The Surakarta/Chapter 14
XIV
MR. HEREFORD MEETS FARREN OF THE POLICE
"The duplicate box!" Hereford read the note left for him by his man upon his dressing table when he returned; for after twelve his man need not wait up. "The duplicate box! What the devil does he mean by that? But that is all he said." For Hereford's man had taken the precaution to leave that notation with the message. It was of no use, therefore, to wake up his man, and Max Schimmel had not left him a telephone number for his new address.
So he put the whole matter out of his thoughts. In the morning he would see Max, if it seemed worth while.
When he dropped asleep he slept soundly, so soundly that it was broad daylight and his man was knocking loudly upon his bedroom door, before he awoke.
"Mr. McAdams is on the 'phone, sir—at your office. He has been waiting there to see you."
"Tell him still to wait. I will see him when I get down."
Hereford started up, looking at his watch. It was nine o'clock. He breakfasted, glancing through the morning paper. He found, as he had anticipated, the account of the invasion and search through his rooms displayed over two columns in the most prominent position of the first page; but, bidding for at least equal attention beside it, he was confronted with another column having to do with the Surakarta. In the automobile on his way down town, he reread this column carefully but still with no more than curiosity:
"An incendiary followed the robber—or the thief of the night before returned as an incendiary—in the Javanese suite at the Hotel Tonty at an early hour this morning.
"A few minutes before two o'clock cording to the account given the police—flames were discovered by Hafara, the secretary of the Javanese envoy, in the room now occupied by Baraka. This room is that adjoining the one from which the great Java emerald disappeared so mysteriously the night before. Hafara, crying an alarm to the other Javanese rushed in and awoke his superior, who had gone to bed only a short time before, and the two, with the assistance of the other Javanese, endeavored to put out the fire. They found then that there was fire also in the inner room—that from which the emerald was stolen—and that there the flames had gained much greater headway. This and the unfamiliarity of the Javanese with American methods of fire alarm, caused almost total destruction of the furnishings of both rooms. The alarm was finally given by one of the chambermaids of the hotel, who heard the cries of the Javanese, and the fire was extinguished by means of the fire protection system of the hotel and the fire department. Baraka and Hafara, as well as some others of the Javanese, were slightly burned in their efforts to put out the flames.
"An investigation which was at once started by the police revealed immediately the incendiary origin of the fire. Gasoline, or some other highly inflammable oil, had been used freely in both rooms, its odor perhaps having escaped attention because of the heavy oriental scents. Hafara now recalls that shortly before the discovery of the fire he heard several muffled explosions, to which however he paid no attention at the time, as the door of Baraka's room was closed and he did not then locate the explosions within the suite. The police expect to establish a direct connection between the fire and the robbery of the night before, but have not yet done so as this extra goes to press."
Hereford tossed the paper into a corner of the limousine, as the motor stopped in front of the office building. On reaching his floor, he entered his private office directly by the corridor entrance with a key, and pressed the desk button while he was taking off his overcoat.
"Mr. McAdams, is in the outer office?" he inquired briskly of the boy.
"Mr. McAdams and another gentleman," the boy replied.
"They came together?"
"No, sir—separately."
"Then show McAdams in," Hereford directed; and he had swiftly thrown open his desk when the detective entered.
Wade Hereford, on this morning, did not know what his own mood was, but only that it was one which he could not remember ever to have experienced before. The self-control which enabled him usually to force his thoughts into any direction necessary apparently had abandoned him since his interview with his ward the night before. Hereford since then had been continually accusing, denouncing her in his own mind, then—in spite of every effort on his part—as hotly defending her against himself. The look which now twice he had seen upon her face seemed to have awakened in him some blind partisanship for her which his reason disavowed. He could make no satisfactory explanation to himself of her part in taking him away in order to enable the search of his rooms to be made. In spite of it, he found himself constantly arraying every possible cxcuse in her favor, each of which only dismissed itself as absurd to make way other explanation equally futile. His sound sleep had been the sleep of exhaustion, following infinite maddening pointless repetitions of this process, which had recommenced again as soon as he was awake. Usually exact and methodical—for he had early established over himself that personal and business routine which is the key to success—today he had begun by consciously varying even the habitual order in which he put on his garments when dressing, as though this defiance of the convention he had established over himself might bring him nearer to her in her defiance of all conventions and, perhaps, make it more easy for him to understand her. So now, as McAdams entered, Hereford appeared even more than ordinarily preoccupied by business and more than usually engrossed in the examination of his morning's mail.
"You have some report to make to me," he shot out at last. "About the fire at the Tonty, I suppose. Of course, I've already read the account in the paper. If that is correct, omit anything it covers."
"About the fire—yes," said McAdams, when he had found a seat. "But more particularly about Miss Regan, who came to the Tonty last night immediately after the fire."
Hereford let the mail fall upon his desk and swung to face the detective.
"Her visit was occasioned by the fire?" he demanded.
"It appeared so. At least she came to see Baraka."
"Of course you don't know what took place between them?"
"Yes; she made a very strange proposition to Baraka—something I don't at all understand; though it happened I was present at their interview. She wants Baraka to give up his search for the thief. But we'll get at this quicker, I think, Mr. Hereford—for I've been up all night—if you let me tell it in my own way."
Hereford nodded his assent. He was not sure whether, of all the odd and capricious actions of his ward, this did not promise to appear the most capricious yet.
"Miss Regan reached the Tonty at twenty-five minutes past two," McAdams commenced, looking at his notes. "It appears that sometime yesterday afternoon she gave directions to the hotel management that she was to be notified at once by telephone of any unusual occurrence among the Javanese. I learn that she was so notified from the clerk's desk at ten minutes past two, which was the time the clerk on duty first learned of the fire."
"You were there when she got there?" Hereford asked.
"I had just got back from following a possible clew; but we need not go into that—it amounted to nothing."
"Miss Regan seemed—how?"
"Nervous—quite agitated, Mr. Hereford; but only when she thought no one was looking. You must understand there was a good deal of disturbance just then. The firemen were still there, and the Javanese rooms were open and people passing through. Baraka and Hafara and the rest were having their burns dressed by a doctor. I heard Baraka talking in an unusually loud tone and I made my way into the room where he was to see what was going on. Miss Regan had just arrived and Baraka seemed to have been addressing her, but I didn't get that part of it. They were entirely occupied with one another and the other Javanese were occupied with them, and nobody seemed to notice my presence, so I didn't draw their attention to myself, hoping to stay there long enough to get an idea what was happening."
"I understand," Hereford urged, impatiently.
"Well, I did get something more than a mere idea. Miss Regan was thanking Baraka for having completed his mission."
"Now I do not understand," said Hereford, frowning.
"She was telling Baraka to pack up and go back to Java carrying her acknowledgment to the Soesoehoenan that she had received the emerald."
"She said she had it?" Hereford demanded in amazement.
"No; not in words. But it was very plain that she wanted Baraka to believe she had it."
"But she has not got it," Hereford declared, with certainty.
"No; and Baraka knew she didn't have it and told her so. These Orientals, I guess, know something about lying themselves. Baraka didn't tell her outright that she was not telling the truth, but he let her know plainly enough that he did not believe her."
"And was not going away?"
"Yes; that he certainly was not going until she—or somebody else—had shown him the emerald, and he had seen it, according to his instructions, safely in her hands."
Hereford got up and moved about the room, as though the movement might help his thought in the perplexity he felt. He turned suddenly back to McAdams.
"What did she do then?"
"She told Baraka that she could not actually show him the emerald, but that she knew where it was—it was in a perfectly safe place—and she could not get possession of it herself until he had left town and gone back to Java."
"Baraka's answer to that?"
"It was exactly the same as he had answered before—that he did not believe her, and could do nothing but obey the instructions of the Soesoehoenan. He said he would leave only when he himself had regained the emerald and had presented it to her with the ceremonies which he had been instructed to carry out."
"Was that all?"
"Yes; she left then a good deal more agitated than when she had come. Now, Mr. Hereford, if you understand it, you do more than I do."
"I do not," said Hereford.
He dismissed McAdams through the private door, and fell to pacing his office—now slowly in absorption, now swiftly as though his bewilderment unconsciously spurred him to action. Hereford, who had thought that his ward had exhausted her possibilities of surprising him, found it easier to explain to himself her having first taken up this affair with the Soesoehoenan than it was to account for her seemingly unmeaning action in attempting now to call off the presentation of the stone. Did this mean that in her anger at the interference with her mad plan she was willing to proceed with the bargain and marry the Soesoehoenan without even receiving the great gem for which she had sold herself? Or, did it mean—?
Hereford had felt that he had detected in his ward two girls. One was the girl he had known from the first in his relationship with her—self-willed, daring, glorying in and pleased by the notoriety she gained in her obstinate following of her own caprice. The other he had divined only in his two interviews with her and so indefinitely that he had not been able to formulate a personality for her in his thought; yet he knew that he had seen something in her which, in the face of all proof, had enlisted him in blind partisanship upon her side by suggesting to him that there might be some reason beyond mere folly for her mad acts. Did her visit to Baraka mean that, besides these two girls, there was still a third—unsuspected until now by him, the mere vague possibility of whose existence sent the blood coursing through his veins in this spontaneous riot whose meaning he himself could not understand?
He recollected suddenly that there was a second visitor waiting in the office outside, summoned the boy, and found that the man had refused to give his name. He found relief in passing through the intervening rooms among his employees to inspect the man himself. He found a middle-aged, tall, well-built, alert and official-looking sort of person in a sack suit, who sat with his hat upon his knee in the attitude of one accustomed to using patience during long waits.
"You want to see me?" Hereford asked. "I am Mr. Hereford."
"Not to see you alone," the man replied, "but after Miss Regan comes."
"Then you have an appointment here with Miss Regan?"
"I was instructed over the 'phone to come here and wait until she came."
The voice aroused Hereford's memory.
"You are Farren, of the police," he recognized all at once—"the man who located that swindler for me two years ago in Omaha. I recollect you now." And swiftly another recognition crowded upon the first. "Stand up, Farren," Hereford bid.
The man arose.
"Now walk away from me—dropping your shoulders naturally. That's it!" Hereford continued, "I merely wanted to be sure of you. You're against me now, eh? You were the one watching for me outside my apartment last night and you followed me here afterwards."
The man, without replying directly, returned to his seat. Hereford left instructions in the outer office that Lorine was to be shown in to him as soon as she arrived, and returned to his room.