The Door of Dread/Chapter 4
CHAPTER FOUR
SIX days later a funereal old figure came to a stop before a shabby- fronted house in a shabby New York side-street not far from Herald Square. He hesitated for a moment at the foot of an iron hand-rail, red with rust. Then he glanced pensively eastward toward Broadway, and then as pensively westward toward Eighth Avenue. Then the dolorous eyes blinked once more up at the sign-board which announced:
MME. FATICHIARA
Palmist and Astrologist
The next moment the man in black ascended the broken sandstone house-steps and rang the bell.
He stood in the doorway, pensive and dejected, with his rusty umbrella in his hand. About his arm was a band of crape, faded to a bottle green, and on his bespectacled face was a look of timorous audacity.
He rang again, apparently quite unconscious of having been under scrutiny from a shrewd pair of eyes that stared out through the shuttered grille-work of the door itself. Then he sighed heavily, and was about to ring for the third time, when the door opened and he found himself confronted by a large negress who, while arrayed in a costume that was unmistakably Oriental, still bore many of the earmarks of Eighth Avenue origin.
"Madame Fatichiara?" the visitor ventured, with a timid glance at the imperturbable turbaned figure.
The negress solemnly nodded, stepped aside and motioned for him to advance. This movement was made with an arm far too athletic to be lightly disregarded. Then the door was closed behind him, and another door at the rear, suggestively presided over by a stuffed owl with two small ruby lights set in its head, was silently opened.
The visitor sidled in past a screen embossed with a skull-and-cross-bones surrounded by an ample parade of what appeared to be interlocked copperheads worked in lemon-yellow. Then he edged about a bowl of goldfish suspended from a black tripod and found himself confronted by a silent and motionless woman in an ebony-black peignoir.
This woman sat behind a table draped with black velvet, on which still another suggestively reptilious design was worked in beryl green, the emblem in this case being that of a diamond-back rattler engaged in biting its own tail. On the table behind which the woman sat as motionless as an Egyptian idol stood a green jade vase in which smoldered three Japanese punk-sticks. Beside it, on a bronze tripod embossed with snakes, stood a glass globe, iridescent in the shadowy and uncertain light of the curtained room. Facing it was a human skull on a black plush pad embroidered with the signs of the Zodiac, while behind the skull stood a planchette, a pack of green-backed playing-cards, a lacquer tray of what appeared to be "mad-stones," and an astronomical chart of the heavens, framed and under glass.
The newcomer's pensive gaze, however, was directed more toward the woman than toward her significantly arrayed accessories.
As this woman's figure was backed by the dusky curtains of a materializing cabinet, and her heavily massed hair was itself as dark as these curtains, the contrasting pallor of her face, well whitened with rice-powder, produced an impression that approached the uncanny.
This impression of uncanniness was in no way mitigated by the blue pigment which had been added to the elongated eyelids or by the woman's studied attitude of languor and aloofness or by the fixed stare with which her mysterious and half-closed eyes accosted her crow-like visitor in rusty black.
This visitor, however, dropped into a chair facing the young seeress. He regarded her and her surroundings with a nod of pensive approval. Then he took out a cigar and proceeded to light it.
For one brief moment the mystic-eyed seeress watched that unlooked-for movement. Then she sank limply back in her chair.
"Hully-gee!" she suddenly ejaculated. The blue-lidded eyes were now staring and wide-opened. Their owner's air of esoteric mystery suddenly evaporated, pricked like a soap-bubble by that one betraying exclamation.
"Hully-gee, if it ain't old Willsie himself!"
Wilsnach looked quickly yet casually about, to make sure they were alone. "Sadie," he solemnly murmured, "you're fine!"
"Well, I ain't feelin' the way I look! But it kind o' sets me up, Willsie, to lamp that classic map o' yours!" She stared at him long and hungrily. Then she sat back with an audible sigh. "I guess yuh ain't back none too soon!"
"Why?" asked Wilsnach.
"B'cause yuh're sure goin' to lose your little stick-up, if yuh leave her long in this dump!"
"Anything happened?"
"Yes, lots! And here's a letter Kestner sent on for yuh."
Wilsnach took the note from her hand. But he stood smiling down at her, without breaking the envelope's seal.
"Sadie, you're fine!" he repeated.
"Fine!" she cried, wuth a hoot of derision. "I was more'n that. I was dog-goned near fined!"
"Wait," commanded Wilsnach. "What was it I told you about that enunciation of yours?"
"Oh, gee, teacher, I just gotta denounce a while b'fore I can stop to pr'nounce! I always get weak on the English when I get indignant. And I've been some little bob-cat for the big-gunners o' this swamp!"
"But why were you nearly fined?"
"Well," began the seeress, with an abandoned rush of words that contrasted strangely with her earlier air of immobility, "I hadn't been stuck up in this drum two days b'fore a flatty lamped me street-sign and blew in for a two-dollar palm-readin'. So I took 'im by the mitt and said he was sure goin' to make a journey soon. And he sez to me, 'Excuse me, miss, but yuh're the guy who's goin' to do the travelin'! And it's goin' to be right over to the Island,' he sez, 'for I'm a plain-clothes man from Headquarters!' Seein' Kestner and yuh'd told me the Feds had ev'rything fixt, I give him the glassy eye and sez, *Nix, honey-boy, nix! Save that for the web-foots,' sez I, 'for I'm hep to this burg and what yuh kin pull over on the chief! I ain't been hibernatin' up-state wit' the hay-tossers, son, and I wouldn't be exhumin' this ol' stuff if I didn't have purtection!' 'Well,' sez the flatty, showin' his badge, 'yuh'd better send in a hurry call for them purtectin' spirits, for I'm goin' to gather yuh in, and I'm goin' to do it right now! So git your street-rags on!'"
"Why didn't you do as we said, and phone Hendry?"
"That gink wouldn't let me git near a phone, nor git long enough out'n his sight to stow away a box o' smokes. He towed me acrosst to Eight' Avenoo b'fore he even melted enough to let me call a taxi. He was jus' swingin' the door open when a cop come along. That cop sez, 'Whadda yuh doin' wit' the skirt, Tim?' The gink climbs in beside me. 'Pinchin' her fur palm-readin',' he sez, as he waves for the driver to git under way. And that cop was all that saved me from being disgraced for life! He put a hand on me friend's arm and sez, 'Nuttin' doin', Tim! If they hadn't jus' brought yuh in from the goat-cliffs yuh'd a-knowed the green lamps was givin' this lady the wink! She's a federal plant, son, and yuh'd better git her back before the whole ward gives yuh the laugh!' And he got me back. But when I got back I was so hot under the collar I cudda jumped the Service for life!"
"We all have our troubles, Sadie, at work like this," soothed Wilsnach, as he studied her pert young face. He realized, as he watched her, that the very audacities which had once made her a trying enemy were converting her into an invaluable colleague.
"But this stall's bin trouble from the first crack out o' the box!" complained the young seeress as she lighted a cork-tip cigarette. "It's easy enough to say not to talk and jus' feed your sucker list on a few Mong-jews and Wollas and Sack-rays, for to make 'em think I'm French. But I ain't no more French 'n a Frankfurter, and I can't git away wit' it! I jus' can't!"
"Then you've already had visitors ?"
"Visitors? Say, a street-sign like mine brings the nuts down like an October black-frost! Gee, but the ginks yuh bump into at this game! The first ol' guy who got a dollar readin' turned confidential and said he was a widower and wanted me to join him in a Back-to-Natcher Society and take dew-baths in his back yard. Then a fat Swede who'd been a ring-thief in a Turkish-bath joint wanted me to work the Riviera wit' him as a hotel-sneak. Then a fat woman wit' three chins and no lap, the same claimin' to be the slickest clairvoyant on the Island, pleaded to know jus' how I could git p'lice purtection, especially wit' a face like mine! The ol' cat! Then a yellow-faced undertaker wit' a front yard full o' spinach and a white string-tie wanted me for his housekeeper up in Syracuse. Natcherally, I said nuttin' doin', Grandpaw!"
"Go on!" prompted Wilsnach.
"Then a mutt in the sash, door and blind trade wanted to move in wit' his trunks, bein' soused to the gills and tempor'ry furgittin' home and mother up in Ithica. Zuleika rolled him down the steps and left him cryin' ag'inst a hydrant fit to break your heart! Then a mulatto lady bookmaker come in to git me to dream track-numbers for her. So in me off time I'm makin' a stab at pickin' the circuit winners. Then' another washed-out ol' guy wit' a patented Elixir O' Life wanted me to run his Second Ark O' The Sacred Elect and be his spirit-wife on the side. I told him to git ready for the grave b'fore his mind went any worse!"
"Is that all?"
"Not by a long shot! Yesterday a couple o' promoters dropped in. One wanted me for a come-on to a company o' his to make blood oranges by stabbin' 'em wit' a needle-ful o' saccharine and red aniline. The other had doped out a scheme for makin' a million or two importin' the Guatemalan kelep-ant to kill all the boll-weevil out o' the cotton states. He offered to split even and pay travelin' expenses if I'd get out and lobby for state grants. Then a widow come in for a message from her husband, and got cryin' all over the place until I hadda warn her she was spottin' me plush-goods. I give her back her money and told her this spirit-rappin' game was all bunk. Then a couple o' sailors come in from the Navy Yard, and—"
"Sailors?" snapped out Wilsnach.
Sadie dashed his hopes. "They was soused to the gills—worse'n the sash and door guy! They was so lit up I short-changed 'em a couple o' bones, jus' for squeezin' me hand durin' business hours!"
"There doesn't seem to be much for us to work on in that group," meditated Wilsnach, after a moment or two of silence.
"What I wantta know," demanded Sadie, fixing him with a rebellious eye, "is jus' why I'm planted here, and jus' what good I'm doin' at this palm-readin' guff!"
"There's a reason for it, Sadie, and the reason is this: We've got to rake this big city for a man named Dorgan. We don't know where he is, or where he's headed for. All we know is that he's hidden away somewhere in New York."
"But where d' I come in?" demanded the seeress.
"You come in as the decoy-duck who's going to persuade the gun-shy stranger to dip down into your neighborhood. For before this man came to our city, Kestner tells me, he'd been consulting a fortune-teller named Madame Fatichiara."
"Then I ain't the one and only?" demanded Sadie Wimpel, with a distinct note of disappointment.
"No, you're merely the one particular kind of fly our particular kind of fish will rise to. I mean by that, Sadie, that if our man sees your sign, or stumbles across your newspaper advertising, it's reasonable to assume he'll come out of hiding and try to have a talk with you."
"I don't quite git that!" objected Sadie.
"You're his friend of other days," explained Wilsnach. "You were his adviser before he went under cover."
"Then why'd he go under cover?"
"Because ten days ago when he was fired from the Sinclair Steel Plant he stole a bundle of chart plans of one of our Navy boats. That boat's our new long-cruising submarine known as the Carp-Mouth Submersible. It's called that because it has a system of air-valve ejectors for mine-laying and a perfected mechanism for taking on fresh supplies along the sea-bottom. That gives it a ninety-day cruising radius without any need of returning to its base, in time of war. Dorgan got those plans. In the same bunch he also got the new Dupont magnetic detector, for indicating under water the approach of any ironclad. They were all plans and specifications from which decently qualified experts could finally work out models."
"Then this guy Dorgan's a spy?"
"Old man Sinclair contends Dorgan isn't a paid agent, but merely a sore-head who tried to get even with the company by sniping any office-papers he could grab while waiting round for his pay envelope, after being fired. Sinclair says he can't even know the value of those papers, for most of the work was done in bond and under government inspectors. That's a matter we can't be sure of. But there is one matter we can be sure of, and that is that for these papers Dorgan could get a quarter of a million in cold cash!"
"Hold me up!" breathed out the amazed Sadie Wimpel.
"Kestner's belief is that Dorgan was actually planted at the Sinclair Works. There's a kink or two in Dorgan's record. We know that he originally came from the government gun factories at Watervleit, that he was some six months at Newport News, and that he even did work on the new Arizona in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. That doesn't look like a plant. But he may have been after something worth waiting a couple of years for. The worst kink in his record, though, is that Dorgan became a pool-room habitué."
"Playin' the ponies?"
"Yes; and through this he got to neglect his work and was finally discharged. It was this woman named Fatichiara who gave him track-return tips. That's about all we know, except one thing. And that one thing is that Keudell and his gang would cut this man's throat as quick as they'd strike a match once they thought those plans were within their reach !"
"How d' yuh know he ain't gay-cattin' for Keudell right along?" demanded Sadie.
"Because Keudell doesn't appear to have been on this trail two months, let alone two years. There may have been others, it's true. But Kestner wired me that he'd got enough tips from the Madame Garnier papers to show that Keudell himself had laid a number of ropes. And those are the things we've got to trace up!"
The mention of Madame Garnier's name took his thoughts back to the letter which he still held unopened In his hand. Sadie Wimpel sat resentfully watching him as he tore the end from the envelope and unfolded a sheet of paper on which a clipping from a newspaper was pasted.
"From the Los Angeles Times," he said aloud as he made note of a brief inscription at the bottom.
But Sadie's thoughts, at the moment, were not concerned with that communication.
"It's all right t' talk about tracin' up these things, but that kind o' tracin' takes yuh through a stack o' rough-neck work, and yuh know it as well as I do! The slooth-king who sits in a swivel-chair and rounds up the big crook by tappin' a two-story bean is all right for the movies, but it won't go in real life. And if yuh ain't ready to get your roof tore off yuh'd better can your hide-and-seek game wit' the Big House boys!"
"Just a minute!" expostulated Wilsnach, preoccupied with his sheet of paper.
"What's the dope, anyway?" demanded Sadie, blinking at the sudden solemnity of Wilsnach's face, as he stared abstractedly across the table at her.
"Listen," he said, turning back to the clipping which he held in his hand. Then he read aloud:
It was Sadie who spoke up out of the silence.
"Yuh don't mean to say that Kestner cooked up that end for 'em?"
Wilsnach looked at her out of unseeing eyes. Then he slowly nodded his head.
"I suppose it was the best way!" he meditated aloud.
"Hully gee," Sadie cried, as she sat absorbing the significance of the words to which she had been listening, "ain't that just what I've been tryin' to tell yuh? Don't that show yuh it's just dog eat dog, and the Old Boy take the guy who's too good to sneak a chance?"
Wilsnach, at the moment, was remembering what Kestner, only one short week before, had said to him about Service work. And it was with an effort that he pulled himself together.
"Well, Sadie, no matter what kind of work it is, we're in it, and we've got to go through with it! And the sooner we get down to tin tacks the better!"
"I ain't delayin' yuh!" announced the young woman beside the crystal-gazer's globe. But for the fraction of a moment a faint shadow hung about her face, a shadow of disappointment, apparently, at his calmly masculine eagerness to escape to the impersonal.
"We've got to remember why you're here, and why I'm here. And the answer is, Keudell. And our hopes of finding Keudell seem to hang on just one thin thread: that somewhere in this city is a thief who's stolen papers which he can't unload, unless he unloads them on Keudell. And if we can't find the thief, we've got to find Keudell, or the people who are acting for Keudell."
"Then why wasn't I give a description of this guy called Dorgan?"
"Because there wasn't time, for one thing, and, for another, Romano's been covering your house and would never 've let him get away before I had a chance to get here. But I'm going to describe the man, in case any of us should miss him. Dorgan's a mechanic, remember, and he's about thirty years old. He's wide-shouldered and rather short, with curly black hair, cut close. His ears stick out a little, and one of them is mushroomed, for he worked in the prize-ring for a couple of winters. Then—"
"Wait!" suddenly announced Sadie. The faint purr of a desk-buzzer had sounded behind her black-draped table. She bent her head and watched the quick play of the vari-colored electric globes of her tiny annunciator.
"Hully gee," she murmured, as she hid away the end of her cigarette, "here's a hob-nail comin' for a readin'. And Zuleika's pushin' the double-green to say he's a guy worth watchin'!"
Wilsnach, who was already on his feet, circled about the table and lifted the black velvet drapery of the cabinet.
"I'll wait here until your man goes," he quietly announced.
Sadie, reverting to her posture of esoteric impassivity, intoned a solemn "Ong-tray-voo!" in answer to the questioning knock on the door.
That door promptly opened and a man stepped into the room. He carried his hat in his hand, and Sadie could see the black hair that curled about the edges of his outstanding ears. He was half-way across the room before he stopped, hesitated and then slowly advanced toward the vacant chair that faced the table, groping for it with an abstracted hand as he stared into the woman's heavily powdered face. Then he sat down in the chair.
"You ain't Fannie Fatichiara!" he suddenly and deliberately announced.
"Ain't I?" murmured the impassive-eyed Sadie.
"You're a faker!" announced the stranger, suddenly leaning forward in his chair.
Sadie's somnolent eye was languid with scorn.
"If any she-cat's been crabbin' my name," she majestically proclaimed, "I'll put her outta business b'fore she kin squeal for help!"
The man sniffed. "You smoke cigars?" he demanded.
"No," was Sadie's languid retort. "But I guess that pool-room king I'm pickin' winners for kin maybe blow hisself to an occasional purfecto!"
"You ain't Fannie Fatichiara!" doggedly repeated the newcomer.
The woman behind the black-draped table suddenly lost the last of her majestic mien. "Well, if I ain't Fannie Fatichiara," she challenged, "I jus' wish yuh'd lead me to her!"
The man pondered this for a moment. He seemed puzzled. "All right," he suddenly announced.
It was Sadie's turn to ponder the problem so unexpectedly confronting her. "When?" she inquired.
"Any old time!" promptly declared the visitor.
Again Sadie pondered. "How'll we go?" she temporized.
"We'll go in a taxi, by gum," was the altogether reckless answer, "and the sooner the better!"
Sadie drew her sable wrappings together and rose with both dignity and determination to her feet.
"Then yuh wait until I grab me hat and mitts," she explained to him.
She stepped back and slipped in under the draped curtains of the cabinet front. There Wilsnach caught her by the arm, his lips close to her ear.
"Follow that man!" was his fierce whisper. "Keep with him to the last gasp. For that's the thief who stole our Navy plans!"
"Then gimme a gun," whispered back the unperturbed Sadie, before stepping out through the second tier of curtains at the cabinet back. "For I'm goin' to make good on this case or quit the Service!"