago; she had read it aloud to him twice, only twice, yet he knew it now by heart. Tony Troup had many strange accomplishments.

“In Newport, Tony, what do we do?”

He smiled. “If Father Divine can buy a heaven there, so can we.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I’m weary of big city life, Pat, and terribly anxious to settle down in genteel surroundings. There are some estates for sale on the Drive, one by the Caldwells. Saw it advertised, weeks ago. You’re my sister again, helping me. We have money, of course. We’re very nice people. The Trumbulls, from Maryland. Anthony and Patricia Trumbull.” The banter faded from his voice and he became serious. “That will motivate our presence and forestall any embarrassing questions. As for a plan of action, I’m not so sure. The opposition will be clever.”

The opposition, Pat reflected, was nearly always clever in this unending battle of wits. That was the one thing that kept Tony Troup happy, despite his physical handicap. Life had become a tense game of chess, in which new opponents stood waiting in line to take the place of those vanquished.

This Newport business, for instance. Here, at the U.S. Naval Training Station, were being tested, in deepest secrecy, the only existing models of two new submarines. Reports of foreign espionage had reached Tony Troup through the usual channels. Kirby, an F.B.I. man, had been assigned to make preliminary surveys of the situation, and was now dead.

“Well,” she said, “we’re here.”

They stopped at the Brandt Hotel and she registered for them. In the privacy of his room, with the shades drawn against any invading light, Tony took a small silver wand from his pocket, pressed its suction-cup end to the tiny lenses covering his eyes, and removed the lenses.

He rubbed his eyes gently and lay back on the bed. He smiled a little and Pat, watching him, said softly, “Better, Tony?”

“Much.” He groped for her hand and caught it. “Find a real estate agent, Pat, and start things moving.”

“Now?”

“The sooner the better.”

He slept. A short while later Pat waked him and introduced him to Mr. Alphonse Fonteneau, rubicund little real estate man. Mr. Fonteneau beamed. He wore a Palm Beach suit, though the season for it was past and the suit was of such poor fit that it made him appear plumper, if possible, than he was. He had removed his hat reluctantly upon entering Tony’s room; now he self-consciously caressed his hairless head while talking.

“Miss Trumbull’s been telling me what you want. Uh uh. And I’m the man can get it for you. I’m exactly the man, Mr. Trumbull. Now then, the Caldwell place which Miss Trumbull specifically mentioned — it’s magnificent, right on the Drive, right on Ten Mile Drive itself. And the Caldwells are somebody, you know. I can take you there right off, show you the place. Then if you like it, we can see the Caldwells and talk terms. Yes, sir.”

“Excellent.”

“My car,” Fontenau announced, “is outside at your service.” He bowed ludicrously. He was a living example, Pat thought, of an American cartoonist’s conception of a French dandy gone slightly to seed, complete even to the waxed and wispy thread of moustache.

He jabbered all the way to their destination, which turned out to be one of the largest and most formidable estates on the Drive. There he produced keys, opened a massive front door and stood aside while Pat steered Tony Troup over the threshold.

It was dark now. Tony had not replaced the tiny colored lenses over his eyes. Fonteneau switched on some lights and glitteringly extolled the beauties of the place. Pat retained a firm grip on Tony’s arm and pretended to be interested.

She sometimes wondered at the thoroughness of Tony’s methods, especially in laying ground work such as this. It was Tony’s theory, she recalled, that the first moves in a game of chess were of vital importance, determining the success or failure of maneuvers to follow.

The house was huge. Fonteneau paraded from room to room, continuing his harangue. He seemed surprised when, in an upstairs bedroom, Tony suddenly asked, “Is anyone living here? A caretaker, perhaps?”

“No one,” the little man declared.

Outside, Tony said, “Well, my dear, what do you think? Like it, do you?”

“It’s very nice, of course,” Pat admitted.

“Think we might do well to see the Caldwells, if our good friend here can make arrangements?”

Fonteneau promised to make arrangements first thing in the morning. He drove them back to the hotel, said good-night enthusiastically and left them. In seclusion again, Tony said gently, “Either he’s a liar, Pat, or he doesn’t know all he pretends to. Someone is living in that place, of course. Or anyway, someone has access to it.” He shrugged, implying that it was not important.

Pat hipped her hands and scowled at him. “Just how do you know that?”

“Cigarette smell. You caught it, surely. Expensive tobacco. Perique.”

“Sometimes,” Pat said, “I think you’re not quite human.”

The telephone rang. It was Fonteneau, highly excited.

“I’ve just this minute called the Caldwells. Just this minute. Told them about you — who you are, and all — and they’re more than anxious to meet you. Not about the house, you understand. Nothing as pecuniary as that, heavens no. Matter of fact, Mrs. Caldwell gave me the very dickens for showing you the house without first permitting her to meet you. Knows you, evidently. At least, when I said you were the Trumbulls from Maryland, she was mighty impressed. Yes, sir. Like to go over there tonight, would you?”

It was Pat who took the call, but Tony, leaning close, had heard every word. She glanced at him and he nodded vigorously. She frowned, put a hand over the phone and said anxiously, “But you’ve had such a trying day, Tony!”

“Can’t pass up such an opportunity. We’ll go.”

Reluctantly Pat announced his decision to Fonteneau.

II

The Caldwells were nouveau riche and had a daughter, Penelope, whom they fervently hoped would marry at least a Count. If money could purchase her a Count she should have it, of that they were determined.

As a consequence, their home — the one into which they had moved after deciding that their former residence was not quite in keeping with their position in life — was now overrun with guests. Male guests predominated.

Mrs. Caldwell greeted Pat effusively. “My dear, dear Miss Trumbull, how lovely!” She was not, as Pat had half expected, a double-chinned female of elephantine proportions; she was in fact quite slim, not more than forty years of age, and not far removed, either mentally or physically, from the burlesque stage upon which she had once been noted for her ability to discard her clothing without revealing too much of her anatomy.

Her husband was a quiet, sulking man of fifty, who kept in the background.

A party was in progress. Pat led Tony Troup to a chair discreetly removed from the blast of the four-piece orchestra, seated him and was promptly led away by Mrs. Caldwell.

She was introduced, in turn, to Mr. Ernst Harstmann, a stern, thick-shouldered man who clicked his heels and bowed to her; to Mr. Paul d’Ethier, a smiling gentleman whose nationality was not so obvious as his name implied; to Penelope Caldwell, who giggled; to Mr. Nicholas Erfurt, a tall, straight, dashingly handsome fellow whom Penelope possessively referred to — with a coy upward glance into his face — as “Our Nicky.” Mr. Erfurt asked Pat to dance.

Meanwhile, John Caldwell sagged into a chair close to Tony Troup and said bluntly, “I don’t suppose you go for this sort of shindig, eh? Being blind, I mean, it wouldn’t appeal to you.”

Tony smiled toward the voice. “Hardly.”

“Can’t say as I blame you. Pretty damn noisy. And senseless, too. I understand you’re interested in some property of mine.”

They talked about Caldwell’s property. It was very valuable property, Caldwell insisted. “Matter of fact, I liked that house a damn sight better than this one, but Flo insisted we grab this one up, too. No woman can resist a bargain.”

Women, Caldwell opined with some fervor, were all alike. “No reflections on your sister, of course. Nice girl, your sister.”

Pat came back. Harstmann had offered to show her the grounds. “Do you mind, Tony?”

“Not at all,” Tony murmured.

“Now there’s a hot one for you,” Caldwell said, shaking his head. “My wife invites the fellow up for a weekend. Met him at some shindig in Washington, couple of months ago. He arrived two weeks ago — for a weekend, see — and he’s still here.”

Mr. Caldwell evidently had his troubles. One of them, his wife, descended on him now and plucked him from Tony’s side. Left alone, Tony dozed.

It was fully an hour later when Mrs. Caldwell’s shrill voice waked him. The woman was standing close to him, saying to Pat, “But you must, my dear. We simply can’t permit you to go back to that stuffy hotel. Not while we have so much room here. You’ll stay, of course you will.”

Pat put a hand on Tony’s arm. “Mrs. Caldwell insists that we accept her hospitality, Tony. We could send someone for our luggage—”

Florence Caldwell showed her teeth in a smile. “Nicky,” she announced grandly, “has already gone to the hotel to pick up your luggage. You see, my dear, you can’t refuse. You simply have to stay.”

“Very nice of you,” Tony said.

“I’ll show you your rooms.”

Tony Troup’s room was an amazing thing. Drapes of violent purple adorned the four windows; the walls were a talkative yellow, the carpet and ceiling a venomous shade of red. Pat, leading him into it, stopped with open mouth and almost envied Tony his lack of sight.

Her own room was farther down the hall, separated from his by a bathroom. After she had made sure that Tony was able to attend to his wants without further help, she left him.

He sat on the bed. A servant entered with his bags.

“My thanks,” Tony said, “to Mr. Erfurt.”

The servant answered him politely, stared at him and went out. Tony closed the door. He sat down again and waited, and after a while the thing for which he was waiting occurred. Pat came running into the room, shut the door and said in a low voice, “Tony! Someone has been through my things!”

He smiled. “You might look at mine, too.”

On her knees, she carefully examined the contents of his suitcase, lifting out shirts, socks, underclothes, a shaving kit. Nervously she removed a false bottom from the shaving kit and revealed a row of neatly pocketed shells designed to fit the automatic pistol which Tony habitually carried in a harness beneath his left arm.

She said finally, “I can’t be sure.”

“He was perhaps more careful with my things,” Tony mused.

“Erfurt?”

“Of course. Such generosity on the part of a perfect stranger would hardly be without a hidden motive. He went to the hotel for our things because he wanted a chance to check on us. Well— I hardly think he found anything, Pat.”

Pat stood over him, breath-takingly lovely in soft, flowing pajamas of an off-white shade that defied description. Her hands on his shoulders, she looked into his sightless eyes for a long moment, then leaned toward him, kissed him gently on the mouth and softly said good-night.

When she had gone, Tony got into his pajamas, opened the door and went down the hall to the bathroom.

He remained in the bathroom some time. Returning, he groped his way back to the bedroom, shut his door again, drew back the bedclothes and got into bed. He had been in bed at least ten minutes before he rolled over and felt something pressing against his side.

He fumbled for it. His fingers closed over it. For a few seconds he lay utterly still, his thoughts racing. Then he opened his mouth and screamed. And screamed again.

It was Paul d’Ethier who first answered. Racing down the hall, d’Ethier flung the door open and fumbled for the light, all the time demanding in a high, clipped voice, “What is it, man? What’s wrong? What’s wrong?”

Behind him came John Caldwell, fumbling with the cord of a dressing-gown and trying at the same time to rub sleep from his eyes.

They found Tony Troup sitting bolt upright in bed, sightless eyes staring straight ahead of him into space, his feet on the floor and his whole body quivering. He opened his mouth to scream again, but d’Ethier caught him by the shoulders and said quickly, “Easy now, fellow, easy. What’s the trouble here?”

Tony shuddered. “Horrible... horrible thing in my bed,” he sobbed. “Pelt like — like a huge spider!”

The Frenchman guided him to a chair and gently lowered him into it. By that time Pat was in the room, white-faced and anxious. Tony Troup’s screams had waked nearly everyone in the house.

John Caldwell drew back the bedclothes and uttered a low, throaty exclamation. His hand went half out to touch the hideous brown thing that lay there, but he withdrew it. Suddenly he warped his face into a scowl and said hoarsely, “Why, the thing’s a fake! It’s phoney!”

He was right, but at a distance of even two feet the monster looked real enough to be terrifying. Made of wire and a brown fuzzy substance simulating hair, it had a body the size of a half-dollar. Its real life cousin would have been a venomous tarantula.

“Poor fellow!” D’Ethier glanced at Tony Troup and shook his head. “Beastly trick to play on him. Beastly. He must have felt the thing, put his hand out and touched it. Don’t blame him for being frightened.” He scowled at Caldwell. “Who in heaven’s name would play such a villainous trick?”

Caldwell, offering no reply, picked the spider up and handed it to Pat, who took it with a grimace. Pat said softly, “It isn’t real, Tony.”

Tony Troup reached out slowly and touched the thing. He tried to smile. “Someone,” he whispered, “has — rotten sense of humor. Sorry I made such a fuss.”

“Shall I stay with you a while, old man?” D’Ethier offered.

“No. No, thanks, I’m all right.”

They left. Pat, last to go, glanced at him queerly before switching out the light and closing the door.

For ten minutes Tony sat motionless in the dark. Then he did a peculiar thing. He stood up and walked straight to one of the room’s four windows, and looked out.

He went from that window to another, and discovered that two of them overlooked a narrow Spanish balcony which was accessible also from other windows in other rooms.

Satisfied, he shed his pajamas and drew on his clothes. Anyone watching him would have been astounded, for his movements were not those of a blind man.

The blindness of Tony Troup had its peculiarities!

He had been a special investigator for the Titan Insurance Company when it happened. Returning by plane from a job in Los Angeles, he had survived a crash and had to walk thirty miles over a desert, with an unconscious young woman and a cripple named Mungo.

The sun fed Mungo to the buzzards. The sun did its best to feed Tony Troup to them, too, but he was still on his feet, still carrying Pat Delevan, still trudging, when one of a fleet of searching planes discovered him.

The fact that he walked for two days in a perfect circle, blind, had saved his life.

He spent eight weeks in a hospital and learned to read Braille. Bitter at first, violently so, he listened so often to the gently encouraging voice of the girl he had rescued that in time he ceased grumbling and began to make plans.

“I’ve been an insurance dick,” he told Pat Delevan, “ever since I quit college. That’s finished now. But I’ll get along, I’ll get along, and it won’t be by peddling pencils. You wait. I won’t quit now.”

He thought he was doomed to eternal blindness then. He thought so even when he returned East and set himself up in an office, calling himself a private detective. His plan was simple enough. As chief of a private agency he could hire others to do the outside work while he listened to their reports, analyzed their findings and directed their movements. He had the brain for it, and he possessed a remarkable chunk of what a woman would have called intuition.

Pat Delevan gave up her job with a Fifth Avenue dress shop — she was a designer — to work for him. It was she who said one day, quite sensibly, “Tony, listen. If the light hurts your eyes when you remove those lenses, it must mean something.” She meant the little colored lenses which he wore over his useless eyes for protection, because any slightest glare resulted in hideous headaches. “It must mean,” she said, “that your eyes are still sensitive, still alive. Try one more specialist, Tony. Please, for my sake.”

A Boston specialist examined the eyes of Tony Troup and shook his head. He would experiment, he said, but it was hopeless. He experimented, and reexamined the eyes, and again shook his head. No use, he said.

But he was wrong. Right in the daytime, he was wrong at night. The eyes of Tony Troup began to improve. Any glare still rendered them useless, but in semi-darkness they began to see things. As the months went by, they began to see more.

It took a long time. And when Tony Troup was sure of it, and realized what it might mean to him in his work, he shared his secret with but one person, Pat Delevan. By day he wore protective lenses; he was blind and he was blind. But at night his eyes were as good as a cat’s.

Then in September, 1939, Europe seethed. Nazi troops invaded Poland. Britain and France declared war. Danger clouds darkened the skies, and as the shadow crept westward, the wriggling tentacles of foreign espionage invaded American soil.

The F.B.I. moved in cautious counter-attack.

Tony Troup made a trip to Washington. Returning, he took up his old agency work. But the private detective agency now was a mere front, a veil, and beneath the veil Tony Troup and Pat Delevan moved in mysterious ways.

The big house was still. Gently closing the door of his room, Tony went noiselessly down the hall, down the stairs. Months of blindness had made him lightfooted as a cat. Not a stair-tread creaked under him.

At the bottom he paused for a moment with one hand on the baluster, then went softly to the front door and slipped out of the house, careful to leave the door so that he could enter again without need of a key.

It was a ten minute walk to John Caldwell’s other house, and here he did need a key. A skeleton key sufficed. The house itself was dark and still.

Tony’s ultimate destination, after a brief preliminary survey of the downstairs rooms, was the room on the second floor in which his sensitive nostrils had detected the aroma of stale perique. Entering the room, he left its door wide, and looked around.

Large in size, the room was evidently meant to be a bed-chamber, but was now empty of furniture. Its flowered wall-paper and polished oak floor, its tinted ceiling and antique woodwork were as vivid to Tony Troup in semi-darkness as they would have been to an ordinary man in broad daylight.

The dulled senses of an ordinary man would not have been aware, either, of the faint odor of tobacco which still hung in the air.

Tony approached the one object in the room which appeared to have possibilities — the fireplace. He stood wide-legged, studying it. A thin film of dust covered the mahogany mantel, the floor of the fire-chamber, the whorls and serpentine carvings in the two ornate posts flanking the apron.

Speculatively he ran a hand over the colorful squares of ceramic tile just under the mantel.

One of them was loose.

With a knife-blade he pried it out, and saw that someone before him had used a knife — or a similar instrument — to dig out a small but neat hiding place. The indentation was just large enough to hold a thick brown envelope which, though bare of any identifying marks, was tightly sealed with adhesive tape.

He slipped it into his pocket. The house was so still that the faint crackling noise made by the square of tile, as he replaced it, was like a pistol shot.

Tony smiled. His habit of never overlooking an opportunity, no matter how slight — his belief in the investigation of all things that seemed to be even vaguely suspicious — had again borne fruit. Quietly he erased all signs of his presence and departed.

Back in his own room at the Caldwell house, with a little kit of polished tools removed from the detachable rubber sole of a bedroom slipper, he carefully opened the brown envelope and studied its contents.

Sheet after sheet of thin white paper, covered with lines of typewriting, passed through his fingers.

The stuff was apparently innocent. It was a collection of poems in manuscript form, roughly typed and edited. Caught with it, any man could have sworn to its innocence by claiming to be a struggling poet, and these merely pages of his work which he hoped to have published.

Tony experimented with liquids from an assortment of tiny vials. Words sprang out between the lines of poetry. A magnifying glass enlarged them. In the end, pieced together, the lines of invisible writing totaled more than 2000 words of expert reporting on naval tests of the new type submarines, plus priceless information on naval defense secrets of Newport and Narragansett Bay, all carefully inscribed with a fine-pointed calligraphic pen and a system of abbreviated spelling — in English.

Convinced of its importance, Tony copied parts of it, folded his copy and stowed it in a safe place. Then he worked on the original, resealed the brown envelope and went out again.

III

Pat Delevan and Ernst Harstmann were giving each other something of a battle on the tennis court. Tony sat on a hammock, in the shade. He could not see the battle, of course, but his keen ears caught the scuffing of the combatants’ feet and the thud of the ball striking rackets and court, and his mind was able to sort the sounds into a clear picture of what was going on.

He smiled in the direction of an intruding voice as Nicholas Erfurt approached and greeted him. Erfurt seated himself on the hammock and adjusted the legs of his gray flannel trousers.

“I have been wondering who could be responsible for the ghastly trick that was played on you, Trumbull. Or—” his shrug sent a little quiver through the hammock — “or perhaps it was not a trick, eh? Perhaps the maid, in making your bed, dropped the thing by mistake.”

“It hardly matters,” Tony said, “except that I made a fool of myself.”

“But no! You had every right to be terrified!” Erfurt’s gaze wandered to the court. “Your sister is a marvelous player. Perhaps sometime I shall have the pleasure of being her opponent. For that reason alone, my friend, I hope that you will decide to remain in Newport.”

“It’s really up to Patricia.”

“And she likes the Caldwell place, perhaps?”

“I’m afraid,” Tony sighed, “I shall have to buy it. Already she has made arrangements to have some of the bedrooms remodeled.” He wondered whether Erfurt’s face had changed expression. Actually it had not.

Pat came up, laughing at her triumph over Harstmann. She and Tony went toward the house together, and Pat said quietly, “What did Erfurt want?”

He told her.

“He seems more than interested in your movements,” Pat frowned. “First he gets our luggage from the hotel; then he wants us to stay in Newport, to buy the Caldwell place. And he sympathizes with you about the spider. But of course, they’re all talking about the spider. Why was the thing put in your bed, Tony?”

Tony shrugged.

“Well,” Pat declared, “I have my own ideas. Someone wanted you to quit that room. There’s something in that room which is of interest to someone.”

“You may be right.”

“While you were in the bathroom, someone entered your room from a window off the balcony, and put the spider there.” She kicked up a little clod of turf, angrily. “The balcony is attainable from Harstmann’s room, also from Penelope Caldwell’s.”

“And from the ground,” Tony reminded her. “And there are more effective ways of frightening a man, my dear, than with trick spiders.”

They dropped the subject. Fonteneau, the real estate man, came up the driveway in his car as they reached the entrance. He greeted them effusively. In a confidential tone he informed them that another potential customer had made inquiries about the Caldwell place, and if they wanted it they had better act without too much delay.

“I happen to know,” he said, shaking his head, “that Caldwell is in no position to refuse any reasonable offer. Yes, sir, I happen to know.”

“Perhaps,” Tony said, “we’d better talk terms with him now.”

The little man seemed mildly surprised. Nevertheless, he found Caldwell and there was a conference. It was settled, verbally, that Tony Troup would purchase the house for thirty thousand — “A bargain if ever there was one,” Caldwell muttered, “but a load off my mind just the same.”

“I shall have to send Patricia to New York,” Tony said, “to confer with my bankers. She can go tomorrow. No doubt she will bring an architect back with her—” He smiled in Pat’s direction and she nodded eagerly. “My sister, you see, loves to tear things apart.”

Pat went for a ride that afternoon with d’Ethier, in the latter’s own car, a gleaming yellow roadster. Tony was invited but refused on the pretext of needing rest.

It was obvious that d’Ethier was more interested — at least on the surface — in tennis than in anything else. He talked of the casino matches, spoke glowingly of Bitsy Grant, Bobby Riggs, of the Australian Davis Cup team.

The car purred leisurely over the island and he pointed out, whenever it occurred to him, places of interest. He refused to talk of conditions in Europe, laughing off Pat’s every attempt to involve him in a discussion of war or politics. He was slightly inclined to be romantic, but was not encouraged.

Pat reported this to Tony on her return, and he listened attentively.

After dinner he pleaded weariness and went at once to his room, Pat, of course, leading him there. At his direction she drew the shades. When she had left, to join the group in the drawing-room downstairs, he sat in total darkness for a time, smoking, and then removed the colored lenses from his eyes.

He sat at a window and waited. It was a long wait. The house grew quiet. Mr. and Mrs. Caldwell, their daughter and their motley array of guests retired. Midnight passed. Then suddenly Tony’s watching eyes discerned a shape moving across the lawn, away from the rear of the house.

Ordinary eyes might have failed to establish the man’s identity in that darkness and at that distance. But Tony’s eyes narrowed, his lips formed the name Erfurt.

Frowning a little, he crossed the room with long strides and stepped into the hall. The house was asleep.

Outside, the night air was cold and biting after the stuffiness of his room. He shivered as very slowly he moved through the dark toward the rear of the estate.

His quarry had vanished.

The estate ended in a high stone wall, beyond which a paved lane, flanked by tall poplars, led to the road. Nicholas Erfurt paused there, then climbed the wall and dropped into the lane. Hugging the wall, he headed for the road.

But there were others abroad tonight as furtive as Erfurt. And when the thing happened it happened behind him, without warning.

The irregular top of the wall rose in motion, became a crouching poised shape. The shape leaped and Erfurt plunged forward to his knees, a pair of encircling hands at his throat, the full weight of a hurtling body bent upon his back.

There was no sound other than the thud of impact and the crunching of loose gravel under his outflung hands. His breath went out of him not in a gasp, but with a mild hiss. He caught his adversary’s arms and struggled weakly to his knees.

But the strangling hands failed to loosen. Sharp knees gouged into protesting flesh and pressed Erfurt flat again. His head whirled.

Not until the first savage thrust had taken its toll and he ceased struggling did the hands shift their grip. Then with rapidity born of long practise they slid over his prone body, emptying his pockets, searching his clothing for possible hiding-places.

Suddenly his assailant heard footsteps in the near darkness and rose, staring. Erfurt made a final desperate attempt to shake the fog from his brain, to push himself up. A foot crushed him flat and drove his face into the ground. With a light, quick rush, his assailant fled.

For a moment he lay still, bitter and bewildered. His lethargy surprised him; when he sought to overcome it, his inability to bring his muscles into play caused him to think momentarily that something in his back, some vital part of him, had been shattered.

But the numbness along his spine swelled into a fiendish form of torture, and he knew then what had happened.

It was jiujutsu. The initial leap had been carefully executed by an opponent of no mean ability. The hands grasping his neck, the knees driven high against his spine, had paralyzed certain nerves.

Not the beginner’s jiujutsu taught as a means of defense in police schools and public gymnasuims, but an advanced, aggressive form of the art practised only by experts.

The torture increased. Perspiration broke out in a thick film on his face and forehead. He struggled to his feet, took a forward step and then stopped, stood swaying. He fell unconscious.

He did not hear the now plainly audible footsteps of Tony Troup, nor did he hear Tony’s sudden gasp.

Halting abruptly, Tony stared down at him, then turned and peered into the crowding dark, aware that Erfurt’s assailant, whoever he might be, could still be lurking nearby.

After a moment of watchful waiting, he dropped to his knees beside Erfurt’s sprawled body and examined it. He was surprised to find the man alive, further surprised when a careful search disclosed no mark of the attack which had felled him.

Erfurt’s pockets were empty, his hands and face had been roughed in falling, but otherwise there was nothing.

The man groaned a little and began to stir. Hastily, Tony straightened from his crouch and backed away.

When Erfurt opened his eyes a little while later, and pushed himself to his hands and knees, the lane was deserted.

IV

“THE highly important point,” Tony Troup said to Pat Delevan in the privacy of his room the next morning, “is that the fellow could easily have killed Erfurt, but didn’t. I like that part of the game we play, Pat. Murder is seldom resorted to.”

He smiled at her. “Murder is a tool of men who haven’t the skill or the brains to win their battles otherwise. I’m surprised that Kirby was murdered. In this game, one uses one’s wits. The stakes are incredibly high; our opponents are the world’s cleverest.”

Pat paced the floor, scowling at him. She had listened to this line of argument before; she knew all too well the meaning of the slight twitching of a certain muscle in Tony’s mouth-corner, the almost unnoticeable but telltale flush that colored his face.

It meant that he had reached certain conclusions. The preliminary work was about finished. He was mentally struggling now, despite his outward calm, to plot a true, swift attack on enemy defenses.

She said, “Nevertheless, it could have been murder. If only you’d give up your night-prowling, Tony, or let me help you—”

“Come here, Pat.”

Stubbornly she remained aloof.

“Come here.” He reached for her.

She stepped toward him with a little sigh of surrender, and he caught her in his arms, kissed her. Then, his smile fading, he went on:

“I had to prowl last night, Pat. The documents were hidden in Caldwell’s empty house. I suspected Erfurt, not because I had any proof, but because Kirby suspected him, and Kirby seldom came to conclusions without thorough research.

“The point is, after our little fable about buying and remodeling the house, Erfurt slipped out of here last night, on some secret mission. It was my job to follow him. I thought — I still think — he intended to remove the papers from their hiding place, but of course he didn’t get there. Now why, Pat, were the papers hidden there in the first place?”

Pat was silent. She had learned long ago not to interrupt Tony Troup’s thinking by answering his questions. He preferred to answer them himself.

“Any ordinary foreign agent,” Tony mused, “having once acquired documents as valuable as those, would have made haste to deliver them to his superiors, even if it meant leaving the country with the documents in his possession. But this chap didn’t. He hid them. The finger points to Erfurt again — if Kirby was right in reporting Erfurt a free agent, working for his own ends.

“Put yourself in his place for a moment. You have in your possession papers for which more than one foreign government would pay a price. Your next move is to find a buyer. But this takes time, and the game is dark with danger in many directions. You hide the papers. You carefully feel out certain foreign embassies — softly, softly — because this sort of thing could bring the heavens down. You see?”

Pat nodded, lit a cigarette.

“So,” Tony said, “our job is to watch Erfurt.”

“Erfurt,” Pat declared, “does not smoke cigarettes.”

“No?”

“You smelled perique in that room. But Erfurt doesn’t smoke. As for the others, d’Ethier is a human furnace but smokes an English blend, mild as air, and refused one of mine when I offered him one.” She regarded her cigarette gravely. “I’m not sure of Harstmann — he’s odd, hard to know — but as for John Caldwell, if he smokes anything but a popular American brand I’ll be the most surprised person in Newport. He’s as Yankee as baked beans.” She crushed out her cigarette as though it had suddenly become distasteful to her. “There’s more to this than we think, Tony. Much more. It frightens me.”

“Sit down,” Tony said firmly, “and let me tell you about your trip to New York.”

Pat Delevan left for New York — “to make arrangements with Mr. Trumbull’s bankers for the purchase of the house” — at three that afternoon.

It was warm. She wore a light gray traveling suit and was stunning. Paul d’Ethier drove her to Newport, would have driven her farther — a lot farther, his admiring gaze said — had she permitted it. She took a bus to Providence, there to catch the New York train.

She knew exactly what she had to do, and beneath her calm, lovely exterior she was tense and excited about it. Tony had warned her that there might be danger. She herself fully realized it.

Tony had said, “They may think, Pat, that whatever they failed to find on Erfurt may be in your possession, and that this trip to New York is merely a means of disposing of it. Be careful. Be very careful.”

In her purse lay a midget automatic. Hours of practice, insisted on by Tony since the beginning of her partnership with him, had taught her how to use it. Nevertheless, when she stepped from the bus on Fountain Street and walked up the hill to Union Station, she was alert and uneasy.

The station was but mildly crowded. Without difficulty she approached the ticket window and asked, in a clear voice, for a ticket to her destination. “Round trip, please,” she added. The train was due on track three. Mentally she reviewed her instructions.

She was to buy her ticket, wait on the platform, and board the train at the front. Having done that, she must walk quickly through several cars, discarding her hat and gloves as she went, and reversing her suit-coat, which was of a different color — brown — when turned. In addition to this, she must don a pair of horn-rimmed glasses and acquire suddenly a tired, roundshouldered droop, all in the four or five minutes of time allotted to her before the train pulled out of the station.

She was to step off the train before it did pull out, and then leave the station by another exit. And she must at all times be ready to shout for a policeman if approached by anyone.

“In this game,” Tony had reminded her, “our adversaries dread the spotlight as they dread nothing else. Remember that. One loud yelp from your pretty lips may do you more good than a machine-gun.”

She thought of these things as she turned away from the ticket window. She knew from the very nature of her instructions that Tony expected her to be followed, that he expected certain persons to assure themselves, by trailing her, that her trip to New York was not a bluff. All at once she stopped thinking of these things.

A shabbily dressed woman of indeterminate age had shuffled up to her and was plucking at her arm. Was holding out a wrinkled time-table and saying plaintively, “Please, Miss, will you look at this thing and tell me if I’m readin’ it right? It’s Boston I got to—”

The voice changed. From a coarse whine it suddenly lowered to a gentle murmur. “There is a gun folded in my time-table, Miss Trumbull. I would use it if pressed. Please walk ahead of me to the ladies room.”

Pat turned pale. Her instructions meant nothing now. It was one thing to yell for a policeman when accosted by a man — you could accuse the man of trying to molest you — but this shabby old lady was a different problem.

“We waste time, Miss Trumbull,” the woman said gently. “Please do as I have requested!”

Pat looked at the bulging time-table, looked into the woman’s face. “The female of the species,” she thought, “is more deadly—”

Turning, she walked leadenly toward the ladies room, desperately hoping that someone, from somewhere, would come between her and the gun and thus give her an opportunity to dart clear.

The ladies’, room was deserted. Quite calmly the woman slotted a nickel, pushed a door open and said, “In here, please.”

She closed the door behind her and let the time-table slide to the floor. The gun was in the open then, an ugly snub-nosed little thing hardly larger than her hand. The hand, Pat noticed, was less wrinkled, less old, than the face. Beneath its cleverly applied makeup the face was probably not old at all.

Expertly she was searched. A frown crossed the woman’s face. “Undress, please!” she ordered crisply.

“But—”

“We are wasting time, Miss Trumbull.”

Pat obeyed. The woman missed nothing. Watching her, Pat thought of that famous German police matron, nicknamed “La Grenouille” — The Frog — by Louise de Bettignies and other French agents who, in the last World War, had been so fearful of her methods and cunning. This woman was no less thorough.

Keenly disappointed, the woman thrust Pat’s clothing aside and said grimly, “Where are the papers you are carrying?”

“I have no papers. I don’t know what on earth you mean.”

The woman’s gaze dropped to the gun in Pat’s purse, rose again and fastened coldly on Pat’s face. She said then, “Turn around, please. Face the wall.”

For one brief instant the blood in Pat’s unclad body ran cold. She hesitated. Tony’s lightly spoken words, “Murder is seldom resorted to in this game,” were of no comfort.

The gun touched her flesh and she turned, not daring to disobey. Behind her the door opened, clicked shut again. She was alone.

There were tears in her eyes, hot, rushing tears of enervating relief, when she stooped to pick up her clothes.

Twenty minutes later she boarded a bus for Newport.

V

Tony Troup lay on the bed in his room, listening to sounds of laughter and music from the terrace outside. It was nearly dark, but the blackout was not yet complete enough for his nightly metamorphosis. Penelope Caldwell was throwing a party.

He had heard them talking about it earlier in the day. The party, it seemed, was to be in honor of Nicholas Erfurt — “Our Nicky” — who was leaving tomorrow for Washington and would not again honor the Caldwells with his presence until some time in the distant future.

Tony wondered how Pat was making out.

He swung his feet to the floor and exchanged his slippers for shoes. When he went to the door a little while later, opened it and stood listening at the threshold, he was a blind man no longer.

The upstairs hall was empty, as was the house itself, the small staff of servants being occupied in serving the group on the terrace. There was a telephone at the end of the hall. Tony lifted it quietly and made a call.

He went downstairs then. Without being accosted he slipped into John Caldwell’s library — Caldwell called it a den — and took up a position close to wide French windows overlooking the terrace.

He would have to wait, he supposed, about half an hour.

With one exception, they were all out there — the Caldwells themselves, Harstmann, Erfurt, even a few strangers. Paul d’Ethier, not yet arrived, was expected. Decorative lanterns of colored paper hung in gaudy array above the mirror-like surface of the Caldwells’ private swimming pool. A string orchestra gaily played a tune created in Vienna in the days when the waltz, not the goose-step, had been in vogue. A waitress served cocktails.

The water in the pool, Tony glumly reflected, was probably very wet and cold.

He straightened out of his slouch when a car turned into the drive, but it was Fonteneau’s shabby machine, not the gleaming car owned by d’Ethier. In a moment, though, d’Ethier’s yellow vehicle pulled up behind it.

Tony breathed deeply and opened the French windows.

His imitation of a blind man was realistic; after all, he had been blind long enough to know how a person so afflicted should act, feel and think. Slowly he walked from the windows to the terrace.

At first no one saw him. The dim glow of the lanterns was not far-reaching enough to envelop him until he was but a few yards from the pool’s edge.

Penelope Caldwell saw him then. At a table on the far side of the pool she suddenly stiffened; a cocktail glass fell from her upraised hand and spilled its contents over her gown. She came erect like a mechanical toy, her white shoulders gleaming, her mouth agape.

“It’s Mr. Trumbull!” she gasped. “Look out, Mr. Trumbull! Look out!”

Tony pretended to hesitate. He had timed his approach well. No one stood close enough to rush to his assistance. They could only gape at him and give voice to shrill warnings. They did that, after the first electric shock of seeing him had passed away.

One — d’Ethier — even made a showy if futile attempt to reach him before his groping feet touched the edge of the pool.

Amid pandemonium, Tony fell forward, losing his balance. He struck with a resounding splash. His feeble cry for help was half lost as he went down, thrashing the pool’s surface with his arms.

D’Ethier and John Caldwell pulled him out and got thoroughly soaked doing it. They dragged him, apparently half drowned and suffering from shock, to safety. They sat him on a stone bench and belabored his back while he choked and sputtered for breath.

His composure regained, Tony made an attempt to laugh at his misfortune. “Stupid of me — just stupid. I heard the music, you see, and thought I could sit somewhere close by and enjoy it. Forgot about the pool—. Should have known enough to call for assistance, I suppose, but it’s damned annoying to be so utterly dependent on one’s friends—”

He was quite all right now, he assured them. “And for heaven’s sake, don’t let this spoil the party. No harm done. Wet, that’s all. Go right ahead and have your fun. If one of you will just help me to my room—”

D’Ethier did that. He offered, too, to help Tony into dry clothes, but Tony shook his head. “I’d better get into bed. Chilled a bit. Just leave me to it, old man, and for heaven’s sake don’t tell my sister about this. She’ll scalp me. Always telling me, you know, that I’m too independent—”

D’Ethier gave him a searching glance of concern, lit a cigarette for him and left. Tony smoked the cigarette slowly.

It was astounding, this thing he had learned. Yet it dovetailed with all that had previously happened and snugly found its proper niche in the pattern of possibilities mentally laid out by him. He realized suddenly that he must hurry now or be too late to take full advantage of it.

Blocking the cigarette, he changed rapidly into dry clothes.

When he slipped out of the house, through an entrance not visible from the terrace, his gaze ran ruefully to the line of cars parked into the driveway. He thought recklessly of hiding in one of them and risking a ride to town without its owner’s knowledge, but discarded the half-formed plan as being too dangerous.

He walked. His destination was an address printed on a small white card. It proved to be a low wooden building jammed tight between two tall tenement houses in a faded section of the town.

The street was dark. The building itself showed no lights.

With a picklock he attacked the door. A moment later, inside, he thumbed the switch of a small dull flashlight and began a systematic search. There was but one room and that was an office, a very untidy office containing a desk, a filing cabinet, a few chairs and a small safe.

At ten-second intervals he extinguished the light, stepped to the room’s one window and peered out. This was strictly a precautionary measure. At any moment the proprietor of the place might suddenly appear.

His search disclosed nothing. He tackled the safe. That, he realized after a few moments of hard work, was beyond his capabilities, and he put the light out permanently and stepped into a niche behind the filing cabinet. And waited.

A car stopped outside. Its lights went out; there was a quick patter of footsteps on the sidewalk, and the door creaked open.

Fonteneau, the real estate man, closed the door behind him, switched on a ceiling light and stood motionless for an instant looking things over. His small dark eyes darted in their sockets, his mouth was drawn thin. Breathing heavily, he made steps to the safe and dropped to his knees in front of it.

He opened it.

Tony Troup drew a gun from his pocket and said softly, “Thank you, Fonteneau.” And added quickly, “No dramatics, please. I have you covered.”

The real estate man turned slowly, seeming to grow out of the floor as he rose from his crouch. His eyes were large. They were a toad’s eyes, unblinking, difficult to analyze. Motionless, he faced the automatic pistol in Tony Troup’s hand, and there was on his face no trace of emotion whatever, certainly no sign of fear.

“You bewilder me,” he said.

Tony nodded. “Perhaps because you hardly expected me to come in person, eh? Ordinarily, the police take over at this stage of the game. But in your case I could afford to make exceptions. You already know most of my secrets.”

Fonteneau’s round eyes still refused to blink. “You flatter me,” he declared solemnly. “Also you confound me. Just why, may I ask, should we be enemies in this matter?”

His gaze left Tony’s face and dropped to the safe, to certain papers which had fallen from his hand when the sound of Tony’s voice had first shocked him. “These papers, supplied to me by Erfurt,” he shrugged, “are worthless. The man is a clever scoundrel. What assurance have you that he will not cheat your government also?”

It was Tony Troup’s turn to maintain a mask of inscrutability. His face betrayed none of his bewilderment. His thoughts rushed to certain startling conclusions and abruptly he feigned an attitude of outrage.

“You accuse Erfurt of deceiving me?”

“Why not? He deceived me.”

Tony’s wavering was deliberate.

“Let me explain,” Fonteneau said, his manner somewhat relaxed. “Erfurt approached me some time ago. He had in his possession, he claimed, plans of great importance. He stated a price and I paid him.

“The documents were delivered. I examined them thoroughly and found them to be not only incomplete but criminally incorrect. At the same time it became known to me that Erfurt had made contact with officials of a certain foreign embassy in Washington.

“Obviously the man was a scoundrel. Having cheated me, he was either dickering with another government for the sale of the genuine article, or was planning to repeat his swindle with a new victim.

“I suspected you when you arrived on the scene. I... er... tested your apparent blindness.”

“With a spider,” Tony nodded. “Rather crude of you, Fonteneau.”

“As a matter of fact,” the little man shrugged, “you passed the test with flying colors. I really believed in your blindness until you interrupted my search of Erfurt. Your actions then were not those of a blind man.”

“Yours,” Tony murmured, “were not those of a genteel dealer in real estate.”

“It was necessary.”

“You thought he had the documents?”

“I hoped.”

“And you hope now to convince me that if I have them, they are worthless. In other words, Erfurt has played me for a dupe, as he played you. Is that it, Fonteneau?”

“Precisely.” Not by the twitch of a muscle did Fonteneau betray a sudden surge of excitement that flooded him. Not for an instant did his level gaze waver to warn Tony to look behind him.

A policeman had stopped outside and was peering in through the window. Tony’s back was toward him.

The policeman hesitated. His glance slipped sideways to the door. He appeared to be weighing the possibility of reaching the door, opening it, and taking his man unawares. Had he done so, Tony Troup’s uncanny sense of hearing might have thwarted the attempt.

The policeman raised his gun, smashed the window with it and barked a command. Tony stiffened, stood rigid without turning.

A second command followed the first, and Tony dropped his automatic. To Fonteneau the law said darkly, “Get his gun, mister. Cover him!”

The little real estate man permitted himself a fleeting smile of triumph as he stooped to retrieve Tony’s gun. He retreated with it, holding it clumsily as though unaccustomed to the feel of it. When the law entered, Fonteneau broke into a torrent of shrill talk.

“He came here to rob me, officer! He threatened to kill me! The man is a vicious scoundrel!”

The law grunted a reply and strode past him, toward Tony. That was a mistake. It put Fonteneau behind him.

Quick as light the little man swung his gun at the policeman’s head.

The law staggered, slipped to his knees. A second blow laid him in a twitching heap at Fonteneau’s feet. The little man, aglow now with triumph, faced Tony Troup and said softly, “My friend, the tables are turned.” He stepped to the broken window and drew the shade.

It had happened so abruptly that Tony Troup was still dazed. He got over that and sat down, sat staring at the man who had outwitted him. In this game, he reflected glumly, an outwitted player seldom recovered lost ground.

“Now,” Fonteneau said, closing the door, “we may put aside the mask. I desire the documents sold to you by Erfurt.”

“I haven’t them.”

“Let me put it quite plainly, my friend,” Fonteneau said without raising his voice. “You and I, we are agents of rival powers. Each of us hopes to deliver to his superiors a certain set of documents. At the moment you hold the upper hand. You possess the documents. No doubt you plan to dispose of them immediately, and having learned of my role in this little drama, you came here tonight to see if anything in my safe might also be of value to your government.

“I, my friend, am at the moment your most frightful enemy. If you refuse to deliver the documents to me, I shall be faced with the necessity of destroying you, in order to prevent your delivering them to anyone else.

“I dislike to put it so bluntly, but any further talk would be a waste of time.”

Tony Troup nodded. His thoughts flashed momentarily to the body he had examined in the morgue. This was a game in which the stakes were high, the penalty for failure often higher. The ace he held — Fonteneau’s mistaken belief that he was a foreign spy — was worthless. The little man’s gun successfully trumped it.

He glanced at the policeman. “What about him?”

“That,” Fonteneau replied, “is why we may not discuss our problems at greater length. I can prolong his awakening for several hours, of course—” his smile was almost benign — “by certain scientific treatment, but ultimately there will be an investigation. Even if the situation becomes acute and I find it necessary to destroy him, my days of freedom will be limited.

“Therefore, I must have the documents at once, and leave here. All this,” and the wave of his hand dismissed the office and its furnishings with utter contempt, “is finished.”

“I see.” Tony stood up. “Very well, Fonteneau. You win. I—”

It was unfortunate that the door hinges needed oiling. Otherwise Tony’s droning voice might have held the little man’s attention long enough for the door to swing wide.

As it was, a fatal creak caused Fonteneau to whirl before Pat Delevan had opened an aperture large enough to admit her slim form.

The little man lurched about, gun in hand, and his voice was a shrill blast of words that were not French, not English, but of a tongue that betrayed his true nationality.

For a split second he wavered, then his gun roared a challenge. A bullet splintered the door and Pat Delevan’s hand, reaching for the light-switch just inside, shivered as though caught in a blast of frigid air.

She slumped. But her fingers caught the switch. The room was suddenly black.

Tony Troup dropped like a cat to the floor. His hand stabbed out, caught up the policeman’s gun. The desk shielded him. His target stood defiant in the center of the room, blinded by the sudden blackout.

“Drop it, Fonteneau,” Tony said. “I’m armed, and I see rather well in the dark. Rather better than you do.”

The little man whipped his gun around and fired. Not once, but two-three-four times, as rapidly as his finger could press the trigger. The bullets were close, uncomfortably close, as Tony wormed to the opposite end of the desk. A jagged splinter slashed Tony’s leg.

Without emotion, certainly without eagerness, Tony shot him. Then in full flight he scooped up the papers which had come from the safe, stuffed them into his pockets and ran to the door.

Pat was leaning against the wall outside, her face white and drawn, one hand pressed to a bleeding shoulder.

“Out of here!” Tony snapped at her. “Quickly!”

He looped an arm around her as they ran, held her up when she stumbled. This part of the game, the all important necessity for keeping out of trouble, out of headlines — the need which arose all too frequently for being fugitives from recognized law and order — this part of it sometimes irked him.

He muttered maledictions as he ran. When at last he stopped, far from the shop where Fonteneau lay dead, Pat Delevan sagged limply in his arms, gasping for breath.

With a handkerchief he stopped the flow of blood from the flesh wound in her shoulder. They were not far from the center of town, now, and he whispered instructions to which Pat weakly nodded her understanding.

A little while later, when they approached a cab, Pat affected a drunken helplessness which quite explained her pallor, her weakness, and her state of disorder. Tony carefully put her into the cab and then winked at the driver.

“The Caldwell place. And take it easy, buddy, take it easy. The lady’s had a bit too much—”

The driver winked back at him and grinned. In the cab, Pat put her head on Tony Troup’s shoulder and said shakily, “I almost didn’t make it, Tony. The note you left in my room, telling me where you were going — I was late getting back — almost too late.”

VI

Nicholas Erfurt had his bags packed and was ready to leave. Last night’s party in his honor had been a resounding success; he was indeed sorry, he told the Caldwells, to leave a house wherein so much hospitality had been heaped upon him.

A friend was driving him to Washington. While awaiting the friend’s arrival, Erfurt killed time with John Caldwell at the bar.

Outside, Pat Delevan played tennis — badly because of a stiff shoulder — with Paul d’Ethier.

A car stopped in the drive. Pat watched it, missing one of d’Ethier’s lobs. With a smile for the Frenchman, she waved a hand at him and ran to the car, her smile broadening now for the dark, thin man who sat behind the wheel.

“Why, hello there!” she cried.

The dark man scowled at her. He did not know her. He had never seen her before in his life.

But she was an attractive girl and was extending her hand to him as though she had known him all her life. He took the hand, and felt against his palm something that was not a part of the handclasp. A folded bit of paper—

Pat gave him her sweetest smile and went back to the tennis court.

Quickly the dark man unfolded the paper. He read, his eyes clouding: “The documents which Erfurt will deliver to you are worthless. The true plans have already been placed in the hands of your government’s greatest enemy.”

He read it twice, his face losing color. He glanced quickly toward the tennis court, then tore the bit of paper into shreds and stuffed the shreds beneath the floor mat of the car. For a moment he sat very still, regaining his composure. Then quickly he entered the house.

An hour later he and Erfurt departed.

Tony Troup sat in a comfortable chair beside his bed, reading with his fingertips a volume of Keats printed in Braille. He looked up when the door opened. “You, Pat?” he said quickly.

She answered him, closed the door and moved to his side.

“No hitch?” he asked.

“No hitch, Tony. They’re gone.”

“Good. What did the fellow look like?”

Pat described the dark man carefully. Tony shook his head.

“Don’t know him, I’m afraid. There are many we don’t know. The one in Providence, for instance — the one who shoved you off the sidewalk. Obviously an attempt to test my blindness, to see if I were faking and could be shocked into coming to your assistance. You thought you knew the fellow, thought you’d seen him somewhere before. Perhaps you have — somewhere. One of Erfurt’s men, perhaps, or even Fonteneau’s — maintained in Providence to report any investigation into the death of Kirby.”

He accepted a cigarette and smiled his thanks. “Yes — there are many we don’t know, and many who don’t know us. I suppose now you want some explanation of what happened in Fontenau’s office.”

“I’m getting more impatient by the minute,” Pat said severely.

He put aside the volume of Keats and drew her toward him. “It follows a clear pattern, all of it. Erfurt, a free agent, obtained the plans and made a deal with Fonteneau. He cheated Fontenau and the latter was smart enough to know it. Fonteneau watched him, learned that he had sent word to a rival embassy in Washington. When we arrived, Fonteneau convinced himself that we had come to buy the plans. He thought Erfurt meant to deliver them the night he slipped out of the house.

“Fonteneau waylaid him, searched him, failed to find the papers. He thought you had them when you left for New York. He sent word ahead and had you stopped. Then he stumbled into my trap.”

Pat released herself and stepped back, her face dark with a scowl. “What trap?”

“I went for a swim.”

Her foot tapped the carpet. “Please, Tony!”

“It’s a fact. They were having a party on the terrace. I wanted them all there, all who could even remotely be suspected, so I even telephoned Fonteneau, telling him Caldwell wished to see him on a business matter. He arrived. That put all my suspects together: Harstmann, d’Ethier, Fonteneau, Erfurt, even Caldwell. I played a game of blind-man’s-buff with them, knowing, you see, that one of them — the one who attacked Erfurt that night and fled when I intruded — knew I was not blind.”

“Well?”

“When I walked into the swimming pool, all but Fonteneau yelled at me. He didn’t. He knew it was an act and was caught off guard. He knew I was up to something. He knew, too, after talking to Caldwell, that his summons to the party was a fake, and it frightened him. Apprehensive, he rushed to his office to put things under control — and I was there ahead of him.”

Pat said slowly, “One of these days, Tony—”

“Don’t say it. Come here.”

“No!”

“Very well then.” He stood up, took her in his arms. Holding her in silence for a moment, he said at last in a voice strangely gentle, “One of these days, Pat, we’ll be too old for this sort of game. It will be time then to settle down.” He kissed her. “Meanwhile, of course, we’re needed. Our job isn’t the most glamorous in the world — it wears no uniforms, wins no medals — but it’s important.”

Late that afternoon, the Trumbulls walked to Newport. They would be back, of course. They were merely going to meet Tony’s banker, whom Pat had sent for after deciding, the previous afternoon, that a. trip to New York would be merely a waste of time.

But in Newport they took their car from the hotel garage and with Pat driving, headed for Providence.

Next morning in New York, in a small Broadway restaurant, Pat read aloud a small item from the morning paper. The item stated that the bullet-riddled body of a man identified as one Nicholas Erfurt, home address unknown, had been found beside a lonely stretch of road outside a small town in Connecticut. The police had unearthed no clues.

Pat glanced at Tony Troup, who was gently buttering a triangle of breakfast toast. He was tired, she noticed, after their all-night drive. She said, “Was it Erfurt who destroyed Kirby?”

“Probably.”

She nodded. “One thing more. Erfurt’s documents. Not the false copies he sold to Fonteneau, but the documents he delivered to the dark man — the man who killed him. Were they worthless?”

“When I first found them in Erfurt’s hiding place,” Tony said quietly, “they were probably more dangerous than even Erfurt dreamed. When he turned them over to the man who murdered him, they were dangerous only to Erfurt himself. I changed them, you see, before returning them to their hiding place.”

He put his toast down without tasting it. “Funny thing,” he said then — “Erfurt felt perfectly safe, probably for the first time, just before the dark man’s arrival. He even offered me a cigarette.” He took a half-smoked cigarette from his pocket and placed it on the tablecloth. An expensive, oval cigarette, heavy with an odor of perique.

“Poor fellow,” Tony said then, “he should have known that in this game, no one is ever safe. Never forget that, Pat. Never forget it for a moment.”