Keeban (Little, Brown and Company)/Chapter 13
It went direct to the LaSalle Street station; and Doris and George and Felice were standing in the carriage court watching porters pick up their luggage, when I drove in.
They glanced at me; that was all. At least it was all I saw, and they went up to the train shed. I snatched a ticket and a coupon for an "upper" from the Pullman window and went through the cars. Doris and Felice had a compartment together about the middle of the train. George wasn't with them; he seemed to possess a section in a car near mine. He possessed also a large, piggy, Trafalgar-Square-looking portmanteau, yellow in color. I didn't know where he picked it up. I hadn't seen it at the Blackstone; probably he'd had it sent direct to the train.
I had lost a lot of my prejudice against George since I saw him parked in a separate car from Doris. He looked at me, realized he had seen me several times recently and half nodded. I nodded and went on. When I glanced back, he was drifting rearward to the observation car where he sat down and picked up an afternoon paper. With as much casualness as I could manage, I dropped into a chair nearly opposite. The average Chicago to New York twenty-hour-train travel filled the other chairs with their varying degrees of self-consciousness and importance. There were the usual clothing merchants vociferous over discounts and braiding; there were a couple of advertising men lying—unless they were Sarazen and Johnny Black in disguise—about how they did the second nine at Skokie; there was a pleasant, middle-aged married couple, happy to all appearances; there was a mother with a son under her thumb; then there were half a dozen assorted males varying from the emphatic, self-made-man type to mild, chinless youths who might be either chorus men or bond salesmen. They always look alike to me.
And they always irritate me so that I did not notice that another man was beyond them until I observed that George was watching that far end of the car. He wasn't doing it conspicuously; he was so subtle about it that if I had not been paying particular attention to him, I'd never have guessed anybody here was worrying him. But some one was—one of those bulldog-jaw, assertive sort of chaps that make you think right away of the reform candidate, and who gives you, at the same glance, the reason that reform administrations fail. Not a tactful face at all but highly determined. He was about thirty-five and was young for his type, I thought, until I considered that his type has to be younger sometime. Anyway, there he was, solid and belligerent, and with a copy of the Iron Age before his face.
I had to look at him eight or ten times before I became absolutely sure that he wasn't reading it but, in turn, was watching George when George was looking the other way.
So a man hunt—other than my own (if you called my operations a hunt)—was on aboard this train; and the stalking was in process before me.
It was a woman hunt, too; for of course Doris and Felice, forward, must be a part of the quarry; and as I reckoned their chances, I thought that never a bulldog-jawed hound had run a quarry into a more hopeless hollow log than the one into which this man of the Iron Age had run my friends of the Flamingo Feather when he followed them on to the Century. He had them where and when he wanted them; they simply couldn't get away. Of course, I didn't know whether or not he was alone, in the sense whether he had other operatives with him; that made no difference; he had the clothing merchants and the golfers; the married pair, and mother and son; the assorted six with the bond salesmen,—if you cared to count them; he had a hundred with him whenever he wanted them. George and Doris, with Felice, had their wits and themselves; and, since there could be no possible doubt of the outcome of the stalking I was seeing, I couldn't help wanting them to give "Iron Age" a run before he got them.
There's something about authority—especially when it's so satisfied and certain and when it has all the odds on its side—which does that to one. Doris Wellington was not in my sight now; but when I thought of her as she was at the dance and as I had seen her walking down Michigan Avenue, I simply couldn't find any impulse to help old "Iron Age" over there snap his handcuffs upon her and put that active, eager, pert little thing behind jail bars to be locked up until she was ten years older.
Now if "Iron Age" could specialize on George, I could control my emotions perfectly. I'd become somewhat more indulgent toward George, I've told you; yet I was not wild over him, at all. However, if "Iron Age" got George, by the same process he'd probably have Doris and maid too. So I was feeling almost friendly with George when I noticed he was standing up. He seemed absolutely casual about where he wanted to go. He wandered down nearer "Iron Age" first, yawned and turned a few pages of a Harper's on the desk there; that seemed to make him sleepier and he strolled forward out of the car.
I arose and drifted after him. Through two Pullmans he walked ahead of me wholly unaware, so far as I could guess, that I was behind him; then, in the vestibule of the third car—with doors closed before and behind us—he half-turned his head.
"Old dear, check him," he said to me. "Here; this door's jammed."
He opened the door before him as he spoke, he sidled through and, as he shut it, he dropped something which engaged the bottom of the door. His words certainly were true, then; that door was jammed. I couldn't open it.
"Iron Age" could not budge it, when he replaced me at the knob. He must have been half a car behind me but I hadn't even suspected it till he joined me. Together we were the better part of three minutes at the door before we could enter the next car. George was then far forward.
I stopped in the washroom of that Pullman; for I wanted a minute or so alone to think over things since George had spoken to me. He had hailed me, you see, as a sort of comrade; he'd counted on me being with him.
Now I realized that after Doris had seen me at Caldon's and then they both had seen me at the Blackstone and here on the train, they must have attached some significance to me. And it was becoming plain to me that they made it a friendly significance; at least, they did not put me down among their pursuers. Probably Doris recognized me, not in the sense that she knew me for Steve Fanneal, but in the far more decoying sense that she realized I had been her partner at the Flamingo Feather and that, therefore, she could count on me when she needed help in this emergency.
I couldn't decide how "Iron Age" had marked me down. He went forward through a couple of cars but evidently lost George in some washroom or compartment and he decided to give up George for the present—there was no danger in that; we were skimming along about sixty-five miles the hour. Anyway, "Iron Age" paid me the compliment of returning to me in the Pullman smoking room and he plumped himself down, emphatically, and went about the job of clearing up any doubts of me.
"Now who are you?" he opened, with charming directness, a heavy hint of federal prison at Leavenworth lurking in his tone.
I gave him my business card without making any fuss and he looked me over and reached, with a now-I've-got-you gesture, for a copy of the Chicago Tribune which somebody had left on the leather seat.
He turned to the produce market page and questioned me temptingly:
"What do you do in the firm, Mr. Fanneal?"
"Oh, I buy a little," I admitted. "Overlook sales some."
"You buy butter, eggs and cheeses, for instance?"
"Absolutely."
"Good. Now what was centralized Chicago yesterday?" he sprung at me.
"What score?" I said; and he was sure I was stalling.
"Ninety-three," he mentioned.
"Not quoted," I told him.
"Ninety-two, then!" he dared me.
"That was blob, too. But ninety was forty-seven and a half; eighty-nine opened at forty-five and lifted a half. Ninety-three in New York was fifty-five and was a half higher in Philadelphia. Butter to Chicago retailers, best (ninety-two to ninety-four) tubs, fifty-three, prints one and a half more, cartons yet a half higher. Good tubs"
He held up a hand. I'd looked up butter, he figured; so he skipped down the column. "Eggs?" he asked me.
"Extras, first or miscellaneous?" I asked him. "Checks or dirties? Forty-eight to forty-nine, and down to twenty-five."
I shook him; but that bulldog jaw was not for nothing. He still held on. "Cheese!" he dared me.
"Flats?" I came back at him. "Twins? Daisies? Double Daisies? Longhorns or square prints? And Chicago? Or Fond du Lac? New York or Philadelphia? Flats at Fond du Lac opened twenty-six and three quarters; twins"
Never had I uttered anything more soothing; he had nothing whatever to say. And I'll say this for him, he may have been stubborn and hard to convince, but once won over, he came all the way.
"Now exactly who are you?" I inquired, as he dropped the paper. "Private or government operative?"
He refrained from laying back his coat impressively to display a shining star. Apparently they do that only on the stage, or in the "sets" out in Los Angeles. Also he lacked the scintillating line of language I'd been led to expect by the Actors' Equity. Somehow, since actually playing about with Jerry's friends, I've lost my feeling for the crook drama.
"You may consider me government, if you prefer; and you may call me Dibley," "Iron Age" confided indulgently and with complete trust. Hereafter, when any one questions me, I'll remember the stupifying effect of cheese quotations. I never saw anything lull a mind so. The trouble was—or perhaps it was an advantage—"Iron Age" now considered me not only harmless but probably childish.
"Have you any idea who that fellow was who wedged the door in front of you?" he asked.
"Did he wedge the door?" I asked, innocently. I wasn't growing any keener about "Iron Age" Dibley, but I saw no harm in gratifying him.
"Didn't you realize that? Well, he's Stanley Sydenham—St. James Stanley, he's sometimes called—the title tapper."
"What?" I really didn't know that.
"Land swindler. He's out of Colorado State penitentiary last April after serving five years in the long house on his last irrigated-land transaction. Has he talked to you?"
"A few words," I said truthfully.
"Probably he'll talk to you again," Dibley suggested, in a tone which hinted that he believed that George, having made a start with the simplest person on the train, would probably continue imposing on a good thing. "Also meet, if you can, Miss Doris Wellington and her maid in compartment E of car No. 424. Then don't let any of them see you and me talking together."
"All right," I agreed willingly. "But what particularly do you suspect?"
"Exclude nothing," Dibley said and got up, the soothing effect of the double daisies and Fond du Lac twins still strong upon him.
I wandered forward to my seat when I discovered that, in my absence, I had acquired hand baggage; and I had sense enough not to question anybody about it or show surprise; I just accepted it; for there it was,—a neat, new, creditable-looking suit case under the forward seat in the position usually assigned to the baggage of the passenger of an upper berth; and it was, beyond any mistake of recognition, the neatest and newest of the suit cases which, at the Blackstone, had been the property of Doris Wellington.
I bent down, after loafing in the seat for a while, and I tried the locks in a careless sort of way, as though making sure I'd fastened my luggage. The bag was locked; and I shoved it farther under the seat and soon went forward.
I was willing to wager that "Iron Age" had no hint of that transfer of luggage to me; and this was no time to tell him about it. Besides, I already was under government orders which I ought to be obeying. So I stepped forward to car No. 424 and to the door labeled E and I tapped upon it.
Felice opened it, like the alert little maid she was. As I confronted her, I tried again to place her in the Flamingo Feather; but I couldn't. She'd been one of the lighting plants, maybe.
Then I saw Cleopatra of the Flamingo Feather, Doris Wellington of Caldon's and the Blackstone and Michigan Boulevard, the daughter of Janvier, engraver of plates and herself shover of the queer. She was alone with her maid in the compartment.
"Can I come in?" I said, as she gazed up at me from her seat.
"Why, certainly; come right in," she said immediately, for all the world as though she was doing nothing there but waiting for me.