The Silent Bullet Part 39

As Kennedy and I bent over, Guerrero's eyes opened, but he apparently saw nothing. His hand moved a little, and his lips parted. Kennedy quickly reached into the pockets of the man gasping for breath, one after another. From a vest pocket he drew a little silver case, identical with that he had found in the desk up-town. He opened it, and one mescal b.u.t.ton rolled out into the palm of his hand. Kennedy regarded it thoughtfully.

"I suspect there is at least one devotee of the vision-breeding drug who will no longer cultivate its use, as a result of this," he added, looking significantly at the man before us.

"Guerrero," shouted Kennedy, placing his mouth close to the man's ear, but muting his voice so that only I could distinguish what he said, "Guerrero, where is the money?"

His lips moved trembling again, but I could not make out that he said anything.

Kennedy rose and quietly went over to detach his apparatus from the electric light socket behind Torreon.

"Car-ramba!" I heard as I turned suddenly.

Craig had Torreon firmly pinioned from behind by both arms. The policeman quickly interposed.

"It's all right,--officer," exclaimed Craig. "Walter, reach into his inside pocket."

I pulled out a bunch of papers and turned them over.

"What's that?" asked Kennedy as I came to something neatly enclosed in an envelope.

I opened it. It was a power of attorney from Guerrero to Torreon.

"Perhaps it is no crime to give a man mescal if he wants it--I doubt if the penal code covers that," e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Kennedy. "But it is conspiracy to give it to him and extract a power of attorney by which you can get control of trust funds consigned to him. Manuel Torreon, the game is up.

You and Senora Mendez have played your parts well. But you have lost. You waited until you thought Guerrero was dead, then you took a policeman along as a witness to clear yourself. But the secret is not dead, after all. Is there nothing else in those papers, Walter? Yes? Ah, a bill of lading dated to-day? Ten cases of 'sc.r.a.p iron' from New York to Boston--a long chance for such valuable 'sc.r.a.p,' senor, but I suppose you had to get the money away from New York, at any risk."

"And Senora Mendez?" I asked as my mind involuntarily reverted to the brilliantly lighted room up-town. "What part did she have in the plot against Guerrero?"

Torreon stood sullenly silent. Kennedy reached in another of Torreon's pockets and drew out a third little silver box of mescal b.u.t.tons.

Holding all three of the boxes, identically the same, before us he remarked: "Evidently Torreon was not averse to having his victim under the influence of mescal as much as possible. He must have forced it on him--all's fair in love and revolution, I suppose. I believe he brought him down here under the influence of mescal last night, obtained the power of attorney, and left him here to die of the mescal intoxication.

It was just a case of too strong a hold of the mescal--the artificial paradise was too alluring to Guerrero, and Torreon knew it and tried to profit by it to the extent of half a million dollars."

It was more than I could grasp at the instant. The impossible had happened. I had seen the dead--literally--brought back to life and the secret which the criminal believed buried wrung from the grave.

Kennedy must have noted the puzzled look on my face. "Walter," he said, casually, as he wrapped up his instruments, "don't stand there gaping like Billikin. Our part in this case is finished--at least mine is.

But I suspect from some of the glances I have seen you steal at various times that--well, perhaps you would like a few moments in a real paradise. I saw a telephone down-stairs. Go call up Miss Guerrero and tell her her father is alive--and innocent."

XII. The Steel Door

It was what, in college, we used to call "good football weather"--a crisp, autumn afternoon that sent the blood tingling through brain and muscle. Kennedy and I were enjoying a stroll on the drive, dividing our attention between the glowing red sunset across the Hudson and the string of homeward-bound automobiles on the broad parkway. Suddenly a huge black touring car marked with big letters, "P.D.N.Y.," shot past.

"Joy-riding again in one of the city's cars," I remarked. "I thought the last Police Department shake-up had put a stop to that."

"Perhaps it has," returned Kennedy. "Did you see who was in the car?"

"No, but I see it has turned and is coming back."

"It was Inspector--I mean, First Deputy O'Connor. I thought he recognised us as he whizzed along, and I guess he did, too. Ah, congratulations, O'Connor! I haven't had a chance to tell you before how pleased I was to learn you had been appointed first deputy. It ought to have been commissioner, though," added Kennedy.

"Congratulations nothing," rejoined O'Connor. "Just another new-deal-election coming on, mayor must make a show of getting some reform done, and all that sort of thing. So he began with the Police Department, and here I am, first deputy. But, say, Kennedy," he added, dropping his voice, "I've a little job on my mind that I'd like to pull off in about as spectacular a fas.h.i.+on as I--as you know how. I want to make good, conspicuously good, at the start--understand? Maybe I'll be 'broke' for it and sent to pounding the pavements of Dismissalville, but I don't care, I'll take a chance. On the level, Kennedy, it's a big thing, and it ought to be done. Will you help me put it across?"

"What is it?" asked Kennedy with a twinkle in his eye at O'Connor's estimate of the security of his tenure of office.

O'Connor drew us away from the automobile toward the stone parapet overlooking the railroad and river far below, and out of earshot of the department chauffeur. "I want to pull off a successful raid on the Vesper Club," he whispered earnestly, scanning our faces.

"Good heavens, man," I e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, "don't you know that Senator Danfield is interested in--"

"Jameson," interrupted O'Connor reproachfully, "I said 'on the level' a few moments ago, and I meant it. Senator Danfield he--well, anyhow, if I don't do it the district attorney will, with the aid of the Dowling law, and I am going to beat him to it, that's all. There's too much money being lost at the Vesper Club, anyhow. It won't hurt Danfield to be taught a lesson not to run such a phony game. I may like to put up a quiet bet myself on the ponies now and then--I won't say I don't, but this thing of Danfield's has got beyond all reason. It's the crookedest gambling joint in the city, at least judging by the stories they tell of losses there. And so beastly aristocratic, too. Read that."

O'Connor shoved a letter into Kennedy's hand, a dainty perfumed and monogrammed little missive addressed in a feminine hand. It was such a letter as comes by the thousand to the police in the course of a year; though seldom from ladies of the smart set.

"Dear Sir: I notice in the newspapers this morning that you have just been appointed first deputy commissioner of police and that you have been ordered to suppress gambling in New York. For the love that you must still bear toward your own mother, listen to the story of a mother worn with anxiety for her only son, and if there is any justice or righteousness in this great city close up a gambling h.e.l.l that is sending to ruin scores of our finest young men. No doubt you know or have heard of my family--the DeLongs are not unknown in New York.

Perhaps you have also heard of the losses of my son Percival at the Vesper Club. They are fast becoming the common talk of our set. I am not rich, Mr. Commissioner, in spite of our social position, but I am human, as human as a mother in any station of life, and oh, if there is any way, close up that gilded society resort that is dissipating our small fortune, ruining an only son, and slowly bringing to the grave a gray-haired widow, as worthy of protection as any mother of the poor whose plea has closed up a little poolroom or low policy shop."

Sincerely,

(Mrs.) Julia M. DeLong.

P.S.--Please keep this confidential--at least from my son Percival.

J. M. DeL.

"Well," said Kennedy, as he handed back the letter, "O'Connor, if you do it, I'll take back all the hard things I've ever said about the police system. Young DeLong was in one of my cla.s.ses at the university, until he was expelled for that last mad prank of his. There's more to that boy than most people think, but he's the wildest scion of wealth I have ever come in contact with. How are you going to pull off your raid--is it to be down through the skylight or up from the cellar?"

"Kennedy," replied O'Connor in the same reproachful tone with which he had addressed me, "talk sense. I'm in earnest. You know the Vesper Club is barred and barricaded like the National City Bank. It isn't one of those common gambling joints which depend for protection on what we call 'ice-box doors.' It's proof against all the old methods. Axes and sledge-hammers would make no impression there."

"Your predecessor had some success at opening doors with a hydraulic jack, I believe, in some very difficult raids," put in Kennedy.

"A hydraulic jack wouldn't do for the Vesper Club, I'm afraid,"

remarked O'Connor wearily. "Why, sir, that place has been proved bomb-proof--bomb-proof, sir. You remember recently the so-called 'gamblers' war' in which some rivals exploded a bomb on the steps? It did more damage to the house next door than to the club. However, I can get past the outer door, I think, even if it is strong. But inside--you must have heard of it--is the famous steel door, three inches thick, made of armourplate. It's no use to try it at all unless we can pa.s.s that door with reasonable quickness. All the evidence we shall get will be of an innocent social club-room downstairs. The gambling is all on the second floor, beyond this door, in a room without a window in it.

Surely you've heard of that famous gambling-room, with its perfect system of artificial ventilation and electric lighting that makes it rival noonday at midnight. And don't tell me I've got to get on the other side of the door by strategy, either. It is strategy-proof. The system of lookouts is perfect. No, force is necessary, but it must not be destructive of life or property--or, by heaven, I'd drive up there and riddle the place with a fourteen-inch gun," exclaimed O'Connor.

"H'm!" mused Kennedy as he flicked the ashes off his cigar and meditatively watched a pa.s.sing freight-train on the railroad below us.

"There goes a car loaded with tons and tons of sc.r.a.p iron. You want me to sc.r.a.p that three-inch steel door, do you?"

"Kennedy, I'll buy that particular sc.r.a.p from you at almost its weight in gold. The fact is, I have a secret fund at my disposal such as former commissioners have asked for in vain. I can afford to pay you well, as well as any private client, and I hear you have had some good fees lately. Only deliver the goods."

"No," answered Kennedy, rather piqued, "it isn't money that I am after.

I merely wanted to be sure that you are in earnest. I can get you past that door as if it were made of green baize."

It was O'Connor's turn to look incredulous, but as Kennedy apparently meant exactly what he said, he simply asked, "And will you?"

"I will do it to-night if you say so," replied Kennedy quietly. "Are you ready?"

For answer O'Connor simply grasped Craig's hand, as if to seal the compact.

"All right, then," continued Kennedy. "Send a furniture-van, one of those closed vans that the storage warehouses use, up to my laboratory any time before seven o'clock. How many men will you need in the raid?