The Surakarta/Chapter 16
XVI
MR. HEREFORD INTERVIEWS MR. ANNIS
Around the corner from the entrance to the office building was a taxicab stand where usually some half-dozen cabs were waiting. The present moment was no exception. Hereford sprang into the first one, scarcely taking time to observe whether anyone was watching him or not. He gave an address at random, sat back and, waiting quietly until they had crossed the downtown district, paid the cabman and dismissed him. He walked swiftly for a block until he found another taxicab, engaged it, and confident now that this new driver did not know him, he gave a second address with care.
This address, when the cab had traversed several streets, proved to be a hotel once luxurious, now fallen to second or third rate. Hereford instructed the driver to wait and, without stopping at the hotel desk, went directly to the carpeted third-floor hall. Here he noiselessly listened at the fourth door on the left and then knocked.
Receiving no response after knocking several times, he stopped and listened again, then peered through the keyhole. Still he heard nothing and his observation through the keyhole merely told him that the occupant evidently had risen, for the room was light and the shades were up, though the bed was not yet made.
Hereford impatiently withdrew down the hall and waited another few moments; but, no one appearing from the room, he made the rounds of the public rooms below, the saloons opposite, returned and went to a telephone booth, where he spent some time. Emerging, he went to the taxicab that had brought him, paid the man and hired him again by the hour, to wait on the corner half a block away.
He returned then—nervously and restlessly—to the door of the room on the third floor. Again he descended. Noon came, and, taking a seat in the dining room where he could watch those entering the hotel, he ordered lunch. This finished, he began again the same baffled round from room to saloons and telephone booths, but seldom out of sight of the entrance to the hotel. As dusk was coming, he finally was rewarded. Going to the room from the telephone booth, he sighed with relief when he heard some one moving within, and he knocked.
The occupant of the room came quickly to the inner side of the door and seemed to listen with his ear against it, then opened it.
"Ah, it is Mr. Hereford!" he exclaimed with surprise.
"Yes, Mr. Annis."
Hereford went in and closed the door behind him, looking carefully to see that it was completely shut.
"I was not expecting a visit from Miss Regan's trustee!" Annis peculiarly smiled.
"It is as trustee of the Regan estate that I have come."
He looked round for a seat uninvited by Annis, brought forward a chair which he set between Annis and the exit door and sat down, laying his cane on the floor beside him. Then he took from his pocket, as though he expected to need them for reference, a small packet of telegrams and other papers.
"On the morning of October twelfth, Mr. Annis," he commenced, "when you came to my office to inform me—so gratuitously as to rouse at once my suspicions regarding yourself—of the very peculiar situation between my ward and a native ruler of Java called the Soesoehoenan of Surakarta, and concerning"
"Concerning the emerald called the Surakarta—yes. I have noted in the papers, Mr. Hereford, that you, as trustee, have taken a singularly effective method of preventing its being presented."
Hereford looked fixedly at Annis before he went on.
"On that visit, Mr. Annis, you stated, first, that you had just come from Java on the same steamer with the emissaries of the Soesoehoenan; and this I found to be correct. Your embarking and disembarking have been vouched for to me by cable and telegram through the steamer agents both at Batavia and San Francisco. Your second statement was that you were an American gentleman who had been living in Java, presumably engaged in business there, for the last six years. Third, you stated you could not then leave any address with me, as you intended to take an afternoon train that day for New York. However, Mr. Annis, you did not take that train."
"That is true," said Annis. "I changed my plans."
Hereford again gave Annis a long and steady look.
"I would rather, Mr. Annis," he said, "you did not use that tone with me. I have come here to put things very frankly and openly to you—not concealing anything in regard to yourself that I know or pretending to know anything regarding you that I do not know. It will expediate matters if you keep that in mind.
"You did not, I say, take the afternoon train. You had plainly wished me to think you had stopped in casually upon me while passing through Chicago; instead, you stayed, coming back to this hotel, where you had then, as you have continued to have, a room. Therefore I saw to it that you made the acquaintance, here in the buffet of this hotel, late in the afternoon of the same day, of a man named Lund."
The blood commenced to glow darkly under Annis' sallow skin, and his sun-bleached, close-cut hair seemed to bristle. He slid into the chair nearest to Hereford.
"Really, now, you begin to interest me," he said. "Am I to suppose"
"What?"
"That this man Lund was in your employ?"
"Lund was then, is now, and at times before, during the last thirty months, has been in my employ, though never openly. The Regan estate, Mr. Annis, is one which, for reasons that I think are plain, has been a continued bait for sharpers, impostors and international marriage bureaus. Miss Regan has made it very plain to me that she would not brook any open interference in such affairs. Once, before this matter of the Soesoehoenan took me by surprise, the presence of some representative of mine—efficient and unknown to Miss Regan—was necessary in another part of the world to defeat people of this sort. Lund, who was at one time a secret-service operative, then proved himself as capable of passing as a nouveau-riche American traveling in Egypt as he proved himself to you the other afternoon capable of passing as an idle man-about-town—a rounder, with no other thought beyond the chance to pass a pleasant day or so in casual acquaintance with a traveler."
Annis shifted uneasily.
"I begin to understand."
"I thought you would."
Annis got up and began to move round the room. The heavy cane he had carried when he appeared in Hereford's office had been thrown, with his hat and coat, upon the bed. He touched it, as if carelessly, when he passed it. Hereford picked up his cane and laid it across his knees.
"No; on reflection, I understand even less clearly than before, Mr. Hereford," Annis replied at last.
"Perhaps you will understand better, then, as I go on. It was not merely for precaution that I put Lund upon you, Mr. Annis. I myself immediately undertook investigation of as many elements of your story as I could. Charge of the one element which I could not look after myself—that is, your own connection with the whole affair—I gave to Lund. Lund, having made your acquaintance, went to a vaudeville show with you that night and left you here at this hotel when you went to your room a little before eleven."
"Then" Annis checked himself.
"You mean, then I do not know—know definitely, that is—anything of what you may have done between eleven o'clock that night and the next morning, when Lund met you again. That is so. Neither do I know definitely what you may have done last night between twelve o'clock midnight and now; for Lund in some way got himself arrested last night, and, as I myself have been under very natural suspicion by the police for complicity in the disappearance of the emerald, they refused my telephone request this morning for a conversation with him. You will find, however, that what I do know is sufficient to convince any one what has become of the Surakarta."
"Convince them, you mean, that I took it?"
"Yes."
"Perhaps you will begin by convincing me that you could convince them."
"I shall be glad to; for that is why I came here. In the first place, you have had and paid for, since the evening of October eleventh, when you reached Chicago, rooms in two hotels. This room where we are now you have occupied days and the greater portion, though not all, of every night. The other room, which you have occupied only twice or at most three times—and then only for a few hours at night—is on the ninth floor of the Hotel Tonty on the same side of the building as the rooms occupied by the Javanese, though not directly under them. On the night of October twelfth, when the Surakarta was stolen, you occupied that room at the Hotel Tonty from a quarter past eleven in the evening until four o'clock in the morning—as Lund ascertained afterward from the hotel clerk. You went to your room in this hotel after bidding Lund good night; you waited in this room between twenty minutes and half an hour; you went from here to the Hotel Tonty and, after spending not quite five hours there, you were back here in this room before daylight. Doesn't it seem to you that a somewhat convincing inference might be drawn—say, by the police—from that?"
Annis had reseated himself, closely studying Hereford from under his bleached brows.
"Go on," he said. "I would rather you finished."
"Very well. Your statement to me—at least the inference to be drawn from your statement of your residence in Java—was that you were an American engaged in business there. That is in a measure true, as I have ascertained during an intermittent cable communication with Java during the last two days; but the businesses in which you have engaged there are, in some instances at least, not such as a man is willing ordinarily to parade—some rather shady matters, Mr. Annis, concerning ships, one or two of which relate to natives in the Oceanic Islands. In short, Mr. Annis, you appear to be one of those world-wanderers who might, on your own account or at the instigation of some one else, very willingly take up an attempt to possess such a jewel as the Surakarta; and who might subsequently find it embarrassing to have his career investigated by the police. Am I not right?"
Annis frowned.
"You may assume so if you like; the majority of people in the world would hardly like to have their careers investigated, as you say, by the police."
"It is not an assumption."
"Call it what you want; but go on."
"Again very well. The Surakarta, Mr. Annis, was kept in a very peculiar box, in which it had been kept for some six hundred years—a box of extremely complicated construction. Having seen the box opened once myself, I am quite sure that no one could have learned to open the box either by description or by seeing the box opened once, or even two or three times. When opened by the thief the box had been in America only four days, during which time it had been closely guarded. Is it not right to suppose that the knowledge by which the thief opened the box, came, like the box itself, from Java?"
Annis had risen and leaned against the mantel.
"It seems a natural supposition. Are you still going on or is that all?"
"There is still a little more if you care to hear it."
"It will give me pleasure."
"As regards the last point, the fact that the knowledge of how to open the box must have come from Java, there is additional evidence in the fact that you were visited last night and the night before at this hotel by a Javanese who is not a member of Baraka's suite, yet is apparently a stranger in the city. Last night Lund was going to have that Javanese followed; but I do not know whether that was done, as since midnight I have not seen Lund or been able to communicate with him. At most, anything discovered regarding him would be merely corroboration, Mr. Annis, in a case where corroboration—as you yourself must see—begins to be unnecessary."
"Indeed, it does appear so, Mr. Hereford. Have you finished?"
"Practically."
"Practically?"
"There is the circumstance of your first very suspicious visit to me to tell me of the affairs of the emerald, which can only have been for the purpose of delaying the presentation of the stone and its passing into the possession of Miss Regan and so possibly into a safe-deposit box before you could carry out your plan to get hold of it; and there is also the doubt—which in itself is somewhat suspicious—whether your real name is Annis or Du Brock."
Annis smiled.
"You have so much other information," he said blandly, "that I do not mind telling you that I have used the name Du Brock only once in Chicago. My object then, as I told Lund at the time, was merely to prevent my becoming involved in the matter of the Surakarta, with which I said I had no connection except my natural curiosity. This was in the bar of the Tonty, Mr. Hereford, at the time I interviewed your brilliant aide Mr. McAdams."
"Yes, to find out from him whether, under your name of Annis, you had yet been suspected in the case," Hereford interpolated. "But, as I said, this part is immaterial; for the other facts are quite enough, I think, to give you the conviction that you asked."
Annis surveyed him with narrowed eyes. "To convince me, you mean, that you could convince others?"
"Yes; and that if a single one of these circumstances was brought to the attention of the police it would cause your immediate arrest."
"Perhaps." Annis shrugged. "Still—" He took a turn or two up and down the room, covertly observing Hereford. "Still, Mr. Hereford, you, I know, do not intend to make any of these circumstances known to the police." He gave Hereford a slightly satirical smile.
"I did not say I did intend to do so." Hereford frowned.
"For you, Mr. Hereford, as trustee, are more anxious than almost anybody else that the emerald should stay lost."
"If it has not struck you how easily I obtained these facts you are even duller than I have given you credit for being."
"I do not follow you," Annis said.
Suddenly Hereford got up, his annoyance preventing him from sitting still.
"Mr. Annis," he exclaimed, "no doubt the Javanese had seen you upon the steamer with them; Baraka or some other among them may even have known of you in Java; perhaps they saw you in San Francisco and again on the way from San Francisco to Chicago. Your chance of being noted and suspected by them, if they saw you still again at the Hotel Tonty, was very great; but when, to avoid that chance, you rented rooms in two different hotels, the expedient you adopted was so stupidly planned that you ought to have been arrested almost within an hour. A little study of the facts, a few hours of watching at this hotel, a single cablegram to Java, will still, at any time, put the police in possession of all the facts with which I have just startled you."
"No doubt."
"Lund, who has been as perplexed as myself at your still staying in Chicago, has stood ready for almost thirty-six hours to warn you if the police showed signs of connecting you with the theft. Last night Lund was arrested. Since the police are certain to trace his whereabouts for the last few days, his arrest will inevitably lead them to you. This morning, therefore, in order to see and warn you before it was too late, I was obliged against my will to destroy the single circumstance which has so far prevented your arrest by directing the almost conclusive suspicions of the police away from yourself. Mr. Annis, do I make this clear?"
Annis ran his fingers through his bleached hair; he paced back and forth, his lithe, slender body automatically avoiding the furniture of the room, which, in his absorption, he did not see. He halted finally in front of Hereford.
"Quite clear," he said. "You make it quite clear that to avoid embarrassment I ought to leave this hotel; but you do not make it so clear, since it is only embarrassment that I would avoid, that I should do all you say, Mr. Hereford—which is, I understand, to leave the city."
"No?"
"No, Mr. Hereford." Annis softly laughed. "I like Chicago. Six years with none but Asiatic amusements, Mr. Hereford—which debilitate rather than entertain—have made me eager, even without Mr. Lund's guidance to the city's sights, for the more diverse pleasures here. I do not see why I should give them up. Moreover, unless you are far more stupid than I have given you credit for being, a moment's reflection might make it occur to you that, if you wish the emerald not to be recovered at any moment, you will continue to be pleased with my presence here—and not locked up."
Hereford stared at him uncertainly.
"I see!" he muttered slowly as he studied the other.
He rose, grasping his stick. Annis bowed exaggeratedly.
"I trust you are therefore advised to leave me well alone. My original intention, as you have observed, may have been to remove the emerald; but recently affairs have been shaping themselves so that it may be quite as profitable, and much less troublesome to collect the profits, to return the emerald to the place from which it seems to have disappeared. Do not, by your interference, urge upon me this second alternative!"
It had grown dark while they talked, but in their absorption neither had thought to turn on the electric light. Hereford, as he now backed toward the door, turned it on and attentively studied the other's face.
To the trustee, accustomed to reading motives in many kinds of men, it seemed that Annis coolness and braggadocio were too pronounced. He felt that, in part at least, he comprehended now.
But nothing of this appeared in Hereford's look; for as if with reluctant resignation that no more was to be got from Annis, he turned and left.