The Surakarta/Chapter 17
XVII
MR. HEREFORD AND ANNIS SETTLE THEIR DISAGREEMENT
Hereford walked, while his footsteps might still be heard from Annis' room, like a man in doubt and without clear understanding of his next move. But when he had turned the corner of the corridor, he started quickly forward and bounded down the stairs without waiting for the elevator.
The early October night was bright with lights in front of the hotel, and the chauffeur of the taxicab was lighting his lamps, as Hereford sprang in and directed the man around the corner to a telephone booth. He saw, looking at his watch, that it was a quarter past six. His own office, therefore, would be closed; but there was a public stenographer in the same building whom Hereford often had employed when under press of work. This office, it appeared, was still open, for he got the girl without difficulty.
"I want you to find out," he directed—"using any name necessary to get the information, why it has been impossible to get access to Baraka's room today—the one at the Hotel Tonty where the fire started—you understand, the room next to that from which the great emerald was stolen. Also ascertain the first moment when anyone could enter there unobserved. I will call you again in fifteen minutes."
He went back to the taxicab; and riding in it for a quarter of an hour in a manner which took him no further from the Tonty, he got out at a drug store and again called the stenographer.
"The Javanese kept the same suite today," the girl reported. "Baraka used his secretary's room with him; and there was someone in the rooms constantly until six o'clock tonight. At six, the hotel management gave them another suite, which was vacated then."
"Had anything been disturbed in the rooms up to that time?"
"No, sir. They have been left for the insurance appraiser, who will be there tomorrow morning."
"That's all, then."
He leaped into the cab again and ordered the driver to take him to the bar entrance of the Tonty. The manner of the thief's entrance into Baraka's locked room the second night before; the manner of his opening the box; the manner of his escape from the room, leaving all doors and windows secured behind him, need not concern Hereford, most particularly then. Everything subsequent which had been at least as puzzling to him as the method of the original robbery—now was cleared in his mind. The strange, unexpected delaying of Annis in the city after the robbery, his repeated returns to the Tonty, the starting of the fire in the suite of the Javanese the night before in order to force them to abandon it—all these circumstances pointed simply and inevitably to one almost certain conviction. The thief who had entered Baraka's room and been able to open the box at the foot of his bed and take the emerald from it and then himself escape from the room, somehow and for some non-understandable reason had not been able to take the emerald with him. Incredible as the supposition seemed, still it was the only one which covered the conditions. Annis knew that; for that Annis had run the risks he had since run; for that he had had the fire started in the Javanese rooms; for that, undoubtedly, Annis was to enter the rooms, himself, now that they were vacated—because he knew the Surakarta was left there!
Reaching the Tonty, Hereford paid the driver off without delay. He entered the hotel through the bar,where his face was unknown, and, without approaching the elevators, ascended the stairs to the tenth floor. On the stairs, deserted at this hour, he met no one; as he had apparently escaped observation since leaving his apartment that morning, so no one seemed to be following him now.
A few people, coming from the rooms about, passed toward the elevators, evidently on their way to dinner. A chambermaid appeared to straighten their rooms after they had left. Hereford walked down the corridor as though coming from an elevator and followed the maid into the room where she was working. Her pass-key had been left in the door. He took it out.
"I want to go back to my room a moment," he explained, as she looked up. "My wife seems to have carried my key downstairs with her."
"Very well, sir."
Hereford returned down the hall to the door of the Javanese suite, which he unlocked and returned the key to the maid.
Entering the suite which had been occupied by the Javanese, he closed the door behind him. He listened, but heard no sound. Going, cautiously into the first rooms, he found them, as he had supposed, quite empty. He passed into the next to the last room—that occupied by Baraka at the time of the fire, in which the oil had been ignited, the one to which Baraka had moved after the theft of the emerald. It was totally dark—even darker than the others, for the shades had been drawn — and his nostrils were filled with a strong odor of charred wood. Striking a match, he went on into the last room of the suite. Here, where the fire had burned fiercest, he found that—owing to the excellent fireproofing of the rooms—the walls and floor were simply charred; the furniture, though attacked by the flames, had been saved half burned. But the great steel box, of course, had been moved out; the suitcase also and Baraka's personal effects.
He located the electric-light switch and let the match burn out. Reopening the door to the other room and listening cautiously before turning on the light, he heard a sound which seemed to come from the door of the room beyond—not at the door by which he himself had entered, but at the door of the room between: some one seemed to be operating the lock.
The hotel servants, when they left the rooms, had gone out by the door through which Hereford had entered. According to custom, therefore, the keys of the other doors communicating with the hall would be left on the inside, with the doors locked. Whether the doors happened to have been also bolted Hereford could not know. The man working at the lock evidently was turning the key in the lock by means of a wire. The lock clicked and a shaft of light from the hall told that the door immediately opened. From his position Hereford could see only that a tall shadow shut out the light; immediately the door was closed and locked on the inside.
Hereford realized that the man might be any one who, having followed the reports of the robbery in the papers and then read of the fire, had seen the interpretation of the second event as he himself now so clearly understood that.
So he retreated cautiously as the other advanced, lighting his way every few steps with a pocket electric lamp. Hereford, recalling the position of the bathroom, crossed to it carefully and reached it when the other entered the room.
The man stood still, throwing his light in every direction to get his bearings. Evidently either he had overlooked the use of the electric lights in the room or had decided not to use them, for he made no apparent search for the switch. He seemed instead—as well as Hereford could visualize to himself the manner of the vague movements behind the little white spot of light—to be looking about the room as one entirely strange to it, but familiar with it from the descriptions. Hereford saw the man turn his light upon this object and that, as if to identify them. So he located the place where the box had stood, stooped and seemed to examine whether the fire had left any of the drops of blood leading to the blank wall, and reaching the wall, instead of being puzzled, seemed to examine with satisfaction the place where the tapestry had hung. He returned then to the middle of the room for a chair. There was the sound of something he carried being put down; then he seemed to get up on the chair—the spot of light glowed against the wall where a tall man, standing upon a chair, would hold an electric lamp stretched toward the ceiling.
Hereford crept out from behind the bathroom door the better to watch him. The man, with one hand stretched up the wall toward the ceiling, was attempting to reach the top of the heavy molding at the very top of the wall next the ceiling. Hereford could hear him breathing heavily as he discovered that even standing on the chair he was still far from reaching it—the uneven breathing of one who knows that in a moment a great matter will be decided for him one way or the other. His agitation seemed to increase. He descended to the floor, and turned his light upon and seized from against the wall a stout walking stick, and stepped back upon the chair. He found now that with the end of the stick he could feel along the top of the moulding. As he evidently found nothing, his agitation seemed to increase. Stepping down he moved the chair as far to left of the tapestry as he had at first set it to the right, and got up again, carrying the stick.
He poked with it along the top of the moulding as far as he could reach, but found nothing. Now he moved the chair again to the left and tried again. Then again he moved the chair. Plainly he intended now to go all around the room in this fashion, unless he found what he was looking for before the circuit was finished. He would go nearly all the way around before he came upon Hereford, who did not dare to move again for fear of being heard; or unless the light of his lamp fell upon Hereford. This last did not seem likely, for the man kept his light turned always toward the ceiling. He took a long time to each examination, but he paid no attention to the lower part of the wall, but only the upper part above where a man standing on the floor could reach with an upstretched hand. Especially he gave heed to the wide, projecting picture moulding set almost against the ceiling itself. A sixth and seventh time he moved the chair, and now he was very close to Hereford. Suddenly the cane struck something. With an exclamation, the man realized it and struck again. It fell to the floor with a firm, sharp sound. The man leaped down and swung his light toward it, but before the light discovered the object, Hereford had sprung forward. The other, hearing him, struck out savagely with his heavy cane, as Hereford rushed into the glow of the lamp.
"Ah! You!" Annis' voice gave the relief in his recognition as he struck.
But Hereford, certain now that what they both sought was between them, made no reply. Annis' blow caught him upon upraised arm. Annis, in countering the blow aimed at him in return, lifted his hand holding the lamp. Hereford's cane smashed it from him and it crashed to the floor. The two men met, striking with stick and fist in the total darkness.
Hereford's face was bruised; he felt the hot blood from a cut on his cheek. He had struck at least once with some effect—with how much, or what his own hurt might be, he had no instant to consider. Annis had struggled out of the clinch.
The man, Hereford knew, was certainly armed with a revolver. He himself was not. There was no chance for either to get out if a shot raised the alarm; but whether Annis would recognize this or would be reckless of it Hereford could not know. At all costs he must prevent Annis from drawing his revolver. This much he had thought in the clinch. He followed the other up, therefore, heedless of the blows he received, beating madly back with his own stick.
When he was a boy in college he had played with single-stick, as he had also boxed. It was altogether too close and rough for good work; but for every blow on the head that staggered him he gave at least another. Annis' breath was coming certainly as fast as his own; he seemed to stagger as Hereford forced him back.
"You know I will let you out of this if you want to go," Hereford managed to gasp as he pressed him.
Annis' answer was to counter merely for a moment—he made no attempt to strike back. As Hereford's cane struck Annis' again, it clashed with a different sound—so Hereford thought he had broken it; but, as he pressed recklessly forward to follow up the advantage, he felt a sudden, stinging, burning sensation in his left shoulder. He pressed forward, not understanding it, striking madly with his cane. Annis' guard went down and Hereford knew he struck with the full force of his heavy stick fair across the temples. Annis cursed loudly as he crumpled and relaxed. The same instant the hot, stinging sensation in Hereford's shoulder changed to a feeling of cold steel in warm flesh, the tear of a cut as the steel turned in it. Hereford felt for the long, slender rapier Annis had drawn from his cane and with which he had run him through.
Surprised at it and not at all realizing what it meant, as the pain yet told him nothing, he drew it out, still more astonished at the blood which followed. As he felt it flowing hot and wet over his underclothes and coming out over his coat, his dismay took the immediate form of a dazed realization that it would be impossible for him to go out through the hotel in that condition. The emerald, he thought, must be somewhere on the floor at his feet. He fumbled for it, dizzily; then, better collecting his thoughts, he felt his way in the darkness to the point where he had located the electric switch; he found it and turned on the light.
The glare showed him the full confusion of the room, with the limp and crumpled form of Annis, bruised and bloody, against the wall near the corner where they had fought. As Hereford bent over him, he knew the man was merely stunned, not dead; but his head was cut and bruised shockingly. Hereford realized that he, himself, was badly battered about the head also. His gaze, dizzily, swept the floor to find the emerald; but, though he now was sure of the place where he had heard it fall, he could not find it. He fell to hands and knees to better examine the floor. Directly in the place where he had heard what he thought was the emerald, an ordinary brass picture hook lay on the floor. Glancing up to the moulding along which Annis had been searching with his cane, Hereford saw the mate of the hook on the floor. Was that all that Annis had found? Was Annis deceived as well as he? Was that all there was in the room to have fought for? Or were they right and the emerald was still in the room, but not found?
Hereford struggled to his feet. As he staggered, it seemed to him it was the stun of the blows of the stick rather than the absurdly less painful cut through the shoulder which dizzied him. He got the chair, managed to climb upon it, and commencing where Annis had left off, began to poke along the picture mould.
Loud beatings upon the door and cries outside made his movements uncertain. He and Annis must have made more noise than he had thought, cudgeling each other in there; for many men seemed to be outside. They were smashing down the door now—or seemed to be, for they were beating upon it hard—and calling loudly.
Hereford knew dizzily that it was useless to try to get out; they were at the door and would never let him pass with all that blood upon his coat. Drops of blood fell on the floor and blood was running down inside his sleeve as he tried to move the chair again. The chair had grown strangely heavy. He could not move it to that one section of wall still unexamined where he felt certain now the emerald was hidden. While he struggled with it, the door came down. Baraka and the Javanese in one wild, pushing, exclaiming mass hurled themselves upon him. Somewhere among the figures crowding into the room, it seemed to Hereford's dizzy senses, was his ward, Lorine. He heard her voice cry out, when first she caught sight of him.
Later, but after how much time had passed he could not tell, he came to himself and saw Max Schimmel close beside him. He drew the little German nearer.
"Max," he whispered, "it is in the room—the emerald is in the room from which they thought it was taken, the room where you found me!"
With effort he moved his hand to direct Max to slip away and get it.
But Max shook his head.
"My friendt, it iss an hour now since you and Mr. Annis had your liddle disagreement. The bolice, too, thought after that, that the emerald must be there; and they haf stripped the very picture moulding from the wall and the frames from aroundt the doors, and they found that the great Surakarta—wass not there!"