Adventures of
the infallible Godahl
Frederick Irving Anderson









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ADVENTURES OF
THE INFALLIBLE
GODAHL
BY
FREDERICK IRVING ANDERSON
WITH EIGHT ILLUSTRATIONS
NEW YORK
THOMAS Y. CROWELL COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
V


IHE NEW YORK
PUBL!C LIBRARY
a8032A
AoTOR. LENOX AND
T1LOEN FOUNDATIONS
R 19SS L
COPYRIGHT, 1913 AND 1914,
By CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY.
Copyright, 1914,
BY THOMAS Y. CROWELL COMPANY.
Published March, 1914.
--{


To my Wife
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THE.- UP*"*"


CONTENTS
I. The Infallible Godahl Page 1
II. Blind Man's Buff 60
III. The Night of a Thousand Thieves 89
IV. Counterpoint 129
V. The Fifth Tube 161
VI. An All-Star Cast 194





ILLUSTRATIONS
"The keen eyes of Armiston followed the bright
knob." Frontispiece
OPPOSITE PAGE
"As safely guarded as the vault of the United States
mint." 28
"'There was a million dollars' worth of stuff in that
room.'" 54
"This strange, impassive figure ran his fingers along
the wall." 76
"'There isn't a man among you with wit enough to
know what's happened.'" 104
"He stood up and watched and listened." 148
"He offered the other the live coal in his cutty-pipe." 174
"Before he could recover himself, he fell headlong
into the room." 212





THE INFALLIBLE GODAHL
OLIVER ARMISTON never was much
of a sportsman with a rod or gun—
though he could do fancy work with a
pistol in a shooting gallery. He had, however,
one game from which he derived the utmost sat-
isfaction. Whenever he went traveling, which was
often, he invariably caught his trains by the tip of
the tail, so to speak, and hung on till he could
climb aboard. In other words, he believed in close
connections. He had a theory that more valuable
dollars-and-cents time and good animal heat are
wasted warming seats in stations waiting for
trains than by missing them. The sum of joy to
his methodical mind was to halt the slamming gates
at the last fraction of the last second with majes-
tic upraised hand, and to stroll aboard his parlor-
car with studied deliberation, while the train crew
were gnashing their teeth in rage and swearing to
get even with the gateman for letting hrm through.
Yet Mr. Armiston never missed a train. A
good many of them tried to miss him, but none


THE INFALLIBLE GODAHL
ever succeeded. He reckoned time and distance
so nicely that it really seemed as if his trains had
nothing else half so important as waiting until
Mr. Oliver Armiston got aboard.
On this particular June day he was due in New
Haven at two. If he failed to get there at two
o'clock he could very easily arrive at three. But
an hour is sixty minutes, and a minute is sixty sec-
onds; and, further, Mr. Armiston, having passed
his word that he would be there at two o'clock,
surely would be.
On this particular day, by the time Armiston
finally got to the Grand Central the train looked
like an odds-on favorite. In the first place, he
was still in his bed at an hour when another and
less experienced traveler would have been watching
the clock in the station waiting-room. In the sec-
ond place, after kissing his wife in that absent-
minded manner characteristic of true love, he be-
came tangled in a Broadway traffic rush at the first
corner. Scarcely was he extricated from this when
he ran into a Socialist mass-meeting at Union
Square. It was due only to the wits of his chauf-
feur that the taxicab was extricated with very lit-
tle damage to the surrounding human scenery. But
our man of method did not fret. Instead, he bur-
ied himself in his book, a treatise on Cause and


THE INFALLIBLE GODAHL
he stepped aboard his train. His new chauffeur
got lost three times in the maze of traffic about
the Grand Central Station. This, however, was
only human, seeing that the railroad company
changed the map of Forty-second Street every
twenty-four hours during the course of the build-
ing of its new terminal.
Mr. Armiston at length stepped from his taxi-
cab, gave his grip to a porter and paid the driver
from a huge roll of bills. This same roll was no
sooner transferred back to his pocket than a nim-
ble-fingered pickpocket removed it. This, again,
was not an accident. That pickpocket had been
waiting there for the last hour for that roll of
bills. It was preordained, inevitable. And Oli-
ver Armiston had just thirty seconds to catch his
train by the tail and climb aboard. He smiled
contentedly to himself.
It was not until he called fcr his ticket that he
discovered his loss. For a full precious second he
gazed at the hand that came away empty from his
money pocket, and then:
"I find I left my purse at home," he said, with
a grand air he knew how to assume on occasion.
"My name is Mister Oliver Armiston."
Now Oliver Armiston was a name to conjure
with.
[4]


THE INFALLIBLE GODAHL
"I don't doubt it," said the ticket agent dryly.
"Mister Andrew Carnegie was here yesterday beg-
ging carfare to One Hundred and Twenty-fifth
Street, and Mister John D. Rockefeller quite fre-
quently drops in and leaves his dollar watch in
hock. Next!"
And the ticket-agent glared at the man blocking
the impatient line and told him to move on.
Armiston flushed crimson. He glanced at the
clock. For once in his life he was about to expe-
rience that awful feeling of missing his train. For
once in his life he was about to be robbed of that
delicious sensation of hypnotizing the gatekeeper
and walking majestically down that train platform
that extends northward under the train-shed a con-
siderable part of the distance toward Yonkers.
Twenty seconds! Armiston turned round, still
holding his ground, and glared concentrated malice
at the man next in line. That man was in a hurry.
In his hand he held a bundle of bills. For a sec-
ond the thief-instinct that is latent in us all sug-
gested itself to Armiston. There within reach of
his hand was the money, the precious paltry dollar
bills that stood between him and his train. It
scared him to discover that he, an upright and hon-
ored citizen, was almost in the act of grabbing them
like a common pickpocket.
[5]


THE INFALLIBLE GODAHL
Then a truly remarkable thing happened. The
man thrust his handful of bills at Armiston.
"The only way I can raise this blockade is to
bribe you," he said, returning Armiston's glare.
"Here—take what you want—and give the rest
of us a chance."
With the alacrity of ,a blind beggar miraculously
cured by the sight of much money Armiston
grabbed the handful, extracted what he needed for
his ticket, and thrust the rest back into the waiting
hand of his unknown benefactor. He caught the
gate by a hair. So did his unknown friend. To-
gether they walked down the platform, each match-
ing the other's leisurely pace with his own. They
might have been two potentates, so deliberately did
they catch this train. Armiston would have liked
very much to thank this person, but the other pre-
sented so forbidding an exterior that it was hard to
find a point of attack. By force of habit Armiston
boarded the parlor car, quite forgetting he did not
have money for a seat. So did the other. The
unknown thrust a bill at the porter. "Get me two
chairs," he said. "One is for this gentleman."
Once inside and settled, Armiston renewed his
efforts to thank this strange person. That person
took a card from his pocket and handed it to Ar-
miston.
[6]
I
t


THE INFALLIBLE GODAHL
"Don't run away with the foolish idea," he said
tartly, "that I have done you a service willingly.
You were making me miss my train, and I took this
means of bribing you to get you out of my way.
That is all, sir. At your leisure you may send me
your check for the trifle."
"A most extraordinary person!" said Armiston
to himself. "Let me give you my card," he said
to the other. "As to the service rendered, you are
welcome to your own ideas on that. For my part
I am very grateful."
The unknown took the proffered card and thrust
it in his waistcoat pocket without glancing at it.
He swung his chair round and opened a magazine,
displaying a pair of broad unneighborly shoulders.
This was rather disconcerting to Armiston, who
was accustomed to have his card act as an open
sesame.
"Damn his impudence!" he said to himself. "He
takes me for a mendicant. I'll make copy of him!"
This was the popular author's way of getting
even with those who offended his tender sensi-
bilities.
Two things worried Armiston: One was his
luncheon—or rather the absence of it; and the
other was his neighbor. This neighbor, now that
[7]


THE INFALLIBLE GODAHL
Armiston had a chance to study him, was a young
man, well set up. He had a fine bronzed face that
was not half so surly as his manner. He was now
buried up to his ears in a magazine, oblivious of
everything about him, even the dining-car porter,
who strode down the aisle and announced the first
call to lunch in the dining-car.
"I wonder what the fellow is reading," said
Armiston to himself. He peeped over the man's
shoulder and was interested at once, for the stran-
ger was reading a copy of a magazine called by
the vulgar The Whited Sepulcher. It was the pride
of this magazine that no man on earth could reed
it without the aid of a dictionary. Yet this person
seemed to be enthralled. And what was more to
the point, and vastly pleasing to Armiston, the
man was at that moment engrossed in one of Ar-
miston's own effusions. It was one of his crime
stories that had won him praise and lucre. It con-
cerned the Infallible Godahl.
These stories were pure reason incarnate in the
person of a scientific thief. The plot was invari-
ably so logical that it seemed more like the out-
put of some machine than of a human mind. Of
course the plots were impossible, because the fiction
thief had to be an incredible genius to carry out
the details. But nevertheless they were highly en-
[8]


THE INFALLIBLE GODAHL
tertaining, fascinating and dramatic at one and the
same time.
And this individual read the story through with-
out winking an eyelash—as though the mental ef-
fort cost him nothing—and then, to Armiston's
delight, turned back to the beginning and read it
again. The author threw out his chest and shot his
cuffs. It was not often that such unconscious trib-
ute fell to his lot. He took the card of his un-
known benefactor. It read:
MR. J. BORDEN BENSON
The Towers New York City
"Humph!" snorted Armiston. "An aristocrat
—and a snob too!"
At this moment the aristocrat turned in his chair
and handed the magazine to his companion. All
his bad humor was gone.
"Are you familiar," he asked, "with this man
Armiston's work? I mean these scientific thief
stories that are running now."
"Ye—yes. Oh, yes," sputtered Armiston,
hastily putting the other's card away. "I—in fact,
[9]


THE INFALLIBLE GODAHL
you know—I take them every morning before
breakfast."
In a way this was the truth, for Armiston always
began his day's writing before breakfasting.
Mr. Benson smiled—a very fine smile at once
boyish and sophisticated.
"Rather a heavy diet early in the morning, I
should say," he replied. "Have you read this last
one then?"
"Oh, yes," said the delighted author.
"What do you think of it?" asked Benson.
The author puckered his lips.
"It is on a par with the others," he said.
"Yes," said Benson thoughtfully. "I should
say the same thing. And when we have said that
there is nothing -left to say. They are truly a
remarkable product. Quite unique, you know.
And yet," he said, frowning at Armiston, "I be-
lieve that this man Armiston is to be ranked as the
most dangerous man in the world to-day."
"Oh, I say "began Armiston. But he
checked himself, chuckling. He was very glad
Mr. Benson had not looked at his card.
"I mean it," said the other decidedly. "And
you think so yourself, I fully believe. No thinking
man could do otherwise."
"In just what way? I must confess I have
[.10]


THE INFALLIBLE GODAHL
never thought of his work as anything but pure
invention."
It was truly delicious. Armiston would certain-
ly make copy of this person.
"I will grant," said Benson, "that there is not a
thief in the world to-day clever enough—brainy
enough—to take advantage of the suggestions put
forth in these stories. But some day there will
arise a man to whom they will be as simple as an
ordinary blueprint, and he will profit accordingly.
This magazine, by printing these stories, is merely
furnishing him with his tools, showing him how
to work. And the worst of it is"
"Just a minute," said the author. "Agreeing
for the moment that these stories will be the tools
of Armiston's hero in real life some day, how
about the popular magazines? They print ten such
stories to one of these by Armiston."
"Ah, my friend," said Benson, "you forget one
thing: The popular magazines deal with real life
—the possible, the usual. And in that very thing
they protect the public against sharpers, by expos-
ing the methods of those same sharpers. But with
Armiston—no. Much as I enjoy him as an intel-
lectual treat, I am afraid"
He didn't finish his sentence. Instead he fell to
shaking his head, as though in amazement at the
["]


THE INFALLIBLE GODAHL
devilish ingenuity of the author under discus-
sion.
"I am certainly delighted," thought that author,
"that my disagreeable benefactor did not have the
good grace to look at my card. This is really
most entertaining." And then aloud, and treading
on thin ice: "I should be very glad to tell Oliver
what you say and see what he has to say about it."
Benson's face broke into a wreath of wrinkles:
"Do you know him? Well, I declare! That is
a privilege. I heartily wish you would tell him."
"Would you like to meet him? I am under
obligations to you. I can arrange a little dinner
for a few of us."
"No," said Benson, shaking his head; "I would
rather go on reading him without knowing him.
Authors are so disappointing in real life. He may
be some puny, anemic little half-portion, with dirty
fingernails and all the rest that goes with genius.
No offense to your friend! Besides, I am afraid
I might quarrel with him."
"Last call for lunch in the dinin' cy—yah—aa,"
sang the porter. Armiston was looking at his fin-
gernails as the porter passed. They were mani-
cured once a day.
"Come lunch with me," said Benson heartily.
"I should be pleased to have you as my guest. - I
[12]


THE INFALLIBLE GODAHL
apologize for being rude to you at the ticket win-
dow, but I did want to catch this train mighty bad."
Armiston laughed. "Well, you have paid my
carfare," he said, "and I won't deny I am hungry
enough to eat a hundred-and-ten-pound rail. I will
let you buy me a meal, being penniless."
Benson arose, and as he drew out his handker-
chief the card Armiston had given him fluttered
into that worthy's lap. Armiston closed his hand
over it, chuckling again. Fate had given him the
chance of preserving his incognito with this person
as long as he wished. It would be a rare treat to
get him ranting again about the author Armiston.
But Armiston's host did not rant against his
favorite author. In fact he was so enthusiastic
over that man's genius that the same qualities which
he decried as a danger to society in his opinion only
added luster to the work. Benson asked his guest
innumerable questions as to the personal qualities
of his ideal, and Armiston shamelessly constructed
a truly remarkable person. The other listened en-
tranced.
"No, I don't want to know him," he said. "In
the first place I haven't the time, and in the second
I'd be sure to start a row. And then there is an-
other thing: If he is half the man I take him
to be from what you say, he wouldn't stand for
[13]


THE INFALLIBLE GODAHL
people fawning on him and telling him what a
wonder he is. That's about what I should be do-
ing, I am afraid."
"Oh," said Armiston, "he isn't so bad as th?.t.
He is a—well, a sensible chap, with clean finger-
nails and all that, you know, and he gets a haircut
once every three weeks, the same as the rest of
us."
"I am glad to hear you say so, Mister—er"
Benson fell to chuckling.
"By gad," he said, "here we have been talking
with each other for an hour, and I haven't so much
as taken a squint at your card to see who you are!"
He searched for the card Armiston had given
him.
"Call it Brown," said Armiston, lying gorgeous-
ly and with a feeling of utmost righteousness.
"Martin Brown, single, read-and-write, color
white, laced shoes and derby hat, as the police say."
"All right, Mr. Brown; glad to know you. We
will have some cigars. You have no idea how
much you interest me, Mr. Brown. How much
does Armiston get for his stories?"
"Every word he writes brings him the price of
a good cigar. I should say he makes forty thou-
sand a year."
"Humph! That is better than Godahl, his star
[14]


THE INFALLIBLE GODAHL
creation, could bag as a thief, I imagine, let alone
the danger of getting snipped with a pistol ball on
a venture."
Armiston puffed up his chest and shot his cuffs
again.
"How does he get his plots?"
Armiston knitted his ponderous brows. "There's
the rub," he said. "You can talk about so-and-so
much a word until you are deaf, dumb and blind.
But, after all, it isn't the number of words or how
they are strung together that makes a story. It is
the ideas. And ideas are scarce."
"I have an idea that I have always wanted to
have Armiston get hold of, just to see what he
could do with it. If you will pardon me, to my
way of thinking the really important thing isn't the
ideas, but how to work out the details."
"What's your idea?" asked Armiston hastily. He
was not averse to appropriating anything he en-
countered in real life and dressing it up to suit his
taste. "I'll pass it on to Armiston, if you say so."
"Will you? That's capital. To begin with," Mr.
Benson said as he twirled his brandy glass with
long, lean, silky fingers—a hand Armiston thought
he would not like to have handle him in a rage—
"To begin with, Godahl, this thief, is not an ordi-
nary thief, he is a highbrow. He has made some
[15]


THE INFALLIBLE GODAHL
big hauls. He must be a very rich man now—eh?
You see that he is quite real to me. By this time,
I should say, Godahl has acquired such a fortune
that thieving for mere money is no longer an ob-
ject. What does he do? Sit down and live on his
income? Not much. He is a person of refined
tastes with an eye for the esthetic. He desires art
objects, rare porcelains, a gem of rare cut or color
set by Benvenuto Cellini, a Leonardo da Vinci—
did Godahl steal the Mona Lisa, by the way? He
is the most likely person I can think of—or per-
haps a Gutenberg Bible. Treasures, things of ex-
quisite beauty to look at, to enjoy in secret, not to
show to other people. That is the natural develop-
ment of this man Godahl, eh?"
"Splendid!" exclaimed Armiston, his enthusiasm
getting the better of him.
"Have you ever heard of Mrs.. Billy Went-
worth?" asked Benson.
"Indeed, I know her well," said Armiston, his
guard down.
"Then you must surely have seen her white
ruby?"
"White ruby! I never heard of such a thing.
A white ruby?"
"Exactly. That's just the point. Neither have
I. But if Godahl heard of a white ruby the chances
[16]


THE INFALLIBLE GODAHL
are he would possess it—especially if it were the
only one of its kind in the world."
"Gad! I do believe he would, from what I
know of him."
"And especially," went on Benson, "under the
circumstances. You know the Wentworths have
been round a good deal. They haven't been over-
scrupulous in getting things they wanted. Now
Mrs. Wentworth—but before I go on with this
weird tale I want you to understand me. It is
pure fiction—an idea for Armiston and his won-
derful Godahl. I am merely suggesting the Went-
worths as fictitious characters."
"I understand," said Armiston.
"Mrs. Wentworth might very well possess this
white ruby. Let us say she stole it from some
potentate's household in the Straits Settlements.
She gained admittance by means of the official po-
sition of her husband. They can't accuse her of
theft. All they can do is to steal the gem back from
her. It is a sacred stone of course. They always
are in fiction stories. And the usual tribe of jug-
glers, rug-peddlers, and so on—all disguised, you
understand—have followed her to America, seek-
ing a chance, not on her life, not to commit violence
of any kind, but to steal that stone.
"She can't wear it," went on Benson. "All she
[17]


THE INFALLIBLE GODAHL
can do is to hide it away in some safe place. What
is a safe place? Not a bank. Godahl could crack
a bank with his little finger. So might those East
Indian fellows laboring under the call of religion.
Not in a safe. That would be folly."
"How then?" put in Armiston eagerly.
"Ah, there you are! That's for Godahl to find
out. He knows, let us say, that these foreigners
in one way or another have turned Mrs. Went-
worth's apartments upside down. They haven't
found anything. He knows that she keeps that
white ruby in that house. Where is it? Ask
Godahl. Do you see the point? Has Godahl ever
cracked a nut like that? No. Here he must be
the cleverest detective in the world and the clever-
est thief at the same time. Before he can begin
thieving he must make his blueprints.
"When I read Armiston," continued Benson,
"that is the kind of problem that springs up in my
mind. I am always trying to think of some knot
this wonderful thief would have to employ his best
powers to unravel. I think of some weird situa-
tion like this one. I say to myself: 'Good! I
will write that. I will be as famous as Armiston.
I will create another Godahl.' But," he said with
a wave of his hands, "what is the result? I tie the
knot, but I can't untie it. The trouble is, I am
[18]


THE INFALLIBLE GODAHL
found that J. Borden Benson was quite some per-
sonage, several lines being devoted to him. This
was extremely pleasing. Armiston had been think-
ing of that white-ruby yarn. It appealed to his
sense of the dramatic. He would work it up in his
best style, and on publication have a fine laugh on
Benson by sending him an autographed copy and
thus waking that gentleman up to the fact that
it really had been the great Armiston in person he
had befriended and entertained. What a joke it
would be on Benson, thought the author; not with-
out an intermixture of personal vanity, for even a
genius such as he was not blind to flattery properly
applied, and Benson unknowingly had laid it on
thick.
"And, by gad!" thought the author, "I will
use the Wentworths as the main characters, as the
victims of Godahl. They are just the people to
fit into such a romance. Benson put money in my
pocket, though he didn't suspect it. Lucky he
didn't know what shifts we popular authors are
put to for plots."
Suiting the action to the words, Armiston and
his wife accepted the next invitation they received
from the Wentworths.
Mrs. Wentworth, be it understood, was a lion
hunter. She was forever trying to gather about
[20]


THE INFALLIBLE GODAHL
her such celebrities as Armiston the author, Brack-
ens the painter, Johanssen the explorer, and others.
Armiston had always withstood her wiles. He
always had some excuse to keep him away from
her gorgeous table, where she exhibited her lions
to her simpering friends.
There were many undesirables sitting at the
table, idle-rich youths, girls of the fast hunting set,
and so on, and they all gravely shook the great
author by the hand and told him what a wonderful
man he was. As for Mrs. Wentworth, she was
too highly elated at her success in roping him for
sane speech, and she fluttered about him like a
hysterical bridesmaid. But, Armiston noted with
relief, one of his pals was there—Johanssen. Over
cigars and cognac he managed to buttonhole the
explorer.
"Johanssen," he said, "you have been every-
where."
"You are mistaken there," said Johanssen. "I
have never before tonight been north of Fifty-ninth
Street in New York."
"Yes, but you have been in Java and Ceylon
and the Settlements. Tell me, have you ever heard
of such a thing as a white ruby?"
The explorer narrowed his eyes to a slit and
looked queerly at his questioner. "That's a queer
[21]


THE INFALLIBLE GODAHL
question," he said in a low voice, "to ask in this
house."
Armiston felt his pulse quicken. "Why?" he
asked, assuming an air of surprised innocence.
"If you don't know," said the explorer shortly,
"I certainly will not enlighten you."
"All right; as you please. But you haven't an-
swered my question yet. Have you ever heard of
a white ruby?"
"I don't mind telling you that I have heard of
such a thing—that is, I have heard there is a ruby
in existence that is called the white ruby. It isn't
really white, you know; it has a purplish tinge.
But the old heathen who rightly owns it likes to
call it white, just as he likes to call his blue and
gray elephants white."
"Who owns it?" asked Armiston, trying his
best to make his voice sound natural. To find in
this manner that there was some parallel for the
mystical white ruby of which Benson had told
him appealed strongly to his super-developed dra-
matic sense. He was now as keen on the scent as
a hound.
Johanssen took to drumming on the tablecloth.
He smiled to himself and his eyes glowed. Then
he turned and looked sharply at his questioner.
"I suppose," he said, "that all things are grist
[22]


THE INFALLIBLE GODAHL
to a man of your trade. If you are thinking of
building a story round a white ruby I can think
of nothing more fascinating. But, Armiston," he
said, suddenly altering his tone and almost whis-
pering, "if you are on the track of the white ruby
let me advise you now to call off your dogs and keep
your throat whole. I think I am a brave man. I
have shot tigers at ten paces—held my fire pur-
posely to see how charmed a life I really did bear.
I have been charged by mad rhinos and by wounded
buffaloes. I have walked across a clearing where
the air was being punctured with bullets as thick
as holes in a mosquito screen. But," he said, lay-
ing his hand on Armiston's arm, "I have never had
the nerve to hunt the white ruby."
"Capital!" exclaimed the author.
"Capital, yes, for a man who earns his bread and
gets his excitement by sitting at a typewriter and
dreaming about these things. But take my word
for it, it isn't capital for a man who gets his excite-
ment by doing this thing. Hands off, my friend!"
"It really does exist then?"
Johanssen puckered his lips. "So they say," he
said.
"What's it worth?"
"Worth? What do you mean by worth? Dol-
lars and cents? What is your child worth to you?
[23]


THE INFALLIBLE GODAHL
A million, a billion—how much? Tell me. No,
you can't. Well, that's just what this miserable
stone is worth to the man who rightfully owns it.
Now let's quit talking nonsense. There's Billy
Wentworth shooing the men into the drawing-
room. I suppose we shall be entertained this eve-
ning by some of the hundred-dollar-a-minute song-
birds, as usual. It's amazing what these people
will spend for mere vulgar display when there are
hundreds of familieststarving within a mile of this
spot!"
Two famous singers sang that night. Armiston
did not have much opportunity to look over the
house. He was now fully determined to lay the
scene of his story in this very house. At leave-
taking the sugar-sweet Mrs. Billy Wentworth drew
Armiston aside and said:
"It's rather hard on you to ask you to sit through
an evening with these people. I will make amends
by asking you to come to me some night when we
can be by ourselves. Are you interested in rare
curios? Yes, we all are. I have some really won-
derful things I want you to see. Let us make it
next Tuesday, with a little informal dinner, just
for ourselves."
Armiston then and there made the lion hunter
radiantly happy by accepting her invitation to sit
[24]


THE INFALLIBLE GODAHL
at her board as a family friend instead of as a
lion.
As he put his wife into their automobile he
turned and looked at the house. It stood opposite
Central Park. It was a copy of some French cha-
teau in gray sandstone, with a barbican, and over-
hanging towers, and all the rest of it. The win-
dows of the street floor peeped out through deep
embrasures and were heavily guarded with iron
latticework.
"Godahl will have the very devil of a time break-
ing in there," he chuckled to himself. Late that
night his wife awakened him to find out why he
was tossing about so.
"That white ruby has got on my nerves," he said
cryptically, and she, thinking he was dreaming,
persuaded him to try to sleep again.
Great authors must really live in the flesh, at
times at least, the lives of their great characters.
Otherwise these great characters would not be so
real as they are. Here was Armiston, who had cre-
ated a superman in the person of Godahl the thief.
For ten years he had written nothing else. He had
laid the life of Godahl out in squares, thought for
him, dreamed about him, set him to new tasks,
gone through all sorts of queer adventures with
[25]


THE INFALLIBLE GODAHL
him. And this same Godahl had amply repaid him.
He had raised the author from the ranks of strug-
gling amateurs to a position among the most highly
paid fiction writers in the United States. He had
brought him ease and luxury. Armiston did not
need the money any more. The serial rights telling
of the exploits of this Godahl had paid him hand-
somely. The books of Godahl's adventures had
paid him even better, and had furnished him yearly
with a never-failing income, like government bonds,
but at a much higher rate of interest. Even though
the crimes this Godahl had committed were all on
paper and almost impossible, nevertheless Godahl
was a living being to his creator. More—he was
Armiston, and Armiston was Godahl.
It was not surprising, then, that when Tuesday
came Armiston awaited the hour with feverish im-
patience. Here, as his strange friend had so
thoughtlessly and casually told him was an oppor-
tunity for the great Godahl to outdo even himself.
Here was an opportunity for Godahl to be the
greatest detective in the world, in the first place,
before he could carry out one of his sensational
thefts.
So it was Godahl, not Armiston, who helped his
wife out of their automobile that evening and
mounted the splendid steps of the Wentworth
[26]


THE INFALLIBLE GODAHL
for the butler seemed to catch every word he
said.
"Fact number two!" said the creator of Godahl
the thief.
He felt no compunction at thus noting the most
intimate details of the Wentworth establishment.
An accident had put him on the track of a rare
good story, and it was all copy. Besides, he told
himself, when he came to write the story he would
disguise it in such a way that no one reading it
would know it was about the Wentworths. If their
establishment happened to possess the requisite set-
ting for a great story, surely there was no reason
why he should not take advantage of that fact.
The great thief—he made no bones of the fact
to himself that he had come here to help Godahl
—accepted the flattering greeting of his hostess
with the grand air that so well fitted him. Ar-
miston was tall and thin, with slender fingers and
a touch of gray in his wavy hair, for all his youth-
ful years, and he knew how to wear his clothes.
Mrs. Wentworth was proud of him as a social
ornament, even aside from his glittering fame as
an author. And Mrs. Armiston was well born, so
there was no jar in their being received in the best
house of the town.
The dinner was truly delightful. Here Ar-
[28]



o





THE INFALLIBLE GODAHL
miston saw, or thought he saw, one of the reasons
for the deaf butler. The hostess had him so
trained that she was able to catch her servant's eye
and instruct him in this or that trifle by merely
moving her lips. It was almost uncanny, thought
the author, this silent conversation the deaf man
and his mistress were able to carry on unnoticed by
the others.
"By gad, it's wonderful! Godahl, my friend,
underscore that note of yours referring to the deaf
butler. Don't miss it. It will take a trick."
Armiston gave his undivided attention to his
hostess as soon as he found Wentworth entertain-
ing Mrs. Armiston and thus properly dividing
the party. He persuaded her to talk by a cleverly
pointed question here and there; and as she talked,
he studied her.
"We are going to rob you of your precious white
ruby, my friend," he thought humorously to him-
self; "and while we are laying our wires there is
nothing about you too small to be worthy of our
attention."
Did she really possess the white ruby? Did this
man Benson know anything about the white ruby?
And what was the meaning of the strange actions
of his friend Johanssen when approached on the
subject in this house? His hostess came to have
[29]


THE INFALLIBLE GODAHL
a wonderful fascination for him. He pictured this
beautiful creature so avid in her lust for rare gems
that she actually did penetrate the establishment
of some heathen potentate in the Straits simply for
the purpose of stealing the mystic stone. "Have
you ever, by any chance, been in the Straits?" he
asked indifferently.
"Wait," Mrs. Wentworth said with a laugh as
she touched his hand lightly; "I have some curios
from the Straits, and I will venture to say you have
never seen their like."
Half an hour later they were all seated over
coffee and cigarettes in Mrs. Wentworth's boudoir.
It was indeed a strange place. There was scarcely
a single corner of the world that had not con-
tributed something to its furnishing. Carvings of
teak and ivory; hangings of sweet-scented vegetable
fibers; lamps of jade; queer little gods, all sitting
like Buddha with their legs drawn up under them,
carved out of jade or sardonyx; scarfs of baroque
pearls; Darjeeling turquoises—Armiston had never
before seen such a collection. And each item had
its story. He began to look on this frail little
woman with different eyes. She had been and seen
and done, and the tale of her life, what she had
actually lived, outshone even that of the glittering
rascal Godahl, who was standing beside him now
[3o]


THE INFALLIBLE GODAHL
and directing his ceaseless questions. "Have you
any rubies?" he asked.
Mrs. Wentworth bent before a safe in the wall.
With swift fingers she whirled the combination.
The keen eyes of Armiston followed the bright
knob like a cat.
"Fact number three!" said the Godahl in him
as he mentally made note of the numbers. "Five—
eight—seven—four—six. That's the combina-
tion."
Mrs. Wentworth showed him six pigeon-blood
rubies. "This one is pale," he said carelessly,
holding a particularly large stone up to the light.
"Is it true that occasionally they are found white?"
His hostess looked at him before answering.
He was intent on a deep-red stone he held in the
palm of his hand. It seemed a thousand miles deep.
"What a fantastic idea!" she said. She glanced
at her husband, who had reached out and taken her
hand in a naturally affectionate manner.
"Fact number four!" mentally noted Armiston.
"Are not you in mortal fear of robbery with all of
this wealth?"
Mrs. Wentworth laughed lightly.
"That is why we live in a fortress," she said.
"Have you never, then, been visited by thieves?"
asked the author boldly.
[31]


THE INFALLIBLE GODAHL
"Never!" she said.
"A lie," thought Armiston. "Fact number five!
We are getting on swimmingly."
"I do not believe that even your Godahl the
Infallible could get in here," Mrs. Wentworth
said. "Not even the servants enter this room.
That door is not locked with a key; yet it locks.
I am not much of a housekeeper," she said lazily,
"but such housekeeping as is done in this room is
all done by these poor little hands of mine."
"No! Most amazing! May I look at the
door?"
"Yes, Mr. Godahl," said this woman, who had
lived more lives than Godahl himself.
Armiston examined the door, this strange device
that locked without a key, apparently indeed with-
out a lock, and came away disappointed.
"Well, Mr. Godahl?" his hostess said taunt-
ingly. He shook his head in perplexity.
"Most ingenious," he said; and then suddenly:
"Yet I will venture that if I turned Godahl loose
on this problem he would solve it."
"What fun!" she cried clapping her hands.
"You challenge him?" asked Armiston.
"What nonsense is this!" cried Wentworth,
coming forward.
"No nonsense at all," said Mrs. Wentworth.
[32]


THE INFALLIBLE GODAHL
"Mr. Armiston has just said that his Godahl could
rob me. Let him try. If he can—if mortal man
can gain the secret of ingress and egress of this
room—I want to know it. I don't believe mortal
man can enter this room."
Armiston noted a strange glitter in her eyes.
"Gad! She was born to the parti What a
woman!" he thought. And then aloud:
"I will set him to work. I will lay the scene of
his exploit in—say—Hungary, where this room
might very well exist in some feudal castle. How
many people have entered this room since it was
made the storehouse of all this wealth?"
"Not six besides yourself," replied Mrs. Went-
worth.
"Then no one can recognize it if I describe it
in a story—in fact, I will change the material
details. We will say that it is not jewels Godahl
is seeking. We will say that it is a"
Mrs. Wentworth's hand touched his own. The
tips of her fingers were cold. "A white ruby,"
she said.
"Gad! What a thoroughbred!" he exclaimed
to himself—or to Godahl. And then aloud:
"Capital! I will send you a copy of the story
autographed."
The next day he called at The Towers and sent
[33]


THE INFALLIBLE GODAHL
up his card to Mr. Benson's apartments. Surely
a man of Benson's standing could be trusted with
such a secret. In fact it was evidently not a secret
to Benson, who in all probability was one of the
six Mrs. Wentworth said had entered that room.
Armiston wanted to talk the matter over with Ben-
son. He had given up his idea of having fun with
him by sending him a marked copy of the maga-
zine containing his tale. His story had taken com-
plete possession of him, as always had been the
case when he was at work dispatching Godahl on
his adventures.
"If that ruby really exists," Armiston said, "I
don't know whether I shall write the story or steal
the ruby for myself. Benson is right. Godahl
should not steal any more for mere money. He
is after rare, unique things now. And I am Go-
dahl. I feel the same way myself."
A valet appeared, attired in a gorgeous livery.
Armiston wondered why any self-respecting Amer-
ican would consent to don such raiment, even
though it was the livery of the great Benson
family.
"Mr. Armiston, sir," said the valet, looking at
the author's card he held in his hand. "Mr. Ben-
son sailed for Europe yesterday morning. He is
spending the summer in Norway. I am to follow
[34]


THE INFALLIBLE GODAHL
on the next steamer. Is there any message I can
take to him, sir? I have heard him speak of you,
sir."
Armiston took the card and wrote on it in pencil:
"I called to apologize. I am Martin Brown.
The chance was too good to miss. You will par-
don me, won't you?"
For the next two weeks Armiston gave himself
over to his dissipation, which was accompanying
Godahl on this adventure. It was a formidable
task. The secret room he placed in a Hungarian
castle, as he had promised. A beautiful countess
was his heroine. She had seen the world, mostly
in man's attire, and her escapades had furnished
vivacious reading for two continents. No one
could possibly connect her with Mrs. Billy Went-
worth. So far it was easy. But how was Godahl
to get into this wonderful room where the countess
had hidden this wonderful rare white ruby? The
room was lined with chilled steel. Even the door
—this he had noted when he was examining that
peculiar portal—was lined with layers of steel. It
could withstand any known tool.
However, Armiston was Armiston, and Godahl
was Godahl. He got into that room. He got
the white ruby!
The manuscript went to the printers, and the
[35]


THE INFALLIBLE GODAHL
publishers said that Armiston had never done any-
thing like it since he started Godahl on his aston-
ishing career.
He banked the check for his tale, and as he did
so he said: "Gad! I would a hundred times rather
possess that white ruby. Confound the thing! I
feel as if I had not heard the last of it."
Armiston and his wife went to Maine for the
summer without leaving their address. Along in
the early fall he received by registered mail, for-
warded by his trusted servant at the town house,
a package containing the envelope he had ad-
dressed to J. Borden Benson, The Towers. Fur-
thermore it contained the dollar bills he had dis-
patched to that individual, together with his note
which he had signed "Martin Brown." And
across the note, in the most insulting manner, was
written in coarse, greasy blue-pencil lines:
"Damnable impertinence. I'll cane you the first
time I see you."
And no more. That was enough of course—
quite sufficient.
In the same mail came a note from Armiston's
publishers, saying that his story, The White Ruby,
was scheduled for publication in the October num-
ber, out September twenty-fifth. This cheered him
[36]


THE INFALLIBLE GODAHL
up. He was anxious to see it in print. Late in
September they started back to town.
"Aha!" he said as he sat reading his paper in
the parlor car,—he had caught this train by the
veriest tip of its tail and upset the running schedule
in the act—"Ah! I see my genial friend, J. Bor-
den Benson, is in town, contrary to custom at this
time of year. Life must be a great bore to that
snob."
A few days after arriving in town he received
a package of advance copies of the magazine con-
taining his story, and he read the tale of The
White Ruby as if he had never seen it before.
On the cover of one copy, which he was to dis-
patch to his grumpy benefactor, J. Borden Benson,
he wrote:
Charmed to be caned. Call any time. See con-
tents
Oliver Armiston.
On another he wrote:
Dear Mrs. W'entworth: See how simple it is to
pierce your fancied security!
He dispatched these two magazines with a feel-
ing of glee. No sooner had he done so, however,
than he learned that the Wentworths had not yet
[37]


THE INFALLIBLE GODAHL
returned from Newport. The magazine would be
forwarded to them no doubt. The Wentworths'
absence made the tale all the better, in fact, for
in his story Armiston had insisted on Godahl's
breaking into the castle and solving the mystery
of the keyless door during the season when the
chateau was closed and strung with a perfect net-
work of burglar alarms connecting with the gen-
darmerie in the near-by village.
That was the twenty-fifth day of September.
The magazine was put on sale that morning.
On the twenty-sixth day of September Armiston
bought a late edition of an afternoon paper from
a leather-lunged boy who was hawking "Extra!"
in the street. Across the first page the headlines
met his eye:
ROBBERY AND MURDER IN THE
WENTWORTH MANSION!
Private watchmen, summoned by burglar alarm at ten
o'clock this morning, find servant with skull crushed on
floor of mysterious steel-doored room. Murdered man's
pockets filled with rare jewels. Police believe he was
murdered by confederate who escaped.
The Wentworth Butler, Stone Deaf, Had Just
Returned From Newport to Open House at Time of
Murder.
• • • . a • .
[38]


THE INFALLIBLE GODAHL
It was ten o'clock that night when an automo-
bile drew up at Armiston's door and a tall man
with a square jaw, square shoes and a square mus-
tache alighted. This was Deputy Police Commis-
sioner Byrnes, a professional detective whom the
new administration had drafted into the city's ser-
vice from the government secret service.
Byrnes was admitted, and as he advanced to the
middle of the drawing-room, without so much as
a nod to the ghostlike Armiston who stood shiver-
ing before him, he drew a package of papers from
his pocket.
"I presume you have seen all the evening pa-
pers," he said, spitting his words through his half-
closed teeth with so much show of personal malice
that Armiston—never a brave man in spite of his
Godahl—cowered before him.
Armiston shook his head dumbly at first, but at
length he managed to say: "Not all; no."
The deputy commissioner with much delibera-
tion drew out the latest extra and handed it to
Armiston without a word.
It was the Evening News. The first page was
divided down its entire length by a black line. On
one side and occupying four columns, was a word-
for-word reprint of Armiston's story, The White
Ruby.
[39]


THE INFALLIBLE GODAHL
On the other, the facts in deadly parallel, was a
graphic account of the robbery and murder at the
home of Billy Wentworth. The parallel was glar-
ing in the intensity of its dumb accusation. On
the one side was the theoretical Godahl, working
his masterly way of crime, step by step; and on
the other was the plagiarism of Armiston's story,
following the intricacies of the master mind with
copybook accuracy.
The editor, who must have been a genius in his
way, did not accuse. He simply placed the fiction
and the fact side by side and let the reader judge
for himself. It was masterly. If, as the law
says, the mind that conceives, the intelligence that
directs, a crime is more guilty than the very hand
that acts, then Armiston here was both thief and
murderer. Thief, because the white ruby had act-
ually been stolen. Mrs. Billy Wentworth, rushed
to the city by special train, attended by doctors
and nurses, now confirmed the story of the theft
of the ruby. Murderer, because in the story Go-
dahl had for once in his career stooped to murder
as the means, and had triumphed over the dead
body of his confederate, scorning, in his joy at
possessing the white ruby, the paltry diamonds,
pearls and red rubies with which his confederate
had crammed his pockets.
[4o]


THE INFALLIBLE GODAHL
Armiston seized the police official by his
lapels.
"The butler!" he screamed. "The butler! Yes,
the butler. Quick, or he will have flown."
Byrnes gently disengaged the hands that had
grasped him.
"Too late," he said. "He has already flown.
Sit down and quiet your nerves. We need your
help. You are the only man in the world who
can help us now."
When Armiston was himself again he told the
whole tale, beginning with his strange meeting with
J. Borden Benson on the train, and ending with
his accepting Mrs. Wentworth's challenge to have
Godahl break into the room and steal the white
ruby. Byrnes nodded over the last part. He had
already heard that from Mrs. Wentworth, and
there was the autographed copy of the magazine to
show for it.
"You say that J. Borden Benson told you of this
white ruby in the first place."
Armiston again told, in great detail, the circum-
stances, all the humor now turned into grim
tragedy.
"That is strange," said the ex-secret-service
chief. "Did you leave your purse at home or was
your pocket picked?"
[41]


THE INFALLIBLE GODAHL
"I thought at first that I had absent-mindedly
left it at home. Then I remembered having paid
the chauffeur out of the roll of bills, so my pocket
must have been picked."
"What kind of a looking man was this Benson?"
"You must know him," said Armiston.
"Yes, I know him; but I want to know what
he looked like to you. I want to find out how he
happened to be so handy when you were in need of
money."
Armiston described the man minutely.
The deputy sprang to his feet. "Come with
me," he said; and they hurried into the automobile
and soon drew up in front of The Towers.
Five minutes later they were ushered into the
magnificent apartment of J. Borden Benson. That
worthy was in his bath preparing to retire for the
night.
"I don't catch the name," Armiston and the
deputy heard him cry through the bathroom door
to his valet.
"Mr. Oliver Armiston, sir."
"Ah, he has come for his caning, I expect. I'll
be there directly."
He did not wait to complete his toilet, so eager
was he to see the author. He strode out in a bril-
liant bathrobe and in one hand he carried an alpen-
[42]


THE INFALLIBLE GODAHL
stock. His eyes glowed in anger. But the sight
of Byrnes surprised as well as halted him.
"Do you mean to say this is J. Borden Benson?"
cried Armiston to Byrnes, rising to his feet and
pointing at the man.
"The same," said the deputy; "I swear to it.
I know him well! I take it he is not the gentleman
who paid your carfare to New Haven."
"Not by a hundred pounds!" exclaimed Ar-
miston as he surveyed the huge bulk of the elephan-
tine clubman.
The forced realization that the stranger he had
hitherto regarded as a benefactor was not J. Bor-
den Benson at all, but some one who had merely
assumed that worthy's name while he was playing
the conceited author as an easy dupe, did more to
quiet Armiston's nerves than all the sedatives his
doctor had given him. It was a badly dashed pop-
ular author who sat down with the deputy com-
missioner in his library an hour later. He would
gladly have consigned Godahl to the bottom of the
sea; but it was too late. Godahl had taken the
trick.
"How do you figure it?" Armiston asked, turn-
ing to the deputy.
"The beginning is simple enough. It is the end
that bothers me," said the official. "Your bogus
[43]


THE INFALLIBLE GODAHL
J. Borden Benson is, of course, the brains of the
whole combination. Your infernal Godahl has
told us just exactly how this crime was committed.
Now your infernal Godahl must bring the guilty
parties to justice."
It was plain to be seen that the police official
hated Godahl worse than poison, and feared him
too.
"Why not look in the Rogues' Gallery for this
man who befriended me on the train?"
The chief laughed.
"For the love of Heaven, Armiston, do you, who
pretend to know all about scientific thievery, think
for a moment that the man who took your measure
so easily is of the class of crooks who get their
pictures in the Rogues' Gallery? Talk sense!"
"I can't believe you when you say he picked my
pocket."
"I don't care whether you believe me or not;
he did, or one of his pals did. It all amounts to
the same thing, don't you see? First, he wanted
to get acquainted with you. Now the best way to
get into your good graces was to put you unsus-
pectingly under obligation to him. So he robs you
of your money. From what I have seen of you in
the last few hours it must have been like taking
candy from a child. Then he gets next to you in
[44]


THE INFALLIBLE GODAHL
line. He pretends that you are merely some trouble-
some toad in his path. He gives you money for
your ticket, to get you out of his way so he won't
miss his train. His train! Of course his train is
your train. He puts you in a position where you
have to make advances to him. And then, grinning
to himself all the time at your conceit and gulli-
bility, he plays you through your pride, your
Godahl. Think of the creator of the great Godahl
falling for a trick like that!"
Byrnes' last words were the acme of biting sar-
casm.
"You admit yourself that he is too clever for
you to put your hands on."
"And then," went on Byrnes, not heeding the
interruption, "he invites you to lunch and tells you
what he wants you to do for him. And you follow
his lead like a sheep at the tail of the bellwether!
Great Scott, Armiston! I would give a year's
salary for one hour's conversation with that
man."
Armiston was beginning to see the part this
queer character had played; but he was in a semi-
hysterical state, and, like a woman in such a posi-
tion, he wanted a calm mind to tell him the whole
thing in words of one syllable, to verify his own
dread.
[45 1


THE INFALLIBLE GODAHL
"What do you mean?" he asked. "I don't quite
follow. You say he tells me what he wants me to
do."
Byrnes shrugged his shoulders in disgust; then,
as if resigned to the task before him, he began his
explanation:
"Here, man, I will draw a diagram for you.
This gentleman friend of yours—we will call him
John Smith for convenience—wants to get posses-
sion of this white ruby. He knows that it is in the
keeping of Mrs. Billy Wentworth. He knows you
know Mrs. Wentworth and have access to her
house. He knows that she stole this bauble and is
frightened to death all the time. Now John Smith
is a pretty clever chap. He handled the great
Armiston like hot putty. He had exhausted his
resources. He is baffled and needs help. What
does he do? He reads the stories about the great
Godahl. Confidently, Mr. Armiston, I will tell
you that I think your great Godahl is mush. But
that is neither here nor there. If you can sell him
as a gold brick, all right. But Mr. John Smith is
struck by the wonderful ingenuity of this Godahl.
He says: 'Ha! I will get Godahl to tell me how
to get this gem!'
"So he gets hold of yourself, sir, and persuades
you that you are playing a joke on him by getting
[ 46 ]


THE INFALLIBLE GODAHL
him to rant and rave about the great Godahl. Then
—and here the villain enters—he says: 'Here is a
thing the great Godahl cannot do. I dare him to
do it.' He tells you about the gem, whose very
existence is quite fantastic enough to excite the im-
agination of the wonderful Armiston. And by
clever suggestion he persuades you to lay the plot
at the home of Mrs. Wentworth. And all the time
you are chuckling to yourself, thinking what a rare
joke you are going to have on J. Borden Benson
when you send him an autographed copy and show
him that he was talking to the distinguished genius
all the time and didn't know it. That's the whole
story, sir. Now wake up!"
Byrnes sat back in his chair and regarded Ar-
miston with the smile a pedagogue bestows on a
refractory boy whom he has just flogged soundly.
"I will explain further," he continued. "You
haven't visited the house yet. You can't. Mrs.
Wentworth, for all she is in bed with four dozen
hot-water bottles, would tear you limb from limb if
you went there. And don't you think for a minute
she isn't able to. That woman is a vixen."
Armiston nodded gloomily. The very thought
of her now sent him into a cold sweat.
"Mr. Godahl, the obliging," continued the dep-
uty, "notes one thing to begin with: The house
[47]


THE INFALLIBLE GODAHL
cannot be entered from the outside. So it must
be an inside job. How can this be accomplished?
Well, there is the deaf butler. Why is he deaf?
Godahl ponders. Ha! He has it! The Went-
worths are so dependent on servants that they must
have them round at all times. This butler is the
one who is constantly about them. They are wor-
ried to death by their possession of this white ruby.
Their house has been raided from the inside a
dozen times. Nothing is taken, mind you. They
suspect their servants. This thing haunts them,
but the woman will not give up this foolish bauble.
So she has as her major domo a man who cannot
understand a word in any language unless he is
looking at the speaker and is in a bright light. He
can only understand the lips. Handy, isn't it? In
a dull light or with their backs turned they can talk
about anything they want to. This is a jewel of
a butler.
"But," added Byrnes, "one day a man calls. He
is a lawyer. He tells the butler he is heir to a for-
tune—fifty thousand dollars. He must go to Ire-
land to claim it. Your friend on the train—he is
the man of course—sends your butler to Ireland.
So this precious butler is lost. They must have
another. Only a deaf one will do. And they find
just the man they want—quite accidentally, you
[48]


THE INFALLIBLE GODAHL
understand. Of course it is Godahl, with forged
letters saying he has been in service in great houses.
Presto! The great Godahl himself is now the
butler. It is simple enough to play deaf. You say
this is fiction. Let me tell you this: Six weeks ago
the Wentworths actually changed butlers. That
hasn't come out in the papers yet."
Armiston, who had listened to the deputy's re-
view of his story listlessly, now sat up with a start.
He suddenly exclaimed gleefully:
"But my story didn't come out till two days
ago!"
"Ah, yes; but you forget that it has been in the
hands of your publishers for three months. A man
who was clever enough to dupe the great Armiston
wouldn't shirk the task of getting hold of a proof
of that story."
Armiston sank deeper into his chair.
"Once Godahl got inside the house the rest was
simple. He corrupted one of the servants. He
opened the steel-lined door with the flame of an
oxyacetylene blast. As you say in your story that
flame cuts steel like wax; he didn't have to bother
about the lock. He simply cut the door down.
Then he put his confederate in good humor by
telling him to fill his pockets with the diamonds
and other junk in the safe, which he obligingly
[49]


THE INFALLIBLE GODAHL
opens. One thing bothers me, Armiston. How
did you find out about that infernal contraption that
killed the confederate?"
Armiston buried his face in his hands. Byrnes
rudely shook him.
"Come," he said; "you murdered that man,
though you are innocent. Tell me how."
"Is this the third degree?" said Armiston.
"It looks like it," said the deputy grimly as he
gnawed at his stubby mustache. Armiston drew a
long breath, like one who realizes how hopeless is
his situation. He began to speak in a low tone.
All the while the deputy glared at Godahl's inventor
with his accusing eye.
"When I was sitting in the treasure room with
the Wentworths and my wife, playing auction
bridge, I dismissed the puzzle of the door as easily
solved by means of the brazing flame. The prob-
lem was not to get into the house or into this
room, but to find the ruby. It was not in the
safe."
"No, of course not. I suppose your friend on
the train was kind enough to tell you that. He
had probably looked there himself."
"Gad! He did tell me that, come to think of
it. Well, I studied that room. I was sure the
white ruby, if it really existed, was within ten feet
[5o]


THE INFALLIBLE GODAHL
of me. I examined the floor, the ceiling, the walls.
No result. But," he said, shivering as if in a draft
of cold air, "there was a chest in that room made
of Lombardy oak." The harassed author buried
his face in his hands. "Oh, this is terrible!" he
moaned.
"Go on," said the deputy in his colorless voice.
"I can't. I tell it all in the story, Heaven help
me!"
"I know you tell it all in the story," came the
rasping voice of Byrnes; "but I want you to tell
it to me. I want to hear it from your own lips—
as Armiston, you understand, whose deviltry has
just killed a man; not as your damnable Godahl."
"The chest was not solid oak," went on Ar-
miston. "It was solid steel covered with oak to
disguise it."
"How did you know that?"
"I had seen it before."
"Where?"
"In Italy fifteen years ago, in a decayed castle,
back through the Soldini pass from Lugano. It
was the possession of an old nobleman, a friend
of a friend of mine."
"Humph!" grunted the deputy. And then:
"Well, how did you know it was the same one?"
"By the inscription carved on the front. It
[SO


THE INFALLIBLE GODAHL
was—but I have told all this in print already.
Why need I go over it all again?"
"I want to hear it again from your own lips.
Maybe there are some points you did not tell in
print. Go on!"
"The inscription was 'Sanctus Dominus.'"
The deputy smiled grimly.
"Very fitting, I should say. Praise the Lord with
the most diabolical engine of destruction I have
ever seen."
"And then," said Armiston, "there was the
owner's name—'Arno Petronii.' Queer name
that."
"Yes," said the deputy dryly. "How did you
hit on this as the receptacle for the white ruby?"
"If it were the same one I saw in Lugano—and
I felt sure it was—it was certain death to attempt
to open it—that is, for one who did not know how.
Such machines were common enough in the Middle
Ages. There was an obvious way to open it. It
was meant to be obvious. To open it that way
was inevitable death. It released tremendous
springs that crushed anything within a radius of
five feet. You saw that?"
"I did," said the deputy, and he shuddered as he
spoke. Then, bringing his fierce face within an
inch of the cowering Armiston, he said:
[52]


THE INFALLIBLE GODAHL
filling his pockets with these other jewels, and told
him to touch the spring."
"You murdered that man in cold blood," said
the deputy, rising and pacing the floor. "The poor
deluded devil, from the looks of what's left of him,
never let out a whimper, never knew what hit him.
Here, take some more of this brandy. Your nerves
are in a bad way."
"What I can't make out is this," said Armiston
after a time. "There was a million dollars' worth
of stuff in that room that could have been put into
a quart measure. Why did not this thief, who was
willing to go to all the trouble to get the white
ruby, take some of the jewels? Nothing is miss-
ing besides the white ruby, as I understand it. Is
there?"
"No," said the deputy. "Not a thing. Here
comes a messenger boy."
"For Mr. Armiston? Yes," he said to the en-
tering maid. The boy handed him a package for
which the deputy signed.
"This is for you," he said, turning to Armiston
as he closed the door. "Open it."
When the package was opened the first object
to greet their eyes was a roll of bills.
"This grows interesting," said Byrnes. He
counted the money. "Thirty-nine dollars. Your
[54]



'THERE WAS A MILLION DOLLARS- WORTH OF STUFF IN
THAT ROOM."'


THE INFALLIBLE GODAHL
friend evidently is returning the money he stole
from you at the station. What does he have to
say for himself? I see there is a note."
He reached over and took the paper out of Ar-
miston's hands. It was ordinary bond stationery,
with no identifying marks of any consequence. The
note was written in bronze ink, in a careful copper-
plate hand, very small and precise. It read:
"Most Excellency Sir; Herewith, most honored
dollars I am dispatching complete. Regretful ex-
tremely of sad blood being not to be prevented.
Accept trifle from true friend."
That was all.
"There's a jeweler's box," said Byrnes. "Open
it."
Inside the box was a lozenge-shaped diamond
about the size of a little fingernail. It hung from
a tiny bar of silver, highly polished and devoid of
ornament. On the back under the clasp-pin were
several microscopic characters.
There were several obvious clues to be followed
—the messenger boy, the lawyers who induced the
deaf butler to go to Ireland on what later proved to
be a wild-goose chase, the employment agency
through which the new butler had been secured,
[55]


THE INFALLIBLE GODAHL
and so on. But all of these avenues proved too
respectable to yield results. Deputy Byrnes had
early arrived at his own conclusions, by virtue of
the knowledge he had gained as government agent,
yet to appease the popular indignation he kept up
a desultory search for the criminal.
It was natural that Armiston should think of
his friend Johanssen at this juncture. Johanssen
possessed that wonderful oriental capacity of aloof-
ness which we Westerners are so ready to term in-
difference or lack of curiosity.
"No, I thank you," said Johanssen. "I'd rather
not mix in."
The pleadings of the author were in vain. His
words fell on deaf ears.
"If you will not lift a hand because of your
friendship for me," said Armiston bitterly, "then
think of the law. Surely there is something due
justice, when both robbery and bloody murder have
been committed!"
"Justice!" cried Johanssen in scorn. "Justice,
you say! My friend, if you steal from me, and I
reclaim by force that which is mine, is that injustice?
If you cannot see the idea behind that, surely, then,
I cannot explain it to you."
"Answer one question," said Armiston. "Have
you any idea who the man was I met on the train?"
[56]


THE INFALLIBLE GODAHL
V
"For your own peace of mind—yes. As a clue
leading to what you so glibly term justice—pshaw!
To-night's sundown would be easier for you to
catch than this man if I know him. Mind you,
Armiston, I do not know. But I believe. Here
is what I believe:
"In a dozen courts of kings and petty prince-
lings that I know of in the East there are West-
erners retained as advisers—fiscal agents they usu-
ally call them. Usually they are American or Eng-
lish, or occasionally German.
"Now I ask you a question. Say that you were
in the hire of a heathen prince, and a grievous
wrong were done that prince, say, by a thoughtless
woman who had not the least conception of the
beauty of an idea she had outraged. Merely for
the possession of a bauble, valueless to her except to
appease vanity, she ruthlessly rode down a super-
stition that was as holy to this prince as your
own belief in Christ is to you. What would
you do?"
Without waiting for Armiston to answer, Jo-
hanssen went on:
"I know a man You say this man you met
on the train had wonderful hands, did he not?
Yes, I thought so. Armiston, I know a man who
would not sit idly by and smile to himself over the
\
[57]


THE INFALLIBLE GODAHL
ridiculous fuss occasioned by the loss of an imper-
fect stone—off color, badly cut, and everything else.
Neither would he laugh at the superstition behind
it. He would say to himself: 'This superstition
is older by several thousand years than I or my
people.' And this man, whom I know, is brave
enough to right that wrong himself if his under-
lings failed."
"I follow," said Armiston dully.
"But," said Johanssen, leaning forward and
tapping the author on the knee—"but the task
proves too big for him. What did he do? He
asked the cleverest man in the world to help him.
And Godahl helped him. That," said Johanssen,
interrupting Armiston with a raised finger, "is the
story of the white ruby. The Story of the White
Ruby you see, is something infinitely finer than mere
vulgar robbery and murder, as the author of
the Infallible Godahl conceived it."
Johanssen said a great deal more. In the end
he took the lozenge-shaped diamond pendant and
put the glass on the silver bar, that his friend might
see the inscription on the back. He told him what
the inscription signified—"Brother of a King," and,
furthermore, how few men alive possessed the ca-
pacity for brotherhood.
"I think," said Armiston as he was about to
-
[58]


THE INFALLIBLE GODAHL
take his leave, "that I will travel in the Straits
this winter."
"If you do," said Johanssen, "I earnestly advise
you to leave your Godahl and his decoration at
home."
[59]


G
II
BLIND MAN'S BUFF
"-#"">y ODAHL, attend!" said that adept in
smart crime to himself as he paused
at the curb. "You think you are clever;
but there goes your better."
He had to step into the street to make way for
the crowd that overflowed the pavement—men and
women, newsboys, even unhorsed actors leaving
their pillars for the time for the passing sensation,
the beginning of the homing matinee crowds—all
elbowing for a place about a tall, slender man in
black who, as he advanced, gently tapped a cane-
point before him. What attracted the vortex, how-
ever, was not so much the man himself as the fact
that he wore a black mask. The mask was impene-
trable. People said he had no eyes. It was Malvino
the Magician, born to eternal darkness. From a
child, so the story went, his fingers had been
schooled with the same cruel science they ply in
Russia to educate the toes of their ballet dancers—
until his fingers saw for him.
[60]


BLIND MAN'S BUFF
Head erect, shoulders squared, body poised with
the precision of a skater—his handsome, clear-cut
features, almost ghastly in contrast to the band of
silk ribbon that covered the sockets where sight
should have been—he advanced with military step
in the cleared circle that ever revolved about him,
his slender cane shooting out now and again with
the flash of a rapier to tap^tap-tap on the flags.
Why pay for an orchestra chair to witness his
feats of legerdemain? Peopling silk hats with
fecund families of rabbits, or even discovering a
hogshead of boiling water in an innocent bystand-
er's vest pocket, was as nothing to this theatric
negotiation of Broadway in the rush hour of
late Saturday afternoon. Malvino the Magician
seemed oblivious to everything save the subtle im-
pulses of that wand of a cane.
He stopped, suddenly alert to some immediate
impression. The vague features relaxed; the teeth
shone.
"Ah! Godahl, my friend!" he cried. He turned
and advanced deliberately through the crowd that
opened a path in front of him. Those wonderful
hands reached out and touched Godahl on the arm,
without hesitation as to direction.
Godahl could not repress a smile. Such a trick
was worth a thousand dollars a week to the front
[61]


THE INFALLIBLE GODAHL
of the house; and nobody knew better than the
great Malvino the value of advertising. That was
why he walked Broadway unattended twice a day.
When he spoke it was in French. "I am sick-
ened of them all," he said, sweeping his cane in
a circle to indicate the gaping crowd straining to
catch his words. "See! We have at hand a public
chauffeur with nothing better to do than to follow
in the wake of the Great Malvino. Godahl, my
friend, you are at leisure? Then we will enter."
And Godahl, playing his cards with enjoyment
and admiration as well, permitted the blind man
to open the door and help him—Godahl, possessing
five senses—into the cab; pleased doubly, indeed,
to note that the magician had managed to steal his
wallet in the brief contact. "To the park!" or-
dered Malvino, showing his teeth to the crowd as
he shut the door.
Godahl had known Malvino first in Rome. The
great of the earth gravitate toward each other.
No one knew how great Godahl was except himself.
He knew that he had never failed. No one knew
how great Malvino was except Godahl. Once he
had attempted to imitate Malvino and had almost'
failed. The functions of the third finger of his
left hand lacked the wonderful coordination pos-
sessed by the magician. Malvino knew Godahl ,as
[62]


BLIND MAN'S BUFF
an entertaining cosmopolitan, of which the world
possesses far too few.
"I would exercise my Eng-lish," said the mask,
"if you will be so good, my friend. Tell me—you
know the lake shore in that city of Chicago?"
"As a book," said Godahl. "You are about to
parade there—eh?"
"I am about to parade there," replied Malvino,
imitating the accents of the other. "Therefore I
would know it—as a book. Read it to me—slowly
—page by page, my friend. I walk there shortly."
Godahl possessed, first of all, a marvelous fac-
ulty of visualizing. It was most necessary, almost
as much so in fact for him in his profession as for
Malvino in his—Malvino without eyes. In a
matter-of-fact manner, like a mariner charting
some dangerous channel, he plotted the great thor-
oughfare from the boulevard entrance to the Audi-
torium. The other listened attentively, recording
every word. He had made use of Godahl in this
way before and knew the value of that man's ob-
servations. Then suddenly, impatiently:
"One moment; there is another thing—of im-
mediate need. The Pegasus Club? We are pass-
ing it at this moment—eh? You are one of the—
what is it they say?—ah, yes, the fifty little mil-
lionaires—ha-ha!—yes?"
[ 63]


THE INFALLIBLE GODAHL
Godahl looked out of the window. Indeed, they
were passing the club now. They had been pro-
ceeding slowly, turning this way and that, halted
now and again or hurried on by traffic policemen,
until now they were merely a helpless unit in the
faltering tide of Fifth Avenue; it was past five in
the evening and all uptown New York was on the
move, afoot and awheel.
It was said of Malvino that he would suffer
himself to be whirled round twenty times on being
set down in some remote neighborhood of a strange
city, and with the aid of his cane find his way back
to his hotel with the surety of a pigeon. But even
that faculty did not explain how he knew they
were passing a certain building, the Pegasus Club,
at this moment. Unless, thought Godahl—who
was better pleased to study the other's methods
than to ask questions—unless the sly fox had
it recorded in his strange brain-map that carriage
wheels rattled over car-tracks a hundred yards be-
low this point. Godahl smiles. It was simple
after all.
"I perform for your club Tuesday night. One
thousand dollars they will pay me—the monkey
who sees without eyes! My friend, it is good to
be a monkey, even for such as these, who—but" He paused and laid his hand on his com-
k-
[64]


BLIND MAN'S BUFF
panion's arm. "If I could but see the color that
is called blue once! They tell me It is cool. They
cannot make me feel how cool it is. You will go
to sea with me next summer and tell me about it
—eh? Will you not, my friend? But three of
these—what you call the fifty little millionaires—
you will tell me why they are called that—three of
these came to me in my hotel and would grasp my
hand. And why not? I would grasp the hand
of the devil himself if he but offered it. They
are surprised. They would blindfold my poor
eyes—my poor eyes, Godahl!—blindfold them
again, and again offer me their hands—thinking
Malvino a charlatan. Ha-ha! Again I must
shake hands with them! One wears a ring, with
a great greasy stone. See! I have it here with
me. It is bottleglass. Yet would this barbarian
wear it until I in pity took it from him."
Godahl burst into a laugh. So this was the thief!
Colwell, one of the so-called fifty little millionaires
who gave the Pegasus Club its savor—who ex-
hibited their silk hats and ample bootsoles in the
plate-glass windows every Sunday afternoon—had
been crying over the loss of a ringstone—a garish
green affair for which he had paid hugely abroad.
"I am a marvelous man—eh, friend Godahl?"
"Indeed yes!" agreed the other, smiling.
[65]


THE INFALLIBLE GODAHL
"Malvino the Magician sought Godahl, his
friend, this afternoon. Petroff—my manager—he
walks ten steps behind me, in the crowd. He taps
three times with his stick. Three steps to the right.
HaI—There is Godahl! The canaille applaud;
even Godahl must smile. My friend, Tuesday
night Petroff is too clumsy. You will be my man-
ager; but you must be somewhere else."
"Indeed not!" cried Godahl warmly; and to
himself: "What does he drive at?"
"Indeed yes!" said the blind man, laying his
hand again on the other's arm. "I ask it of you.
You will be in other places. If you but say yes
you will take me to sea in June and tell me what is
the color blue. Listen! First, Malvino will play
the monkey. Then I am to be locked in a room for
five minutes. At the end of five minutes, if I am
gone, that which I have is mine—even to their fat
wallets—fat wallets like this one of yours, which
I now return intact."
Godahl accepted the return of his wallet absent-
mindedly. "It is what Mr. Colwell calls a sport-
ing proposition. See! I have it in writing. It is
in addition to the one thousand dollars. That I
already possess. Now these fifty little millionaires,
friend Godahl—are they all like the three who
come to me in my hotel? The one with the slip-
[66]


BLIND MAN'S BUFF
pery stone in his ring—the stone that I have—that
one had eight thousand dollars—forty thousand
francs—in one wallet—in one-thousand-dollar
notes. Does the American nation make new money
especially for such as these? The notes were new,
the imprint still crisp, like the face of my watch.
Forty thousand francs in one wallet! I know, be-
cause I had the wallet as he talked. No, my friend.
I have it not now. I put it back. Ha-ha! What?
And there are fifty of them like that. I am to
carry away what I can find! Godahl, it is told that
the very servants of the club own rows of brick
houses and buy consols at correct times. But fifty
little millionaires! And Malvino is to be locked
in a room, alone! I have it in writing."
A passing street lamp looked in and caught Go-
dahl in the act of blinking.
"Godahl, my friend, if you will tell me what I
must know, then I will teach you what you wish to
know. You wish to know many things—eh? I
can tell, for I always feel your eyes when you are
by. Tell me now, every inch of the way—play it
is the lake front in that city of Chicago."
Godahl chuckled. He did not love the fifty little
millionaires. Those marvelous fingers! Malvino
was playing with them in the air now in his earnest-
ness. They could rob a poor-box! Godahl, smil-
[67]


THE INFALLIBLE GODAHL
ing grimly, began to draw the map his friend de-
sired. Three steps up from the street, then the
first glass door. Inside, two vestibules. Past them,
on the right, the smoking-room and lounge, a log
fire at each end. On the left the street parlorpa
great table in the center, and heavy chairs, all up-
holstered—none far from the walls. Between the
rooms, on the left wall, the electric-switch panel.
Would he play with light and darkness? It would
be as well to hold the secret of this panel. On the
floors, deep carpets
"Deep carpets!" repeated the magician. "It is
well I know. I do not like deep carpets. And this
room, where I shall be left alone behind locked
doors"
"It would have to be the cloak-room, on the left
of the main entrance," said Godahl. Yes, that
would be the only available room for such a test.
No other rooms off the street parlor could be
locked, as there were no doors. In this cloak-room
there were two doors—one on the main corridor
and one on the first vestibule. There was a small
window, but it was not to be thought of for one of
Malvino's girth. The doors were massive, of oak;
and the locks—Godahl remembered the locks well,
having had need to examine them on a recent occa-
sion—were tumblerlocks. It would be rare busi-
[68]


BLIND MAN'S BUFF
ness to see a man, even a magician, leave the cloak-
room without help. And that, too, was in the
bond—this sporting proposition.
"The locks have five tumblers," laughed Godahl,
nfere and more amused.
Let there be fifty!" whispered the other con-
temptuously. "Tell me, my observing friend—
who counts the tumblers of a lock from the out-
side—do these doors open in or out?"
"In," said Godahl—and the long fingers closed
on his wrist in a twinkling.
"In, you say?"
"In!" repeated Godahl; and he made a mental
note to study the peculiar characteristics of doors
that open in.
Malvino buried himself in his furs. The car
sped on through the winding thoroughfares of the
park, and Godahl fell to counting the revolving
flashes of the gas-lamps as they rushed by.
"This is the one place in your great city where
I find joy," said the blind man at length. "There
are no staring crowds; I can pick my thoughts; and
the pavements are glass. Outside of these walls
your city is a rack that would torture me. Tell me,
why is blue so cool? June will be too late for the
Mediterranean. We will start before. If you will
but tell me, friend Godahl, so that I can feel it, I
[69]


THE INFALLIBLE GODAHL
will give you the half No! I will not. What
is money to you? Are you quite sure about the
doors opening in? Yes? That is good. Godahl,
if I could see I think I would be like you—looking
on and laughing. Let me tell you something of
doors that open in What! We are traveling
at an unlawful speed! Mistair Offigaire—indeed,
yes, the Great Malvino! Pity his poor eyes!
Here is money falling from your hair! You are
not a frugal man—so careless!"
The park policeman who had stopped them to
warn them against speed stood staring at the crisp
bill the blind man had plucked from his hair, as
the taxicab sped forward again. Malvino directed
the driver to his hotel through the speaking tube,
and a few minutes later they were set down there.
Godahl declined dinner with his queer friend.
"I have here your wallet once more, friend Go-
dahl!" laughed the blind magician. "The fifty
little millionaires! Ha-ha! You promise? You
will not be there when I am there?"
"You have my stickpin," said Godahl. "I be-
lieve you are collecting bogus stones. That one is
bogus, but it was thought to be a fine gift by a
friend who is now dead."
The other, with evident disappointment, re-
turned the pilfered stickpin. "You promise!
[70]
/
/


BLIND MAN'S BUFF
You will not be there when I am there, my
friend?"
Godahl held the blue-white hand in his own for
a moment as they parted. "No; I promise you,"
he said; and he watched his queer friend away—
Malvino erect, smiling, unfaltering in his fine stride,
conscious to the last dregs of the interest he excited
on all sides. He shunned the elevator and started
up the broad marble stairs, his slender cane tap-tap-
tapping, lighting the way for his confident tread.
Godahl dined at his club—looking on and laugh-
ing, as Malvino had said with a directness that
rather startled the easy rogue into wakefulness.
Godahl's. career had defied innuendo; his was not
an art, but a science, precise, infallible. But sev-
eral times that afternoon in the somber shadows of
their cab he had felt, with a strange thrill, that
black impenetrable mask turn on him as though an
inner vision lighted those darkened orbs.
Frankly he avoided afflicted persons in the pur-
suit of his trade, not because of compunctions, which
troubled him not at all, but because a person lack-
ing in any of the five senses was apt to be uncannily
alert in some one of the remaining four. He was
intensely a materialist, a gambler who pinned his
faith to marked cards, never to superstition. He
believed intuition largely a foolish fetish, except
[71]


THE INFALLIBLE GODAHL
as actuated by the purely physical cravings; yet
he recognized a strange clarity in the mental out-
look of the afflicted that seemed unexplainable by
any other means.
Malvino, too, played with marked cards. After
all, magic is but the clever arrangement of prop-
erties. But why had Malvino picked him? Why
had Malvino confided in him at all? There were
a dozen other members of the Pegasus Club who
would have served as well, so far as furnishing the
business of the affair; who would have entered the
game as a huge joke. To hold up the fifty little
millionaires in their upholstered wallow would
surely set the whole town by the ears. Something
of the sort was needed to bring the ribald crew
back to earth. But—thought Godahl—if the task
were to be done he would much prefer to do it him-
self, not look on as a supernumerary.
Malvino, of course, was a thief. The only rea-
son he did not practice his profession was that he
found the business of playing the monkey paid
better. Then, too, as a thief he must bury his tal-
ents; and there is nothing so sweet to the Latin as
applause. Malvino could not keep his fingers quiet.
Godahl had permitted himself to be stripped in
their ride through sheer enjoyment of observation.
There is nothing too small to be learned and
[72]


BLIND MAN'S BUFF
learned well. Nevertheless it had irritated him
to think that this master had whispered in his ear
familiarly. It smacked too much of kinship. Go-
dahl knew no kin!
As he swept the magnificent dining-room with
his eyes, however, he could not repress a chuckle
of sheer delight. It would be a hundred-day jest.
They all conformed pretty well to type—a type
against which the finer sensibilities of Godahl re-
volted. In the beginning the Pegasus had been the
coming together of a few kindred souls—modest,
comfortable, homelike; a meetingrplace of intellec-
tual men who took their chiefest pleasure in the
friction of ideas. In this way the organization had
come to have a name, even among the many clubs
of the city.
Godahl had adopted it as his home; and—he
cynically paraphrased it—he might be without
honor in his own country, but never in his own
home. He had always been pleased to think that
when he entered here he left the undesirable some-
thing outside, like the dust of his shoes on the door-
mat—not that he lacked the lust of the game or a
conscious pride in that slick infallibility which had
made him a prince for whom other men went poor.
There are times and places for all things. And
this had been home.
[73]


BLIND MAN'S BUFF
a written permission to carry off all his fingers could
lift, but they chose to interpret sport according to
their own lights. Two centuries ago it was sport
in merry England to tie a gamecock to a stump and
shy brickbats at it. The game was conducted ac-
cording to rules carefully worked out, and was
popular with all concerned—except the gamecock.
Godahl at length, getting his fill, rose in disgust
and passed out. At the corner the street lamp
winked at him in its knowing way; and Godahl,
forgetting the gorge that had risen in him, returned
the wink, smiling.
Colwell, the master of ceremonies, was venturing
to a chosen few that a certain faker would be in-
eligible for dates on a kerosene circuit in Arkansas
before the evening was over, when the telephone
boy brought him a message from the Victoria.
Malvino had started, and was driving to avoid the
inevitable crowd that dogged his steps.
The committee was giving a last touch to its
properties—a camera and flashlight apparatus ar-
ranged behind a screen—when there came the
familiar tap-tap-tapping of the cane on the marble
steps. If the lilt of his gait were any criterion the
mask was in fine fettle.
"So"—he was whispering—"three steps up
[75]


THE INFALLIBLE GODAHL
from the street—two vestibules—and deep carpets.
Deep carpets are bad!"
As he passed through the first vestibule this
strange, impassive figure in dead black ran his
fingers along the wall. There was the door, in-
deed, by which he would escape.
"Malvino the Magician!" cried a flunkey in
gold lace as the inner doors swung open. Colwell
was there, with extended hand. The hand of the
other closed on it without hesitation, holding it for
a moment.
"You speak no French? No? It is—most unfor-
tunate. I speak things—and I am most awkward
in your tongue. Is there the color blue here?
I would touch it before I play."
He waved his cane toward the entrance. "The
corridor? It is empty—yes? It is so in the bond.
Thus," he cried, his teeth glowing at the circle of
faces before him—"Thus am I to take away that
which is mine—is it not?"
Colwell elevated a knowing eyebrow at his com-
panions. Colwell had not been a plumber's as-
sistant for nothing in the days of his youth. He
had plugged the keyslots with molten lead. Once
closed it would require the aid of a carpenter, not
a locksmith—not even a magical locksmith—to ne-
gotiate the doors of the cloakroom. Colwell did
[76]


r
..o*

*.


BLIND MAN'S BUFF
not begrudge his walletful of small change at auc-
tion bridge, but he was decidedly averse to letting
it fall into the hands of this blind beggar.
They helped him out of his coat. "My cane
too!" he said as he handed the cane to Colwell. It
was of ebony, as thin as a baton and without orna-
ment of any kind, save a platinum top. "It is—my
faithful Achates! It is—a little brother to my
poor senses. It is wonderful "He swayed
slightly and put out a hand to steady himself
against Colwell. "But tonight, gentlemen, in your
honor Malvino disarms himself, for the—how is
it?—the fifty little millionaires—ha-ha!—who are
so good as to receive me."
"Am I," he continued, "to have the honor
of shaking the hands of the gentlemen? I
do not know." He paused as though em-
barrassed, shrugged his shoulders deprecatingly;
and then, smiling: "Myself, as a person, is not
present if you so desire—only my talents, which
you buy and pay for. Ah, I am awkward in your
tongue. Sometimes, gentlemen, I am the guest—
sometimes I am only the monkey, with his tricks.
You understand? I thank you, sir. Saunders, of
Texas Union? Ah, of the landed gentry of this
great country! I am indeed pleasured."
A smile went the rounds. Saunders, of Texas
[77]


BLIND MAN'S BUFF
in the room. A diversion had been promised; but
what it was to be the honorable gentlemen of the
committee had kept to themselves and their con-
federates. Colwell, Saunders and Mason—-of In-
dependent Guano—whispered together for a mo-
ment; and when the circle of introductions was com-
plete the guest was led to the center of the room.
He took his place at the head of the big table,
exploring it nervously with his fingers while he
waited for the company to be seated.
What followed was somewhat tame, and they
expressed themselves to that effect occasionally be-
hind their hands. They had seen the same thing
before; a two-dollar bill gave the veriest street
loafer the same privilege every afternoon and eve-
ning at the Victoria—except for a few parlor pieces
the Magician reserved for private entertainments.
But even the makings of these were to be had for
a few pennies in any one of the numerous shops in
Sixth Avenue devoted to the properties of magic.
It was merely quickness of hand against slowness
of eye. It is said that the persistency of vision
amounts to one-hundredth of a second. These
fingers found ample room to work in that slit
of time. Yet the circle looked on languidly, like an
audience at a championship fistfight tolerating the
preliminaries.
[79]


THE INFALLIBLE GODAHL
The performer had borrowed a pack of cards
bearing the unbroken seal of the club, and was
playing a solitary game at whist, cards faced—a
trick of Malvino's, by the way, which has never
been satisfactorily explained—when suddenly the
barons of Tonopah, Alleghany—and so forth—sat
up with a thrill of anticipation. It was evident to
all, except perhaps the performer himself, that the
apex of the evening was at hand. Masons softly
opened the electric-switch cabinet; Colwell and
Saunders moved carelessly toward the table, taking
up positions on each hand of the mask, as though
for a better view of the game.
Then came blank, overwhelming darkness!
There was the scuffle of feet; the snapping impact
of body against body; a gasp; a half-uttered cry
of pain; then:
"Confound him!" It was the voice of Colwell,
breathing hard. "He's like a bull Gad!
Can't you"
Then another voice—that of Saunders:
"Steady—I've got him? Ready?"
The unseen struggle ceased suddenly. There
were several in that thrilled circle that grew sick.
It seemed evident that the honorable gentlemen of
the committee had overpowered the Magician,
were about to strip him of his mask—to show him
[80]


BLIND MAN'S BUFF
up as the charlatan who had too long duped a city.
They wanted their money's worth. Colwell was
laughing, short, sharp; he had the mask now—they
could hear the silken ribbon rip as it came away.
"Now! Mason, let him have itI"
The words ended in a roar of mingled rage and
pain; there came a sharp snap-snap—as of bones
coming away from their sockets; and simulta-
neously the muffled explosion and the blinding glare
of the camera flashlight. And in the one-hundredth
of a second of incandescence there was indelibly
imprinted on the vision of the audience the figure
of the Magician holding two men at arm's length,
each by the wrist, their features hideously con-
torted. Then dead darkness fell, in the midst of
which hung the imprinted scene in silhouette against
a phosphorescent pall.
Some one thought of the lights. It was the
Magician himself. This curious circumstance was
not noted until later. The switch clicked and the
chandeliers sprang into being again. Colwell held
the torn mask in his hand. Every eye, still strain-
ing for sight after the shock of the flashlight,
sought the blind face of the performer. It was
horribly blind now, stripped of its silk ribbon. Cov-
ering the eyesockets like plasters were great black
disks larger than silver dollars. He stumbled
[81]


THE INFALLIBLE GODAHL
across the room—almost fell against the table; his
uncertain hand sought Colwell's arm, traveled
down its length and took from the fingers the torn
mask and replaced it. The master of ceremonies
gazed at the cadaverous face, fascinated. The
room was deathly silent. The Magician flashed his
teeth in a poor attempt at a smile. His voice, when
he spoke, was in whispers as crisp as leaves:
"Ah—my poor eyes! I do not sell Gentle-
men, I am clumsy with your words. Let me not
offend those who are my friends among you when
I say I do not sell you my private self—it is only
the monkey in me you can buy."
Colwell and Saunders were making efforts to
soothe their arms, which were suffering exquisitely.
Several men pushed forward, ashamed, to bridge
the embarrassment with their apologies to the
Magician, who stared at them imperturbably with
the mask. Things gradually came to rights, except
for the honorable gentlemen of the committee, who
took the first chance to retire with their troubles.
The hands of the mask were like steel and when he
wrenched the bones in their sockets he had not dealt
lightly.
"We proceed," said the Magician with a depre-
cating wave of his hand. "The room! I am to be
your prisoner. It is so written."
[82]


BLIND MAN'S BUFF
The few members who knew of Colwell's pre-
cautions of plugging the keyslots with lead thought
wryly of the fact now. If this thing went any
further the Pegasus Club would be the butt of
the town!
"We will forget that," said Welton, of Tonopah
Magnet, assuming leadership in a movement to
make amends. "Besides," he added with a laugh,
"we haven't given you a chance to go through our
pockets yet. You would have to escape empty-
handed."
"Your pardon!" said the mask with a grand
bow. "I have already taken the opportunity."
So saying he displayed the contents of his ca-
pacious pockets. He had at least a score of wallets
and several rolls of bank-notes. The room exploded
in a cry of amazement. Then the truth flashed
upon them. When they passed the guest from
hand to hand his nimble fingers had been busy sub-
stituting wads of paper for wallets.
"The hour is late," he continued, feeling the face
of his watch. "I must be gone in five minutes.
The room—if you will."
Welton, of Tonopah Magnet, roaring with
laughter, took the Magician—they admitted now
he was at least that—and led him to the door of
the cloakroom.
[83]


THE INFALLIBLE GODAHL
"One favor!" said the mask at the threshold.
"My coat—my hat—my faithful cane. Ah! I
thank you. I bid you good night!"
The naivete of the words was masterly. Welton,
of Tonopah Magnet, drew the door shut with a
slam and the lock clicked. He faced the others and
turned his trousers pockets inside out comically. He
was not worrying about the safety of his cash, but
he did admire the deftness of those fingers.
"I am glad to say he left my watch," he said;
and he put his watch on the table. It was lacking
five minutes of midnight. "What gets me," he con-
tinued, turning toward the closed door, "is how
we are going to get the poor devil out without a
battering ram. Colwell has most certainly earned
everlasting fame by his brilliant entertainment this
evening."
The keys were useless now that the spring locks
had snapped on the prisoner. Some one suggested
sending for the engineer; but one and all agreed
that the game must be played out in common de-
cency. They all retired to the lounging-room to
give the blind beggar five minutes to find out the
trick that had been played on him.
At the end of five minutes they sent for the
engineer, and that grimy individual appeared,
loaded down with tools; he expressed it as his
[84]


BLIND MAN'S BUFF
reverend opinion a damned fine door was about
to be turned into scrap. There was one chance—
that a gasoline torch might blow the lead from
the keyslot. But, no—the molten metal only com-
pleted the upsetting of the fine mechanism. There
was nothing to do but to cut round the lock with a
compass saw.
"Cheer up, Malvino!" said Welton through the
door. "We will be with you in another minute."
Just then Godahl ran in from the street. He
threw his hat and coat to an attendant.
"Ha! The devil to pay—eh?" he cried ex-
citedly. "I just this minute heard of it; and I
rushed here."
"What?" said a number of voices at once.
The usually exquisite Godahl was somewhat
disheveled and his eyes were red.
"Malvino!" cried he, staring at them as though
perplexed at their blandness. "Do you mean to
say you don't know why he didn't show up this
evening?"
"Didn't show up! What do you mean?"
"You really don't know?" cried Godahl, his
eyes blazing.
"No! What? Tell us the answer!" said some
one with a laugh.
"The police found him bound and gagged in
[85]


THE INFALLIBLE GODAHL
oner, laden with the cash of the fifty little million-
aires, had simply drawn the bolts of the two hinges
and lifted the door out of its frame. On the floor
was a wad of handbills like those the rogue had
left in his dupes' pockets in place of their wallets.
They read: "Malvino! He Has No Eyes!
Watch His Fingers!"
The fifty little millionaires gazed at each other
dumfounded, feeling their pockets the while.
The infallible Godahl fell into a chair, roaring with
laughter. He threw back his head, kicked out his
heels, buried his hands wrist-deep in the crisp bills
that lined his pockets—all in cold, hard cash! On
the whole, he had never spent a more profitable
evening.
As for Malvino the Magician, that charlatan
could be mighty thankful that it was not he whom
the honorable gentlemen of the committee had sub-
jected to manhandling. For Malvino had the
eyes of a hawk. So much Godahl had ascertained
earlier in the evening when he, in the guise of a
murderous cabby, was subjecting the Italian to
the indignity of a gag.
[88]


Ill
THE NIGHT OF A THOUSAND THIEVES
TUCKED away toward the apex of the
island at the Battery are a few irregular
city blocks over which the figure of Sleep
seems to hover with a finger on her lips; the still-
ness that falls here when the day's work is done is
sepulchral.
To the west is lower Broadway, feebly sensuous
even in the small hours, a thin stream of cars and
the occasional rumble of the underground still
evidencing that the line of life linking two days
is not yet broken. To the north is Newspaper Row,
glowing with its perpetual flame of eternal wake-
fulness, functioning stridently at the approach of
dawn when only the cock should be crowing. To
the east is the river, gleaming with the arching
lights of the bridges, dull with the shadows of si-
lent looming ships and creeping barges, turning to
and fro sluggishly with the tide. It is drowsing,
but it does not sleep. A winch rattles; the exhaust
of a straining engine breaks a blank wall of dark-
ness; and a blinding beam of intense electric blue
breaks through the dull shadows of a freight-house,
[89]


THE THOUSAND THIEVES
Officer Double-O-Four was sorrowfully execut-
ing a vamp on the tessellated pavement of the cor-
ridor of the International Life Building, interject-
ing syncopations with snaps of his fingers to the
tune of meditation that was running through his
head. It was a cruel task for a young man—to be
condemned to the very silences of these ghoulish
defiles. All must serve, but some must stand and
wait. To stand and wait with majestic uplifted
finger in the maelstrom of Thirty-fourth Street and
Fifth Avenue was one thing; to haunt a graveyard
that could not even boast a rabbit was quite another,
and not at all in keeping with the dignity he had
absorbed from his book of rules when he was pre-
sented with his shield and heard his chief depicting
the glory of his calling. Occasionally a night
watchman in heretical gray slunk by; but it is more
simple to extract blood from a stone than compan-
ionship from one of these low-caste civilians. At
this hour even the nocturnal scrubwomen had long
since put on their shoes and gone home.
At the lower end of his beat, toward the river,
dwelt the one human being whom Officer Double-
O-Four could cultivate consistently through the six
weary hours of his watch. That was Long John,
[91]


THE THOUSAND THIEVES
good fortune to be able to come to a stop at all,
regardless of the rules of the road. When the
muffler of the engine suddenly blew its head off
with a loud bang the car was sliding down the in-
cline in the canon that dumps Nassau Street into
the hollow that was once, in the long ago, a mean-
dering brook flanked by a romantic cowpath, still
known by the name of Maiden Lane.
Our officer brought his vamping feet to a stand-
still and exercised his discretion. He might vary
the monotony—establish a reputation for himself,
in fact—by bringing in a prisoner from this solemn
spot, which slept with both eyes shut at night; but,
he reflected, the misdemeanor was just round the
corner from the confines of his beat, and was there-
fore the concern of his partner, Mulligan, who was
not in sight. Also tomorrow was his day off; and
he must choose and choose quickly, between going
to court and going fishing. He decided in favor
of the latter as the season was well advanced—late
October—and weakfish would be migrating at the
first opportunity. He tinctured his decision with
the reflection that traffic rules are made solely for
traffic, a condition that obviously did not exist at
this moment; and therefore Rule Number Twenty-
six would never know the difference if it were not
called into use for the present emergency.
[93]


THE INFALLIBLE GODAHL
The decision was proved especially happy by
what followed. Evidently his new friends were in
for quite a stay—at least, it appeared they would
tarry to keep him company until his relief arrived.
Strange noises were emerging from the engine, even
now after the pistons had come to a halt. One of
the passengers dismounted with much difficulty, on
account of a greatcoat. He stretched himself,
yawned, and divested himself of his greatcoat, and
then carefully picked out the sharply-corrugated
surface of a manhole cover as the couch on which
he might rest while he made astronomical observa-
tions under the car. Why a man should pick out
a manhole cover, sharply corrugated, in the first
place, was beyond the wit of our officer. Why
the man should strike a match to examine the man-
hole cover, to be sure he had the right one, was
another rather asinine trick. This person was at
length satisfied, for he rolled over on his back and
with much exertion, because of his girth, worked
himself under the chassis.
Our officer, seeking companionship, softly re-
sumed his vamp and propelled himself toward the
stalled car and its horizontal mechanician. The
passenger in the seat was enveloped in bearskins
to his chin; his chin was shrouded with a truly Bis-
marckian mustache; and a pair of obsolete goggles
[94]


THE INFALLIBLE GODAHL
The policeman readily traced the source of this
wit to the wafflelike manhole cover on which the
man lay prostrate, and smiled indulgently. He
could while away the remaining few minutes of his
watch giving advice. In these days of foolproof
motors, with needle-valves, butterfly-shutters, and
tubes so placed that they can be doctored from
above instead of below, the sight of a horizontal
motorist was becoming rare, even in the barber-
shop papers.
"Nineteen-seven, Herkimer!" said the police-
man to himself scornfully, taking note of the hub.
Once, before he became an officer, he had begun
a correspondence course in automobile engineering;
and he had progressed so far that he was able to
classify machines according to the cryptic designs of
their hubs. That was long ago. A motorist of to-
day who was so far put to it that he drove a Herki-
mer of 1907 model must be far put to it indeed!
"Don't mind my friend," said the man in bear-
skins, contentedly drawing at his cigar. "He has
been sitting up all night with this sick car and it is
getting on his nerves. Do you happen to have the
correct time, officer?"
It lacked five minutes of the hour of two. This
seemingly innocent fact caused quite a commotion
between the two motorists, and for a moment they
[96]


THE THOUSAND THIEVES
argued in lively fashion back and forth. The onl^
thing they agreed on was that their respective
watches differed by three minutes and ten seconds
of eternal time, as indicated by the policeman's
timepiece. Indeed, the exactness of the hour
seemed of such importance to these two—appar-
ently hung up for the rest of the night with their
sick car—that the obliging officer ran across the
street to verify his faith in his own timepiece by a
jeweler's chronometer, ticking away in the half-
shadow of a barred window. When he returned
the man in furs had submerged himself to the ears
in his great collar, and only the lazily winking
cigar protruding from the enveloping folds gave
signs of life.
The policeman squatted on his heels and held
matches in close proximity to the gasoline feed,
while the man underneath sweated and swore—but
did not remove his goggles. Then came the wel-
come clatter of a distant nightstick on the pave-
ment, as strident as a drumbeat; and Officer Double-
O-Four took his leave gracefully and made his way
toward the river with light foot. His relief was
calling; his day off had begun; his head was full
of fish. He did not once glance round. Had he
done so he might have seen the head of the man
in furs emerge from its enshrouding collar and
[97]


THE INFALLIBLE GODAHL
;urn cautiously. The man lifted a heavy instru-
ment—which looked like a pair of bloom-shears,
but might have been an automobile jack—and set
it down on the pavement beside the car. Then he
waited for thirty seconds.
At the end of that time, apparently unmindful
of his mechanician, he touched the button of an
up-to-date starter; the engine purred softly, and the
car slid away as easily as if coasting downhill in-
stead of uphill—for the car turned into the up-grade
of Maiden Lane, to Broadway, and then north.
The hollow silence shut down again. The canon
was deserted. Only the manhole cover now marked
the spot where, five minutes before, Providence had
presented Policeman Double-O-Four with two
cigars against his day off on the banks.
A two-hours' wink on his cot in the dormitory
would fortify our sportsman for the pleasures of
the day ahead—so he reflected as he divested him-
self of his shoes and belt and lay down to lull
himself to sleep with the problem of whether the
weather would be more propitious for shrimps than
bloodworms, as bait. But it was not to be!
Later in his career Officer Double-O-Four more
than once used the incident of this morning to drive
in his lessons to the rookies who came his way, that
a patrolman of the first grade must on no account
[98]


THE THOUSAND THIEVES
exercise his discretion! Discretion is all right for-
captains, or even for lieutenants, on occasions; but
the little blue book states clearly what a patrol-
man must do under certain circumstances. Rule
Number Twenty-six covers the case in point.
If our policeman had done his duty as he
saw it he would have jugged these two night
birds and appeared in court at the break of
day to witness against them for violating the
rules of the road. The judge would have listened
to three words—"Ten Dollars!" he would have
said; and, with fair winds blowing, Policeman
Double-O-Four might have caught the eight-o'clock
boat and the nine-o'clock train to Huguenots and
had his play with the fish in spite of himself. Traf-
fic rules are traffic rules—even in Nassau Street at
two in the morning!
The superiority of bloodworms, in spite of the
price, had won the debate, when suddenly the
slumbers of Officer Double-O-Four were inter-
rupted by a crashing clamor that seemed to jar the
very plaster of the room. It was followed in-
stantly by the thumping of stockinged feet falling
off the forests of cots; sharp cries and indistinct
commands burst in through the door of the drill-
room. A volley of musketry, which seemed to
come from the street, told the sleepy senses of the
98032A
[99]


THE THOUSAND THIEVES
There was not the familiar sting of smoke in
the air that usually accounts for such a midnight
upheaval. Neither was the clang of the police-
wagon, to be heard on all sides now, met by the
answering wail of fire-trucks' sirens—that strange
wail which in the dead of night is like nothing so
much as the howl of a panther with its head buried
in some mud cavern. But bells, bells, bells! Every-
where the angry clang of bells! Fast, slow, whim-
pering, booming—they shivered the early morning
air with their insistent clamor!
"First-precinct reserves! Close order—for-
ward! Double quick!" came the bellowing order
of a megaphone from the Broadway end; and the
men closed up and started forward on a run. At
Broadway they were shunted *to the north. At
Maiden Lane they were dropped twenty feet apart
east to William.
"Not a man to pass!" roared the megaphone;
and its echoes had scarcely died away when a little
police automobile sped up and came to a stop.
Two men got out—one was the inspector of the
district; the other was a man in civilian's clothes.
He was roaring at the top of his voice:
"Hell! No! Who said the Lane? Number
Three Cable has gone now! Throw this line across
Fulton Street!"
[IOI]


THE THOUSAND THIEVES

through at John Street. Take your hands off me!
What the devil is the matter with you mutts any-
way? Every reserve south of Forty-second Street
is here and you've got a line strung solid round
twenty blocks! And there isn't a man among you
with wit enough to know what's happened! Gad!
Look at that!"
His last exclamation was caused by the sudden
bursting into light of the tall towers of the Inter-
national Life. One by one the floors counted
themselves, as some hand threw on the current at
the electric switch. Then a neighboring building
began to wink light through its windows; then an-
other, and another. The Wall Street and Maiden
Lane District was opening its eyes wide in the
dead of night!
The shiny pavement was flooded with reflection.
The dull sky overhead caught the glare and threw
it back as a luminous cloud.
In the Pearl Street converting station, the Edi-
son superintendent sprang from his couch at the
clang of a warning bell and ran to the switchboard.
The needle of the dial he looked at was jumping
forward a thousand amperes at a time. The lone
set of converters caring for the night load south of
Canal Street was as hot to the touch as a flatiron
under the stress of a sudden excess of electric cur-
[ 103]


THE INFALLIBLE GODAHL
rent. The superintendent threw in one machine
after another at the giant switchboard; the needle
had now touched the index of the peak of the load
—the normal capacity of the electric service to be
had from this station.
"Who the devil is celebrating at this hour!" he
exclaimed, glancing over at the clock.
It lacked five minutes of three. He ran up a
flight of iron steps to a balcony hanging on the side
of the south wall and peered out of the window.
The skyscraper line of the lower part of the island
was like a huge heap of glittering yellow jewels—
every window, to the topmost of the towers, was
aglow with light.
II
At seven o'clock on that momentous October
morning—which was always afterward referred to
by the Edison superintendent as "The time we hit
the peak of the load with a jump of four thousand
amps at three A.M.!" and by Officer Double-O-
Four as "The day I did not go fishing!"—at
seven o'clock that morning the cordon of police
was still being drawn tight across Fulton to Will-
iam; down William to Pearl; down Pearl to the
spot where it crosses Broadway for the second time
[ 104 ]


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THE N*-* Y'.,r,K
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ASTOR, «NM


THE THOUSAND THIEVES
in that street's crooked career through lower New
York; and up Broadway to meet the start of the
line at Fulton.
Gradually, however, the excitement focused it-
self at a point in Dutch Street, where the new Man-
ufacturing Jewelers' Building stands—a stone's
throw from Maiden Lane. This building is the
last work in the art of safety devices as applied to
fire and burglar hazard. It is absolutely unburn-
able, they say.
Dizzy Sunday-story specialists have attempted
to compute the wealth in gold and precious stones
kthat finds its way into this tall skyscraper—given
over entirely to manufacturing jewelers—in the
course of a year. A knowledge of logarithms is
necessary in the calculation. Knights of the road
occasionally stop on the opposite side of the street
and look with longing eyes at the tall fagade, every
window of which seems to nod an invitation. Usu-
ally these gentlemen, if they stand too long in one
spot, are tapped on the shoulder by total strangers
and requested to move on—back, not forward.
The old deadline, relic of the days of a great
policeman, has long since passed into history as a
police institution in the Maiden Lane district. The
public did not take to the idea of a squad of plain-
clothes police telling a man in which direction he
[105]


THE INFALLIBLE GODAHL
might walk the free streets of the city, no matter
what the record of that man might be; but the
association of jewelers themselves, recognizing the
value of the old deadline, have always maintained
it at their own expense.
At seven in the morning two squads of men—
one of police and the other of the gray-coated spe-
cials^—getting no response to repeated knocking
of the big bronze gate that closed the corridor in
the night-time, set to work with sledges and jacks
and soon had the gate open. Their fears were
doubled by the fact that the din occasioned by the
battering did not bring the body of watchmen who
guarded this building during every hour of the day
and night. The building was fully illuminated like
the rest, showing that some hand had manipulated
the switch at the first alarm. Next they attacked
the inside doors. These proved to be more easily
negotiable.
On the floor in front of the elevator cage they
found the captain of the night watch bound and
gagged, an ugly streak of dried blood matting his
hair and covering his forehead. He was released;
but he was found to be in so serious a condition
that it was necessary to transfer him at once to
Gouverneur Hospital.
Inside an elevator the rescue party found two
[106]


THE INFALLIBLE GODAHL
Street—if they were veracious—reported the as-
tounding fact that over seventeen hundred safes
were being tampered with at the same moment!
Seventeen hundred strong boxes bulging with
wealth were shrieking for help.
Not exactly at the same moment, however; for
the cunning thief had cut the cables with intervals
of one minute between—first the lead-inclosed sheaf
carrying nearly five hundred pairs of wires, the
sensory nerves of the rich vaults lying below Cedar
Street. At the deafening persistent clang of that
first alarm, the authorities, dumfounded at the ex-
tent of the catastrophe, had thrown their cordon
of police about this small district, drawing it so
tight, that, it seemed, no man could escape.
Then with a crash the switchboard of District
Number Two went to pieces; and in another sixty
seconds District Number Three added its bells to
the bedlam. Then it was that the police lines were
moved as far north as Fulton, and the call was
sent forth for all reserves south of One Hundred
and Twenty-fifth Street.
Byrnes and Dunstan, summoned from opposite
quarters to the Jewelers' Building, arrived simul-
taneously. Grave as was the crisis, as their eyes
met and they clasped hands they burst into a laugh.
This outdistanced even their experience.
I
[108]


THE INFALLIBLE GODAHL
fusal to assemble a certain famous brooch of pearls
that had paid one hundred thousand dollars in cus-
toms duties—on the ground that they were imita-
tions. He of a dozen jewelers and experts was the
only one to discern the fraud.
"Whew! Old Telfen, eh? That's bad as a
starter!" exclaimed Byrnes under his breath. The
main entrance to the suite occupied by Telfen
stood open. An ugly gash in the studding showed.
A new light as to the daring of this deed burst on
Byrnes, used to shocks as he was.
"Rough work, that!" he said, turning to Dun-
stan. "What was the exact hour the first switch-
board went off?"
"Two-forty-five, to the second. Hell broke
loose! I was asleep upstairs. I thought the roof
had caved in! Then came the second and the
third—seventeen hundred and fifty-six all at
once! I never expect to hear a racket like
that again."
"Seventeen hundred and fifty-six chances to one!"
said Byrnes; and they proceeded, examining every
step of the way. Here a door was battered; there
a litter of glass on the floor. With nearly eighteen
hundred strong boxes within a radius of half a
mile shrieking Burglars! the master thief had gone
straight to the mark.
[no]


THE INFALLIBLE GODAHL
usually long carbon rods bound together, though
insulated from each other, and connected with an
electric transformer such as is used in welding.
On the floor, too, were scores of crumpled en-
velopes—all empty. Metal doors that lined the
walls of the interior hung slatternly on rudely
twisted hinges, disclosing metal boxes—empty.
Byrnes himself—matter-of-fact, unromantic, stirred
more easily by deeds than by poetic suggestion—
found himself trying to decipher the symbols with
which the empty envelopes were penciled. Each
symbol held its story of treasures of gold and gems,
men's greed, women's vanity and tears. How
much was gone? How much remained? Only old
Telfen himself—with shrewd, pasty mask of a
face, with its high, thin nose, and lips as thin
as a slit in ivory—only old Telfen himself
could tell.
But the thief—what a thief! On the floor,
carefully laid aside, was the ransom of a king.
Rare designs in special metals; fragile baskets,
woven of threads of gold as fine as silk; wreaths of
stubborn platinum, worked with infinite patience
and skill into little nests to receive their precious
jewels; the almost medieval trappings designed for
the oratory of the wife of a multimillionaire—these,
magnificent in themselves, were thrust aside, ig-
[112]


THE THOUSAND THIEVES
nored as dross, for the masterpieces the famous
vault contained.
While eighteen hundred bells were shrieking—
crying in terror; while cordons of police were be-
ing thrown about, so that even a crawling animal
could not escape; while guardians of the mammoth
treasure were rushing frantically about seeking the
thousand thieves in one or the one thief in the
thousand—this master rogue had with unerring
hand cracked the biggest prize in the city, and with
the coolness of a connoisseur had tested, weighed
and rejected—and taken his fill!
Then Ludwig Telfen himself came, white and
terrible to behold. Byrnes established field head-
quarters on the spot, and his lieutenants were com-
ing and going with his terse commands. He re-
enforced the lines about the desolated blocks until,
in police parlance, the four streets that held the
cordon together were one continuous circle of peg-
posts. But no one realized more than Byrnes him-
self the futility of such a course. He tightened the
lines merely because it was the obvious thing to
do—there was one chance in a thousand that the
bird had not yet flown. Newspaper men were as-
saulting the lines on all sides; but all to no pur-
pose. There was no juice in the turnip for them.
Extras were flooding the streets; throngs were
[113]


THE THOUSAND THIEVES
v.
of thousands of pounds—a child exerting gentle
pressure on the powerful lever could slice a great
piece of metal in twain as if it were a sausage. The
emergency crew of the protective system had dis-
covered the spot where the cables had been rent
asunder early in the excitement. With their charts
showing the location of every trunk of the monster
nerve system of burglar-protection, they had fol-
lowed up the main cables, manhole by manhole,
until they finally came to the corrugated cover on
which the fat man in goggles had rested himself
to get a view of the astronomical inaccuracies of the
inside of his car.
The manhole was a roomy affair—it had to be
to accommodate men working at the cables, which
are tested regularly with the finest instruments
known to science.
The expert who had cut the cables had evidently
spent some time awaiting the mystic hour. A dozen
cigarette butts scattered about the cement well
showed that he had awaited the appointed second
without impatience; and having accomplished his
task he had left his set of bloom-shears behind as
a clue—whatever that might be worth—and had
gone to the trouble of putting the manhole cover
back in its seat with some care. He had probably
escaped by Broadway—that meant running a hun-
["5]


THE INFALLIBLE GODAHL
dred yards before the first section of the pol'tice
cordon could be summoned. The blades of tlhe
shears were covered with a coating of lead and copi-
per, like a film of grease. There was a calm, cool
insolence about the whole thing that got on Byrne's
nerves.
A bureau of identification was established at
eight o'clock for the clamoring bankers and jewel-
ers. Every mother's son of them had to be iden-
tified before he could enter the lines; and then he
entered under guard and opened his safes under
guard. One by one the treasure vaults were
checked off as their contents were found to
be intact. As the vaults were surrendered to
their owners the guard would move on to the
next, and the next. It was not until noon that the
inventory had been made throughout the district.
Of all the district, only the strongroom—the
fabled strongroom—of Ludwig Telfen had been
tapped. The genius of the night, then, had jammed
the entire machinery of the Street and the Lane,
roused it from its bed with shrieking clamors for
the police, simply for the opportunity of attacking
this one prize. The white-faced Telfen, inscru-
table even in this hour, deciphered the stories of
the empty envelopes one by one. It was at ten
o'clock when he crumpled up and was carried away.
[116]


THE THOUSAND THIEVES
The Bentori crucifix was gone, with its one match-
less sapphire; the Dolgoda pearl; the great canary
diamond—the diamond of the Saffarans family—
with its creepy history; a Hindustani ruby called
"The Well"; a pale blue hyacinth, on whose
broad table had been carved a symbol that had
baffled the greatest archeologists; and a baker's
dozen of unset diamonds, carefully matched as to
size and color. Not a thief merely—an artist had
picked here!
The strongroom of'Ludwig Telfen, as we have
said, stood in the middle of the room like a tomb
in a crypt, with its sheathing of concrete. It was
like a monolith the size of a dozen elephants. A
workman with the coldest-drawn chisel would laugh
at an order to drill through the adamant in an
eight-hour day. Yet a hole the size of a man's
thigh penetrated the mass, leading straight and
true to the very heart of the ingenious mechanism
hidden within—a mechanism in itself believed to
be indestructible. It was not indestructible. The
same brain that had known the spot to tap the
monolith, and then had devised the means of tap-
ping It, had played with the safe as though it had
been a toy instead of a thing hundreds of men of
talent had made their lifework. A pellet of some
explosive at the right spot had destroyed the spark
["7]


THE INFALLIBLE GODAHL
of life; and, once destroyed, the mechanism of the
doors, as beautiful as the inside of a watch, became
merely a jumble of senseless cogs.
"Can you figure it?" asked Byrnes, inspecting
the huge hole in the monolith. "It's beyond me, I
must admit."
"I don't know," said Dunstan; "but I am going
to find out." He connected the set of carbon rods
to the electric switch panel in the corridor through
the transformer. "If I figure it right," he said,
"there are a thousand amperes of electricity flowing
through these rods when the current is turned on.
One-tenth of an ampere will kill a man under cer-
tain conditions. Look at this!"
He kicked the switch with his foot; and instantly
a blue-white flame, an arc of blinding intensity,
shot across the gap between the ends of the carbon
rods, hissing ominously. He handled the rods with
his bare hands.
"Harmless as a kitten!" he said as Byrnes cried
out in dismay.
He held the hissing arc against the side of the
vault. The cement seemed to shrink before it and
melt. It dissolved into a fine dust that hung in the
air.
"They tell us that concrete will withstand any
fire. It did in San Francisco. Look at that! Con-
[118]


THE THOUSAND THIEVES
crete will stand two thousand degrees of heat; but
it won't stand this heat. Byrnes," he cried, sobered,
as he kicked over the switch and dropped the
electric torch, "when they come this good we can't
beat them! We just haven't got the brains—
that's all there is to it!"
III
Cap'n Ha'penny, that blue-eyed son of York-
shire who patrolled the waters of Raritan Bay at
night to locate the universities of fish for his cus-
tomers in daytime, waited long and finally impa-
tiently at the musty Huguenots wharf that mem-
orable morning for Policeman Double-O-Four.
Finally he gave it up and went out to his lobster
pots.
As for Officer Double-O-Four, he dozed away
the morning on his peg-post in Fulton Street, dimly
conscious that a cataclysm had occurred in his im-
mediate neighborhood, of such proportions as to
rouse that hard-sleeping locality for once in its life.
On the whole it pleased him to consider that there
were rabbits in this graveyard after all. Such a
scurrying he had never seen before in his short
period as a patrolman of the first grade. Shortly
after noon the order came to break ranks, and the
[119]


THE INFALLIBLE GODAHL
'
mystic cordon, the wonder of a gaping crowd, dis-
solved into thin air and was gone. Our officer
purchased a copy of the Press and verified his fears
that high tide was due off the Hook at eleven-
thirty-three A.M.—which meant that the only
promise his disrupted day off now held out for him
was to take all his clothes off, go to bed and lux-
uriate in sleep. So he wended his way slowly to
the Old Slip Station. The surroundings were be-
ginning to take on their usual air. The rattle
of trucks and the odor of fish from the Fulton
Market filled the senses.
A shock awaited him! As he ascended the steps
and clumped across the floor to report himself out
at the desk, the fragrance of cigar smoke smote
his nostrils. His captain, bleary-eyed with his
unusual exertions, was leaning back in his big chair,
his feet cocked on the corner of the desk; and he
was pulling at a cigar, painting the atmosphere
with spirals of smoke—as if he had at last found
the solace he read about in books.
It was not the undignified sight of his captain,
with feet higher than his head, that roused the
dull mind of Policeman Double-O-Four. It was
the band of the cigar! The band was a brilliant
red and blue; the policeman scratched his head and
churned his memory.
[I20]


THE THOUSAND THIEVES
He was painfully extracting a swollen foot from
a shoe when light broke on him. It was as clear
as day now. That was his cigar! He distinctly
remembered the band. A kind though not over-
sociable gentleman in a stalled automobile had
presented him with that cigar earlier in the morn-
ing; in fact had presented him with two of *Chcm—
one for his brother. And this lowiife captain had
cribbed them out of his helmet while
Officer Double-O-Four stared vacantly at a
spider constructing an engineering work on a win-
dowpane with a skill beyond human.
He slowly pushed his suffering foot back into
his shoe; and—his head traveling like a Coney
Island merry-go-round—he bent over and absent-
mindedly began fastening the laces. He shook
himself as though in a cold draft; he bit off part
of a fingernail.
"Mulligan," he said, addressing a man packing
a kit on the opposite side of the room, "did I hear
ye was sent down already?"
"The divil take them!" said Mulligan between
his teeth. "And all because somebody tampered
with a manhole on me post when I was at the other
ind of the beat! What's the force coming to these
days, I ask. It'll cost me tin days' pay, at least,
mind ye!"
[121]


THE INFALLIBLE GODAHL
Officer Double-O-Four, somewhat dazed, passed
out. At the corner of Nassau and Maiden Lane
he found a crowd collected about the very manhole
\ his friend of the night before had selected with
so much care as the spot on which to lie down.
A pot of wiping solder, looking blue and cool, was
thoughtfully bubbling over a gasoline torch; and
the manhole, now open, was filled with men in
jeans—plumbers, thought our officer—like bees in
a beetrap. Officer Double-O-Four, mouth open
like a sucker drinking in air at the top of a weedy
pool of water, listened to the man on post explain
the lay of the land. Then he put his hands in his
trousers pockets—in defiance of the rules and regu-
lations—and started east. At Dutch Street he
picked out the Manufacturing Jewelers' Building;
and on the second floor, after considerable embar-
rassment, he found Deputy Byrnes. Officer Double-
O-Four was not exactly a word artist—more espe-
cially he was not a word artist when on the carpet
under the eye of this particular superior, who had
a distressing way of looking at him.
"Herkimer—1907 model!" repeated the deputy.
"Very good. Report to Farley at headquarters.
I'll see you there."
Now there are a hundred thousand automobiles
in the city and vicinity of New York. The horse-
[ 122]


THE THOUSAND THIEv^g
power, make and ownership of each is a matter>u„
record. All that is required is infinite patience—
or a superfluity of clerks among whom to divide
impatience. The Herkimer of the vintage of 1907
was a limited edition that was called in shortly
after being put out. A few still crept wearily
about the city, as though tired of life and its at-
tending ills.
At three o'clock that afternoon an automobile
drew up to the entrance of headquarters—then in
Mulberry Street. It was a Herkimer, model 1907.
Two detectives—undoubtedly detectives, from
their closely shaved and shiny appearance—helped
out a man of middle age, somewhat gray, pasty
and frightened. He was chewing on a cigar that
sported a red-and-blue band.
As he got down a messenger boy on a bicycle
rushed up, dropping his wheel with a clatter; and
seizing the prisoner—there was no doubt he was
such—by the sleeve he thrust an envelope into his
hand.
"Mr. Merwin!" gasped the boy. "I have been
chasing you all the way down."
Had he not been so badly upset Mr. Merwin
might have been astonished. As it was he stared
stupidly from the envelope to the messenger boy,
and thence to the cloud of reporters the detectives
["3]


THE INFALLIBLE GODAHL
. ,fe beating back. He was hurried to the office
of the deputy commissioner. Byrnes wheeled in his
chair.
"Merwin! Ai-yi!" ejaculated the usually col-
lected deputy. "What the deuce are you doing in
this mess?"
From the expression on Merwin's face, he him-
self was still struggling for an explanation why
two detectives had gently but firmly insisted on
his driving them to headquarters just because he
happened to own a Herkimer—reconstructed—
1907. Byrnes turned to the others with a nod of
dismissal. Then he turned on Merwin. He could
not bring himself to believe that this notorious
crank, this nuisance who had made himself the bane
of police administrations for the last ten years,
could have a guilty knowledge of the catastrophe
of the morning. Yet he shut his teeth down hard,
glared at the trembling yet defiant figure before
him, and cried out fiercely:
"Well! Out with it! Quick!"
There was something in the attack of Byrnes
that turned the average man inside out. The effect
on Merwin, the crank, was peculiar. Merwin sud-
denly straightened up. He crushed the envelope
he held and waved his hands on high. His eyes
blazed.
[124]


THE THOUSAND THIEVES
"I have proved it!" he cried triumphantly. "The
•whole town is laughing at you. Burglar protec-
tion! Bah! One—two—three! I slice your
cables—yes! A child could have done it! I have
exploded your system. Ha-ha!"
Byrnes sprang at him with the roar of an animal.
He seized the man in his grasp and hurled him
against a wall.
"You and your damned patents that have made
you a pest for ten years!" he cried. "Don't start
that on me! Come down to earth! Who told you
to do it? Who walked through Ludwig Telfen's
strongroom and took his pick of what he found
there while you were chopping the cables with your
infernal shears? Spit it out! Who was it?
Quick!"
The infuriated deputy dropped the man and
backed away from him.
"Telfen? Strongroom? Took his pick? Why,
man, it was to be a joke—a jest! I am—I am a
genius! I needed only this to prove that my sys-
tem Telfen, did you say? He—he"
"He! He! Yes—he! Who was he?"
The inventor, who for years had striven by
every means known to insane persistence to foist
his worthless electrical protective system on the
city, gradually collected his senses.
[125]


THE THOUSAiv-/THIEVES
Street and we waited until the cops changed posts.
Lord, I know the plan of their mains like I know
the humps in my own bed! Simple! Why, as
a showing-up of the egregious, asinine "In
his excitement he tore apart the envelope he was
crushing in his hands. Two halves of a thousand-
dollar bill dropped out. "The wager! The
wager! He saw it! He's paid it!" cried Mer-
win.
"The thief!" cried Byrnes.
On a slip of paper with the bill was the line,
typewritten:
"My compliments! You have convinced meI"
Seeking the engaging young man who had made
the estimable though fanatical electrician his easy
dupe in the matter of looting the Ludwig Telfen
strongroom, Byrnes paid a visit to the address indi-
cated in the inclosure. Needless to say, however,
neither the name nor the description the electrician
furnished was recognized by the respectable land-
lady who answered the bell.
So ended the incident of the Night of the Thou-
sand Thieves, the feat taking its place among the
many unsolved mysteries. There were clues, it is
true, but they were too insolently obvious on the
face to lead anywhere. The misguided inventor
[ 127]


THE INFALLIBLE GODAHL
passed the remainder of his days in confinement,
childishly happy at having achieved his life's am-
bition.
It is interesting to note, in passing, that of the
rare gems so carefully selected from the Telfen
strongroom that morning only one was ever traced;
the story has never been verified—it is a myth.
At the head of navigation on the Saguenay River
rests a little chapel, built by fishermen. On the
cliffs above stands the figure of a Virgin, the thank-
offering of those saved from the sea. The lost
Bentori crucifix is said to hang in the chapel. It
is mentioned, merely as a coincidence, that the ex-
quisite Godahl, a famous cosmopolite—the Infal-
lible Godahl—whose true character was never
known until the publication of the memoirs of this
Master Rogue, was once rescued from drowning
at this spot.
[128]


IV
COUNTERPOINT
ASIDE from the fact that one Mr. Jack-
son, of Cleveland, had further fattened his
- batting average by lifting a ball over the
ridgepole of the Polo Grounds clubhouse—a stu-
pendous feat in the dogdays—there was nothing in
the morning papers to excuse the waste of ink and
paper incident to the running off of an edition.
Everybody was out of town and, as usual, news
had followed the crowd. The serialized comics and
other faithful all-the-year-round performers were
still active in their respective columns; a variety
actress was having herself arrested at Asbury for
wearing a one-piece bathing suit; an entire Jersey
jury was being hung by its twelfth member who did
not believe in capital punishment; and the crafty
Japanese were realistically credited with sowing the
gates of the Gatun locks with rhyolite, cordite,
maximite, et cetera, so that at the psychological
moment (and as a diplomatic declaration of war)
a Samurai in the disguise of a barber could press a
[ 129]


THE INFALLIBLE GODAHL
button and leave the major portion of our fleet of
super-dreadnoughts stranded up to its knees in the
mud of the lake.
Godahl — the Infallible Godahl — languidly
pushed aside his breakfast things and ran through
his morning papers. He was pleased to note that
only the most enterprising of the morning papers
contained the item divulging the secret of the
Gatun locks being built of fulminating compounds
instead of concrete as was popularly supposed, the
contemporaries remaining silent on this delicate
subject. Godahl tossed the paper to an adjoining
table where, breakfasting late like himself, sat his
friend of many capitals, Adichi Yasakawa—or
Yasakawa Adichi, as you will. "I see you are up
to your old tricks again, Adichi," said Godahl
genially.
The little Japanese looked uncertainly from the
paper to Godahl, and back again, several times.
He could not quite make out, when Occidentals
addressed him, whether or not they were in earnest.
Most of them treated him as a joke. Adichi was
not a joke. He was traveling round the world
slowly—so slowly, indeed, that when he reached
home again he would be very wise and very old.
In Germany he made wooden toys; in France he
was a banker; in England he sold silks; and in
[130]


THE INFALLIBLE GODAHL
his eyeglasses, was candidly interested, as he was
in everything Adichi did.
Suddenly, however, Godahl's wandering atten-
tion was recalled to his afternoon extra. He
brought himself back, to the immediate cause of
his being in town this torrid weather. Stock Ex-
change news was on the front page! At the open-
ing of the session at ten o'clock that morning the
bears had raided Little Steel, knocking the stilts
from under that restless disturber of Wall Street
traffic just at a moment when a board of directors
thought they had everything tacked down tight
and had gone to sea.
This was good news indeed! Not because it
was Little Steel that was again playing all three
rings of the circus, but because there was transpir-
ing a movement in stocks of sufficient importance
to break into the front page of the newspapers.
Godahl had been waiting patiently for Wall Street
news to break into the first page for months now.
In five minutes he was in his own runabout, a
high-powered car that breathed as easily as an
engine coasting down hill. He stepped down into
Cedar Street ten minutes later and turned the key
in his magneto switch, so that he might find the
car when he returned. It was quite probable that
he would be in a hurry when he returned. Next
[ 132]


COUNTERPOINT
he tossed his silk cap with his gauntlets into the
dust-tight compartment behind and donned a shiny
silk hat. The silk hat was his badge for this oc-
casion. He turned the corner, swinging along with
the free gait which he had acquired in his earlier
youth only after arduous toil with a fencing master
of repute.
The curb market, sprawling over the asphalt in
front of the Stock Exchange, was bubbling like
drops of water on a hot griddle. Every one seemed
in a hurry or else trying to out-talk some one else.
The only exceptions to the turmoil were the de-
crepit nags attached to obsolete hansoms roped into
line in the middle of the street, and the occasional
coming and going of well-fed persons clad in silk
hats and frock coats, who exuded an air of pros-
perity and respectability.
Both the exceptions—the horses munching at
their nose-bags, and the silk-hat brigade—were of
interest to Godahl: the horses because of the vege-
tating life they pursued. These creatures came
to Wall Street every day and stood there as long
as the exchanges were open. None of them was
ever known to carry a passenger since the days of
automobiles. The bucolic idea of a stockbroker
invariably associates him with a hansom cab; and
probably these cabs were retained to preserve local
[ 133]


THE INFALLIBLE GODAHL
color. Some of the nags stood with crossed legs
like make-believe horses one sees in summer vaude-
ville; some of them hitched one bony hip high in
the air; others slept through the turmoil, their
noses sweeping the ground. All the cabbies looked
as if Phil May had drawn them years and years
ago.
It was the human animal in Godahl that caused
him to prize these cab horses as one of the sights
of the town. It was his thieving propensities, his
adventuring genius, that caused him to be interested
in the silk-hat brigade. These latter were the
uptown bargain hunters, who never come to Wall
Street unless financial news on the first page informs
them that the Street operators are either over-
anxious to sell or overanxious to buy. They were
not gamblers in stocks; they were investors. They
merely took advantage of the periodic myopia from
which Wall Street suffers; and they were content
with a modest hundred per centum on the dollar
in the course of a twelvemonth.
Godahl entered the mahogany offices entitled in
large gold letters, Sturgis, Wheelock & Com-
pany, Stocks and Bonds; and returning the nod
of an acquaintance here and there, he dropped into
a remote chair, dividing his attention between the
quotation board and the mob clustering like flies
[134]


THE INFALLIBLE GODAHL
world considered it well worth the cost to tell off
shrewd agents to report his smallest doings. It was
said in those days that he had an organization
extending into every corner of the earth; and that
he carried a full line of presidents, cabinets and
royal heirs, ready to be seated or dispatched at a
day's notice.
That was before age had drawn his fangs. That
was before he hid himself from his closest intimates,
in a seclusion none could penetrate. Though he
still maintained an official residence his real home
was as unguessed as the riddle of the Sphinx. Only
on feast-days in Wall Street did he emerge, to play
with funds that came from the four winds.
This was the man that Godahl awaited—this
man who had so far outlived his time that most
men had forgotten him. Godahl would run the
old fox to his lair to-day. That he had promised
himself.
Mapes was a striking figure still at eighty-odd:
tall and gaunt, with the beak of an eagle, and
shaggy brows; one eye was glass, supplanting an
orb that had been gouged out by a Malay kris; in
his funereal attire he looked as soft and flabby as a
superannuated deacon, but for all his years he was
still a man of thews. His hands were enormous;
the thumb of the right hand was a full half inch
[ 136] V


THE INFALLIBLE GODAHL
paradoxically, he sought to accomplish the one by
means of the other.
The cabby at the head of the slovenly line rubbed
his eyes and his nose; and it required the services
of a friendly messenger boy to interpret the old man
shaking a menacing cane. The driver yanked the
chain that upset the third leg of his hansom; he
chirruped to his horse and the beast came to life
with a start and a shudder. The cab drew up at
the curb. The old man permitted the porter in
waiting to assist him to his seat and the cab drove
off without spoken directions. They would be de-
livered en route, no doubt.
Godahl rapidly put in a small order at the desk
and he blotted his check with the self-same blotter
which bore the reversed facsimile of the palsied
signature of Wellington Mapes. He turned it
over. The inscription ran: "Forty-four thousand
three hun "Then it was lost in a maze of
confusing numerals.
It was some forty-five minutes later that the
head of the somnolent line of cab horses drew up
at a corner in lower Seventh Avenue that might
have been the back drop of a ten-twenty-and thirty-
cent melodrama. The house was an old rookery
of wood, tumbling into decay. A tailor's sign
decorated one dusty window, and round the corner
[133]


THE INFALLIBLE GODAHL
the master thief had followed away half an hour
later proved in the end to have two good eyes in
his head and perfect thumb on his right hand,
though in all other respects he was Wellington
Mapes to the life. Apparently on that occasion
the old world-adventurer had cause to employ a
double.
Mapes now alighted feebly and walked across
the sidewalk to the door, which opened for him
from within. It was only a brief wait. Every-
thing occurred as it had occurred in the former
instance. The door opened again, and a white-
coated barber assisted the old man who emerged
to the waiting hansom. Again it was Wellington
Mapes to the life, except—as the apparently drows-
ing plumber noted under his lashes—both eyes were
busy covertly examining the street in all directions;
and one glimpse he got of the right hand told
Godahl that all its members were intact. Godahl
smiled discreetly to himself. It was so simple, if
one only used his wits.
The cab started off. As it rounded the corner
a second cab—another cab of the Wall Street
vintage—appeared quite accidentally from Green-
wich Avenue, turning north into Seventh Avenue
in the wake of the first. And shortly an automo-
bile that had been standing at the curb opposite be-
[ HO]


THE INFALLIBLE GODAHL
its shrubbery running riot and its fences falling to
decay, suggested the glories of old Washington
Heights in Revolutionary days, before the city had
traveled north. Over the ridge on the other side
of the hill were the thirteen trees Alexander Ham-
ilton himself planted as symbols of the units of the
young nation. Ten minutes' walk to the north,
overlooking the Harlem River from the heights,
was the historic mansion where first the British,
then the Continental officers, had gathered about
the mahogany and planned their scheme of battle.
The house stood foursquare in its little park.
It was of three stories, surmounted by a mansard
roof. A veranda clung to its river face, one end
sagging under the rotting timbers laid more than
a century ago.
Godahl had chosen a rear window on the first
floor, after a painstaking reconnaissance of the situ-
ation. His blood tingled. It was rarely that he
indulged in an adventure of breaking and entering,
and then only for high stakes, as now. But to-
night there was an added zest in the affair. Mapes
had been a roaring lion in his day, and to tamper
with him and his possessions at his zenith would
have been to invite certain destruction. All this
had changed now with the coming of age, and
when Godahl had set forth airily on this adventure
[ H2]


COUNTERPOINT
he had not anticipated entering a web. Yet two
vehicles do not dog a fictitious person without rea-
son; and Godahl, as he worked, could not help
wondering if he alone had been successful in pick-
ing up the right trail. The mere fact that the
crafty old man had, on at least two occasions, taken
such pains to cover his tracks after an open ap-
pearance in Wall Street gave rise to a thousand
speculations.
It was simple enough for a man of Godahl's tal-
ents. The French window gave easily and noise-
lessly. Godahl found himself in a broad room that
seemed long unused. Through an open door he
caught the sound of tinkling silver. Mapes was
at dinner. If Godahl's information was correct
the old man was attended by but one servant. That
servant would now be engaged in caring for his
master's wants at table; and the light-footed thief
moved forward in the gloom and lifted a dusty
tapestry leading to the adjoining library.
A low light was burning there and the window
curtains were drawn tight. It had the familiar
pleasant smell of tenancy. In one corner was a
closed desk. Adjoining it was a small safe let into
the wall. In the center, under a hanging gas-lamp,
was a table piled with books and odds and ends.
A tray with a decanter of liquor, and a half-
[143]


THE INFALLIBLE GODAHL
emptied glass stood invitingly in the center. Sev-
eral loose sheets of paper lay on the table, one
held down by a pen, still wet. It was as he had
learned. This man, with a soul seared by avarice
extending over an active life of more than fifty
years, had developed one queer trait of character
in his declining days. This was his infatuation for
music.
Mapes had picked up and reduced to occidental
scoring the weird chants of some Eastern tribes he
had encountered in his wanderings. There had
been no principality too mean for this famous med-
dler to pry into its secrets. And out of his adven-
turous past all he now retained was the memory
of these mystic chants, whose significance stretched
back thousands of years. It was said that the old
man toiled unceasingly setting these airs down on
paper. Apparently he had been bent over his
task within a few hours, for a sheet of music scores,
each inscribed in a trembling hand, with fragments
of impossible themes, lay on the blotter. Godahl
picked up one of them and ran over the air in his
head. But he was not here through interest in
exotic melody. He sought something else; yet he
was willing to take advantage of what seemed an
old man's abstraction in a hobby, if by its means
he-could accomplish his own ends.
[144]


THE INFALLIBLE GODAHL
so that the keys hung over the brass salver, and let
his head fall back.
It was true then! Wellington Mapes still in-
dulged this unique habit in his old age. In his early
days Wellington Mapes had reduced the science of
sleep to elementals. To lose himself in sleep until
the muscles of his fingers relaxed and let fall the
keys in the resounding salver, insuring an instant
awakening, was all the rest he required to refresh
himself for hours of toil. He had learned the trick
from a famous physician and thenceforward had
practised it as sedulously as the great specialist him-
self.
The old man's breathing became more and more
regular. Godahl crossed the room with padded
steps, watching the keys with fascinated eyes. Sud-
denly the fingers relaxed and the keys fell; but the
resounding crash of their contact with the reso-
nant brass did not follow. They fell softly into
the waiting hand of the intruder. Godahl straight-
ened up with a smile and regarded the keys in his
palm. The old man was his prisoner, for the
moment at least, as securely as if bound by chains.
Godahl knelt softly beside the recumbent form
and gently touched the loose flesh of the throat
with a thumb and forefinger. With a touch as
soft as running water he exerted pressure on the
[146]


COUNTERPOINT
throbbing carotid arteries. Consciousness would
not return to that numbed brain until the blood was
again permitted to resume its course. It was a trick
Godahl had acquired in Java, where it is frequently
used. To this device of the ancient Javanese he
added another, of the moderns. He took from a
pocket with his free hand a band of soft rubber,
and, as carelessly as if he operated on a patient
under ether, he proceeded to stretch this over the
gray head resting on the cushions. He brought
it down to the neck, tightened it, adjusted two soft
molds of rubber in the place of his pressing finger-
tips, and stood away, regarding the finished task
with satisfaction. Now he might go about his
business.
First, there was the desk. It was a chance, a
small chance; but he must be thorough. The lock
came with a click, and he stood up and watched
and listened. He gave thanks that Wellington
Mapes spent his evenings behind locked doors,
free from the eyes even of trusted servants.
Inside the desk was a litter of letters and memo-
randa, mostly pertaining to business—business car-
ried on by means of the cash that came from the
four winds. Godahl did not seek money. A letter
attracted his eye. He picked it up and carried it
over to the light. His quick sense of detail told
[147]


THE INFALLIBLE GODAHL
him that the flap had been steamed and carefully
re-sealed. By whom? Not by Wellington Mapes
surely, because the letter was torn open raggedly
at the top. He examined a second and a third—
all bore the same evidence that some one was tam-
pering with the mail of this burned-out creature
of many lives. Godahl, his curiosity aroused,
drew forth an inclosure. It was a torn scrap of
paper. Some insignificant memoranda relating to
a chart of stocks—gamblers chart stocks in much
the same way as the Weather Bureau charts the
weather—occupied one side. Surely there was
nothing in that to repay a prying person the
trouble of intercepting a man's mail.
Godahl, a magician in ciphers, studied the words
and the formation of the letters; but he brought his
mind away from the task, satisfied that the inscrip-
tion contained no hidden message. He examined
the other side of the paper. At the top it bore the
embossed name of Wellington Mapes. It was a
shefct of paper the old man had used in his endless
scoring of his weird music. There were a dozen
bars of wobbly musical notes, which, as Godahl
mentally ran through them, revealed a jumble oT
sounds without lilt or rhythm. A second inclosure
he found to have been written on a similar sheet,
although the whole sheet was intact and without
[148]


COUNTERPOINT
musical inscription. So with a third and a fourth.
Some contained fragments of strange chants similar
to those lying on the table beside the heavily breath-
ing Wellington Mapes. Each of the communica-
tions was signed with the initial "R." The thrifty
correspondent, whoever he might be, seemed to
have made use of Wellington Mapes' waste paper.
Thrusting several letters into his pockets for
examination at his leisure, Godahl put the rest aside
and resumed his search.
The safe bore an intricate lock; but the fingers
of the rogue, schooled to recognize the silent im-
pact of the hidden tumblers, readily conquered the
combination. There was something fantastic in the
boldness with which he worked, with the sleeping
man at his side. From time to time he stopped to
listen, but otherwise gave no sign that the situation
was perilous. In the safe was a litter .of odds and
ends, money, papers, a drawer of foreign coins,
another of rudely carved ornaments and decora-
tions in gold, silver and hard stones—each of them
probably with its tale of blood and disaster. Go-
dahl gave them scarcely a glance. He explored
every nook and crevice of the room to no avail.
Finally, with infinite caution he ran his delicate
fingers through the clothing of his unconscious
victim. But Mapes wore no belt. It might be
[149]


THE INFALLIBLE GODAHL
about his neck then. Yes! A pouch hung on a
thong under the shirt bosom. With hands that
trembled ever so little, Godahl untied the string
that bound the neck of the pouch. "His fingers were
alive as they searched the recesses. It was here!
He drew forth a roughly shaped circlet of zir-
con; it was large enough for a man's first finger.
The characters, microscopic in size, engraved on
its surface, were of a language two thousand years
dead. Godahl took from his own pocket a stone
of similar size and shape. To the touch the two
were identical; yet even his skill had not been equal
to the task of counterfeiting the inscription of the
original. He placed the substitute in the pouch
and replaced the pouch in the bosom of the un-
conscious man. The chances were, he thought,
that Mapes would not discover the fraud for
months, possibly never. Yet the substitute was
dross; and the original, which Godahl slipped into
the back of a capacious watch case, was a passe-
partout, a talisman, a charm, a division of king-
ship, the mere possession of which—in its long-
forgotten day—would have enabled its bearer to
pass unquestioned through the sacred places of an
ancient empire. To-day it was a curio, a mere
nothing, yet, to the mind of the man now treasur-
ing it, it was worth the risks of a night not yet
[150]


THE INFALLIBLE GODAHL
wise he adjusted the hands of the watch of his
victim. Standing beside him Godahl measured the
distance to the curtain behind which he had taken
refuge on entering here. It would take quick work,
the type of skill he rejoiced in. With his fingers
pressing the arteries whose resumed flow would
bring consciousness to the numb brain he removed
the rubber band. With one movement he tossed
the keys into the waiting salver and leaped to his
curtain. The sleeper sat up with the start of one
suddenly roused. From force of habit his fingers
sought the keys in the salver. For a short space
he sat idle, summoning his lagging senses; then
he drew his chair to the table and resumed his
eternal occupation.
in
It was midnight when Godahl found the coast
clear and left the house behind him. He hugged
the ragged picket fence, shadowed by its wild
tumble of overgrown shrubs. A person in his at-
tire with a face well decorated with lead grease
would be given short shrift if found prowling
about such a place at this hour of night. He
waited patiently at the gate for a full half-hour;
and then suddenly he straightened up and started
down the neglected avenue.
[152]


COUNTERPOINT
At the corner a man stepped out from the shad-
ow of a tree, stood stock-still in front of him, and
laughed.
"Well, my fine jail-bird!" said the man genially,
but with a distressingly business-like air.
Godahl peered into the leering features. Even
he, alert for every eventuality, was ill-prepared
for the surprise the sight of the man's face gave
him. Quick as a flash, however, he had flattened
one eyebrow and drawn up one corner of his mouth,
a trick that transformed his features. His quick
wits worked fast. The night's adventures had de-
veloped a sudden and amazing illumination.
"Scott!" he exclaimed with a sneer of contempt.
"You miserable incompetent! I thought we had
lost you and your pack of amateurs in lower Sev-
enth Avenue this afternoon."
Marvin Scott was known to the master-rogue as
a young dandy who did his best to ape Godahl the
exquisite in the clubs he frequented. Of good
family, Scott had been advanced in the diplomatic
service for several years, till his taste for wild
escapades had led to his dismissal. So, at least,
the story ran.
The unexpected mention of his own name com-
ing with sneering sarcasm from this soiled person
in jeans carried Scott off his feet; but he quickly
[153]


THE INFALLIBLE GODAHL
recovered himself. Seizing Godahl by the shoul-
ders—a fatal move, for the next instant his wrists
were in the grip of wirelike fingers—he struggled
toward the light.
"Who the devil are you?" he cried, battling
furiously. "I don't know you!"
"You will!" said Godahl vehemently. He had
taken a long shot, and even now that he felt sure
of his ground he was entirely aware that the Infal-
lible Godahl was lost if this man recognized him
on such a venture. That the house of Wellington
Mapes was being watched could mean but one
thing—the old fox was at his old games again. He
had long held a suspicion that Marvin Scott's long
journeys hither and yon about the earth were not
wholly unofficial. This thing was as clear as day.
The gentleman adventurer could be here in but
one capacity—as a secret agent of the state depart-
ment.
"You have made a pretty mess of this business!"
cried Godahl. He released his hold, but he thrust
out his chin so savagely that the other, nonplussed
at the sudden turn affairs had taken, shrank before
him. "Do you think I have nothing better to do
than to devote my time to your failures? Tell me,
who among you had the wit to trace Mapes here
after he doubled on you? Tell me that!
[154]


COUNTERPOINT
"Take your hand off your gun!" Godahl com-
manded, pursuing his advantage—for the other,
perplexed in spite of his chagrin at the way this
stranger had ridden him down, made a move toward
a pocket. The stranger's tone was one of author-
ity. In his trade no man knows his brother. "Fol-
low me!" said Godahl over his shoulder as he
started off. "And remember," he said as he waited
for the other to overtake him—"I am Brown. If
you call me anything else in the next half-hour I
will see to it that you are started to Shanghai on
foot!"
In the cover of the darkness, as they proceeded,
Godahl indulged in a- smile. So young Marvin
Scott, in the role of a diplomatic agent, had been
assigned to match his wits against the wily old
Mapes. The situation that had promised to be
exceedingly embarrassing was turning out entirely
to Godahl's liking. His man—who it was plain
to see accepted him now in his character of a dis-
gruntled superior—was following along as tamely
as if he had been accustomed all his life to take
orders from a plumber. They mounted the steep
hill to Broadway and then crossed to Amsterdam
Avenue. Godahl picked out an all-night saloon
and entered the side door. The back room was
deserted; and he and his companion were soon sit-
[i5S]


THE INFALLIBLE GODAHL
ting down and regarding each other with very
different emotions.
"I suppose," said Godahl wearily, "that if I
had let you have your way you would have further
distinguished yourself by picking me up and turn-
ing me over to the police as a common house-
breaker, eh?"
The other said nothing. He was trying to re-
member where he had seen this face before. If
it had not been for the smear of plumbago, as black
as lampblack, running parallel to the nose, the task
might have been easier.
Godahl shook his head, a queer smile playing
about his lips.
"The damnable part of it," he went on in a
tone of utter disgust, "is that, now that I have
finished up another one of your failures, you will
get the credit for it, just as you have done in the
past."
Godahl took an envelope out of his pocket, one
of the three pilfered from the littered desk of
Wellington Mapes.
"As a piece of fine art," he said, now enjoying
the situation to its utmost, "I call your attention
to this. My man, did you by any chance think
that you were playing with a baby when you under-
took to scrutinize the mail of Wellington Mapes?
[156]


COUNTERPOINT
A child of five could do a better job of steaming
than that!"
Scott's eyes bulged at sight of the letter, which,
it was true, had already passed through his hands.
All his defenses were down now. He sat silently,
watching the dirty and offensively authoritative
person of whom he had had the bad luck to run
afoul, as that individual gave his undivided atten-
tion to the inclosure of this envelope. The adven-
ture of the night was, after all, a mere bagatelle
to Godahl. Something infinitely more interesting
was on hand now. He read and reread the words
of the letter. They suggested nothing but mar-
gins and rights, dividends, and Supreme Court
decisions affecting Big Business. He turned the
paper over and a second time a dazzling illumina-
tion stole over his senses. He had begun to dis-
cover that two and two make four.
There was a decrepit piano in the room. Go-
dahl stepped over to it and, holding the paper with
its straggling bars of music, he fingered the notes
over.
"I suppose that means nothing to you, Mr.
Marvin Scott?" he said. Scott shook his head;
but a dull red began to burn in his cheeks. A
dozen of these letters had passed through his hands,
but not until this moment had he thought of at-
[157]


I
THE FIFTH TUBE
I
l<irT will be observed," noted the pharmaco-
poeia, "that the size of the drops of differ-
ent liquids bears no relation to their density;
sulphuric acid is stated by Durand to yield ninety
drops to the fluid drachm, while water yields but
forty-five, and oil of anise, according to Professor
Procter, eighty-five. It follows, then, that the
weight of the drop varies with most liquids; but
few experiments on this subject have been recorded,
the oldest being contained in Mohr's Pharma-
copoeia Universalis of 1845. More accessible to
the American and English student are the results
of Bernoulli"—and so on.
1 Godahl—the infallible Godahl—did not have
the printed page before him, but he had visualized
it in one glance only a few hours before and the
imprint was still fresh on his memory. Reduced
to elementals, a drop of liquid varies in size from
one-third to one and one-half minims. Godahl split
the difference and called a drop and a minim syn-
[161]


THE INFALLIBLE GODAHL
onymous for his purpose. Later, if he were so
minded, he might arrive at precise results by means
of atomic weights. He began a lightning mental
calculation as he sat idly stirring his beer of Pilsen
with a tiny thermometer, which the proprieter of
this Hanover Square resort served with each stein
of beer.
"It should be fifty-two degrees Fahrenheit, my
friend," said the master of the house, who in pass-
ing saw that Godahl was seemingly intent on the
thermometer. Godahl was not intent at all on the
tiny thread of mercury; rather he was studying the
drops of golden brown liquid rolling off the pointed
end of the glass instrument. However, it was as
much as one's life was worth to dispute the proper
temperature of beer at this eating place, and Go-
dahl smiled childish acquiescence and explained
that he was awaiting with impatience the rise of
half a degree of temperature before he indulged
his thirst.
"It should be just such a color," he mused—
"possibly a little more inclined to orange—and a
little sirupy when stone cold." And, with his
head thrown back and his eyes shut, he completed
his calculation: there should be sixty-one thousand,
four hundred and forty such drops to the gallon—
at ten cents a drop!
[162]


THE FIFTH TUBE
cognizant of the shiny silk hats and limousines of
their employers. Gold bought everything the
heart could desire; gold attracted everything with
invisible lines of force radiating on all sides.
An express wagon was backed up to the curb and
curious pedestrians were peering over each other's
shoulders, attracted and held spellbound by no
more rare a sight than a pyramid of rough pine
boxes, each as big as a shoebox, piled on the pave-
ment. The boxes contained gold—ingots of gold.
If the guards, who stood on each side of the sweat-
ing porters carrying the boxes inside, had not
looked so capable it is more than likely that many
individuals in the crowd would have remembered
that they had been born thieves thousands of years
ago, and fought madly for the possession of this
yellow stuff.
"It should obey the laws of gravity and be sub-
ject to the stress of vacuum," mused Godahl, still
delighted with the obvious idea he had discovered
over his beer in Hanover Square. "I think," he
wandered on ruminatively—"I think I shall reduce
it to its absolute atom and beat it into a frieze for
the walls of my study. Sixty-one thousand drops
to the gallon! It should make a frieze at least four
inches wide. And why not?" he thought abrupt-
ly, as though some sprite in him had snickered
[165]


THE FIFTH TUBE
their seams from prying eyes. The cornices were
ample for a flood and the tiles of the roof were
as capacious as saucers. Before the days when
electrolytic chemistry came to the aid of the crude
agencies of earth, air, fire and water, the very
smoke that emerged from the blackened chimneys
was well worth gathering, to be melted down in
a crucible to yield its button of gold. The whole
represented the ideal of a stronghouse of a past
age. It was the Assay Office of the United States
that Godahl regarded.
"If," thought Godahl delightedly, as his eye
caressed the picture—"if it were painted on china
I am affaid, friend Godahl, you would not sleep
until the plate was secure in your possession."
The hour of one was suddenly, stridently ush-
ered in by a crash of steam riveting hammers, like
the rattle of machine guns. Little apes of men,
high in the air back of the little building, were
driving home the last of the roof girders of a tiny
chimney-like skyscraper, which in several months'
time was to absorb the functions, with ultramodern
methods, so long and so honorably exercised by the
beautiful little house in the street—the old Assay
Office.
Godahl passed on and shortly was in his lodg-
ings. There was mellow contentment here—some-
[167]


THE INFALLIBLE GODAHL
thing he prized above all things; and he sighed to
think that he would not know this comfort again
for weeks. That same day, as an expert electrician
named Dahlog—with a pronounced Danish accent
—he presented his union card and obtained em-
ployment at sixty cents an hour. Things worth
doing were worth doing well in his philosophy;
and, though he hated soiled fingers and callous
hands and walking delegates, he must regard the
verities.
II
The spic-and-span new Assay Office of the
United States is sometimes described as the House
Without a Front Door. Indeed, it has no front
door; but it has two back doors, and gets along
very well at that. In reality it occupies two back
yards, balancing itself nicely on the party line be-
tween a parcel of land fronting on Wall Street and
another on Pine. The Wall Street entrance is
effected through the dingy halls of the now tenant-
less Assay Office of the olden time; on the Pine
Street side a tall iron paling suggests to the passer-
by that something more precious than bricks and
mortar is contained within. There is a wicket gate
of ornamental iron in the fence, wide enough to
[168]


THE INFALLIBLE GODAHL
ing at their eternal task of separating gold from
dross.
A party of four men were in the act of leaving
the place on the Pine Street side. One was the
superintendent of the plant and another the master
refiner, the two men responsible for the wealth,
within—two men whose books were balanced each
year on a set of scales that will weigh a long ton
or a lead-pencil mark with equal nicety.
A third man of the party was a Canadian gov-
ernment official who had come down from Ottawa
to inspect this latest monument to the science of
electrolytic chemistry. He was not interested in
the Assay Office as a stronghouse—it had long ago
passed into tradition that the Mint of the United
States, with its accessories, is inviolable; and to
ask whether this latest plant of its kind in the
world were burglar-proof would be to laugh.
The fourth member of the party was the chief
of a division of the United States Secret Service,
who in passing through the city had run down to
find out whether Guinea gold owed its peculiar
color to a unique atomic structure or to the presence
of a trace of silver. On the answer hung the fate
of two rascals he had laid by the heels.
"No; you haven't the idea yet," the master re-
finer was saying to the Canadian official. "We
[ 170]


THE FIFTH TUBE
He waited for the answer, which did not come—
only a suppressed gasp through the telephone.
"Jackson !" he cried. "Listen to me! Turn round
and walk to the tank; then come back and tell me
what you see! . . .Boy!" he shouted through the
half-open door of the booth. A dozen pages
rushed for the door. "Tell Mr. Whitaker to
come to me at once. He is the man with the red
mustache who is sitting on the ottoman in the
smoking-room."
When Whitaker, the secret agent, thrust his
head in at the door he was met by Hamilton
bounding out. Hamilton's face told the agent
that something big was afoot, and as the other
dashed out he followed. Hamilton picked up
Banks, the superintendent, on the way out.
They left the Canadian gasping and alone. The
nice little dinner for four that had been planned for
the evening was off. The three officials were half
a dozen blocks down-town in a taxicab before the
Canadian guest of honor woke up to the fact that,
as the whitefaced refiner had stated bluntly, some-
thing was afoot that was not his affair.
The street scene that met the eyes of the three,
as they tumbled out of their cab in Pine Street and
ran up the long ramp leading to the door, was
much the same as when they had passed out a short
[ 177]


THE FIFTH TUBE
He began examining the rifled tank. He had not
gone far before he began to swear softly to himself.
The tank was composed of porcelain in a steel
retainer. He pointed to the two rods that ran
parallel lengthwise of the empty receptacle. These
two rods were covered with a saddle of yellow
metal throughout their extent.
Suspended from the rods were hooks roughly cut
out of the same sheet of metal. Suspended from
the hooks on one rod were some fifty canvas sacks,
each the size of a man's sock. They contained
crude bullion, from which the plating solution
extracted its pure gold. On the other rod, sus-
pended from similar hooks, were yellow plates ten
or twelve inches long, varying from one-eighth to
an inch thick, covered with a fine incrustation of
yellow crystals, clustering together like grains of
damp sugar.
"What is all this stuff?" he asked bluntly,
turning to his companions who had sprung to his
side when he exclaimed: "Is it gold?"
The two men nodded assent. It was solid gold,
pure gold—even to the roughly hewn hooks. The
very electrical connections were of gold.
"What's it worth?" demanded Whitaker.
"I could tell you in a second from my books—"
began the superintendent.
[181]


THE INFALLIBLE GODAHL
"Never mind your books! A million?"
The superintendent shook his head. He could
not yet grasp details.
"Half a million?"
"Easily!" responded the refiner. "Yes; quite
that, I should say."
Whitaker lifted one of the incrusted plates, still
wet from the solution in which it had been im-
mersed so short a time before. He swung it on his
finger by means of its golden hook.
"Doesn't it strike you as a bit strange," he said,
"that a thief with wit enough to make away with
six hundred pounds of your precious juice should
have left behind half a million dollars in raw gold,
lying loose in the middle of a room?"
This was a nut that for the time being resisted
cracking. The secret agent said, "Humph!" and
fingered his vest pocket for the interdicted cigar,
which was not there.
"In emergencies," he said absent-mindedly, "it
is justifiable." He turned to Banks and added:
"See that no one leaves the building until I return.
The first thing to do—it's foolish, but it must be
done—is to round up all your employees and bring
them here. I suppose all of them knocked off for
the day with a clean shower?"
Yes; all the men had passed through the chang-
[182]


THE INFALLIBLE GODAHL
"Humph!" said Whitaker, who was studying
the toes of his shoes as though they contained the
answer to the riddle. "It is quite evident," he be-
gan, "that eight hundred pounds of gold, especially
in a fluid state, did not get up and walk off with-
out help. I think," he said, rising, "that before we
go farther I will take lessons in electrolytic chem-
istry. We haven't lost much time on this case and
we can afford to waste a few minutes getting at
fundamentals."
They retired to the seventh floor, the floor of
the yawning porcelain tank; and in a short time
Whitaker was in possession of the facts. It was a
simple system, when all is said and done, this sys-
tem of refining gold, which had been worked out by
the greatest students of the time. The secret agent
was put through the elementals of the process of
transmuting gold from the alloy by means of the
electric current.
"Very clever indeed!" remarked Whitaker.
"Also, gentlemen, let me add that it is very clever
indeed to lock up gold bars downstairs in safes
that cost a fortune, and leave a tankful of the stuff
standing in the center of an unprotected room like
this."
"But who could come seven stories up in the air
and get away with stuff of this bulk?" querulously
[184]


THE FIFTH TUBE
interjected Hamilton. "The thing is preposter-
ous!"
"The preposterous thing," said Whitaker, with
his drawl, "has occurred—apparently under your
very noses; and, from the looks of things, the fact
that the liquor was steaming hot did not interfere
with the plans of the thief in the least. What is
that collection of pipes?"
He indicated a nest of black-varnished iron pipes
running along the outside of the tank.
"Those are the conduits to carry the electric
wires," explained the master refiner.
No sooner were the words out of his mouth than
he exclaimed aloud and leaped into the empty tank,
running his fingers with feverish haste over the
conduit outlets.
"By Gad! I have got it!" he cried, his voice
a high falsetto under stress of his excitement.
"Hand me a portable light—quick!"
With an electric bulb at the end of a portable
cord, he inspected every inch of the tank, more
especially the outlet boxes of the electric wires.
Four tubes were required to carry the electric cur-
lint.
There were five. The fifth was empty of wires.
So cunningly concealed it lay behind an elbow-joint
that only eyes sharpened by an idea born of genius
[ 185 ]


THE INFALLIBLE GODAHL
could have detected it. With a cry of triumph, the
refiner dashed to the door and down the stone
stairs. He was at the panel of the switchboard in
the converting-room, where the electric current is
properly tuned for its task of assaying. There
were only four conduits leading from the upper
floor—the fifth had lost itself somewhere among
the studdings and joists of concrete and steel.
The astonished Whitaker, finding his recently
acquired knowledge insufficient to follow the leap-
ing mind of Hamilton, finally seized that individ-
ual and cornered him.
"What is it?" he cried.
"It's as plain as the nose on a man's face!" cried
Hamilton. "That fifth tube! Good Heavens!
man, are you so stupid? That fifth tube could
drain that tank of its last drop by siphoning it out!"
He broke away, cheering. "They have taken our
gold out of the tank, but they haven't got lit
away from the building yet. Find out where
that fifth tube runs to and there you will find our
gold!"
Through the simple means of a siphon their
forty gallons of precious liquor could have been
removed through an aperture scarcely larger than
a pinhole. The dawn was beginning to break.
Whitaker's mind, clogged by its abnormal meal of
[186]


THE FIFTH TUBE
technical details, was beginning to run cleanly
again.
"Stop!" cried Whitaker. "I am in charge of
this affair. I want you to answer my questions.
In the first place," he cried, seizing the refiner by
the arm and twisting his hand above his head,
"what is the matter with your hands?"
Hamilton's hands, where he had been pawing
about in the electrolytic tank, were stained brown,
as though from cautery. They were drawn with
pain, though in his excitement, up to this moment
he had not noticed it.
"Cyanide of potassium!"
"Where did it come from? Quick!"
"Oh, you fool! The tank—the tank, of course.
The process—I went all through it with you. The
tank contained chloride of gold dissolved in cyanide
of potassium!"
"Does it hurt?" inquired Whitaker, with an ir-
ritating slowness.
"Hurt! Do you think you can take a bath in
red-hot acid and Help me trace that extra
tube. How the deuce do you suppose that tube
ever got there?"
Instantly the picture of a small burned foot came
before Whitaker—an inspiration. He held the
struggling Hamilton as in a vise.


THE INFALLIBLE GODAHL
"If you will sit still three minutes," said Whita-
ker, his eye gleaming and a forbidden cigar cocked
fiercely, "I will guarantee to lead you to the place
where your precious gold is—or was; I won't
promise which. Or, here—come along with me!"
he said as an afterthought; and the pair started for
the street on the run.
Whitaker came to a stop on the corner where he
had seen the barefooted boy yelling with pain.
"What's that?" he asked, pointing to a wet spot
on the pavement where a liquid had collected in the
ruck about a sewer opening. Hamilton dug his
hands in the dirt and sprang up with a cry. In the
mud were tiny needles of an orange yellow color.
"There it is! There's our gold!" he cried
ecstatically; and then, with a despairing gesture:
"In the sewer!"
Whitaker was taking advantage of the refiner's
desolation to quiz an interested policeman. Yes;
it was a fact that a steel dumpcart and a steel der-
rick wagon had brushed hubs at this corner about
six o'clock, and that the shock had washed as much
as a bucketful of mud out of the dumpcart.
Did the policeman happen to have the names of
the drivers? He did, because there had ensued
quite a flow of language over the accident, but no
arrests. The derrick wagon belonged to the Deg-
[188]


THE FIFTH TUBE
Thirty-six was indeed the receptacle in which the
thief ^had carted off forty gallons of gold worth
ten cents a drop.
It was a simple matter to trace the mysterious
pipe from the gold tank through the junction boxes
of the electric system to the electrical manhole in
the street. Evidences were numerous that this ex-
tra conduit had been installed by the far-thinking
thief at some time during the period when the
building was in process of erection. In the bottom
of the manhole were found a few pints of the
precious stuff that had been siphoned down through
seven floors to the street by the adroit expedient of
breaking open a concealed plug.
"I must confess I am not much of a scientist,"
said Whitaker a week later; "and before we turn
the page on this subject I want to find out one
thing: Admitting that our dumpcart friend got
away with a quarter of a million dollars' worth of
gold in the form of mud, what value would it be
to him? How could he get the gold out of it?"
An indulgent smile curled Hamilton's lips.
"The process of extracting gold from mud is
one of the simplest in chemistry and mechanics.
And the joke is," he went on, screwing up the
corners of his mouth, "that when that crafty mud
rat has manufactured it into bullion again he will
[I91]


THE INFALLIBLE GODAHL
probably have the supreme gall of bringing it here
and asking us to buy it. The devil of it is that we
shall have to buy it too!"
At this remote date the Assay Office officials are
still in doubt whether they have repurchased their
stolen treasure. It is worth while to say in passing
that the surety companies responsible for the men
responsible for the treasure of the Government
Assay Office are still engaged in suing each other
and the various contractors responsible for fitting
and inspecting the interior of the new building.
The robbery undoubtedly had been planned and
the properties arranged months ahead of time; but,
aside from the fact that an expert electrician named
Dahlog, who had been employed on the premises at
odd times—a man with a pronounced Danish ac-
cent—turned up hopelessly missing, the case has
not progressed. It promises in time to become as
celebrated in court annals as the antique litigation
of Jarndyce versus Jarndyce.
Whitaker seldom confessed his failures; but sev-
eral months later, over cigars in the library of his
friend Godahl the exquisite, he related the story—
unabridged—of the most remarkable bit of thiev-
ery in his experience. It was his secret hope that
the acute mind of this celebrated dilettante, who
[192]


VI
AN ALL-STAR CAST
I
ONE afternoon, when he was going home
from work, a young woman who ap-
peared perfectly normal sat down beside
young Grimsy in an elevated train and asked him
whether he did not think people looked silly sitting
still and staring at each other the way they have
the habit of doing in public conveyances. The re-
mark struck him as being the most sensible one he
had heard during his six months' residence on Man-
hattan Island, and just as he settled down for an
interesting—though somewhat unconventional—
chat with this normal person, the guard brought in
a policeman and pointed her out as an escaped
lunatic.
This hit young Grimsy rather hard, because he
had spent his six months looking for a friend who
was a sociable animal like himself. He worked
in a bank, where he operated a handpower adding
machine and had a cage all to himself, with a door
[ 194]


AN ALL-STAR CAST
that locked on the outside and walls and ceiling of
interlaced brass ribbon, to say nothing of an ar-
mored concrete floor.
There were cages on each side of him in which
were locked young men like himself; but, just
when he felt intimate enough with his neighbor—
with no other excuse than sheer proximity—to say
good morning, his neighbor would be wafted off
to some remote cage and a strange face would
glower at his advances through the bars.
Once he actually did address the paying teller
on his right, and that person instantly moved to
the far side of his den, as though there were some-
thing in the act to affect the soundness of his surety
bond.
At his boarding-house young Grimsy made in-
effectual attempts to engage his fellows in social
discourse; but they all answered by merely growling
over their food, like a dog discussing vested inter-
ests with a bone he had cornered.
Primitive man probably was interested in noth-
ing so much as his food at mealtime; but that
archaic instinct is surely no excuse for civilized
creatures who make a practice of sitting down
together at one table. So he began to cultivate
friendships, through the public prints, of people
who had the habit or the knack of being talked
[195]


THE INFALLIBLE GODAHL
about. Grimsy read about society and uptown
society, and doings of the Upper West Side; and
he actually began to take a vicarious delight in their
antics, much as the ragged urchin who plants his
nose on the frosty window of a toy shop and lets
the water of his mouth and his imagination run
riot.
He gloried in the hobnobbery of the august im-
perial Wilhelm and Mr. Carnegie; he knew which
of the Waterburys made the deciding goal in the
polo tournament, and the color of his pony; he
could trace the consanguinity of some of the first
families through numberless weddings and di-
vorces; and for three whole days he followed with
the greatest concern the choosing of the House-
of-Representatives gift for the White House wed-
ding. He knew that Mr. Gary, of the Steel Trust,
left Aix-les-Bains on the twentieth and would sail
from Southampton seven days later; that Mrs.
Bixbie's first husband was a Strange, and that her
son by her second marriage resided in Paris
through choice; that Memsahib was the best mare
at the Piping Rock Show; that the Culver-Stones
were importing a new necklace of pearls for their
daughter, who was to marry Comte de Chalvray;
that Buck Stringer, of the Harvard eleven, kicked
with his left foot; and that the Winstons were
[196]


AN ALL-STAR CAST
about to reestablish themselves socially in Wash-
ington after being ostracized in Manhattan through
overindulgence in the divorce court.
People at sea, people on shore, at Lenox, at
Durham, at Palm Beach—it was all the same to
Moberly Grimsy; he flitted over the face of the
earth in patent-leather society—in the narrow con-
fines of his hall room—every time he opened the
extra of an afternoon paper or stirred gossip with
his coffee and rolls. And he spiced the whole with
juicy paragraphs from a society weekly which con-
fided to him the back-stairs talk in the most shame-
less fashion.
So in time he came to acquire a stock of informa-
tion that would have been of infinite value to a
faithful old family nurse in a three-story novel or
to an editor of a metropolitan newspaper. It was,
after all, merely one step in acclimatizing himself
to New York, assisting in the laborious process of
the transmogrification of one's soul from the person
of a gregarious provincial to that of an insular
New Yorker. He acquired numberless bowing
acquaintances in print, but none on the street. It
is hard—breaking the crust—when one comes from
the country.
Do not blame young Grimsy when he began
looking for queer places to eat. That was inevi-
[197]


THE INFALLIBLE GODAHL
table. Possibly, since he was regarded as a sus-
pected person in the sphere that was his own, he
might surprise a smile or a nod among the dwellers
on the fringe. He began, of course, among the
logwood and red ink. of the electric-lighted restau-
rants off Sixth Avenue, but the stuff they gave him
to eat and drink made him shiver in the wind
when he got outside.
One night he stumbled into a Lombardy board-
ing house in Ninth Street, where, for the nonce, his
spark of sociability was rekindled by a Great Dane
dog that rested its chin on his table and regarded
him with loving eyes so long as the division of the
meat was fifty-fifty.
Another night he sat in a back room lined with
wine-casks and counted twenty men — every
mother's son of them fat and sporting waxed mus-
taches—enter with mysterious offerings, which later
he discovered to consist of such things as one reads
of in a fashionable short story, or on the carte du
jour at Delmonico's or Sherry's—truffles, pates,
succulent squabs, aromatic sauces, open-winged arti-
chokes, bottles half-empty—the toll of many lard-
ers; for they were all chefs about to prepare food
for themselves and eat. Somehow he had never
before thought of chefs having to eat; but they
did now, before his very eyes, after gathering about
[198]


AN ALL-STAR CAST
a red-hot range in the corner and putting the old
adage of too many cooks to rout by loading the air
with the most tantalizing odors.
Then they converted the pool table in the center
of the room into a groaning board and, with many
gibberings and gesticulations, sat down with the
utmost enjoyment—except when they turned to
scowl at him over his cold ham and cabbage.
Down in Pearl Street a Spanish cook treated him
to a dish that made him feel like a three-alarm fire;
in Washington Street he stumbled across an Arme-
nian atrocity in which sulphur was the main ingre-
dient; but he would not have minded the food-if
they all had not looked so sour when he helped
himself to an empty chair and drew up to their
table. Aside from the big dog in Ninth Street,
not a soul in all his wanderings so much as nudged
his elbow in a spirit of companionship. Even that
dog had proved fickle when a roast came to another
table.
On the evening of the fourth of December,
young Mr. Grimsy, pursuing his avocation of seek-
ing out queer places to eat, found himself—for the
first time since he had come to the city six months
before—lost.
He had left his cage at four that afternoon;
and, profiting by the few hours of grace granted
[ 199]


THE INFALLIBLE GODAHL
him by an early start, he had undertaken to explore
that part of the city contiguous to the old Ganse-
voort Market. There were items of interest on
every hand to claim his attention and befuddle his
sense of direction. For instance, all the merchants
—prosperous-looking persons above their collars
—were attired in a common garb, a smock of white
cotton that fitted them from head to heels like a
priest's cassock.
On all the streets were superimposed wooden
awnings to the very edge of the pavements, and
from the eaves hung quarters of beef, spring lamb
—clipped like French poodle dogs—pheasants,
turtles, and such. A freight-car, ghostily propelled
by some unseen force round a corner, gently pushed
him off its track; a one-horse wagon, laden with
provisions disguised by gunnysacks, disputed his
right-of-way in an alley and left him in the gutter.
And at length he came on an object of unusual
interest in the shape of two white-coated men, who
seemed to be doing their best to teach cratefuls of
live poultry not to stick their heads out between
the slats when a second crate of live poultry was
descending on them from a six-foot height. The
poultry did not seem to mind it in the least; and it
was evidently not a game, because the two strong
men were very sober at their task—except when
[ 200 ]


AN ALL-STAR CAST
one of them found a warm egg, which frequently
happened. The finder of the warm egg invariably
transferred it to his pocket, indicating the score by
holding up his fingers.
So interested was young Grimsy, indeed, at first
in the ducking heads of the poultry and then in the
egg score, that he found a comfortable wall to
lean against and lighted a cigarette. It came on
toward six o'clock, and when he again recalled him-
self to his surroundings he was astonished to note
that the strings of beef and other provender, which
had so gayly festooned the eaves but a brief time
before, had mysteriously disappeared, and only
blank boarded windows greeted him now in place
of the busy shops.
He bestirred himself and started off, but to his
surprise he found himself in the middle of a minia-
ture walled city with columns and bastions and
watch-towers.
Also, as he read the names of the streets, they
were strange to him—such as Grace, Loew, Grant
and Strong. He caught a glimpse of the river
through a gate; and, deciding that it was the Hud-
son and indicated the west of the compass, which
he had lost, he turned his back on it and crossed
the now almost deserted walled inclosure to a gate
at the opposite side. He struck out on a street
[201 ]


THE INFALLIBLE GODAHL
lined with warehouses and tenements in the general
direction of what he believed to be the New York
that he knew. As he crossed a little square he
was reminded of the object of his exploration of
this locality by a sign on a dusty window which
read, in tarnished and fly-bitten letters: Grittin's
Dining-Room.
It had the outer appearance of a cheap coffee
house. Through the dusty glass panel of the door
he made out two tables, guiltless of cloth and
decorated with crockery of the armor-plate variety
to be found in the poorer class of restaurants. It
is quite probable that Grimsy would have passed
by Grittin's Dining-Room had it not been for a
picture in the window. It was a crayon portrait
incased in a massive gilt frame shrouded in dust.
The picture bore the legend: Edward Askew
Sothern, 1858.
Even then it is quite probable he would not have
tarried to question himself as to the veracity of the
legend—never having considered it plausible that
an eminent comedian of to-day might have sprung
from a stock immortal enough to be perpetuated
in crayon so far back as fifty-eight—had it not
been for a playbill draped carelessly over one cor-
ner of the ornate though somewhat weatherbeaten
frame.
[ 202 ]


THE INFALLIBLE GODAHL
of a type of art and free drawing long since dead.
Packed round and about these, as excelsior is
packed about fine china for shipment, were wads of
venerable handbills.
One wad of perhaps fifty bills celebrated the
return of Forrest as Jack Cade; another announced
Mathilda Huron in her great character Camille—
from the date, 1854, it seemed that La Dame aux
Camelias had begun weeping some time before the
Civil War. Heme the Humbug was on the eve
of its premiere on another bill; and Teddy the
Tiler and the Ice Witch or the- Frozen Hand were
in the midst of a revival. Of historical importance
was the dramatization of the celebrated pictures
of Wilkes' Distraining for Rent, under the title
of Rent Day, with Mr. Heywood and Mr. Hamlin
in the principal roles.
Grimsy, convinced, sat down at a table, first
taking the precaution to polish its surface with an
old newspaper that covered a hole in the cane seat
of a chair. He waited for several minutes for the
appearance of some sign of ownership or at least
of life; and when nothing developed he seized
a spoon from a pressed-glass container and rapped
it vigorously against the harveyized side of the
sugarbowl, which, however, gave out only a dull
thudding noise. Grimsy rose impatiently and
[204]


THE INFALLIBLE GODAHL
of young Turks desired to set up an obscure res-
taurant where they might dine in peace and quiet
was no reason—to him—why he should not walk
boldly in and take a vacant chair, and force them
to talk in whispers if they wished to continue their
family confidences undisturbed; and the fact that
this Mr. Grittin, whoever he may have been, ad-
vertised a dining-room on his front windows and
forced volunteer customers to locate the source of
food for themselves was sufficient excuse for our
explorer boldly to open the door before him and
step through the aperture. He did so.
Grimsy found himself in the middle of a paved
yard lighted only by the pale reflection from the
sky of a late winter afternoon; dark on four sides—
with the exception of a far corner where two win-
dows glowed warmly. The sound of smothered
voices and the occasional clinking of tableware is-
suing from this corner, he turned his steps confi-
dently in that direction, positive at last that he had
stumbled on a queer place to eat and hopeful that
here he might find some kindred soul to discuss
topics of the day—possibly the art of acting—over
his meal.
There was a fanlight in the door at the corner,
but it was so obscured by grime that he did not
notice it until his hand was on the knob and he was
[206]


AN ALL-STAR CAST
peering through the opening. He paused in the
act of turning the knob.
Inside, before his eyes, was a long room evi-
dently comprising the entire ground floor of a rear
tenement, for on the opposite side of the apartment
windows looked out into another courtyard like
that in which he stood.
There were twenty persons in the room, mostly
men; but, as he looked, there came a rattle of chairs
on the floor by the near wall—at some spot beyond
his range of vision—and in another second he saw
three women advancing across the open floor to
the far corner, where sat the broad squat figure
of an old man with a magnificent head on his
shoulders.
At this moment, however, the women attracted
the attention of the peeping Grimsy more than the
man. The advancing group consisted of an old
woman, very evidently a grande dame from her
dress and manner—supported on each side by a
young and good-looking Irish girl—evidently her
maids. In addition to the support lent by their
round, fat arms the old lady leaned heavily on a
stick, which she pushed ahead of her with each
feeble step. The ferrule of the stick was loose,
and as it slid along the hard floor it gave out a
curious reedy note.
[207]


THE INFALLIBLE GODAHL
Suddenly, and for no reason apparent to the in-
truder, the progress of the nice old lady was
interrupted by the man in the corner. First he
held up one hand; then he rapped sharply on the
floor with an impatient foot, at which the two maids
looked at their frail little charge with a touch of
tenderness and slowly turned her about-face; and
again they retreated beyond the angle of vision of
the looker-on, but only for a second.
The rasping note of the cane sliding across the
floor was resumed, and the three started once more
for the distant table, this time the stubby old man
in the corner rising with much graciousness to re-
ceive the old lady from the arms of her two youth-
ful guardians and thanking them with a courteous
gesture. He placed the old lady in her chair, sat
down himself and began speaking, accompanying
his words with gestures every shade of which, even
to the uncurling of his fine fingers, seemed a bit
of art in itself.
Grimsy could not distinguish the words; but,
as he listened, fascinated at the queer sight on which
he had stumbled—with no qualms of conscience—
he thought this voice must be the most beautiful
in all the world. An almost metrical cadence with
which the speaker accented his phrases, and the
timbre, as vibrant and resonant as the G string of
[208]


THE INFALLIBLE GODAHL
feet, too, were fast. "I came here—looking—
for a place to Quit that! Take your
thumb"
A thumb was doing its best to dislocate his
Adam's apple, and a hand over his mouth cut off
further remarks from Mr. Moberly Grimsy. He
was gently picked off the floor by four men—one
at each quarter—in silence. They might have
been his pallbearers, so solemnly did they start off
with their burden, the hand over his mouth now
being supplanted by a handkerchief jammed down
his gullet. They turned this way and that. The
hollow echoes of their footfalls and the crowding
of the men carrying him told him they were thread-
ing a tunnel, though evidently not the same magic
gate by which he had been permitted to enter on
the unsuspecting assemblage.
He wondered whither they were taking him.
Suddenly the dull sounds of the living city that
had always been in his ears became louder, like
stage thunder, and a breath of cool air told him
he was in a street. A coat was over his head
now, so he could not see. He was gently set on the
flagging of the curb; and then in an electric frac-
tion of a second the coat was gone, the gag was
gone and his pallbearers had vanished.
He got to his feet and found himself rubbing
[212]



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AN ALL-STAR CAST
his head and surveying a dimly lit avenue that
presented no familiar landmarks. The thing had
occurred so quickly that now, as he looked round
in the dim light and found himself alone, it was
quite simple to persuade himself that it was all
some lurid fabrication of his brain. He walked
to the end of the block and looked at the lamp-
post. It said Jane Street on one side. Some small
boy had put a stone through the glass legend on
fhe other side, so the intersecting street remained
a mystery.
He walked back through the street, trying to fix
on the house that had emitted him a few moments
before, but all the houses—old-fashioned brick
structures, ornamented with iron grilles at doors
and windows—looked out cheerlessly and imper-
sonally.
Suddenly Moberly Grimsy broke into a run. He
must find somebody, because the strangest idea had
come into his mind, which, while he fuddled over
his whereabouts, seemed to have been working sub-
consciously at something else. Two blocks farther
on he encountered a young man, swinging a cane,
emerging from a side street. Grimsy did not stand
on ceremony.
"Isn't it a fact," he cried, bringing the young
man to a sudden stop by the simple expedient of
[213]


tfHE INFALLIBLE GODAHL
stepping in front of him, "isn't it a fact that John
D. Rockefeller was playing golf at his home in
Cleveland, Ohio, this morning, and that he beat
the bogey?"
The young man looked at him for a second be-
fore replying. Then he said:
"My acquaintance with Mr. Rockefeller is con-
fined to the interesting gossip of his doings as set
forth in the newspapers. And," he said with a
smile, "with that authority I think I can assure you
that Mr. Rockefeller indeed was in Cleveland this
morning. I recollect an item to that effect
in an afternoon edition which I saw but an hour
ago."
"Then how," began Moberly Grimsy, squaring
off and holding up one handful of fingers to count
off the points of his argument, "how in the name
of the seven sins could I have seen him hobnobbing
with Mr. Carnegie less than half an hour ago, and
within one hundred yards of this spot?"
"It is rather remarkable," said the other sooth-
ingly. "Come! Are you going in my direction?
We will try to figure it out together as we walk
along."
Grimsy came to liis senses. He tried to laugh,
to excuse himself for this sudden attack of his on
a stranger—a stranger who seemed very much of
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a gentleman from the manner in which he had met
the situation.
"Show me how to get out of this hole, if you
will," said Grimsy. "My mind is giving way. I
have just gone through a most amazing experience;
in fact, I am not quite sure—I am lost!" he said,
breaking suddenly in on his disjointed sentences.
"If you will be kind enough to direct me I will not
further trespass on your good nature."
"I will do better than that," said the stranger,
taking him by the arm. "It is but a step to New
York. I am going there myself."
And indeed it was but a step. Under the guid-
ance of the skilled pilot the tangles of off-shooting
streets straightened out and they set foot in Sixth
Avenue as unexpectedly to Grimsy as one comes
on a hidden pond in the Maine woods. Grimsy
turned round and surveyed the entrance to the New
York he knew.
"I was looking for an out-of-the-way place to
eat," he explained; and then abruptly: "I thank
you. I will not intrude further on your good na-
ture. You must think me loony; but, believe
me
His guide held up a slender gloved hand and
smiled deprecatingly.
"If you have not yet dined," he said, "let us
[215]


THE INFALLIBLE GODAHL
make it a company of two. I have leisure—and
an appetite. Possibly I can be of service to you."
The stranger looked at his companion out of
shrewd gray eyes. Some restless spirit within was
clamoring for adventure, and the occasion seemed
to promise something of the sort surely. He led
Grimsy, the latter protesting weakly, to Fifth
Avenue, and there, a block to the north, turned
into a mullioned doorway of brownstone, where
they were instantly greeted by a gorgeous person,
evidently a maitre d'hotel, much rigged up for his
part. His guide seemed a person of consequence;
and Grimsy, impressed, followed on through the
heavily carpeted hall to a small room hung with
deep curtains and warmed by a glowing fire on a
stone hearth.
"May I be permitted to suggest the filet de sole,
M'sieu Godahl?" said the maitre d'hotel in French
as he seated them.
"Godahl!" cried the youth ecstatically. "Are
you indeed Godahl?"
It was indeed Godahl whom chance had thrown
in the way of the distressed Grimsy; and the latter,
whose one-sided friendships were all gathered
through the common medium of the press, impul-
sively seized that arch-rogue by the hand in an
outburst of enthusiasm. Did not the reading pub-
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lie know this Godahl as one of the institutions of
the town? As a matter of fact the infallible thief,
in his assumed character of a well-found young
man-about-town, had proved it impossible to keep
his picturesque personality from the eyes of prying
newsgatherers and camera men; and he was known
outside of the favored circle to which he belonged
as Godahl—just Godahl, as one knows Matty, or
Corot, or Napoleon, or Fatima. The name Go-
dahl was an established entity.
So, before the clams were gone—little clams the
size of a dime—Moberly Grimsy had launched
himself spontaneously into a confession, glowing
with the subtle fire of a well-flattered person, a con-
dition of mind that some personages have the fac-
ulty of conferring on those about them.
Godahl studied his man as he gave attention to
the strange story. Godahl was partial to this man
Grimsy's type—closely cropped red hair; freckles;
tawny eyes; and a natural manner of wearing
clothes—even though those clothes were obviously
ready made.
"The woman!" said Godahl. "The old lady—
tell me more about her. You say you know her.
Who was she?"
"Who was the woman," said Grimsy, bringing
together the leading strings of recollection, "who
[217]


THE INFALLIBLE GODAHL
furnished the money necessary to buy that island
in the Gulf of Mexico for the protection of mi-
grating shore birds?"
"Mrs. Jeremiah Trigg," responded Godahl; and
the restless fingers of that master craftsman ceased
caressing the thin stem of his glass.
"Ai! yi! Mrs. Jeremiah Trigg!" exclaimed
young Grimsy; and he stared at his companion,
interpreting the sudden calm that had come over
Godahl for lack of interest. It was, as a matter
of fact, the reverse.
Jeremiah Trigg had run out a life of seventy-odd
years in the character of what Wall Street was
pleased to call a shark. His main occupation was
loans—call loans; but, using the genius that evi-
denced itself to the world only as brittle sensibil-
ities and fingers that stuck to gold, he had steered
the ship of several great family fortunes for the
younger generations—and the best evidence of his
genius lay in the fact that these same fortunes had
begun to disintegrate soon after his death. His
character, to the public who were never permitted
to peep behind the scenes, was that of a miser hard
as nails, with a heart wrung dry of pity. Yet at
his death he had consecrated his fortune of some
seventy million dollars to simple charity—not for
himself, that his abused name might be acclaimed,
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but for his widow, the gentle wife whom all the
world had revered. The fortune was deeded by
the will to no other trust than her kindly sym-
pathies.
And immediately on her assuming the responsi-
bilities of the administration of great wealth she
had been hounded by an importunate army of
professional charity-mongers—implored; besought;
threatened in the name of pity, justice, patriotism
and all the other masks of the nefarious crew who
ply the profession of leeching on charity. At length
the kind creature, who loved nothing so much as
simple home life and an open, unaffected commu-
nion with the whole world, was forced into a se-
clusion that could be compared only to that of some
prisoner rescued from a howling mob by his keep-
ers; until she was forced to bury herself under a
cloud of retainers to fight off the importunities of
the world she would have loved to succor in her
own sweet way.
"And this man?" pursued Godahl, thrilling.
"You tell me that when she started across the floor
he rapped her back and made her try it again."
"Yes."
"Describe him."
"A head like—like Daniel Webster! Mag-
nificent! Enormous shoulders—long arms; and his
[219]


THE INFALLIBLE GODAHL
hands—the best way I can describe them is that
they seemed to float in the air as he gesticulated."
"And a voice like a god?" said Godahl, sud-
denly leaning forward over the table. "A voice
like a god, eh?"
"God? Yes!" cried Grimsy. "Such a voice as
I never"
Godahl, however, was not listening to him as
the young man rattled on in a maze of hyperbole.
Godahl had risen to his feet and was pacing the
room.
"I am going to trust you," he said, suddenly
coming to a stop in front of Moberly Grimsy and
putting a hand on his shoulder. "I never saw you
before in my life, and your interest in the golf score
of John D. Rockefeller was not, I should say, a
propitious opening for a prolonged friendship.
Listen to me! You are a bank clerk, you say, at the
Cheltenham Bank. Forget that. Marston, the
vice-president, will give me the loan of you.
"Grimsy," said Godahl, dragging up a chair and
sitting down at the corner of the table, "the great-
est actor the world has ever known is a man who
has never been on the stage! And his name is
David Hartmann. A mind like a diamond, a voice
of a god—and the frame of a hideous gorilla!
That's Hartmann. Embittered, unscrupulous.
[ 220]


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Think, man! A man with the wits of an oaf has
the world at his feet at the Metropolitan Opera
House to-night because the good God above gave
him not only a throat but the physique of a man.
The lack of a body of the most commonplace pro-
portion, such as you and I and everybody else
possess as an inalienable right, is all that prevents
the greatest master of his art in this generation from
claiming his own. Tell me, could the lithe Hamlet
stalk the stage in the guise of a hideous ape!
Imagine Lear seizing his straws and crying, 'Ay,
every inch a king!' if he were a spindle-legged
dwarf!
"Enough of this!" cried Godahl, suddenly
rescuing himself from his thoughts. "Never mind
about your precious cage at the bank. You are
mine! There is work to be done."
n
Old Fifth Avenue is gone, and gone forever.
There is a fringe along the edge of Washington
Square and for a few blocks to the north still stub-
bornly holding out against the encroachment of
trade to suggest the stately solidarity of the aris-
tocracy of this quarter a generation ago. There is a
zone now given over to sweatshops; and from
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berneck audience begins to titter and to recount to
each other the eccentricities of this famous old put-
and-call shark of Wall Street. These stories, for
a period of many years, flooded the press of the
country; and the public, like our friend Moberly
Grimsy, makes its friends and accumulates its ene-
mies through the newspapers. In this old house the
man who lived for a principle and died happy in the
consciousness of having confided the administration
of his principle to sure hands spent fifty years of
his life. Behind these windows, hung with rich
tapestries, he sat in the evening with his wife,
playing with the family cat and a ball of yarn.
When he had something nice to suggest to his good
wife to do for other people he was too shy to tell
her, and the family cat became the medium of his
confidence, his plans being expressed in a loud
voice clearly audible to the good wife who sat
by knitting.
There was a little rag doll, loaded with shot,
which sat on the floor and listened with wide-open
eyes as the cat played unheeding through the
unfolding of gorgeous plans to make some one—or
many, many ones—happy without knowing the
source of that happiness. The doll had a duty in
life quite as dignified as that of the cat—its duty
being to sit tight against the library door, so that
[223]


THE INFALLIBLE GODAHL
the door might not swing shut on its hinges and
shut off the coziness of the other room.
Uncle Jeremiah, so they jocosely called him
downtown, discussed the hopes and fears and tears
of their farmers—the old couple counted many
countrymen to whom their bounty was more gen-
erous than that of the stubborn soil—much as if
they had been sitting before a fire in some rude
farmhouse and the cares of the neighborhood were
theirs to alleviate with the simplest of godly alms,
instead of a complex machinery that every moment
must protect itself from lying greed.
Here in the evening was always the picture of
home—a home that is being banished from the
many palaces along the way; a home that was not
only sufficient unto its own peace and happiness but
which radiated warm beneficence to many other
homes.
This evening—the evening following that on
which Moberly Grimsy at last found a sociable
friend at table—the picture was the same, except
that Uncle Jeremiah was gone on his long journey.
There was an open fire in the deep grate; outside
was the soft coming of evening and gently falling
snow. The old lady sat knitting; the big-eyed
doll was thinking of the most serious things of
life at its post by the door; and the cat, the same
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cat, languidly studied the ball of yarn, wondering
whether, as a matter of fact, it was not getting
too old to be frisking this foolish thing about the
room.
The servants were coming and going on tiptoe
over the soft, padden carpets, exchanging words
in whispers—mysterious whispers, accompanied by
smiles that signified that something of moment was
afoot.
The butler, who had been with the family since
they came to town, in his present graduate capacity
was directing the maneuvers from the seclusion of
the street hall, out of sight of the old lady. He
was whispering to the second butler that the second-
in-command was to be in command of this ship—
information that had been explained with stolid
iteration through many busy days now—days that
were busy, but with their business concealed under
smooth machinery.
The clock on the mantel struck the hour of four.
The old lady roused herself with a sigh and looked
up with a smile when two plump Irish girls ap-
proached and helped her to her feet, and muffled her
in wraps of downiest texture. She took her cane;
and, with an arm on each side to support her, she
made her way to the door where, as if by the magic
of some hidden stage director, four secretaries were
[225]


THE INFALLIBLE GODAHL
in waiting. They were, in fact, the bodyguard.
They were needed. As the door opened a little
man with a greasy black beard, who had been in
waiting at the curb, dashed up the steps and at-
tempted to push past the advance guard. He held
a paper in his hand, and he cried, as a secretary
held him off:
"It is most worthy, madam. I could convince
you if I could have but a word with you."
"Mrs. Trigg receives no strangers on account of
her advanced years," explained the secretary po-
litely; and as the party passed down the steps, he
successfully blocked the charity seeker from his
prey.
The attendants surrounded the old woman like
a cloud. There were other importunate ones at the
curb; but so closely did the guard cling that they had
no opportunity to voice their harsh claims on the
bounty of this poor creature. It was always thus.
The army studied the habits of this household like
a hawk, hovering about the mansion at all hours
of the day.
"Did you get a good view of her?" asked
Godahl.
"Yes," said young Grimsy. "I saw her per-
fectly. It is she, I am certain." The pair had
sauntered up just in time to witness the disgraceful
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exhibition that was a daily occurrence now. "Did
you notice her cane?" said Grimsy.
Godahl had not, he said.
"The ferrule was loose and made a queer noise,
like the low string on a violin, when she pushed it
across the pavement. It was the same cane she
used the other night."
"Delightful," said Godahl. "Now we shall see
whether the rest of the drama is played according
to the cards."
It was an hour later when the two sauntered
along the Avenue just as the returning carriage
of Mrs. Jeremiah Trigg drew up at a brownstone
house. It was the same carriage, but not the same
brownstone house as before.
The same curtains—apparently—hung at the
windows; the same mellow radiance of the table
lamp and the flickering light of the fire played
on the tapestries; the same butler waited at the
top of the steps; the same cat and doll guarded
inside; and the same coterie of guards, men and
maids, inclosed the figure of Mrs. Jeremiah Trigg
as she crossed the pavement.
The house occupied the same position in the
block—but it was not the same block; the location
was half a mile to the north. It was the new
home of Mrs. Jeremiah Trigg. Trade, clamoring
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distance I should say you have a frog in your
throat," said the genial banker.
"That's not worrying me half so much as other
people's troubles," said the husky voice, with a
cough. "The old lady wants those bronze me-
dallions that are in the big strongbox, and there
is nothing to do but to bring the whole box up
here to the house."
"Humph! Well, in your case, I should advise
calling out the Seventy-first Regiment for a body-
guard," said the jocose banker.
"Thanks! I am going to pass the buck to
you. The old lady wants you to bring it up
yourself. Ha-ha!"
And so it was that the banker found himself,
half an hour later, sitting in a closed automobile,
with two big bank guards and an imposing-looking
steel box, and bound, not unhappily at that—
because the dangers of the city streets did not daunt
him—for "Uncle Jerry Trigg's house," as he had
instructed the driver. As the car came to a stop
at the curb he sprang out and up the steps, waiting
at the door, opened by the second man, for his
two guards to bring in their precious burden.
"Mr. Martin, sir," said the man, "asked me to
tell you that he was called out to the Sunnyside
meeting and would not be able to see you, sir."
[229]


THE INFALLIBLE GODAHL
As Marston handed his hat and coat to the man
he nodded casually to two young men who were
passing through the hall to the rear of the first
floor. The whisking of a white apron about the
turn of the stairs indicated the presence of one of
the Irish maids.
"This house smells good!" exclaimed the banker
to himself, as though he had stumbled on a new
source of happiness on this visit. He looked into
the drawing-room, but retreated immediately, his
finger to his lips to enjoin silence on the two men
who were depositing their burden. The old lady,
her knitting fallen to the floor, was asleep in her
chair. The cat sat purring before the fire; the
rag doll, of all the room, seemed the only thing
alive, and it sat staring accusingly at him with
its big eyes.
As he took in the scene something in him welled
up and overflowed. It was the memory of just
such a scene long, long ago when he was a boy,
and the recollection came on him with a rush of
warmth and tenderness. He tiptoed to a chair and
sat down quietly, signaling to his men to place
their burden in the doorway and withdraw as
quietly as possible.
Now the old lady stirred herself uneasily, sighed,
and opened her eyes. For a moment she did not
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see him, but smiled at the old cat stretching itself
in the extravagant manner of a languorous feline
before the warm glow of the fire. Everything in
the room seemed to rouse itself with her. Her
eyes came with a start to the figure of Marston,
who rose and came forward.
"Don't move!" he cried, smiling and reaching
out his hands to implore her to remain seated; but
she rose to her feet and pushed the cane ahead
of her. She permitted him to help her to her seat
again, and she sat holding his hard hand between
her two withered hands and looking out the win-
dow. It was a silence he dared not break, though
it made him uncomfortable. It was broken at last
by the approach of the second man bearing tea
things. At eleven every day Mrs. Jeremiah Trigg
had her tea and her cat was given a bit of cheese
to nibble. Mrs. Trigg in talking about cats used to
say that she ascribed the faithfulness of her cats
to their eleven-o'clock cheese.
Marston had come with his expectations made
up for a brisk chat with the old lady; but it turned
out to be rather a trying situation for him. She
cried softly throughout the time they sat before the
tray—crying softly as old women cry when they
spin the thread of memories that are dearest to
them. He made one or two ineffectual attempts to
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eyes back from the fire, and, with trembling hand,
wrote her signature.
Marston made his adieux as quickly as possible.
The man opened the door for him and, seeing two
men in conversation with the bank guards, who
stood at the curb waiting orders, drew back hur-
riedly and said:
"Are they friends of yours, sir? We must be
very careful, as so many people are ready to take
advantage of the old lady."
"You don't need to worry about them," said
Marston, laughing; for he recognized in the two
men Worden, the managing head of the Bankers'
Protective Association for the Metropolitan dis-
trict, and young Moberly Grimsy. The man in-
side was still peering through the interstices of the
ground-glass carving of the door as Marston went
down the steps.
"What are you two doing in this neck of the
woods? I thought you were on your vacation,
Grimsy, with that young devil Godahl."
"This house is pinched," said Worden, starting
up the steps with a laugh, as he ran his arm through
the banker's and turned him back. "I have been
waiting for you to come out, to have a good look
at your face when the ceiling comes down on your
head." So saying he touched the bell. He looked
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beyond recovery—whatever might be the explana-
tion of this weird situation—Marston concluded
that the superintendent of the Bankers' Protective
Association would be laughing on the other side
of his mouth.
"For the love of the holies, don't stand there
grinning at me as though I were a lunatic! Tell
me—what does it all mean?" cried the amazed
banker.
"Come with us," said Worden, showing no de-
sire for haste or inclination for any other task than
relieving the curiosity of his friend. He took
Marston by the arm and the three marched up-
stairs. The bedroom floor above the parlor was
empty—bare-floored. So was the third floor and
the servants' quarters above. So was the basement
floor. With the exception of the parlor floor the
house was stripped to the very walls.
"But—Mrs. Trigg! Where has she gone?"
cried Marston when he had convinced himself.
"I don't know, I am sure," said Worden. "Mrs.
Trigg hasn't been in this house in twenty hours,
to my knowledge."
"Hasn't been in the house, you idiot! Then
whom, pray, have I been taking tea with in this
room—not ten minutes ago?"
"Marston," said Worden, "you have been en-
[235]


THE INFALLIBLE GODAHL
mann to himself though aloud, and carving his
words with that devilish trick of enunciation he
alone possessed. "Yes, I thought so. My man,"
he added, indicating Godahl though he did not
deign to turn his head in the direction of the
young man, "I do not believe I care to discuss the
matter with you. I am presuming that you have
authority to ask me to accompany you."
"No," said Godahl with the consciousness of a
bitter taste in his mouth. "I am taking you to
the Grand Central Station to see you aboard any
train you may elect to choose. See—we are here
now. I have money. It is yours. Even now the
police of the country are seeking you. Your mates
will squeal—that's absolute. I am ready to aid
you in any way I can—not because of to-day, but
because of"
Godahl ran his fingers through the air in front
of him impatiently.
"You are not of the police, then—or with au-
thority to detain me?"
Passers-by turned their heads to catch the
nuances of that voice, though the words were low.
Godahl shook his head.
"No?" said the voice.
"No," said Godahl.
David Hartmann came to a stop and raised
[240]


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his hand—that hand which Moberly Grimsy said
seemed to float in the air. He waved it at a
policeman who stood on the corner. The police-
man came to his side and bent over.
"You do not know me, my man," he said. "I
am David Hartmann. That means nothing to
you. The police seek me. I am wanted for rob-
bery. I might tear my soul to shreds in hopeless
flight; but I am marked. See—my ridiculous little
legs! My friend," he said, turning to Godahl and
taking him by the hand, "I do not know who you
may be, but I thank you. If I did not so love this
bitter life I might have the courage to die; but I
have not the courage."
That voice, ringing like a knell, sang in his ears
as Godahl hurried across town.
"What would a few hundred thousand dollars
in gold bonds more or less have meant to the old
lady anyway?" he cried suddenly to himself as he
stopped and called a hansom. "Nothing! Bah!"
[ 241 J


















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