who;
RANSOM
The Kidnapping of Burton
Conybear, Millionaire

By ARTHUR SOMERS ROCHE

“Ransom” is a story of how the
“Readjustment Society of the World,"
attempting to control the wealth of
the world, and how the clever and
unscrupulous Simon Bergson sees a
chance to make millions for himself.
He kidnaps the financiers, Burton
Conybear and four other millionaires,
and forces them to draw out millions
of dol/lars, bringing the country to
the verge of a financial panic.
As the plot develops, thrills, kid-
nappings and mysterious tragedies
follow each other in such rapid suc-
cession that before the reader can
emerge from one surprise he is
plunged into another.
The plotters fail to succeed because
a young New Yorker who had been
robbed of his wealth makes some sur-
prising discoveries, and, with the aid
of the heroine and several other as-
sistants, brings about the utter de-
feat of the plotters and the deatli of
several of them.
The mix up of thieves, po" ., plot-
ters, financiers and fish-riders ur<
nish enough matm-i =1 N.» or-
dinary books "H uero not nly
regains his re, but a wi’ as
well. -

1y Arthur Somers
The Eye! 0‘ "'9


A. L. BURT ( NIPANY
Publishers, New York
/








RANSOM_!

ARTHUR SOMERS ROCHE


RANSOM I




By ARTHUR SOMERS ROCHE 5

AUTHOR OF
“The Eyes of the Blind," Etc.







1
‘
A L. BURT CONIPANY E
Publishers New York
Published by lrrnugcment with (‘10me H. DoRAN COMPANY {
, ___‘_ ____~ _-» _~_k ____J




COPYRIGHT. 1918,
BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
COPYRIGHT. 1916-17.
BY THE STORY-FREQ CORPORATION
PRINTED [N THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA


T0
ETHEL PETTIT ROCHE





RANSOM!


10 RANSOM !

them glide ofi' together, unresentful at the im-
pertinent moue she made at him over her new-
found partner’s shoulder. Then he forgot all
about her.
He sipped his wine, looking about him with
vague eyes. It was the usual sort of thing in
this sort of place. The same sort of thing that
might be found in any of a dozen Montmartre
cafés at this hour—midnight. Officers home
on leave, bright-eyed Parisiermes, a sprin-
kling of Russians, English and Americans. It
was quieter than before the Great War, and
there was less extravagance. The fact that
the French were not spending their money on
such entertainment as this might perhaps be
one reason why Waring had attracted the at-
tentions of the little dancer.
Waring wished that he had stayed at his
hotel and got a good night’s rest against to-
morrow’s railway journey to Cherbourg. For
at least the dozenth time he cursed the break-
down of the Paris express—from the Riviera
—that had made him miss connections for
Liverpool and the White Star liner that sailed
to—morrow morning. Even though it didn’t
matter that the liner sailing from Cherbourg


RANSOM! ll

to-morrow afternoon would land him in New
York two days later than his planned sailing,
even though by rare good fortune he had se-
cured at the booking-office this afternoon ex-
cellent accommodations on the French liner,
he was irritated.
He had wanted to sail on a White Star
liner; he had wanted to land in New York
seven days from now. It was a nuisance that
one couldn’t do exactly as one wanted. He
had not intended to spend a night in Paris;
he resented savagely the railway accident that
interfered with his intentions.
The little dancer who had so frankly forced
her acquaintance upon him and as frankly left
him, circled, with her more complaisant friend,
close to Waring’s table. She lifted one shoul-
der in affected fright at him. Waring knew
that he had been scowling, and at the girl’s
mockery he grinned infectiously. The dancer
felt sorry that she had so early decided that
‘Varing was uninteresting; the grin justified
her first opinion: that blue-eyed, red-haired
men are by no means dull.
But \Varing’s grin disappeared quickly. It
was a tiresome world, and Paris was not the


12 RANSOM !


least tiresome of the places in it. There had
been a time, six or eight years ago, when War-
ing had loved Paris. Well, he loved the city
now, but he didn’t wish it forced upon him.
Paris was like a rare and heady vintage: one
must be exactly in the right mood to appreciate
it, to desire it.
And Waring was not in the right mood.
He wished that he were; Paris, when one felt
right, was so gay. But to-night all the gayety
seemed artificial, forced. This was the fourth
cabaret he’d been in since leaving the hotel.
. . . He wondered if he were growing old.
Thirty-one! Where did middle age begin, any-
way? Had he lost his capacity for en oyment?
What meant all this late restlessness?
He caught his waitress’ eye. “L’addition,”
he said.
He paid his check, tipped the waitress and
rose from his chair. He faced the entrance
and stood, half-straddling his chair, for a mo-
ment. Then he sank back into it.
“Bring me coffee—with cognac,” he told the
waitress.
With a shrug of her shoulders—but incom-


16 RANSOM!


witness this dance that glorified the baser, ani-
mal passions? She ought to be spanked! Serve
her jolly well right to blush, to be mortified!
If he were her brother, he’d give her a tongue_
lashing that—
He ceased wondering just what his fraternal
words would be. The dancers had left the
stage. A man at a front table had smiled at
the danseuse; she had sat down with him. The
male dancer was swaggering among the tables,
bowing to acquaintances who hailed him as
“Raoul the Red.”
His red hair, of course! That was the ori-
gin of the nickname. Waring conceived a vio-
lent dislike for the dancer. Red-haired men
ought to be in better business than dancing.
He felt that having red hair himself somehow
de-classed him.
Then his violent dislike became cold anger.
The dancer, bowing, nodding, had reached the
table where sat the recently arrived girl. He
smirked at her; he twirled the faint indications
of a moustache. Waring saw the girl shrink
in her chair. The dancer spoke to her and
sat down beside her; the girl’s eyes appealed
(l


RANSOM! l7


to Waring. And Waring walked over to her
table.
“Mademoiselle is annoyed?” he asked.
He was conscious of a dead silence about
him; the orchestra, which had been playing an
American rag-time tune, grew still. The
dancer leaped to his feet.
“M’sieur intrudes,” he stated.
Waring eyed the man coldly. He turned
to the girl again.
“Mademoiselle is annoyed?” he asked again.
To his surprise she replied in English.
“Please,” she said, “take me out of here.”
Waring placed a five-franc piece on the
table. “For the waitress,” he said.
The dancer picked up the coin—flipped it
in the air/caught it, dropped it on the table.
“M’sieur purchases his pleasures cheaply,”
he said.
His strong white teeth gleamed as he leered.
Waring aimed for the exact centre of the
smile; he had a large, capable fist and a box-
er’s eye. The dancer went down with a crash.
It was Waring’s left hand that had struck
him. Waring’s right reached for his coat and
hat, on a chair by his own table. He got only


RANSOM! 19


blow that Waring had dealt him. He only
knew that there was confusion in the darkness
behind him, and that a cabby who might have
parleyed with an unescorted girl, delaying her
to find out if there might be more in hindrance
than in aid of her escape, whipped up his nag
the moment they had climbed inside his car-
riage.
A nasty mess! Why on earth hadn’t he con-
trolled himself? A disgraceful café brawl that
might have led to heaven knew what! But
they were out of it, and now that they were
safe, that no harm had come to the girl, War-
ing rejoiced in his skinned knuckles. He had
taught one ruflian that a lady may not be
insulted with impunity.
The girl was huddled in one corner of the
carriage. Waring could hear muffled sobs.
The heat of the fight left him as suddenly as
it had come; he remembered now how appeal-
ing and frightened had been her eyes, how
lovely, even in her alarm, she had been. A
queer chokiness that had possessed him when
he first glimpsed her possessed him again.
“You musn’t cry about it,” he said. “It’s
all over. Where do you wish me to take you?”


20 RANSOM !



She named a hotel—a very fashionable and
expensive hotel. Waring called the address
to the cabby. '
“I’d better ride along with you—if you
don’t mind,” he said.
“Th-thank you,” she replied. She said no
more.
Sulkiness came to Waring. Of course, he
didn’t expect her to fall on his neck, but after
all—he sat up very stiflly in the carriage, look-
ing straight ahead.
More sounds came from the huddled figure
beside him. He looked at her suspiciously. Of
course, women often got hysteria after scenes
like the one they had just passed through, but
—this sounded like healthy giggling.
“I don’t see anything funny,” he said.
“You didn’t see yourself—in the light we
just passed,” she answered. “You look so stern
and—and—was that a left hook or a jab that
you knocked that man down with?”
“You’re American,” charged Waring.
“Of course. And I read the sporting pages
-—when the sisters let me see a New York
paper. You’re American too.”
“How’d you know?” demanded Waring.


eel-MU RANSOM!


“\Vell.” she said defiantly, “suppose you’d
been in a French convent since you were five
years old, and spent your vacations there too,
except sometimes when girls invited you to
their homes? Suppose you’d never been in
Paris in your life? Suppose that your uncle,
who was your guardian, had telegraphed the
sisters to send you to Paris, and that when
you got there your uncle was terribly busy
and didn‘t have any time to take you anywhere,
and spent all his evenings out? Suppose all
that! “'ouldn‘t you be bored and want to
go out and see Paris. and finally wouldn’t
you go ahead and do it t"
“There‘s merit in your contentions.” he
mid. “Rub—don‘t you know that it isn't
safe i“
“I do now.“ she said. “but—I‘m glad I"
“\Ycll. so am I!“ he laughed. “And per
bsps your uncle wm‘t mind my showing you
the shops and the Rois and ”
“But we havm‘t been properly inmwdumd.“
she said with a mocking primness.
“OR‘ he said blankt‘. “But I can call on
your uncle and explain and—“


IO
1'.
RANSOM!
is

“Very well," said Waring.
He leaned across to open the door on her
side. His hand brushed hers. She gripped
his hand with firm fingers.
“You are just as nice and brave as you can
be, Mr. \Varing, and—I’m ever so much
obliged.”
Then she was gone. Waring laughed ten-
derly to himself, as the cabhy drove him to
his hotel. “Ever so much obliged!“ Like a
boy! In his room. undressed, he bathed his
bruised knuckles with witchhazel. “'hat a de-
lightful autuaintance'. “'ell worth far more
than bruised knuckles! He didn’t blame her
a hit. Her uncle must be a hard-hearted brute!
\'cll. if he could secure an introduction—and
it would he mighty funny if he couldn’t. with
his wide cin‘le of friends in Paris—he would
show the girl a good time. After all. he could
easily mud his hooking on the FTench liner.
There was no hurry about returning to Amer-
ica.
Poor little girl! All moped up in a convent.
and then denied the delights of Paris by a
xzrly ol-d mmmdgwa of an uncle! “"mt
tests were in store for her! Mm \Viiiy Siti-


RANSOM! £25



sabaugh was in town, he happened to know.
And he and Mrs. Willy had been pals for ever
so many years. Mrs. Willy would invite the
girl to things, and would chaperon them, and
——he chuckled at himself, as he dropped off
to sleep. He wasn’t so old, after all. Thirty—
one marked the real youth of a man, not the
beginning of middle age. . . .
Only a very young and enthusiastic person
whistles in the midst of shaving; yet Waring
attempted—with very fair success—“Listen to
the Mocking-bird.” A mouthful of lather cut
short a roulade. He frowned at himself in
the glass and then grinned delightedly. What
a pretty girl she was!
He finished shaving, as quickly as possible.
The passing of the night had not diminished
his enthusiasm. He would cancel his booking,
telephone the Embassy and find out what ho-
tel was being accorded Mrs. Willy Sinsa-
baugh’s patronage, call on her, make her do
some telephoning among her friends—some
one, the friend of a friend of a friend, perhaps,
must know Mr. Peter Randall.
He dressed with scrupulous care, yet with


26 RANSOM!

rapidity. Downstairs, in the hotel restaurant,
he ordered fruit, omelette, cofi’ee and rolls.
Awaiting their arrival, he opened his Paris
Herald. A headline struck him with almost
the effect of a physical blow.

CAREY HAICI
KILLS HIMSELF
Prominent New York Broker
Discovered in Defalcation
and Commits Suicide



Waring read the brief cable from New York
that followed. Then he put the paper down
and mechanically ate his breakfast. But he
tasted nothing. Carey Haig had been his trus-
tee; every cent of the Waring fortune had
been in his control. The cable held out little
hope that there would be any salvage at all
from the wreck.
Waring must go to New York at once, after
all. The inchoate plans of last night and the
early morning must be abandoned. The girl
—Philip Waring had no right to bother with
girls just now—not while he was, so far as
he knew, practically a pauper. And as he


RANSOM ! 27

went upstairs to attend to his hasty packing,
he thought little of the girl. Tragedy ban-
ished romance.
“Poor Carey,” he said, over and over again.


CHAPTER TWO
THE M ontam'a had docked. Waring had come
down to meet Mrs. Willy Sinsabaugh and her
maid; he had helped the vivacious lady through
the formalities of the customs, and now the
maid and several suit-cases and handbags were
in one taxi, while Waring and the pretty young
matron were in another.
Mrs. Willy leaned back and sighed.
“There, thank heaven, that’s over. Philip
Waring, you’re a dear, and if I weren’t just
mad about my husband, I’d kiss you.”
“These husbands,” growled Waring.
“They’re always in the way.”
“Not to-day,” said Mrs. Willy. “The
brute! Running off to Chicago the night be-
fore I land! I’ll make him pay I”
“But it was very important business,
Madge,” expostulated Waring mildly.
Mrs. Willy laughed. “Just like a man!
Defend another man against a woman!”
as


RAN SOM ! 29

“And if I didn’t defend him?” countered
Waring.
“I’d stop this taxi and make you walk,” de-
clared L'Irs. Willy viciously.
“William Patterson Sinsabaugh is the pink
paragon of perfection,” announced Waring.
“Exactly,” said Mrs. Willy, dimpling.
“You are a great reader of character, Phil
-—though in the Carey Haig afl’air you weren’t,
were you?”
“Oh, Carey was a good fellow,” said War-
ing evasively. .
“A good fellow! When he robbed you 0
—Philip Waring, how can you say such a
thing?”
“Well, I don’t think Carey was quite him-
self. He—there’s a lot of mystery about that
matter, Madge.”
“Tell me,” she commanded.
He smiled at her. “If I don’t, I suppose
Mr. Bill Husband will, eh?”
Mrs. Willy nodded. “Mr. Bill Husband
tells Mrs. William Wife everything.”
“Well, in that case—to tell you the truth,
Madge, I’m puzzled about Carey. I’ve been
over his books. Carey killed himself on the


30 RANSOM!



twenty-eighth of January. On January first
all his investments, personal and trustee, were
in the best of shape. He held something like
four hundred thousand dollars for me; he’d
been trustee during my minority, you know,
and after I came of age I let him continue.
It was less bother.”
Waring continued:
“There was about eight hundred thousand
that he held in trust for others—personal prop-
erty, I mean. Well, on January seventeenth
he began selling. By the twenty-fourth he
had turned all his trustee investments into
cash. And his own personal investments,
amounting to a quarter of a million, he had sold
also. He held one parcel of real estate for
me—that is, collected the rent and all that
sort of thing; he couldn’t sell that. And there
were three or four other bits of property that
he didn’t-realise on—couldn’t, I guess. Well,
he killed himself on the twenty-eighth. He
left a confession on his desk, stating that he
had embezzled all the funds left in his care.”
“But what had he done with all that cash?”
demanded Mrs. Willy.
“That’s the point that is so queer," said


RANSOM ! 31


Waring. “On the twenty-sixth he drew from
various banks every cent he had, both his own
and the trustee money. It came to almost a
million and a half. And that money has disap-
peared.”
“Impossible,” ejaculated Mrs. Willy.
“But true," said Waring.
“But can’t you tell—find out? Isn’t there
any way ”
“Oh, I’ve got detectives looking into the
matter,” said Waring, “but—I don’t look for
much.”
“But didn’t he leave any clue at all?”
“W-e-ll, I don’t know that you could call it
a clue, exactly. It hasn’t led to much.”
“What was it?”
“Why, his stenographer—she rushed into
his office at the sound of the shot that killed
poor Carey—says that he lived for ten seconds
or so, and that he repeated over and over the
name ‘Bergson.’
“And in his papers I found some notes made
two days before he died—made on the twenty-
sixth. Not much—simply a record of having
paid one Simon Bergson $1,450,000.”
“Why, almost a million and a half,”


32 RANSOM !


breathed Mrs. Sinsabaugh. “And this Berg-
son—”
Waring forestalled her query. “Can’t be
located.”
“But aren’t there any other papers that
would, maybe, tell ”
“Not a thing. Carey Haig kept fewer per-
sonal memoranda than any business man I
ever heard of. But perhaps he burned them
before he died. Anyway, there’s nothing.”
“And what are you doing?” demanded Mrs.
Willy.
Waring shrugged his shoulders. “Me? Oh,
I’ve got that piece of property that Carey
couldn’t sell. I’m acting as my own agent,
rent-collector and that sort of thing. It brings
me in about forty dollars a week.”
Mrs. Willy gasped. Forty dollars some-
times paid for one of Mrs. Willy’s hats.
“But you can’t live on that, Phil] Y
aren’t a slacker, Phil? You aren’t lying down,
are you? You aren’t afraid to work?”
“Oh, no. Bill Husband offered me a job,
but——” ’
“Why didn’t you take it?”
Waring’s voice grew bitter. “Well, Madge,


34 RAN SOM !



Waring put his hands up over his head.
“Help!” he groaned. “I thought that being
a pauper would protect me from—”
“Well, it won’t,” declared Mrs. Willy de-
cisively. “And your being poor—well, my
Bill Husband lost every penny in the panic
seven years ago, and look at the old dear now.
And he didn’t have any business experience or
—-—or anything.”
“No, not a thing in the world except a wife
who came to him and offered him the hundred
thousand that her father had left her.”
Mrs. Willy coloured. “Well, he didn’t take
it."
“And you expect me to take from some
woman ” 7
“Oh, you go ahead too fast,” said Mrs.
Willy. “She—well, Bill Husband will find
something else for you, and this girl—Phil,
she’s a beauty, and her uncle is immensely rich,
—every one says so, anyway,—and she’s his
only heir—or should I say heiress? Anyway,
you’re going to meet her—to-morrow night,
if I can locate her so soon. She’s stopping at
the Plutonia, I believe, and—I’ll bet ‘you’ll
discover this Bergson person and get your


RANSOM ! 35



money back, and—I’m home at last! Oh.
Phil, look at old John smile at me. I’m a bad
wife and housekeeper, running off for three
months at a time.”
She aned at the grizzled butler standing
on the steps. Then she was out of the taxi
and at home. Waring, after conditionally
promising to dine with the Sinsabaughs the
following night—if Sinsabaugh should return
from Chicago in the morning—and further
assuring Mrs. Willy that he knew her judg~
ment of feminine charms was perfect and that
he felt certain that he would fall madly in love
with Miss Sorel as soon as he saw her, dis—
missed the taxi and walked downtown toward
his bachelor quarters in Twenty-eighth Street.
He smiled as he walked. Mrs. Willy Sin-
sabaugh was a dear. Just now she was re-
proaching herself for having been away from
home for three months, but within another
couple of weeks she’d be restless and off she’d
go again. He remembered what he’d heard
her husband say, to a group of chafling inti-
mates, at the club one day:
“It’s all very well for you people to say
that I’m no better than a bachelor, wtbh my


86 RANSOM!



wife trotting off to Europe or California or
some other place,” Sinsabaugh had laughed.
“But—the average man has one honeymoon in
all his life. I’ve been married nine years, and
I’ve had at least three honeymoons a year in
the last seven. I have to stick on the job here,
but that’s no reason why she shouldn’t have a
good time.”
It might not have worked well with some
people; some men would have objected to the
butterfly tendencies of Mrs. Willy, but VVar-
ing didn’t know where a happier couple than
the Sinsabaughs could have been found.
His smile broadened—then grew tenderly
reminiscent as he thought of Mrs. Willy’s un-
disguised matchmaking plans for himself.
Dear lady! She never grew discouraged,
never realised the hopelessness of her task. For
if Waring ever married any one, it would be
that girl whom he had rescued from the atten-
tions of the dancer in the Montmartre restau-
rant, and she—well, nobody that he knew,
knew of Peter Randall, and 50—well, he’d
never see her again. And it was best. At
thirty-one, untrained to business, the only
chance a man without capital has is of being


RANSOM ! 37



a salaried employee. With capital—but not
a woman’s! If he could recover the money
embezzled by Carey Haig and—oh, well, what
was the use! Spilled milk!
At the Waldorf, he stopped in for a cock-
tail. It was while drinking it slowly that he
became conscious that he was being followed.
He looked about him, with seeming careless-
ness but with eyes that took in everything.
Yet he could see no one who seemed at all out
of place here, no one whose manner was fur-
tive or slinking.
Waring paid his check at the desk and
walked out into Thirty-fourth Street. He
tried to shake off the sensation that had made
him scrutinise the faces about him at the bar,
but it would not be shaken ofl".
Once, in Uganda, 9. panther had trailed
Waring when he was separated from his na-
tive attendants. Something instinctive, sur-
viving over the centuries from the days of an—
cestral barbarism, had warned Waring to be
on his guard then. It had not been a matter
of scent or hearing or seeing. It had been
something beyond any of the five senses that
_had saved his life in the Uganda jungle. And


38 RANSOM!


that same supersense now told him plainly
that he was being followed.
He turned toward the Avenue and walked
south, continuing on his way to his apartment.
Why should any one follow him? If the mys-
terious Bergson, who had obtained Waring’s
fortune from the defaulting, self-slain Carey
Haig, knew of Waring’s feeble efforts to lo-
cate him, he would also know Waring’s ad-
dress. He would not bother to trace him
there, when the telephone-book or ordinary di-
rectory would furnish the required informa-
tion. .
He was enmeshed in none of what the
French euphemistically term afl'aires. Waring
was no saint, but he was clean. No jealous
husband, seeking divorce evidence. . . . There
was a nasty weekly in town that made a prac-
tice of printing innuendo, but even if the re-
porter of that unclean sheet had seen him es-
corting Mrs. Willy Sinsabaugh home—ridicu-
lous! The reporter would know Philip Waring
by sight or he wouldn’t hold his job overnight.
This was not conceit; the Warings had been
prominent socially in Manhattan since the days


RANSOM .' 89


of old J an Worringe, the founder of the fam-
ily in New York.
Then, inasmuch as there was no reason for
any one’s following, no one could be follow-
ing. So Waring tried to believe as he turned
the corner into Twenty-eighth Street. Never-
theless the feeling persisted, and as he entered
his ground-floor apartment, he glanced rap-
idly over his shoulder. No one was in sight.
Still, when he stepped across the threshold and
closed the door behind him, he did not lock it.
Instead, he stood close to it, his ear to the
crack.
It was an old-fashioned apartment-house,
only four stories tall, deVOted, for the most
part, to artists and writers. There was no ele-
vator. And as it was a warm spring day, the
door leading from the vestibule into the hall
was swung wide. As he listened, waring
heard the sound of feet on the marble flagging
of the vestibule.
The steps ceased. Waring opened his door
the least bit and glanced through. Some one
was bending over, staring at the name-cards
above the letter-boxes. There was something
vaguely familiar about the man—also some-


40 RANSOM!


thing strange: his apparel, which was French
in cut. Waring now recollected what had not
struck him as important when drinking his
cocktail: that as he looked up, a man dressed
somewhat oddly for New York had sauntered
to the free-lunch table, his back to Waring.
Well, if the man had been following him,
it was a simple matter to accost him and ask
his reasons. Waring stepped through the
door, very softly, and was in the vestibule be-
fore the man looked up. And Waring recog-
nised him at once. It was the dancer, “Raoul
the Red,” whom he had thrashed last January
in the café in Montmartre.
There was no time to ask questions. As
Waring looked, the man sprang. There was
a struggle of a moment; the knife that had
flashed in the dancer’s hand dropped to the
floor as Waring’s grip crushed his wrist.
Agile, slippery, the man broke from Waring’s
grasp and burst through the open outside door
into the street. Waring dashed after him. A
touring-car was rolling rapidly down the
street. Waring stopped; his anger evaporated
in pity; he cried aloud, but it was too late.
Heedless of everything save the man pursuing


RANSOM ! 41


him, Raoul the Red had not seen the oncoming
machine. Its front wheels knocked him down,
hurled him against the curbstone.
The car stopped at once; the chauffeur—its
only occupant—ran back to where Waring
knelt over the dancer’s body.
“It wasn’t my fault, boss,’
man. “Y-you saw him; you——
“I live right in this house here; name’s Philip
Waring. If there’s any trouble about it, I’ll
clear you. Never mind about that, now. Take
him to the nearest hospita .”
“Is he dead, d’ye think?” asked the driver.
“God knows; he looks it. Hurry.”
“D’ye know him, boss? It looked like he
was running from you.”
“I don’t know him. He was in the hall, and
I frightened him.”
“Thief, eh? Help me in with him.”
Together they deposited the limp form of
Raoul the Red in the tonneau of the car. A
few persons had been attracted by the accident,
but so swiftly had the body been placed in the
car that no policeman had as yet appeared on
the scene. But one would come later, very
soon, Waring reasoned. And if he told that
1
stammered the
9’


4-2 RANSOM!


the man had drawn a knife on him, had fol-
lowed him here—well, Waring would have to
tell the incident of some months ago, in the
Paris restaurant.
And Waring had figured notoriously
enough in the newspapers this winter. It had
hurt a bit to read editorials, after Carey Haig’s
death, when it had been discovered that \Var-
ing’s fortune had been lost, commenting on
the diff erence between other Warings, who
had made their fortunes, and himself, charac-
terised as an idler who had not even taken or-
dinary precautions about his affairs but had
let another man do the onerous work of col-
lecting dividends and clipping coupons.
And now, if Waring told what had really
happened— He wouldn’t do it! Only last
Sunday he had appeared in a newspaper-yarn
that pretended to tell the habits and recreations
of, and a lot of other nonsense about New
York’s “eligible society bachelors.” God for-
bid that he should invite notorietyl He could
tell the police what he had told the chauffeur.
And a potential murderer was done no injus-
tice when he was characterised as a sneak-thief.
He walked swiftly into the house to avoid


44 RANSOM!

ably the same sort of people, though they
might live in quaint, old-fashioned Hancock
Square, in the heart of Greenwich Village.
And those friends might very well be as vin-
dictive as the dancer, might attempt to carry
out to a conclusion what the dancer had so
recently attempted. With the very knife that
had so nearly penetrated his own body, he slit
the envelope. Another envelope was enclosed;
Waring drew it forth, to stare at it in wonder-
ment. It was addressed to Simon Bergson, 17
Hancock Square.
Simon Bergson! The man to whom poor
Carey Haig had paid almost fifteen hundred
thousand dollars! Waring opened the second
envelope without hesitation.


CHAPTER THREE
THE enclosure was written in French. War-
ing read it without scruple. The following is
a translation:
My dear Bergson:
The bearer of this note is one Raoul Carvajal,
recently a café dancer. At present he is most
earnestly sought by the police, he having inadvert—
ently knifed a cabman with whom he had some tri-
fling dispute. I have used him once or twice in
obtaining information concerning American habitués
of the cafés where he danced, and have found him
trustworthy. Considering that there is an extradi—
tion treaty between America and France, and that a
word from either of us will mean his arrest and exe-
cution, we need have little fear as to his fidelity.
His difficulty with the police is providential, so
far as we are concerned, for he is exactly the sort
of man you have been wanting. I appreciate your
difficulty in obtaining men of imagination who are
also men of action, of violence. This Carvajal is of a
mentality above his kind, and is as ruthless as a
45


4-6 RANSOM !



wolf. Further, though he has imagination, it is in
subjection. I fear that I cannot recommend him
as one truly interested in the Society, for he knows
little about it, but promise of payment has made him
an eager instrument. And if good be accomplished,
it matters little that the tool be unclean. He is dar-
ing to the point of recklessness, and hates society as
we do, though not,‘ like us, because of society’s in-
justice to the downtrodden. He hates it because
he is a natural outlaw, not because he loves his
fellow man. Incited by money, there is nothing at
which he will stop, and such a man is necessary to
you. Unfortunately, all those through whom we
work cannot be inspired by the same lofty purpose
that animates us. But in the matter of Burton
Conybear and his associates, motives matter little;
results are everything.
I am arranging to send him to New York by the
Montana's, leaving to-morrow. There will be no
difficulty about the matter, as I have learned that
the police believe he has lied to Italy. They will
not be looking for him at Cherbourg.
I might add, as a precautionary measure, that
Carvajal has red hair, light eyes of grayish—blue,
and is about five feet, ten inches tall. His teeth are
even and his complexion fair. I trust that he will
prove as valuable as I think he will—for, although
he has never been in America, he has danced in Eng-


RANSOM! 4-7



land and speaks English with hardly a trace of
accent.
I will not speak of matters connected with the
Society in this letter, but shall do so in my regular
weekly report. With all felicitations, I am
P. R.
Waring read the note again. Dated ten
days ago, at Paris, there was no house address
to identify the writer. And the writer had
taken the precaution of signing only initials,
which might very well be fictitious.
Nevertheless, although the sender was un-
known, the man to whom it was addressed was
the man whom Waring sought, and the po-
lice— He stopped, halfway across the
room toward the telephone. He returned to
his chair and for the third time read the note.
The “Society”? VVhat did that mean?
What did all the hints in the letter mean? And
why should a Paris rough carry on his person
a note in which was mentioned, with what
seemed threatening meaning, the name of Bur-
ton Conybear, the richest man in America, if
not the world? A slight fever of excitement
throbbed in Waring’s veins.
The police were stupid! Suppose he showed


48 RANSOM !



them this letter? He knew exactly what would
happen. The police would first make inquir-
ies; they'would not dream of arresting Simon
Bergson out of hand. Beyond a note stating
that payments had been made to Bergson,
found in Carey Haig’s effects, and the fact
that his stenographer had heard the dying man
gasp the same name, there was nothing against
this Bergson. This letter.that Waring held
in his hand? That was evidence against some
person named “P. R.,” who lived in Paris,
who had committed no offence against United
States laws and was therefore not amenable to
police jurisdiction in New York. It was not
evidence against Bergson. Bergson couldn’t
help itif his Paris friend sent him a murderer
to be his assistant in—
VVhy, Bergson could say that the letter was
a jest. And the letter would not be evidence
against Bergson’s word. No, the police would
not make an immediate arrest. Instead, a
heavy-footed, and probably fat-witted, plain-
clothes man would call at the Hancock Square
address. He would question Bergson, ask him
why Carey Haig should have paid him money.
The plain-clothes man would report to police


50 RANSOM!


him that they were in possession of a clue that
made them think that the mysterious Bergson
had gone to the Pacific Coast. And all the
time, unless this letter that Waring held in
his hand was part of some silly farce, Berg-
son had been in Greenwich Village.
And the letter was not farcical. The man
that it recommended had so plainly shown
that he was willing and anxious to play a part
in tragedy!
Waring considered this angle of the afi' air.
It was perfectly simple: Carvajal had been
aboard the Montam'a; he had seen Waring
with Mrs. Willy Sinsabaugh and had recog-
nised the man who had thrashed him last J an-
uary. “Ruthless as a wolf” the letter said that
Carvajal was. Well, the writer had written
with knowledge. Undoubtedly Carvajal had
forgotten all about his mission to America, his
flight from the Paris police, in his savage ex-
ultation at seeing a man to whom he owed a
vengeful debt. Undoubtedly Carvajal had
followed Waring uptown with Mrs. Sinsa-
baugh; probably Carvajal had dismissed his
taxicab when Waring dismissed his. Now that
Waring looked back, he remembered that a


RANSOM! 51


taxi had been drawn up half a block from the
Sinsabaugh home. And it was not so long
after leaving Mrs. Willy that he had felt. that
he was being followed.
Most positively the letter was not farcical!
The man whom it introduced to Bergson was
all that the letter said he was! But why should
Bergson—or any one else, for that matter——
need the services of a man like the dancer?
What was this “society” that the writer men-
tioned? This capitalised Society? For the
fourth time Waring read the letter. Written
by a fanatic, yes—but by a cool-headed fa-
natic.
The same impulse that had stirred old .I an
VVorringe to leave his comfortable home in
Holland, for the doubtful venture in a new
world, stirred Jan Worringe’s descendant to-
day. Something new; something different!
Something unknown, with a spice of danger!
Add to this the fact that Waring believed
Simon Bergson had somehow got hold of VVar-
ing’s money, and his mood is understood.
Roughly, the description of Raoul Carvaj al
fitted himself. There was a difl’erence of an
inch in their heights, but that counted for


52 RANSOME



nothing: a perfectly natural mistake, that
would probably not be noticed at all. And
the letter would introduce him to Bergson,
give him a chance to secure that evidence need-
ful if ,VVaring were to recover his fortune—
provided, of course, that this Bergson was the
Bergson Carey Haig had mentioned with his
dying breath.
But Waring refused to consider the possi-
bility that there were two Simon Bergsons in
the world, both crooked. For the Bergson who
had got Carey Haig’s stolen money was
crooked; he must be. And this Bergson of the
letter, whose correspondent hinted casually at
murder—they must be the same.
_ A ring at his door-bell aroused Waring from
his excited thinking. He answered it; a police-
man, visibly armed with nothing more alarm-
ing than a notebook, entered the apartment.
Carvajal was dead. This Waring learned
from the officer’s first words. And the chauf-
feur had been taken from the hospital to the
nearest police station, there to await the re-
sult of this policeman’s investigations.
“The chaufl’eur was blameless,” said VVar-
ing. “He was proceeding at a moderate rate


RANSOM! 53



of speed. It wasn’t his fault. The man ran
out in front of his car; he tried to stop.”
“That’s what the chauffeur says,” agreed
the officer. “But what made the man run?
WVas you chasing him?”
“I saw him in the hall, bending over the let-
ter-boxes. At sight of me he began running.
I naturally followed. I judge he was a thief.”
“Probably was. You never seen him be-
fore, did you?”
This demanded the lie direct; Waring hesi-
tated, but imperceptibly. It was a lie that
would harm no one. It was not Waring’s
fault that Carvajal should have resented the
just thrashing he had received last January,
and so planned murder. It was the fault of
the dancer. Then why should Waring suffer
through Carvajal’s fault?
“No, I never did,” he answered.
“Well, guess it’s an unniarked grave for
his,” said the officer. “Not a single paper on
him, and not very much money. About two
hundred dollars. Frenchman, he looked.
French clothing, but no tailor’s marks on it.”
“Did he recover consciousness?” asked War-
ing.


54- RANSOM !



The officer shook his head. “Guess he was
dead when you picked him up, sir. Well,
much obliged, sir. We’ll turn the chauffeur
loose at once.”
The officer left. Waring sat down in his
chair again. Perhaps he had done wrong, but
—he could see no particular harm in it. Of
course, it was every citizen’s duty to tell the
truth, but—it didn’t matter at all in Carva-
jal’s case. Whereas, if Waring did tell the
whole truth of the matter, not only would he
figure in the newspapers—which he detested
-—with the story of his fight in Montmartre
shouted broadcast, but he could not pose, to
the mysterious Simon Bergson, as Raoul Car-
vajal. And as Raoul Carvajal he had in-
tended to pose if the dancer were merely in-
capacitated—had intended to take advantage
of the few hours or so that must elapse before
Carvajal’s friends could have been notified
of his injury. But now—there was no need
to telephone the hospitals, to find out if Carva-
jal were unconscious—no need to worry about
moments. Carvajal was dead.
And Waring could not find it in his heart
to be regretful at the man’s death. He was a


RANSOM ! 55


murderer—not merely a potential murderer,
but an actual one, if this letter found on him
told truth.
On showing the policeman out, Waring had
found an afternoon paper outside his door. He
opened it now. On an inside page he found
the story of the M ontania’s arrival, and the list
of passengers. There was a paragraph about
Mrs. Willy Sinsabaugh, but Waring skipped
this. He searched the list of first-class pas-
sengers.
For Carvajal must have been among these.
There are difliculties about the landing in
America of second-class or third~class passen-
gers who are foreigners. It was natural that
Carva al’s benefactor, “P. R.,” of Paris, would
see to it that Carvajal travelled in the fashion
that would assure least inconvenience.
And Carvajal—or again, “P. R.”—-would
have intelligence enough to know that a man
dressed in French-cut clothing would have dif-
ficulty, no matter how well he spoke English,
in passing for anything but a Frenchman.
Hence the dancer had been booked as a
Frenchman. Waring looked for French names
among the passengers.


56 RANSOM!



But the Blontam'a was an English boat,
starting from Southampton and touching at
Cherbourg. There were only two French
names among the first-class passengers, though
there were plenty in the second-class list.
Jacques Pelletier and Pierre Carnot were
these two. Americanised Frenchmen, too, for
they hailed, according to the list, from Du-
buque, Iowa, and Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Well, maybe one of them really hailed from
one of those places, but the other was undoubt-
edly Carvajal. Of course! Travelling “first”
and speaking English extremely well, it would
facilitate landing if Carvaj al posed as a natu-
ralised American—which was probably what
he had done. In view of his birth, it would
not seem unnatural for him to adhere to the
methods of dress of his native land.
But which? Waring, smiling,—it didn’t
matter much, so far as he could see,—tossed a
penny. It came down “heads.” Well, then,
not only in the next few hours would he pre-
tend to be Raoul Carvaj al, but he would pro-
fess to have been, during the M ontam'a’s voy-
age, Jacques Pelletier, of Dubuque, Iowa.
For if Bergson had been able to get almost


RANSOM! 57


a million and a half of dollars from Carey
Haig, and had been able to vanish without a
trace of his whereabouts until this providential
accident had located him, and if Bergson were
mixed up in some “society” that looked upon
violence as a casual thing, it befitted Philip
Waring to have a straight story. Waring
only hoped that it was as Jacques Pelletier that
Carvajal had posed. Still, it mattered little;
with the letter of introduction whose descrip-
tion fitted himself, there was little danger of
Bergson’s suspecting an impersonation. And
if he didn’t suspect, he wouldn’t make in-
quiries. Besides, four hundred thousand dol-
lars was well worth risking something for!
And WVaring was suddenly convinced, through
an emotional sort of reasoning, that he was
going to recover his fortune.
Bergson had been the name of the man to
whom Carey Haig had turned over the VVar-
ing fortune; Bergson had been the man whom
Waring had tried, these past months, to locate;
it was surely nothing less than fate that had
sent Raoul Carvajal upon Waring’s trail, a
trail that had led' the dancer to death. And
if fate had interposed in the Waring affairs


58 RANSOM!

n:

so far, putting into the Waring hands a clue
to the identity and whereabouts of the man
who possessed the Waring fortune—well, fate
simply couldn’t let it go at that!
For half an hour Waring sat in the deepest
thought. Fate had helped him, but fate some-
times seems to have a trick of helping those
who help themselves. Perhaps, after all, fate
is God.
He put himself in the place of Carvajal.
Of course, the dancer himself would have ex-
plained his delay in reaching Hancock Square
from the boat by saying that he had recognised
an enemy and pursued him. Waring could
not do this. But Waring could state that he
had found his French clothing too conspicuous
in this new country, and hence had bought new
garments. That would account for the delay.
Therefore Waring must buy new clothing.
Further, there were the two opened envel-
opes. It would be just as well to deliver the
letter to Bergson in a sealed envelope. War-
ing, studying them, noticed that the handwrit-
ing on the outer one differed from that on the
inner, which was exactly similar to the writ-
ing of the letter itself. Evidently Carvajal


60 RANSOM !


subdued in design for the taste of an Apache
dancer of the Paris restaurants. Further, they
were tailor-made, and Carvajal would not have
had time to have clothing made.
Waring regretted the absence of “Mike,”
his servant. Mike was a Japanese who had
been in Waring’s employ as cook and general
housekeeper for several years. But Mike,
whose brain was extremely keen, and who
would have died for Waring, was ofl" for the
day. And Waring could not postpone his
visit to Hancock Square. Already several
hours had elapsed since the M ontam'a had
docked.
Waring went to a desk. It was against the
law for a free-born American to possess
weapons in the city of New York. Neverthe-
less, having read of the experiences undergone
by law-abiding citizens who had taken their
weapons to the police to surrender them,—and
had been promptly jailed,—Waring still pos-
sessed his automatic pistol, which had accom-
panied him to the Arctic and to Africa. He
put the weapon, a flat, well-balanced affair, in
the pocket of his overcoat. Then he left his
apartment and started for a well-known men’s


CHAPTER FOUR
THE “Society!” It had intrigued the interest
of Philip Waring, but it obsessed the mind of
Burton Conybear. For the dozenth time he
pressed the electric call-button that summoned
Henderson, his combination secretary-valet-
nurse, to his presence.
This time it was not to fetch a document or
rearrange the lighting or sharpen a pencil or
to do any of the ordinary thousand and one
things whereby Henderson earned his ample
pay. It was merely to ask again a question
that the testy old millionaire had asked at least
four times in the last half-hour.
“The Burnham people arrived yet, Hender-
son?”
For any indication to the contrary that the
patient Henderson’s manner gave, this might
have been the first time that the question had
been put.
“No, sir, they’ll be brought to you imme-
diately they arrive, sir.”
oz


RANSOM ! 63


“All right. Be sure that they are. Er, Hen-
derson,”—as the man started to leave the room,
—“patrols on duty?”
“Why, yes, sir.”
“Gates attended to?”
Henderson bowed an affirmative.
“Men on the roof?”
“Do you think, sir, that I’d neglect—”
“Damn it, sir, who are you, the King of
Kickapoodalum? D’ye think you’re ninety-
nine and forty-four one-hundredths pure per-
fection, like a bloomin’ cake of blasted soap?
Never made a mistake, I suppose? Father
was a logarithm and your mother was a cosine,
hey? Who’s payin’ you exactly one hundred
times what you’re worth? Answer me that!”
“You are paying me one hundred dollars
a week, sir,” answered Henderson, his face
impassive.
“I am, am I? Well, by George, sir, I’m
glad to hear you admit it! I thought maybe
I was wrong, that I didn’t hire you, but that
you were chief bodyguard to the Grand Vizier
of the Ahkound of Swat! Well, as I ain’t
wrong, is there any harm in my asking you if
there are men on the roof?”


64 RANSOM!


“None at all, sir. I stationed them myself,
as usual, sir. I only regret that you should
think me capable of forgetting the precautions
that—”
Conybear’s face lost its frowning petulance.
“Didn’t think you’d neglected it. Didn’t
say I did. Simply asked a civil question.”
Then, as though regretting the momentary
softness of his speech, he roared: “Got a right
to ask, ain’t I?”
“Certainly, sir.”
“Hoomph,” snorted the old millionaire. He
bent over some papers on his desk. “Big times,
Henderson, big times. Big things. Got to be
careful. Y’understand?”
It was as close to an apology for his rude-
ness as old Conybear ever came, and the valet
bowed.
“Yes, sir.”
“A’right. Show the Burnham people in as
soon as they come.”
“Yes, sir.” Again Henderson started for
the door, and this time Conybear did not de-
tain him, but drew a paper to him and began
making notations on its margins. At first, his
handwriting was shaky, but as the moments


RANSOM! 65


passed, the nervousness that possessed him was
conquered by his interest in his work. He was
quite calm when Henderson returned to the
room again.
“The Burnham gentlemen, sir,’
nounced.
“Show ’em in,” snapped the millionaire.
Conybear locked the papers, on which he
had been figuring, in a drawer of the desk and
leaned back to await his visitors. They came
in a moment, two men, quietly dressed, smooth~
shaven, grave-faced, deferential in the pres-
ence of the lord of so many millions.
“Which one of you is Burnham?” demanded
Conybear.
The older of the two men answered.
“Neither, sir,” he replied apologetically.
“Burnham is—a name, sir. Peter Burnham
is still a heavy stockholder in the agency, and
is president, but I am general manager, sir,
and this gentleman, Mr. Williard, sir, is chief
of operatives.”
“What’s your name?” demanded Conybear
of the speaker.
“Meehan, sir, Robert F. Meehan.”
“I didn’t ask your history or what your
9
he an—_


66 RANSOM!


great-grandfather was hanged for,’ snapped
Conybear. “Your name could be Aloysius
Nero Fiddlesticks Meehan, for all I’d care!
Meehan! That’s enough. D’ye think I wanted
to call you Robbie?”
The two men smiled faintly, and Conybear
was appeased by their appreciation of his crude
humour.
“Suppose you people can ferret out any-
thing, eh ?” he asked.
“We can try, sir,” said Meehan.
“Read this, then,” said Conybear. He
shoved a letter across the desk, and Meehan
took it up.
“Read it aloud,” said Conybear.
Meehan bowed. He read:
“ ‘Burton Conybear,
“ ‘Sir:
“ ‘You have long been permitted by a com-
placent government to obtain fruits far be-
yond your deserts. You are now planning a
combination of industries that will net you a
hundred million dollars. Under a properly
organised society, you would receive for your
services in this matter not over fifty thousand
dollars. You will therefore be prepared to


RANSOM ! 67


pay over to the undersigned ninety-nine mil-
lion, nine hundred and fifty thousand dollars.
As earnest of your good intention, you will
make an advance payment to the undersigned
of ten million dollars. You will have this
amount ready on demand. You need make no
effort to communicate with us, as we will know
your intentions.
“ ‘Very truly yours,
“ ‘The Read justment Society of the World.
By the Inner Council.’ ”
There was no address or date on the letter.
“Well, what d’ye make of it?” demanded
Conybear.
“Is this the only letter you have received?”
asked Mechan.
“Yes.”
“When did you get it?”
“Yesterday afternoon. Delivered out here.”
“Any one else seen it?”
“Henderson here.” Conybear jerked a
thumb at his valet. “No one else.”
“The police?” suggested Meehan.
Conybear sneered contemptuously. “And
have the newspapers learn of it, and—faugh!
The people that wrote that letter aren’t the


68 RANSOM!



kind to be afraid of the police. There’s brains
behind that note, brains!”
The two men from the detective agency
smiled at each other. Conybear saw the smiles
and growled at them.
“Yes, brains! Maybe you think it’s an easy
thing to locate the writers of that letter. All
right, I hope it is easy for you. God knows
I didn’t send for you to miss out on it! But
if you’re going to tackle it as though you were
dealing with a lot of Italian Black-Handers,
then say so, and get the deuce out of here,
now!”
“Why, no—no, Mr Conybear,” said Mee-
han soothingly. “But what makes you think
they’re so brainy?”
“Think so? I know it! Do they make any
threats? No! That’s your quiet man who
means business. Bomb-throwers! Faugh!
I’ve got men patrolling every yard of my es-
tate; I’ve a private system of wiring that noti-
fies fifty men if any one climbs the fences or
goes through the gates. I’ve men around the
house and men on the roof. Your Black-
Hander—a fine chance he’d have here!”


RANSOM! 69



“Then why send for us?” demanded Mee-
han.
“Because brains are behind this note. Trust
me to recognise them! You read what the
note says about a hundred million dollars—
about a new combination? Gentlemen, I’ve
got that scheme ready for the springing.
There’s four other men in it with me, and not
one of them knows what I’m definitely aiming
at. I’m not tellin’ you men, either. But those
men are goin’ it blind with me, because I say
so. They don’t know how much there is in
it for them, or for me. But the man who wrote
that note knows. How does he know? Be-
cause he’s got brains. And the man that’s
afraid of brains isn’t a coward; he’s just not
a bloomin’ idiot.”
“One of your partners has leaked ?”
“Haven’t I told you that none of them know
the real inside? And not one of them knows
that three others are in it with me? Each
one holds the end of a string, but he doesn’t
know how many other strings there are, nor
where his own string leads to. How’d it get
out? I’ve never mentioned it to a soul before,
but I ain’t afraid you gentlemen will mention


70 RANSOM !


it, nor Henderson here. But how’d it get
out—unless the man that wrote that note read
my thoughts? Gentlemen, I’m nervous; that’s
the short of it. I ain’t ever been a-scared of
any threatenin’ letters before, and I’ve re-
ceived a plenty of ’em. But this letter—I ask
you, gentlemen, how’d whoever wrote this let-
ter know?”
“Your private papers?” suggested Meehan.
“Good Lord I” cried Conybear. “I never
kept no private papers of this deal!” In his
nervous alarm he forgot the training of recent
years and reverted to the mode of speech that
had been his before enormous wealth came to
him. “I kept it all in my head.”
“But if some one had overheard you talk
with one of your partners and then overheard
you talk with the others—couldn’t your plan
have been pieced together and understood by
the listener?”
It was the first time VVilliard had spoken.
Conybear glared at him.
“The walls of this room are absolutely
sound-proof. How’d they hear me? Why,
you—-d’ye think I’m a fool? Maybe I


RANSOM! 71



was, sending for you people!” He snorted
angrily.
“Just a minute, Mr. Conybear,” said Wil-
liard soothingly. “Suppose I show you how
you could have been overheard?”
Conybear’s jaw dropped. “Yes, suppose
you do,” he said.
The chief operative of the Burnham Agency
flashed a look at the manager. Then he
walked to a picture on the wall. He lifted
it down.
“Right there,” he said. “See the wires?”
“A dicto—” gasped the astonished mil-
lionaire, flashing a look of swift suspicion at
his visitors.
“Right there! Right where you are, Mr.
Conybear,” said Meehan quietly. He sat still,
his legs still crossed as they had been since
he sat down, but in his hand was a revolver!
“Sound-proof walls, you know, Mr. Cony-
bear. And the door is closed.”
Conybear stared at the gun. All his ner-
vousness had left him. Imagination, the same
imagination that had made him the ruler of a
country’s finances, had made him fear possi-
bilities. But concrete facts were concrete


72 RANSOM!



facts—nothing more. Old Burton Conybear
could look into a gun as nonchalantly to-day
as he had forty years before, when he’d made
his first stake by rounding up a group of train-
robbers and winning the reward ofiered for
their capture.
He looked at Henderson. “You, of
course,” he said, quietly. Henderson nodded,
smiling sardonically.
“Always thought you were a bit too pussy-
footed-—stood a little too much,” said the old
man. “Don’t suppose there’s a mite of use
in my keeping my foot on this electric but-
ton, is there, Henderson?”
“Not a bit,” replied the valet cheerfully.
“Mind my smoking?” asked Conybear.
Williard looked at his watch. “We have
a few minutes to spare before we start.
Smoke, if it eases your mind.”
“Thanks. Kind of you,” grunted Cony-
bear. He lighted a cigar and puffed it calm-
ly.
“You said ‘start,’ didn’t you?” he asked
after a moment. “What’s the answer?”
“Ten million now; the balance later,” said
Meehan.


RANSOM ! 73



“Suppose you think I keep little bits 0’
change like that on my clothes, hey ?”
Mechan smiled. “Oh, no, Mr. Conybear.
By ‘now’ I mean as a first payment—within
a day or so.”
“Oh, I see.- Suppose you think that if I
promised to make the payments, I’d be so
grateful at your sparing my life that I’d be
sure to keep my word, eh?”
Meehan laughed. “Oh, no! We know that
you’d break your word in such a matter with-
out a qualm.”
“W'ell, you got good sense, like I said the
people behind that note had. But you know
that a bank is going to hold up a check for
anything like ten million, don’t you? Ain’t
going to deliver it over to strangers? You
know that mighty well.”
“VVe’ll cross that bridge when we come to
it, sir,” said Meehan.
“Yes, and maybe the train that’ll take you
to prison will cross some bridges, too.”
“Well, we won’t bother to look up the time—
table for that train right now, Mr. Conybear.
Ready?”
“For what?”


74 RANSOM!



“A little journey.”
“You don’t suppose I’m going anywhere
with you, do you? You people have caught
the elephant, all right, but what you going to
do with him? Oh, I’ll write checks for the
rest of the night. But you got intelligence;
you know they’ll be stopped. And if you
killed me, the checks would be stopped. Looks
to me like the elephant’s got you.”
“I mentioned a little journey,” said Mee-
han.
“That’s right; you did. VVell_—-say, why
the note and all that? Why didn’t Hender-
son—and I hope to the Lord that some day
I get you at the end of a gun, you sweet-
scented tumcoat! Why didn’t Henderson
just bat me over the head with a blackjack
and lug me off?”
“Through your guards? You said we had
brains, awhile back, Mr. Conybear. The note
was so that you’d send to a detective agency
and strangers could be admitted to you.”
“How’d you know I’d send to Burnham’s ?”
Meehan laughed. “Inasmuch as Hender-
son has been mailing your letters, did it mat-
ter to whom you applied for aid?”


RANSOM! 75


“Brains is right,” said Conybear ruefully.
“No use in my suggesting that I never bear
any ill-will toward those who beat me, pro-
vided I think I could use ’em in my business,
eh ?”
“We aren’t thieves or blackmailers, Mr.
Conybear,” replied Meehan. “We represent
the Society. Will you come, now?”
Old Conybear stared at the weapon repos-
ing on Meehan’s knee. He shrugged his
shodlders. “I hate to breathe the same air
with Henderson. You two people—well,
this is business with you. Poor business, fool
business, for I’ll live to see you jailed, but—
business. But Henderson—he’s eaten my
bread, taken my wages—”
“Henderson remains here—t0 explain your
absence,” said Meehan.
Conybear stared at Meehan. Then he
looked at Henderson.
“I take a little of it back—what was in my
thoughts, Henderson,” he said. “You’re a
polecat, but you got nerve. . . . Well, here’s
to the day you hang, Henderson! Where to,
gentlemen ?”
He was as brisk and alert as though, hun-


76 RANSOM!

gry from a hard forenoon’s work, he were
about to lunch with two cronies. He looked
from one to the other of the two “Burnham”
men.
“I might suggest to you, Mr. Conybear,”
said \Villiard, “that although we work in the
interests of society, the true interests of the
true society, as against the interests of men
like yourself and the society that tolerates
you,—we realise that the world misunderstands
men like ourselves. We have to pass many of
your servants, of your private guards. We
are perfectly willing to die, if need be, Mr.
Conybear. I do not ask any promise from
you to keep silent. Nor do I like to make
threats.”
“Why not? People understand threats.
Only thing they do understand. If I get a
chance, in the next ten minutes, or the next
ten years, to put you gentlemen in prison
or in your graves, I’ll do it. But I’ve got a
lot of things to do in this world. I don’t in-
tend to die any sooner than I’ve got to.”
“You have the right idea, Mr. Conybear;
I only hope that you will continue in the be-
lief that we have brains and quick wits. The


RANSOM! 77


least word—but you are a man of intelligence,
even though your intelligence has been per-
verted, Mr. Conybear. You are going on a
sudden trip. You do not know when you will
return. That is all you need to say. A word
more than that—we understand exactly what
we are doing, Mr. Conybear. We know how
every stranger, no matter how he is vouched
for, is scrutinised by your guards. We realise
the risk we are running. We only hope that
you realise the equal risk you run.” .
“No one’s ever accused Burton Conybear
of bein’ an out-and-out tom-fool,” said the old
man quietly.
“Very well. Henderson, you come to the
car with us,” said Williard.


CHAPTER FIVE
HERKOMER, Commissioner of Police, yawned
over his evening paper. It was incredible, the
virtue of New York! Beyond a few petty
breaks, the routine of gathering in criminals
“wanted” in other cities, the restraining of
the drunk and disorderly, the town was as dull
as a United States Senator making a speech
against women’s sufl‘rage.
Not a major crime of any sort in seven
days! Truly, the millennium was here! Not
a line in the paper abusing his administration
of the department, no letters from indignant
citizens criticising the traffic arrangements.
. . . He turned idly to the financial page. A
headline caught his eye
Herkomer carelessly read the half-column
story that followed. Condensed, it was to the
effect that certain bear interests had taken ad-
vantage of the Amalgamated General Prod-
ucts Company’s failure to pass a dividend yes-
terday by circulating reports that the com-
78


RANSOM! 79


pany was facing a receivership. If true, such
a condition would afl’ect the markets of the
whole world, and there was a lively time for
twenty minutes, the whole list of stocks tum-
bling an average of two points. The huge
trust immediately issued a statement, declar-
ing that the reason for the failure of the direc-
tors to pass the usual quarterly dividend was
that it had been impossible, owing to various
matters, to get a quorum of the directors to-
gether. The directors’ meeting had been post-
poned a week, at the end of which time a
dividend would be passed. All statements in-
timating that the company’s finances were in
disorder were canards. The company would
use every means to trace these canards to their
source and confidently expected that the gov-
ernors of the Stock Exchange would take
measures to prevent their repetition.
Herkomer chuckled. “But if the directors
did refuse to declare a dividend, would they
tell the public in advance of their intentions,
or would they quietly sell, all along the line,
first? It’s wicked to spread a report that Bill
Smith is a crook, but it’s all right for Bill to
be a crook! It’s a funny world, the humour


80 RANSOM !




of it (kpending on whether you’re a little fel-
low or a big fellow.”
He turned over the paper to his favourite
cartoonist, and was chuckling when there came
a knock on his door. Sergeant Kelcey entered
in response to his call.
“Another nut, sir. If he don’t see you,
we’ll wake up some mornin’ to find the Wool-
worth Buildin’ in the East River.”
Herkomer smiled wearily. “Is that what
he says?”
Sergeant Kelcey shook his head. “No, he
won’t say anythin’, sir, except that he’s got
to see you, and knowin’ your rulin’, sir ”
Once, a year or so ago, an alleged crank
had been ejected from police headquarters
without being permitted to see Herkomer.
The crank had gone directly to a newspaper
ofiice, and the newspaper had received the
glory of bringing a dangerous criminal to jus-
tice, through the crank’s information. Also,
Herkomer had received his first and last re-
buke from the Mayor. Thereafter all per-
sons wishing to see the Commissioner on mat-
ters connected with the enforcing of justice
found more or less easy access to him. Of


RANSOM! 81



course, if they would divulge their informa-
tion to a subordinate, so much the better, but
when they would not, Herkomer saw them.
“Bring him in,” he ordered.
Kelcey saluted and left the office. He re-
turned in a moment, like a battleship—Kelcey
stood six-feet-three in his stockings——convoy-
ing a submarine.
The clothes of the undersized man whose
frightened eyes ‘stared at the Commissioner
were ludici ously large for him. Skinny,
short of legs and long of neck out of all pro-
portion to his trunk, his head emerged from
a collar several sizes too big »for him, like
the periscope of a submarine.
“This is the Commissioner. Go on—speak
to him,” ordered Kelcey.
From somewhere in his baggy, dilapidated
clothing the man produced an envelope. He
handed it to Herkomer. Dirty, as though it
had lain on a dusty road, the address, never-
theless, was not obscured. And the envelope
was addressed to the Commissioner of Police,
New York City. Beneath that title were the
two words, “Important. Reward.”
It was a peculiar envelope, too, Herkomer


82 RANSOM !



noticed. Its material was not the usual paper.
It seemed made of some waterproof stuff. It
was unopened, and the Commissioner slit it
. with a paper-knife from his desk. He read
the enclosure, and the observant Kelcey saw
his chief’s shoulders stiffen.
“What’s your name?” demanded Herkomer
of the little man. .
“Perkins, sir. Peter Perkins, sir.”
“Where do you live? What do you do?”
“In Portsmouth, sir, and I do mythin’, sir.
Gardenin’, lookin’ after hosses, clammin’——”
“Where’d you find this note?”
“In the main road, sir, just outside the main
gates of Mr. Burton Conybear’s estate, sir.”
“When?”
“This mornin’, sir, about four o’clock. I was
goin’ to dig clams.”
“Why didn’t you bring it to me at once ?”
“Well, I had to dig the clams, didn’t I? My
mother, she said that if I didn’t dig ’em I’d
hear from her, and I had to go and do it, didn’t
I?”
“Did you tell your mother about this note?”
The man—he was plainly half-witted—


RANSOM ! 83


cocked his head on one side and winked cun-
ningly.
“And let her get the reward when I ain’t had
anythin’ to smoke for a week? I didn’t tell
nobody anythin’. I just told her I was goin’
out for a walk, and I came in here.”
“You didn’t walk all the way from out on
Long Island, did you?” asked Herkomer.
“No, sir. I got rides here and there along
the way. I don’t suppose I walked over ten
miles, sir. But I could of walked all the way,”
he said boastfully. “Thirty miles ain’t nothin’
to me. Why, I could walk a hundred miles—
a thousand miles if I wanted to.”
“But you wouldn’t want to, would! you?
You’d like to ride back on a train, wouldn’t
you?”
“Yes, sir, with the reward money.”
“Well, we’ll see about the reward a little
later. Hungry?”
“Yes sir.”
“Kelcey, turn him over to some one and
have him fed. A good meal, and a good
cigar.” -
The little man’s face glowed with delight.
He took Kelcey’s hand as a child would, and


84- RANSOM !


almost danced in his hurry to be fed. Heer-
mer smiled pityingly after the half-wit.
A hoax, of course, and only a half-witted
person would have been tricked by it. The
average person, disinclined to be made a butt,-
would have read the letter even though the
envelope was sealed. But this poor man,
treated by his mother like the child be mentally
was—Herkomer read the letter again. It was
undated, and was written in a jerky scrawl
upon paper that was of the same apparently
waterproofed material as the envelope. He
read again:
Commissioner of Police,
New York:
I am a prisoner. Notify my business associates
but not the press. Reward the finder of this note,
and I will meet all expenses that may be incurred
in locating and rescuing me.
BURTON CONYBEAR.
A hoax, yes, but—an alert police commis-
sioner can afford to overlook nothing, espe-
cially when the telephone is always at one’s el-
bow.


RAN SOM ! 85



Herkomer called up Conybear’s New York
ofiice. He said nothing as to the motive be-
hind his call. He did not wish to be laughed
at. His name procured him immediate au-
dience with Conybear’s office secretary.
No, Mr. Conybear was not in the city to-day.
He had not been in his office for several days.
He had no definite office-hours, of recent
months. Came when he felt like it, and stayed
away when he felt like it. The Commission-
er could probably reach him at his Portsmouth
estate, however.
Herkomer rang ofi’. If Conybear had been
kidnapped, his New York office would know
of it, and certainly, despite its dread of pub-
licity, would not hesitate to take the Commis-
sioner of Police into its confidence. The kid-
napping of Burton Conybear would be an
event of national, of international, importance.
Still, the most unlikely things happened in
this world. If the note were genuine, despite
the million-to-one chance against its being any-
thing but a stupid hoax, and Herkomer neg-
lected to call up Portsmouth— He got Cony-
bear’s country residence on the telephone. _
No, Mr. Conybear was not there. The


86 RANSOM !



Commissioner of Police of New York City
was inquiring for him? \Vas anything
wrong?
“Why, no,” said Herkomer embarrassedly.
“I—who is this talking?”
“Henderson, Mr. Conybear’s valet, sir, and
confidential secretary, in a way, sir, too. If
there is anything important ”
“Why, no,” admitted the Commissioner.
“I got word that Dir. Conybear had been—
well, kidnapped, or something like that, and

Henderson, at the other end of the wire,
laughed.
“Excuse me, sir, but—you, perhaps aren’t
aware of the system of guards out here?”
Herkomer felt himself blush. “Why, yes,
I know it’s a poor jest, but—although such a
matter would be, strictly speaking, in the office
of the Portsmouth police, still ”
“Quite right of you, sir. And very kind,
too, I’m sure. I shall tell Mr. Conybear of
your thoughtfulness. By the way, sir, where
did such an absurd rumour spring from?”
“Oh, that doesn’t matter,” grumbled Her-
komer. “You say Mr. Conybear’s all right.


RANSOM! 87



That’s enough. You needn’t mention my
calling up. The papers—”
“We don’t like the papers out here any
more than you do, sir,” laughed Henderson.
“Thank you again, sir, for ringing up.”
“Not at all,” said Herkomer. “By the way,
Mr. Conybear wasn’t in his New York office
and wasn’t expected.”
“Did you tell them of the absurd rumour?”
asked Henderson.
“No, I didn’t.”
“I’m glad of that, sir. It annoys Mr. Cony-
bear when foolish reports are brought to his
ears, and some one in the office might have
let drop something to a newspaper man—you
never can tell, sir. And it would embarrass ‘
Mr. Conybear to have the newspapers trailing
him, now. I can tell you, sir, for you’re dis-
creet, of course. Mr. Conybear has some im-
portant business matters on hand, and has
gone up into New England to consult with
some associates. He left night before last.
I tell you this in strict confidence, sir, of course.
Even his office doesn’t know of it. But your
telephoning me, your natural alarm, sir, make
me feel that Mr. Conybear would have no ob-


88 RANSOM!

jection to my telling you this. Good after-
noon, sir, thanking you again, sir.”
“Not at all. Good afternoon,” said Her-
komer.
He rang off just as Kelcey knocked.
“‘We’ve fed the little man, sir,” said the Ser-
geant. “Want to see him?"
Herkomer nodded, and Peter Perkins,
smoking a large cigar, was ushered into the
office again. The Commissioner of Police was
a kindly as well as thorough citizen. A cruel
hoax had made this poor half-wit tramp miles
over the dusty Long Island roads in the hope
of a reward. Well, he should have a reward,
if his ambitions were not too lofty.
“Well, have a good meal, Peter?”
“Fine!” Peter smacked his lips.
“Thinking about the reward, now, eh?
About how big do you think it’ll be?”
“Well, it ought to be a dollar, hadn’t it?”
asked Peter.
“Well, I should say so,” said Herkomer.
He winked at Sergeant Kelcey. “It’s two
dollars, Peter, and your fare home, besides.”
It was one of the little things that endeared
Herkomer to the Force, and that lost nothing


RANSOM! 89


in the telling, although Herkomer never
dreamed that the little generosities, which were
as natural to him as eating or sleeping, were
mulled over at Headquarters, in remote pre—
cinct stations or by officers meeting at the in-
tersection of their beats.
His “reward” thrust deep into his trousers
pocket, Peter left the office. Herkomer
turned his attention for the next half-hour to
reading reports, signing orders and the like
routine business. Then he locked his desk,
made a memorandum of what he expected to
do during the evening,—-—at what hours he
might be reached on the telephone, and where,
—handed the memorandum to Kelcey and
pulled on his light overcoat.
He hesitated a moment, looking at the Ser-
geant. Commissioner Herkomer had the
healthy man’s disinclination to he laughed at,
but he trusted the good sense and the loyalty
of Kelcey. He handed Kelcey the note that
Peter Perkins had found in the Long Island
dust.
“What do you make of it, Sergeant?”
Kelcey read it slowly, moving his tongue


90 RANSOM!


around his mouth. He nodded toward the
telephone.
“I take it you been usin’ that little bridge-
builder, Commissioner ?”
Herkomer laughed. “Oh, yes—got his of-
fice and then his Portsmouth place. Talked
with his private secretary out there. Cony-
bear’s O. K.”
“Then he’s O. K., I should say, sir,” said
Kelcey. ’
He handed the note back to Herkomer.
“It’s a dull day when some new nut don’t
spring some new wrinkle—ain’t that the truth,
sir?”
“It certainly is, Sergeant,” laughed Her-
komer. He reached for his hat, nodded to
Kelcey and left the office.


CHAPTER SIX
THE paying-teller of the Seventy-third Na-
tional Bank looked swiftly but comprehensive-
ly at the check and then glanced through his
cage at Conybear.
“How’ll you have it, Mr. Conybear?” he
asked.
“Hundreds,” grunted the financier.
The teller reached beneath him. Twenty-
five thousand dollars in hundred-dollar bills
was more than he had on the counters at either
side of him. He shoved several packages
through the little opening in the cage. Cony-
bear swept them into an open bag, locked it,
glanced at his companion, shrugged his
shoulders and started for the bank door.
A tall, handsome man, in the early thirties,
accosted him.
“I see you’re in town, Mr. Conybear,” he
said. He nodded curtly to Conybear’s com—
panion, who returned the nod in the same
casual way. Conybear did not notice the ex-
change.
91


92 RANSOM !


“Well, what if I am?” he growled.
“You ought to have attended Amalgamated
General’s meeting to-day,” snapped the tall
man.
“So? Just because you’re president of this
bank, Malcolm, and I keep an account here,
don’t mean you got any license to advise me.”
“I have a right to speak my mind,” returned
the banker. “When your staying away al-
most precipitated a panic—”
Conybear’s companion touched the financier
gently Qn the elbow. Malcolm did not see
the movement. Conybear was tense, rigid;
he relaxed.
“I was directin’ trusts, Malcolm,” he_said,
“when you were in long dresses. You ’tend
to your bank and let me ’tend to my business.”
“But it’s the public’s business, too, and ”
“The public can go to grass! You too,”
snapped Conybear.
The young banker flushed and stood aside.
Conybear and his companion walked to the
door, past the uniformed porter, down the
bank steps, and into a waiting automobile.
Two men, apparently busied at difl’erent cus-
tomers’ desks, making out checks, simulta-


RANSOM .' 98



neously seemed to decide not to withdraw any
money to-day; they sauntered out of the bank.
Two other men, lounging on the sidewalk, ex-
changed glances with the couple descending
the steps. As the automobile started ofi', the
four men merged in the crowd.
Inside the automobile Conybear pufl’ed a
cigar. .
“Well, you put it across, Mr. Carvajal,”
he said. “Suppose you take your hand off
that pop-gun in your pocket now. It kinda
gets me nervous.”
“That’s odd,” replied his companion. “It
soothes me.”
Conybear stared at the young man.
“Do you know, Mr. Carvajal, if you wasn’t
a Frenchman, I’d say you was a high and
handsome kidder.”
“Thank you.”
Waring forced a smile——with difficulty; his
inclination was to scream. Yesterday he had
been Philip Waring, victim of Simon Berg-
son; to-day he was Raoul Carvajal, aide to
Simon Bergson. He wondered if it would
be safe to explain everything to old Cony-
bear, and together leap from the machine—


94- RANSOM!



he knew it would not stop—and take their
chances.
But he had noticed the two men on the side—
walk as he had entered the bank with Cony-
bear; he had seen the two men in the bank;
he knew that behind him followed an automo-
bile with at least four men in it; he knew that v
the driver of this car in which he rode was
prepared to die rather than let Conybear es-
cape. And if Waring escaped alone—Cony-
bear would die. And Conybear was too old
a man to leap from flying automobiles. It
would not do even to let Conybear know that
his companion was not the desperate criminal I
he seemed, but was an American gentleman,
playing a part forced upon him. For Cony-
bear might drop some unguarded word. . . .
He looked at the old man; the grim lines of
defiant defeat were about the financier’s
mouth.
Waring felt a tremendous admiration for
his companion. The best loser he had ever
seen! Conybear might be all that the yellow
journals termed him, a grinder of the poor, 9.
rapacious forager upon the common property
of all, but—-he was a high-class fighting-man,


RANSOM! 95

for all that. Waring knew how close Cony-
bear had been to telling Malcolm, president of
the bank they had just left, that he was with-
drawing this money only under threat of death,
at the points of weapons. It had not been
fear entirely that had prevented Conybear
from speech; it had been discretion. A fool
would have spoken; the wise man bided his
time.
That was it: to hide one’s time! That was
what Waring would do. He prayed that
those watching in the bank had not noticed
Malcolm’s nod, a tribute to a very slight ac-
quaintance, or that, if they had noticed it, it
had been set down to mere acknowledgment
by the banker of the fact that Conybear had a
companion.
Waring stole another glance at Conybear;
the old man was leaning back now, his eyes
half-closed, dreamily. If Conybear could be
calm, self-contained, so could VVaring—espe-
cially as Waring would have a little freede
soon, freedom to summon the police.
Police? The militia, the regular army, ,
maybe! Bergson was not so destitute of dar-
ing followers as “P. R.” had thought. There


96 RANSOM!


were plenty of men, dozens surely, scores prob—
ably, and hundreds maybe, who would die in
executing the commands of Bergson, chief of
the Inner Council.
The Inner Council! Inner Council of
what? Waring reviewed all that had hap-
pened since he had mounted the steps at 17
Hancock Square. He had rung the hell; 2.
suspicious-eyed man—who was called Ranney,
he now knew—had admitted him. He had
given this man his letter. Then he had been
taken to a room on the ground floor, where his
letter had been read by a sunken-eyed, pre-
dacious-nosed, frail-seeming old man. That
man had been Simon Bergson.
That was yesterday. And to-day he was
one of Bergson’s band, a band whose object
was to—what? Bewildered, dazed by the
sudden transition from amateur sleuth to ama-
teur criminal, Waring tried to itemise the
various things that had led to this transition.
First, of course, there was his determination
to impersonate Carvajal; second, he had im-
personated Carvajal; third, he had met Berg-
son and been accepted at his face value; fourth,
Bergson had not asked him anything about


RANSOM! 97


“P. R.,” fortunately enough. And as to the
name that those initials stood for, Waring
had only learned, from Bergson’s remarks, that
the first stood for “Peter.” Fifth, Bergson
had explained to his new ally that there would
be immediate work for him on the morrow;
sixth, the pseudo-Carvajal had dined with
Bergson and several other men, whom Berg-
son had designated as members of the “Inner
Council of the Society,” about the nature of
which “Carvaja ” would learn more later on.
Seventh, after a long cross-examination as to
his life in Paris, from which, thanks to a ready
imagination, a certainty that Bergson knew no
more than the letter of introduction contained,
and a really wide knowledge of Paris, Waring
had emerged triumphant.
Eighth item: a night of sleep that followed
some hours of wondering if he had enough
evidence against Bergson to cause his arrest
and the conclusion that he had no evidence at
all. Ninth, the astounding information that
Burton Conybear, of whom, like every one
else in the world, he had heard, was a prisoner
in this very house, and that it was designed
to visit one of the banks where Conybear had a


98 RANSOM !



deposit and draw money for the immediate
expenses of the “Society.” Tenth, Bergson’s
command—it was nothing less than that—that
“Carvajal,” because he was an absolute stran-
ger in the country, should be the one to be
Conybear’s companion in the visit to the bank.
Eleventh, Waring’s quick suspicion that Berg-
son was not the trustful person that he seemed,
but that Conybear’s companion would be
watched as closely as was the financier him-
self. Twelfth, Waring’s further understand~
ing that he was chosen for this delicate mis-
sion because Bergson was somewhat of a
gambler. The explanation of this twelfth
item was that Bergson was the sort of per-
son who would stake much on a single chance.
At least, so he seemed to Waring.
For the man who had obtained almost a
million and a half from Carey Haig, and who
held Burton Conybear a prisoner, was surely
not going to be content with a pitiful twenty-
five thousand from the financier. Therefore,
Bergson’s demand upon Conybear that the
latter cash a check for twenty-five thousand
was but a preliminary, a feeler. If Bergson
could get away with this, without arousing


RANSOM ! 99



suspicion—Bergson must have something tre-
mendous on the tapis, something whose execu-
tion he dared not attempt until he had received
previous assurance that he could essay it in
safety. This bank matter would be that as-
surance if it succeeded.
And it only went to prove that what had
just transpired was but a minor incident in the
ventures planned by Bergson. Had it been
a big thing, of importance, Bergson would
have selected for its execution only true, tried
followers. Bergson, then, must have looked,
not too unwillingly, at the possibility of the
violent death of Conybear, and the equally
violent death of “Carvajal.” If Conybear
proved recalcitrant, if “Carvajal” proved
treacherous—Bergson’s watchers in the bank,
in the automobiles that followed Waring and
Conybear, on the sidewalk, had had their in-
structions, beyond a doubt.
Waring dismissed all his theorising. Facts
were the only things that counted. And the
facts were these: In pursuance of his plan to
find out something about Bergson that would
return to him the money got from Carey Haig,
Waring had let himself in for something tre-


100 it A N SO M !


mendous. He had become, apparently, one of
Bergson’s “Society,” had assisted in a crime—
had, therefore, evidence against Bergson. Now
the only thing that remained to be done was
to present that evidence to the authorities.
His own part in to-day’s crime——making Cony-
bear draw money under threat of death—
could be explained satisfactorily. Conybear
would bear no grievance against the man who
had held an automatic on him this afternoon.
Waring smiled grimly as a traffic police-
man held up the car for a moment. One word
to the ofiicer— He shook his head. He did
not propose to die just yet awhile.
The car rounded a corner into Hancock
Place. It stopped, and Waring got out.
Two other cars had also stopped, one fifty
feet west, the other a dozen yards to the east.
Any lingering notion that he might tell Cony-
bear his true position left Waring’s mind. A
false gesture, even, and those watchers might
suspect. . . . He gently impelled Conybear
through the gate, along the path and up the
stoop. In a moment they found themselves
inside the house.


RANSOM! lOl



Bergson, his lips curled in a malignant
smile, met them in the hall.
“Take Mr. Conybear to his room,” he said;
“then come to me.”
“Wait a minute,” said Conybear. “I’d like
to talk this matter over with you ?”
Bergson’s smile broadened. “You’re will-
ing to make certain pledges—about turning
over your property to the Society?”
“Don’t talk foolishness! But I’m willing
to settle—right. And to give guarantees of
immunity—what do you say to a million—
cash?”
“What do I say? Well, Mr. Conybear, if
some one offered you a small fraction of what
you might have by reaching out your hand
for it, what would you say?”
“It ain’t that way. Not at all! Because
you get me to draw twenty-five thousand, you
don’t imagine you can get more than I’ve just
offered you, do you? Why, I don’t keep a.
million cash in all my banks together!”
“N 0? But how about your securities, that
might so easily be turned into cash, Mr. Cony-
bear ?”
“That takes time, and you know it. And


102 RANSOM !


my brokers would have to see me. And they’d
have to see me alone, too, and—you can’t do
deals like that just with letters. You got
sense, Bergson. This Society of yours, the
way you got hold of me—it all proves you got
brains. But don’t let ’em get addled. Listen
to reason. All the cash I’ve got on deposit,
no prosecution—”
“Make it all the cash you have in vaults,
and we’ll begin to talk real business, Mr. Cony-
bear,” interrupted Bergson.
Conybear’s jaw dropped. “You mean
that—”
Bergson’s sneer became ineffable in its su-
periority.
“And they call men like you brainy! A
poor, docile people allow your sort of men to
rule them! Whereas, the true secret of your
success lies in the fact that you have assumed,
and correctly assumed, that the people have no
brains and therefore will permit you to do as
you will. If it were your own brains that had
made you the richest man in the world, you
would recognise brains when you met them.
You would not merely flatter, or assume that
we of the Society are a cut cleverer than the


RANSOM ! 103


mass of the people whom you rule. You
would recognise that we have real brains, the
sort of brains that overlook nothing. Mr.
COnybear, why do you suppose I sent you to
the bank this afternoon?”
“To get money, wasn’t it?” snapped Cony-
bear.
“When I could have taken your check, had
it cashed through any one of a dozen sources?
You amaze me! ‘To get money !’ Assured-
ly, my dear sir, the upkeep of this Society
costing something more than a trifle, and ready
cash being needed, but—why did I send you?”
“Go on, tell it,” growled Conybear.
Waring hung on Bergson’s answer.
“Obvious reasons must have occurred to
you,” said Bergson, still with that air of su-
periority. “For instance, if you were shot
down in a public place, other gentlemen might
be more amenable to reason. You thought of
that ?”
Conybear waved his hands. “Oh, go on,
tell the rest of it.”
“Well, you have several millions in gold in
the vaults of the Seventy-third National. You
have studied financial history, Mr. Conybear.


10-1- RANSOM !

You remember that Jay Gould once defeated
a coalition against him by his ability to show
his enemies that he had over fifty million in
cash to use against them. In many ways you
are like Jay Gould.
“You are perfectly right when you say that
selling off securities without personal orders
from you would be difficult, dangerous for us
of the Society. Also, despite all the precau-
tions we have taken, the advance information
we have gathered, we have not—as you sug-
gested the other night—been able to read your
thoughts, Mr. Conyberr. Therefore, we do
not know—did not know—~but that you had
some private arrangement about drawing cash
yourself. After all, you have some brains,
Mr. Conybear. Such a contingency as has
happened to you might very well have sug-
gested itself to you. We know that you have
not been yourself to a bank to draw money in
many months—years, almost. If the possi-
bility of what has happened to-day had ever
entered your mind, you might have arranged
with your various bankers not to honour your
checks, though you presented them yourself,


RANSOM! 105


unless you said or did some particular thing.
You might have arranged to be followed.
“You see, Mr. Conybear, we overlook noth-
ing. Your vaults, we happen to know, can
be opened by you only. Your presence is not
only desirable; it is necessary. If, among
other things, we plan to obtain the contents of
your vaults, you must go with us. And it is
just as well to be certain that your failure to
say or do something will not mean our appre-
hension. But if you thought of no such pre-
caution to protect your bank-account, it is
not likely that you thought of any such thing
with reference to your stored cash.”
Conybear’s eyes expressed open admiration.
“You got a head on you,” he said. “But how
do you know I ain’t been followed to-day ?”
Bergson shrugged his shoulders. “Those
members of the Society who were at the bank
just now are not amateurs, Mr. Conybear.
You would never have been driven here had
suspicion been aroused. And now—have I
made your position clear, Mr. Conybear?”
Conybear’s eyes were puzzled now. “Clear
enough—as far as you go,” he said slowly.


106 RAN SOM !


“But—supposin’ you get my cash reserve?
What then?”
“Then we will talk of other matters, Mr.
Conybear.”
“H’m! I thought so. Something bigger
than fifty million, eh?”
“Much bigger,” said Bergson placidly.
“Do you feel, now, Mr. Conybear, like sur-
rendering everything you have to the Society?”
“And then what?”
“Like joining the Society and aiding its
work?”
“What is its work?”
“That will be explained when your mind
is prepared for it. There is a beginning. It
is useless to struggle; it is better to yield.”
Conybear turned to Waring. “Come on,
Carvajal,” he said. “Take me to my room.
I want to take a nap.”
“You prefer to be forced, then?” asked
Bergson.
Conybear stared at him. “Why, you poor
fish!” he said. “Do you honestly think you
can get away with much more than you’ve got
away with to-day?” He stumped toward the


RANSOM! 107


stairs. Over his shoulder he flung his offer.
“One million—cash! That’s all.”
Bergson smiled. “Take him to his room,
my Carvajal. Then come to my study.”
In silence Conybear mounted the stairs; he
said nothing as Waring opened the door of his
room. He was stripping off collar and tie as
Waring locked the door. Once again Waring
characterised him as a fine loser—something
more: one who refused to admit that he was
a loser. Waring’s lips tightened. Conybear
was not a loser. Once Waring got outside
this house, beyond the menace of half a dozen
watchers—
In the ground-floor room that he called his
study, Bergson was waiting for him. The
mysterious chief of the “Society” looked up
with an expression as close to friendly ap-
proval as his thin lips and harsh eyes could
manage. '
“You have done well, my Carvajal—as well
as I would have expected from one whom
Peter sent to me. Too bad you work from
greed alone.”
Waring shrugged his shoulders. “There
are safer ways of satisfying greed than I have


108 RAN SO M !


used to-day. I am not greedy. A fair share
He paused, impudent expectation in his ex-
pression.
“So? You want money from us already?”
Again Waring shrugged his shoulders. He
looked down at his clothing.
“Those things that I wore aboard the ship
—they were soiled, worn. And I could only
buy what I have on. There are many things
needed in a gentleman’s wardrobe that I lack.”
He hung on Bergson’s words. It was such
a transparent excuse, and yet a perfectly nat-
ural one. And Bergson was a fanatic; and
fanatics, though quick to suspicion, trust
wholly while they trust at all.
Bergson smiled. “I forgot that dancers
are dandies. Be careful, my Carvajal. Have
nothing sent.”
Across the desk at which he sat he handed
money; Waring took it. He found himself
outside on the street almost before he realised
it. How easy! He could hardly believe it
possible. And yet—why not? There was
no reason on earth why Bergson should sus-
pect him, should think that there was more


RANSOM! 109

than a dandy’s desire to be well-dressed be-
hind “Carvajal’s” desire to go out. Had not
“Carvajal” played a dangerous, criminal part
to-day? Why should Bergson suspect?
Waring held to a careless walk until he had
rounded two corners and found himself at the
foot of Seventh Avenue. Then he almost ran
into a saloon—not for a drink, but to use the
telephone which he knew would be there.
But inside the booth he hesitated. The police
—well, the way they had handled the Carey
Haig matter, their inability to—focus——made
him pause. A score of policemen, or even
plain-clothes men,—and nothing less than a
score would be sent to the rescue of Burton
Conybear,—would be the signal for Cony-
bear’s death. Bergson was a fanatic, and fa-
natics kill! The man who would kidnap the
financier, send him to a bank and make him
draw money. . . . Waring had almost forgot-
ten his own grievance against Bergson in the
greater affair that was going on.
No, not the police! And as for the Green-
hams—he wondered if they had the delicacy
needed for this matter. Bergson must be sur-
prised; his followers in the house at 17 Han-


110 RANSOM!


cock Square must be surprised; otherwise—‘
Waring shuddered. Somehow, in this after-
noon he had acquired a real affection for Bur-
ton Conybear. He might not think of his own
fortune; he might not think of crushing the
“Society” of which Bergson stood at the head,
until he had thought of some means of rescu-
ing Burton Conybear. And it was not fair to
the financier that his life or death should de-
pend upon the judgment of Waring alone.
Waring called up Conybear’s city offices.
That is to say, he asked for the number.
But they had visited the Seventy-third Nation-
al just at the closing hour. The automobile
had taken a long and roundabout course back
to Hancock Square. Waring had remained
some time in the house. Conybear’s office was
closed. And Waring did not know who were
Conybear’s intimates in the city. He knew,
of course, that the financier must be acquainted
with about every one of importance, but to
whom it was best to turn, Waring did not
know.
He dismissed the newspapers. They were
more dangerous to Conybear than the police.
Further, if the rescue could be accomplished


RANSOM! l 11



without publicity, Conybear would be im-
mensely pleased, and Waring would like to
please the game old chap. He called up Cony-
bear’s country home at Portsmouth. Like all
the world, he knew of Conybear’s countryr
home. And there he would get in touch with
some one who would be competent to advise
his next move, to join hands with him.
He asked for some member of the family.
He did not know that Conybear lived without
kith or kin, although aware that he was a
bachelor.
“You mean his secretary, sir?” answered a
voice.
“Yes, he’ll do.”
“Just a moment, sir.”
Another voice spoke. “This is Henderson,
Mr. Conybear’s secretary. You wished to
speak with me ?”
“Yes. My name is Waring—Philip War-
ing. Mr. Conybear is a prisoner at Number
Seventeen, Hancock Place. I have just come
from there. You tell me what to do—”
“Just a moment.” Henderson’s voice was
very cool. “You say that your name is VVar-


114- RANSOM!


“I shall be there in an hour,” said Hender-
son.
“All right,” said Waring.
He hung up the receiver and stood a mo-
ment in sheer bewilderment. Of course, it
was not an impossibility that Burton Cony-
bear, richest man in America, and probably
in the world, should be kidnapped, and held to
ransom, for the kidnapping had happened. But
that Burton Conybear should have foreseen
such a happening—well, he’d done it; there-
fore it wasn’t impossible. And, having de-
cided to leave whatever action might be taken,
to the discretion of Conybear’s associates, it
was up to Waring to obey Henderson’s orders.
He took a Seventh Avenue car, chafing at its
slowness, to Twenty-third Street. There he
transferred across town, and at Fifth Avenue
jumped from the car and took a taxi to 88
Camp Avenue.
The house was a dignified mansion, of the
type to be found still on Murray Hill. Trade
had not yet encroached on Camp Avenue.
Waring mounted the steps and rang the bell.
It was opened in a moment, and Waring
stared in amazement at the girl who stood be-


RANSOM! 115

fore him. Yet, even as he gasped at sight of
the girl for whose sake he had braved the dan-
gers of a Paris brawl, he became conscious
that down the hall a telephone jangled.


118 RANSOM!



the shoulder. The young banker turned with
a smile.
“Well, Commissioner, what can I do for
you?” he asked.
“I overheard you talking with Boyd,” said
Herkomer. “I didn’t mean to listen, exactly,
but————”
“Any time I say anything in a grill that I
wouldn’t say in my bank or anywhere else,
I’ll be a different man, Herkomer,” grinned
Malcolm. “Well, you heard me roasting old
Conybear. What about it?”
“Nothing much,” answered the Commis-
sioner. “Only—you know his signature, of
course. Is this his?”
He showed Llalcolm the signature of the
note that Peter Perkins had brought from
Long Island yesterday, and which Herkomer
had since carried. Sensitive to ridicule, not
wishing to appear easily hoaxed, he folded the
waterproofed paper on which the message was
written, so that only the signature showed.
Malcolm scrutinised it carefully.
“Well,” he smiled, “if this is a note, I’ll
discount it for you the moment the bank opens
in the morning.”


RANSOM! 119

“It’s genuine, then?”
“Absolutely,” said the banker.
“Much obliged,” said Herkomer.
Malcolm lingered a moment; then, seeing
that Herkomer was slightly embarrassed and
wished to say no more, the banker nodded and
left the room.
Herkomer stared at the folded paper in his
hand. Conybear’s signature! So Malcolm
affirmed, and Malcolm, in addition to his finan-
cial accomplishments, had invented and caused
to be adopted in many banks besides his own
a system of verifying signatures that had been
very successful. He was by way of being a
handwriting expert, and if he said that this
was the signature of Burton Conybear, then
Burton Conybear’s signature it was!
Herkomer walked to the club dining-room
and ordered dinner. _He ate mechanically,
his mind perplexed. Why should old Cony-
bear have written such a note? The old
financier was not in the habit of playing prac-
tical jokes, Herkomer knew.
He studied the writing of the message.
Scrawled jerkily, the words were; neverthe-
less they were patiently written—even to one


120 RANSOM!

not a graphologist—by one to whom jerkiness
and scrawling were natural. There was no
evidence of undue haste in the writing. There
were no blots, no spatters where the pen had
scratched, its points spread by haste. If the
signature was genuine, the body of the note
was genuine. If Malcolm had noticed noth-
ing wrong about the signature that sprawled
half the width of the sheet of paper, then there
was nothing wrong about the other words that
ran so irregularly across it.
But why? Herkomer leaned back in his
chair, his hand playing with the sugar-tongs.
His forehead wrinkled. The envelope was
creased, and the note within was creased—
not with the wrinkles that lying in the dust,
or being carried around by Peter Perkins,
might have put in them, but with the wrinkles
that weeks of continual carrying around in a
pocket put in any paper, wrinkles that de—
note comparative age.
Herkomer pulled from his pocket the last
,letter that his father had written him before
he died seven years ago. Although of differ-
ent texture, this paper held the same sort of
wrinkles and creases, even though Herkomer


RANSOM! 121



had always carried it inside a leather billfold.
His eyes softened as he glanced at the lines
penned by the old judge, his father; then he
put the letter away, and he frowned again.
An old note, carried around in old Cony-
bear’s pocket until an emergency—Herkomer
sat up stiffly. In due time he could see Cony-
bear and have an explanation of the note.
Meantime, wasn’t it sufficient that he had the
financier’s confidential secretary’s word for it
that Conybear was all right?
The financier had had plenty of time to re-
turn from New England. Why, New Eng-
land might have meant merely across the Con-
necticut line! Conybear could easily have got
back to-day. And if he were seen in a bank,
in company with Philip Waring,—whom Her-
komer knew by sight and name,—why—Her-
komer was becoming an old woman! He must
shake off this creepy feeling, unbecoming a
grown man and the Commissioner of New
York’s police.
He signed his check and rose from his chair.
As he did so, a boy came to his table.
“You’re wanted on the telephone, Mr. I-Ier-
komer,” he said.


122 RANSOM !



Herkomer walked to the booth just outside
the dining-room door.
“This you, Commissioner? This is Kelcey
talkin’. Say, you know that note you got this
afternoon?” .
“Certainly. What about it?”
“Looks like there might be something in it,
Commissioner.”
“Eh? What do you mean?”
“H. Hathway Symons—you know, presi-
dent of Amalgamated General—has been
down here lookin’ for you. He’s in a terrible
stew. The Burnhams have been workin’ for
him‘ since morning and ain’t found out a
blasted thing, so——”
“VVhat’s happened?” roared Herkomer.
“Clurg, Prendergast, Larned and Mikells,
—the four biggest guys in Amalgamated ex-
cept old Conybear,——-they’re missin’! And
Symons can’t get hold of Conybear—out of
town, they tell him at his Portsmouth place.
And at his office they say the same thing. And
Symons is in a terrible state; he—-”
There were occasions when Sergeant Kelcey
let excitement master him. Herkomer could
hardly blame him, for if there was more than


RANSOM! 123

hysteria bothering Symons, then the biggest
job that Herkomer had ever tackled con-
fronted the Commissioner now. But Kelcey
must not be permitted to wander.
“What’s happened?” demanded the Com-
missioner again. “Words of one syllable,
Sergeant, and take your time.”
He could hear Kelcey, down at Headquar-
ters, gulp. Then, in the colourless voice in
which policemen make reports to their supe-
riors, Kelcey spoke.
“Them four I just mentioned, Commission-
er: They, with Conybear, are the real bosses
of Amalgamated General. The other direc-
tors are dummies. Nothin’ is done unless one
of them is present. Well, to-day was the big
day with Amalgamated—dividend-day and all
that. Well, when none of them four showed
up, Symons supposes it’s just a coincidence:
Clurg thinks Mikells will be there, and Mikells
thinks Larned will be there, and Larned thinks
Prendergast— Well, the dividend couldn’t
be passed without one of them bein’ present; so
Symons telephones Larned. He learns that
Larned left his house at ten after ’phonin’ his
oflice he wouldn’t be there till noon. Had to


124 RANSOM!

attend Amalgamated General’s directors’
meetin’, he said.
“Symons don’t think much of that; he just
tried to get hold of Mikells. And he learns
that Mikells had told his wife he couldn’t take
her to a mornin’ musicale uptown because he
was late gettin’ started for the directors’ meet-
in’. And Mikells don’t show up at his office,
either. Same thing with Clurg and Prender-
gast; both of ’em said at home this mornin’,
or at their offices last night, that they was goin’
to take in the meetin’, and neither of ’em can
be located by Symons. Then he ’phones
Conybear’s office, and the old boy ain’t there,
and out at Portsmouth they tell him that Cony-
bear’s out of town for a few days.
“Well, there’s nothin’ for Symons to do but
to tell his bunch of dummies to postpone the
meetin’ a week, which they do. Symons
wouldn’t dare do nothin’ with none of the big
guys present. And Symons ain’t really rat-
tled, then. But along toward afternoon, when
Larned’s chauffeur arrives home with a head—
ache and a tale of bein’ took sick at breakfast,
and says he ain’t driven the car to-day at all;
well, Symons gets nervous, especially as not


RANSOM! 125


a word has come from any of them four What
left home headed for the meetin’.
“And Symons rushes over to the Burnhams.
Here’s what they’ve got, so far: Somebody
impersonated Larned’s chaufl’eur. Must have
been clever, too, because evidently Larned
didn’t suspect him, and when he turned the
car in at the garage later,——sure, he did that,
—no one noticed him particularly. No trace
of him.
“Prendergast took a taxi. One of his ser-
vants says he ’phoned the Occidental Taxi
Company. If he did, the Occidental ain’t got
no record of the call. No trace of the taxi
that took Prendergast away.
“Mikells hadn’t got a block in his car when
the front wheel rolled ofi’. A limousine fol-
lowin’ stopped; the owner called Mikells by
name and offered to take him downtown.
That’s the last seen of Mikells. Mikells’
chauffeur says it was a big blue limousine car.
The Burnhams have combed the city for a car
like that and have found a hundred, but they
all got alibis straight enough.
“And Clurg always walks to the subway
from his house and takes an express downtown.


126 RANSOM!


He left the house all right this mornin’-—and
that’s the last seen of him!
“Well, Symons is frightened to death that
the newspapers will get hold of it all, but he’s
twice as frightened at the idea that somethin’
phoney has happened to the four of ’em. And
that last fear drove him to us. He feels that
a private agency, no matter how good it is,
ain’t the thing to handle this. Well, what’s
the orders, Commissioner?”
Herkomer could dream and speculate and
wrinkle his brows; he could also think and act
quickly.
“Detail half a dozen men to look up Philip
Waring. Know him? Clubman, amateur
explorer, big-game hunter—”
“I got you,” said Kelcey. “Shall they
bring him in?”
“If they find him. Has an apartment some-
where——”
“I know,” said Kelcey. “He was in the
Era last Sunday—that yarn about society
bachelors of New York. Picture, too. And
address.”
“Send some one over to the Era office for
a photo’ of him, then. Make some excuse


RANSOM! 127


so they won’t suspect anything. Have copies
made up at once.”
“Anything else?”
“ ’Phone Conybear’s Portsmouth place.
Get his private secretary—Henderson’s his
name; tell him that Conybear was seen in the
Seventy-third National Bank to-day, cashing
a check—with Philip Waring. Ask Hender-
son if he knows anything of Conybear’s rela-
tions with Waring. Attend to that now.”
“Yes, sir. And you?”
“I’m coming right downtown.”


CHAPTER EIGHT
“COME in,” said the girl softly. She cast a
frightened glance over her shoulder toward the
telephone, giving its insistent call.
Waring hesitated on the threshold. Some-
how that backward glance of hers galvanised
all his dormant suspicion.
Henderson had been too cool. In the ex-
citement of the moment of his speaking with
Conybear’s secretary, he had been glad that
Henderson was self-possessed; in the enormity
of the crime, it had not seemed too absurd that
preparations against the crime’s commission
should have been of apparent magnitude; in
his hurry to get to Camp Avenue, he had been
too occupied with his errand to reason calmly
about the plausibility of Henderson’s words.
But one thing stuck out: Henderson had
stated that there was no telephone at 88 Camp
Avenue, that there had not been time to in-
stall one. That was false. It might be the
falsehood of ignorance, but—Waring did not
us


RANSOM! 129


think so. It had sounded all right when Hen-
derson had said it, but now— If Conybear
had feared kidnapping, and had taken precau-
tions because of his fear, one of those precau-
tions would be the installation of a telephone.
Henderson had said that there had not been
time. But Burton Conybear was the richest
man in America. ‘Vithin five minutes after
Burton Conybear had asked for a telephone,
a corps of men would have started to do the
work. ‘
Henderson, then, had uttered a knowing
falsehood about the telephone. Why? There
was the rub! Although his nerves tingled
with suspicion, Waring did not know where
those suspicions pointed. And now the girl
spoke again.
“Please,” she said.
She was not the merry-eyed convent-girl-
on-a-lark that he had driven to a Paris hotel
one night last winter. Nor was she the fright-
ened-eyed girl whom Carvajal the dancer had
accosted. In her eyes then, as now, had been
fear, but it was a disdainful, prideful fear-—
the fear of something unclean touching her.
The fear that Waring saw in her eyes now


180 RANSOM!


was something difl’erent; it was a fear that
seemed to have eaten into her soul; it was hor-
ror.
And she was the girl of his dreams, the girl
whom, absurd though it seemed, he loved.
Waring no longer hesitated; though every in-
stinct warned him to back down the steps, he
crossed the threshold. As he did so a voice
called from the floor above—a masculine voice:
“Have you answered the door, Claire?”
The girl pointed toward an open door. She
put her finger on Waring’s lips. The inti-
mate touch thrilled him, although he noted,
with anger against some one undefined, that
the finger was hot, feverish. She motioned
him toward the door, gently urged him with
her hand on his shoulder now. Waring tip-
toed into a large room. But he stood by the
door.
“The door ?" He marvelled at the coolness
of the girl’s voice. “It’s the telephone that’s
ringing.”
“I heard the door-bell too.”
Waring watched the girl. He saw her open
the door, not quietly, as she had done when he
rang, but noisily.


RANSOM! 131



“There is no one here; it must have been the
’phone,” she called.
“Well, answer it, then,” snapped the voice
upstairs.
It was not a request; it was a surly com-
mand. Waring trusted that he would meet
the speaker soon.
“I was just going to,” she replied.
She walked swiftly down the hall and lifted
the receiver to her ears.
“Yes,” she said. “Yes. . . . All right.”
She hung up the receiver and came down
the hall. Her face was white.
“Who was it?” called the voice from up-
stairs.
“It was a mistake; some one got the wrong
number.”
Waring marvelled again at her coolness, at
the firmness of her voice, the nonchalance, al-
most, with which she uttered that which he di-
vined to be a falsehood.
“Oh,” granted the voice upstairs. “Stay
down there where you can answer it if it rings
again.”
Again Waring resented the quality of com-
mand in the voice, again hoped that he would


132 RAN SOM !



meet the speaker soon. But the girl answered
calmly that she would. Then, humming, she
entered the room where Waring stood. She
crossed to the middle of the room, Waring fol-
lowing her. Her humming ceased.
“G0,” she said, “quickly! Mr. Henderson
just telephoned. It’s the second time. His
car’s broken down, and he is going to take the
train at Rollansville. He said that you knew
—that he’d tricked you into coming here—
that’s why I was waiting at the door—so ready.
I didn’t tell them—upstairs. I said—it was
the grocer—please g0.”
Waring looked at her. Her bosom heaving,
her face no longer white, but crimson with ex-
citement, she was even more alluring than the
girl he remembered.
“But you asked me in,” he protested.
“I wanted to speak to you—to warn you—-
‘I' thought that he”—and she pointed upstairs
——“was asleep. But he’s awake—please go.”
“And leave you here? Tell me—where do
you come in, anyway? Do you know what’s
going on? Is Henderson ”
“I know it all! Henderson is with them.
He—they’ll kill you. Please go.”


RANSOM! 138



“Henderson won’t be here for a while yet, if
he’s just taking a train. I want you to ex-
plain—”
“But the others! Bergson—they’ll be here.
I haven’t dared to go out—not even to tell the
police. And I’ve been afraid—they might kill
Mr. Conybear—and the others—”
She put her hands to her face.
“Please,” said Waring. “Please! If you’ll
tell me—what you know-——”
“Nothing,” she answered. “Except that
Mr. Conybear and some other rich men have
been kidnapped by a name named Bergson,
and that Henderson, Mr. Conybear’s secre—
tary, is in the plot.”
“But what are you doing here? Tell me
that!”
“My uncle—I have been living with him in
Paris. But I was tired of France. I wanted
to come back to America. I insisted, and he
let me. But—there were certain things—he
explained certain facts to me—that I had not
known—things that bound him to Bergson.
And I told him that I’d help him—break those
bonds. . . . I thought I could, but—oh, I
can’t explain now. Please go.”


184- RANSOM!



“To the police?”
“Yes. No—oh, I don’t know. If the
police could come upon them without alarming
them—oh, I don’t know.”
Her body shook as she fought against a sob.
Waring patted her shoulder.
“It’s all right. I felt as you do—about the
police. But—something must be done. Hen-
derson fooled me—”
“Oh, if Uncle had sent the man he was going
to send. He told me—when I left him—that
he’d send some one. But maybe he was afraid.
Bergson is dangerous ”
Waring suddenly remembered the name of
her uncle. Peter Randall! And “P. R.” un-
doubtedly stood for that name! But it was
hardly the time to tell her that her uncle sup-
plied Bergson with murderers. If she thought
that Peter Randall aimed at Bergson, instead
of standing with the chief of the Ilmer Coun-
cil of the mysterious society, let her think so—
for the present, at any rate.
“Look here,” he said. “We can’t stay here
——either of us. You come with me. We’ll
go down to Police Headquarters. I’ll tell


RANSOM ! 185


them all I know, and you tell them what you
know. We can slip out now, quietly.”
“And they’ll miss me, and suspect, and per-
haps kill those men at once. You go. I’ll
stay, and———”
Her voice died away. At the front door
were men entering the house. She looked
wildly about her. But the only door to the
room was the one through which they had en-
tered.
“The window,” she gasped.
But Waring shook his head. If he were to
die, he preferred to die facing his enemies; he
did not care to be shot in the back. But the
first words of Bergson, bursting into the room,
told him that death was not too near to him to
be avoided, if his wits were quick. For Berg-
son’s suspicions were not yet awakened.
“You, Carvajal ?” he cried. “What are you
doing here?”
Waring saw the light of hope—mystified,
yet still hope——flash in the girl’s eyes. And
Waring, fighting for his life, he knew, found
that his wits were sharpened by his danger.
“I saw a man spying when I left Hancock
Square,” he said. “He followed me, and I—


136 RANSOM!


I eluded him, and then I followed him. I saw
him go to a telephone—in a saloon. He left
and I still followed him. He came to this
house, mounted the steps, and I thought that
he would enter. But he seemed to change his
mind. He descended and walked to your sub-
way. I am not familiar with its passages. I
lost him there. So—I returned here and de-
cided that I would make some investigations.
I rang the bell; the young lady admitted me,
and she asked if I came from you. And so I
knew that I had done well in coming here.
For though I have only been here a moment,
she has told me that she'was one of us ”
“Your tongue is loose, Mademoiselle,”
snapped Bergson.
“Not so,” retorted Waring. “It is I—-I
who speak too freely. But—we are both of
the same society. There is no harm done.”
“No,” cried Bergson, “—none at all, except
that the police suspect, except that your spy,
one Philip Waring, has probably gone to the
police by this time, if Henderson—the fool,
the fool!”
“What did he do?” asked the girl.
“Do? The police telephoned him this after-


138 RANSOM !



and Durney, without liquor at all, are not at-
tractive to a woman, and with a drink—”
His eyes suddenly narrowed. “But how did
you expect, if you had not told them, to handle
this Waring——did Henderson fail to tell you
that he had sent this Waring, who had tele-
phoned him ?”
“Henderson said that Waring was coming
here, and told me to detain him. But those
beasts upstairs—I was going to wait until
Waring got here and then tell them.”
“If I could only get people who do no think-
ing for themselves,” raged Bergson. “If you
had told them, when he came to the steps they
would have captured him. And Henderson—
if Henderson had not delayed telling me that
in some manner the police had got wind of
Conybear’s capture by us— I am cursed
with the brains, the infinitesimal brains of those
who surround me, their desire to think for
themselves, to save me alarm.”
He turned to Ranney, who had entered the
room with him.
“If that Waring has gone to the police-—
let those swine upstairs—”


RANSOM! 139


But at this moment the “swine” entered,
attracted by the voices downstairs.
“What’s wrong?” demanded the foremost,
whose voice was that of the man Waring had
heard speaking to the girl.
“The police know of this place,” snapped
Bergson, "—doubtless 0f the other, too. But
if they go there, they will find the birds have
flown, and if they come here—you shall pay
for your drinking, my friends.”
“We’ve not drunk a drop,” protested the
second man.
“She says you have; why he to me?” de-
manded Bergson.
“Why—she—she——”
“It doesn’t matter now. We will settle
later the price you pay.” He turned to War-
ing. “This Waring, who telephoned Hender-
son—he said that his name was Philip War-
ing. You, Carvajal, find out where he lives.
He is a fool! None but a fool would have
come to this house on so flimsy an excuse.
But—he thought better of it. He may be the
sort of fool to think again. He—he can’t
know anything. And he may think again be-
fore he tells the police. It is a chance. And


14-0 RANSOM !



we must take that chance. You, Carvajal,
find him. Kill him!”
Waring’s nerves were taut, and yet he al-
most laughed at Bergson’s command. To find
himself, and kill himself—but his sense of the
ludicrous was less insistent than his sense of
peril.
“And after that?”
“You are a man, Carvajal,” cried Bergson.
“N o doubts, no wondering, no thinking for
yourself! After that, you say? You came
here, on the Montam'a, as Jacques Pelletier,
eh? Then resume that name. Go to—oh,
the Plutonia, and remain there.”
“And if I can’t get this Waring?”
“Try! I shall delegate others, too, as soon
as— \Ve have talked enough. There are
two cars outside. Come—”
“But Henderson?” said one of the men.
“He thinks, and not always foolishly. He
will telephone from near by before he comes
here. If there is no answer, he will go to one
of the offices—quick.”
There was not a police officer in sight as he
reached the sidewalk. There was not a man
within a block. Helplessly—it would do no


RAN SOM ! 14-1


good to attack half a dozen armed men by him-
self~—\Varing watched the two cars drive off.
There was not even a taxi in sight whereby he
could trail them. He could think of no ex-
cuse to detain the girl. He could think of
nothing, save the fact that, with the Society at
his mercy, he had been duped by Henderson
and was lucky to have escaped with his life,
much less capture the kidnappers of Conybear
and rescue that millionaire.
This house was deserted of the Society; the
Hancock Square house was deserted. Berg-
son, whether from caution or because it simply
wasn’t necessary to waste valuable time giving
instructions to his latest recruit, had not told
\Varing where the “offices,” to one of which he
had said that Henderson would go, were lo-
cated.
And there was no use in his trying to locate
Henderson. That treacherous gentleman
would doubtless do just what Bergson proph-
esied that he would do. From some place he
would telephone, get no answer, take alarm—-
Waring felt like a fish out of water. He did
not know what to do.
Of course, he could still go to the police.


142 RANSOM!


But if he did, what could he tell them, of any
value? That he had located Bergson, had
helped to force Burton Conybear to draw
money from the bank—there was the weakness
of his position. The police would not com-
plaisantly believe everything that Waring told
them. They would arrest Waring on sus-
picion, anyway. If he could lead the police
to Conybear’s prison, matters would be dif-
ferent. But if he could merely tell them that he
had pretended to be one of Bergson’s gang,
and could not tell them where the gang was
now— The police were an unimaginative lot;
they would not believe that any one, an inno-
cent any one, would have found it necessary
to assist in a crime in order to get evidence.
The police would ask why Waring had not de-
nounced the plotters in the bank. They would
laugh at Waring’s fear that both Conybear
and himself would be instantly killed. No, if
Waring went to the police now, he would, at
the very least, be put under surveillance. And
Bergson’s men would soon discover that “Car-
vajal” was shadowed, would wonder why,
would learn that the police were shadowing,
not “Carvajal,” but Waring. Trust Berg-


RANSOM ! 143

son’s crew to learn so simple a thing as that.
At this the plot to raid the Conybear vaults
would be abandoned, and some other scheme
would be cooked up and would be put through
without interference from a baffled police-de-
partment. Waring could help better if he de—
layed informing the police until he was in
with Bergson once more—as he would be, if
he registered at the Plutonia as Bergson had
commanded.
Maybe it was his duty to inform the police,
but—he was not a member of the police-force.
If he chose to go ahead and do some detective
work of his own, he was well within his rights
in so doing—the more so, inasmuch as he would
be, perhaps, saving Conybear from death. For
the girl whom the voice of Cantrell had called
“Claire” had had the same thought, at first,
as Waring: that summoning the police meant
Conybear’s death. There was danger that
way.
Waring thought of the girl. Even now,
perhaps, Bergson was discovering that she
lied, that Cantrell and Durney had not taken
a drink, that she was not in danger at their
hands. Still, Bergson had seemed to know


14-4 RANSOM !


that the men upstairs were drinking men;
Bergson could not pick and choose, in a ven-
ture like this, as the president of a corporation
would select his employees. Bergson must
make the best of what material he could gather.
No, Bergson would not believe their protes-
tations of complete abstinence. Claire would
not be blamed for failing to give them Hender-
son’s message at once. And she was quick-
witted enough to explain away her failure to
tell Cantrell and Durney of “Carvajal’s” ar-
rival. She was clever, and probably safe
enough, and yet— Waring’s thoughts were
not pleasant as he turned in the direction of
his Twenty-eighth Street apartment. To
have seen her again, and to have lost her so
soon!
Waring’s intention to play a lone hand
hardened. The girl, like himself, was inno-
cent of wrongdoing. But she would be sub-
jected to arrest, to the notoriety and shame of
a trial, maybe, if the police captured her along
with the rest of the gang—unless Waring so
arranged matters that her innocence was dem-
onstrated in advance by her helping in the
capture of the gang. Waring could not ar-


RANSOM ! 14-5


range that, if he were suspected by Bergson.
And suspected by Bergson he would undoubt-
edly be if he went to the police-even if the
police did not arrest him, but merely had him
trailed. He was back at the start of his rea-
soning.
Yes, he must play a lone hand, for her sake
as well as his own. And despite her peril and
his own, he could hardly forbear smiling as he
turned down Fifth Avenue. It was absurd,
this commission to stalk and slay himself.


CHAPTER NINE
“WILL, what have you done?”
Kelcey, standing stiflly at attention, waited
until the Commissioner had hung his coat and
hat upon a hook. Then he answered.
“Sent over to the Era office for a photo’ of
Waring. Ought to be here any minute. Or-
dered a hundred copies made as soon as pos-
sible and sent to each precinct. Telephoned
Portsmouth. Henderson not there.”
“Not there?” Herkomer was at his desk
now, and he stared at the sergeant. “Where
is he?”
“Servant answered that he’d gone to New
York awhile ago on business.”
Herkomer frowned. “What else did you
do?”
“Sent six men off in seach of Waring.
Looked hina up in the Blue Book. Belongs
to the Exploration, the Bachelors’, the Mum-
mers’ and the National clubs. Man to each
of them and a couple to his apartment.”
14s


RANSOM ! 147


“Who’s his lawyer?”-
“Sent :3. man to the Era as you ordered.
Told him to look up Waring in the ‘morgue’
there. Probably have all that information
when he returns, sir.”
“Send some one out to interview him, who-
ever he is. Get all you can about YVaring’s
finances; see if he owns any property that he
could have mortgaged to Conybear. See
if—_”
A knock on the door interrupted him. Kel-
cey admitted a uniformed man who laid on
the Commissioner’s desk a sheet of paper. It
was a brief dossier of Waring. Herkomer
nodded comprehensively at Kelcey.
“Very quick work, Sergeant.”
He glanced at the terse sketch of the career
of Philip Waring. Complete, it told little of
Waring that Herkomer was not already
vaguely aware of, save that it stated the name
of the attorney who had, while WVai-ing was
crossing the Atlantic last winter, represented
him at the early inquiries into the Carey Haig
smash.
“This may help a little,” said the Commis-
sinner. “Samuel Balch is Waring’s attorney.


RANSOM ! H19



ble to this for a while. Then I’d pray Him
that I’d have a little accident, like a busted leg,
sir, or smallpox, or typhoid fever, or appendi-
citis, or somethin’ nice and mild compared to
what’s goin’ to happen once the public learns
about this—somethin’ that would keep me con-
fined to the house, and ”
“Help you dodge responsibility? I don’t
believe you, Sergeant,” chuckled Herkomer.
“Well, I’d pray, anyway,” grinned Kelcey.
Herkomer put humour away from him.
“The Greenhams? What are they doing?”
“What do they ever do except run up an
expense-bill?” demanded Kelcey scornfully.
“Watchin’ the ferries and the railroad stations
or somethin’ nice and original like that, I sup-
pose.”
“You don’t think much of that, then? But
you sent, or have ordered to be sent, Waring’s
picture to all the ‘houses’ ?”
“Well, sir, we got to do somethin’, ain’t we?”
Herkomer laughed mirthlessly. He changed
the subject.
“Why isn’t Symons here?”
“I chased him,” said Kelcey. “He was like
a wild man, sir, and the night boys from the


150 RANSOM!



papers was about due to drop in, and I didn’t
want them seein’ him here. They’d smell a
story, and they’d get it, before they was
through. And we don’t want that to hap-
pen.”
Herkomer shook his head.
“Who was going to lead the Strong-arm
raid?”
“Loot’nant Dan McGaw, sir.”
“Better have him do it, after all. It’ll keep
the newspaper men busy. Tell him to make
it spectacular.”
“Right, sir. All the frills? Hydraulic
jack for the door, and all that?”
“Yes. And red fire and a brass band——
anything to get the town talking. It’ll keep.
help keep, maybe, this other thing dark. And
I hardly think, Kelcey, that strong-arm men
are what we need for this other matter—just
yet. We need—brains, Kelcey.”
“Well, you got ’em, Commissioner,” said
Kelcey. His tone was not one of flattery; it
was one of challenge. Herkomer eyed his sub-
ordinate.
“You want me to use ’em, eh?”
He stared unseeingly at the dossier of Philip


RANSOM ! 151



Waring. Back of that, back of the apparent
abductions of Clurg, Mikells, Prendergast and
Larned, lay Peter Perkins, the half-wit from
Portsmouth. And behind Peter Perkins lay
the note now in Herkomer’s breast pocket. In
that note, cast by Burton Conybear into the
dust of the Long Island road, lay the solution
of the mystery, Herkomer felt.
And yet—how could that be? For the note
was old, had been written months ago, at least,
and—Herkomer’s head whirled. He must
not speculate; he must act. He was all busi-
ness as he turned to Kelcey.
“Have a couple of men go out to Conybear’s
Portsmouth place. Have ’em stay there till
Henderson gets back. Meanwhile, let ’em
pump every one out there. Learn as much as
they can. And if they get anything at all,
telephone it in.”
“Yes, sir.” Kelcey saluted and left the of-
fice.
Herkomer got up and paced the floor. If
the four millionaires mentioned by H. Hath-
way Symons had been kidnapped, and heaven
knew it looked as though they had been!—
and if Burton Conybear was also a prisoner


152 RANSOM!



——and if Philip Waring, last of a prominent
family, well known socially—if Philip Waring
were mixed up in the abductions, then Herko-
mer would need every ounce of the brains with
which Kelcey credited him.
This was not an extraordinary conclusion,
considering the circumstances. For, as all
policemen know, there are two kinds of artists
in criminality. First there is the professional
criminal who has been at odds with the law
since childhood, or who, having lapsed once
from the straight road, finds the climb back
difficult or undesirable. Second, there is the
criminal who has led, so far as the world knows,
so far as, often, investigation shows, a blame-
less life, and yet who is suddenly discovered
to have planned a crime of magnitude and
executed it with amazing cunning. It is these
latter who are the more difficult of apprehen-
sion.
For in almost all cases they come from the
brainier, better-educated class. They are men
——or women, sometimes—0f imagination, and
imagination means forethought, painstaking
care, the drawing-0n of the loose ends. At
least, it means that in criminality.


RANSOM! 153



And so, having imagination, they are much
more dangerous than those of the first class
who have drifted into crime, sunk to it through
psychological gravity. For the work of this
second variety is not haphazard, chance-born;
it is calculated, weighed, measured.
Herkomer knew that the case confronting
him was the work of the second class of crim-
inal artistry. The appearance of Philip War-
ing in the affair was proof enough of that—
provided, of course, that there was connection
between the note found by Peter Perkins and
the abductions of Clurg, Prendergast, Larned
and Mikells.
And while that connection was unproved,
while it was still not at all certain that Bur-
ton Conybear was, despite the note he had writ-
ten, a prisoner at all, if Herkomer should as-
sume that there was connection, it would give
him a working basis to go upon. And it was
rather improbable that two crimes, so similar
in nature, should occur almost at the same
time without relation to each other.
It was a crime of the second class. Philip
YVaring’s blood, his position, his life, lifted
him above the level of the first class of crim-


154 RANSOM!


inals. A Waring would not jeopardise his
whole career without weighing the matter very
carefully. He would use imagination; he
would forestall the various moves of the police;
he would—
Herkomer sat down at his desk. He was a
good, capable executive, with a thorough
knowledge of police methods. He had studied
the Scotland Yard system and the ways of the
Continental police. Educated for the bar,
hoping to follow in the footsteps of his father,
a well-known jurist, Herkomer, taking a
course in criminal jurisprudence at a German
university, had become interested in municipal
government, especially that portion of it re-
lating to enforcing and upholding the law.
Called back to America by an offer of an
assistant professorship in his ahna mater, his
lectures on European police departments had
attracted the attention of a municipal welfare
league in a large Western city. He had de-
livered two addresses to that league. Later,
the newly elected mayor of New York, anxious
to put the police department on a high plane,
invited Herkomer to a consultation, with the


RANSOM! 155



result that Herkomer had become Police Com-
missioner.
Aside from one or two matters that—like
the crank who had been refused admittance to
the Commissioner and later had given valu-
able information to a newspaper—were of no
real moment, Herkomer had given complete
satisfaction to the Mayor, to the press and to
the public. Many changes in method and per-
sonnel of the force had proved conclusively
that Herkomer was more than a mere pedantic
theorist, that he was a practical business man
with sound sense.
But—and it was the “but” that confronted
the Commissioner now—Herkomer knew his
own limitations. He was not a detective.
He could direct the operation of the detec-
tive bureau, could instruct his subordinates to
round up “wanted” criminals, could even ad-
vise them how to go about that rounding—up
process—under certain conditions. And those
conditions always had to do with a crime com-
mitted by a criminal of the first class. But
when a crime such as this occurred,—-—there had
really been nothing quite like it in his experi-
ence,-—-he was at a loss how to proceed.


156 RANSOM!



He thought of Kelcey’s description of the
Greenhams’ activities and shrugged his
shoulders. It was but another proof of his
oft-iterated opinion: that, as public opinion
conceived them, there were no detectives in the
world, never had been any detectives in the
world. There were policemen, and that was
all. And he himself was only a policeman!
And policemen’s limitations were so obvious!
Policemen could, if lucky, apprehend a profes-
sional criminal, after the fact. In rare cases,
aided by stool-pigeons, they could catch a pro-
fessional criminal in the act, or when a crime
of violence was committed too openly. But
rarely indeed did policemen catch a profes—
sional, habitual criminal in the midst of his
plans, before he had committed the crime he
intended.
And as for the imaginative beginner, who
had planned every detail, who had brains and
education—there was not a chance in the world,
hardly, of apprehending such a one before the
fact—not, at least, for a policeman. Super-
human detectives might do such things, but
even they would need something to go upon,
to work from.


158 RANSOM!



dation, there was nothing to build from. He
must have patience.
He picked up a newspaper; a little incon-
spicuous paragraph leaped from the page at
him. Tucked away in a corner, there was no
reason why he should have read it. It was an
item of a hundred words telling about an acci-
dent, fatal, to an unidentified man, apparently
a Frenchman, who had been run down by an
automobile at Twenty-eighth Street. Alarmed
by the approach of a tenant of the apartment-
house that the man was apparently intending
to rob, the victim had fled, been knocked down
by a car and instantly killed. And the tenant
who had frightened the man to his death was
Philip Waring.
Herkomer was never bothered by reports of
minor accidents that were plainly no more than
accidents. Undoubtedly there was a report of
this accident filed away already in the police
records. Wondering that the city editors had
overlooked the name of Waring and failed to
“play up” the story, and deciding—what was
true—that the accident was deemed so unim-
portant in the City of Manslaughter, as New
York had been called, that even the name of


RANSOM! 159



Philip Waring could not give it importance,
Herkomer reached for a press-button to sum-
mon a clerk. He didn’t suppose that the ac-
cident possessed any more importance than it
seemed to possess, but he was obsessed with
Waring by now, and anything that would shed
any light at all upon the character of Waring
was of interest. The telephone at his elbow
buzzed, and while he answered the telephone
he postponed sending for the record of the ac-
cident.
The Headquarters central spoke to him.
“Officer Dooling on the wire, Commission-
“All right,” said Herkomer.
A moment later Plain Clothes Man Dool-
ing spoke.
“I’m up near the Sinsabaugh place, Com-
missioner. ’Phonin’ from a drug-store round
the corner on Madison Avenue. William
Sinsabaugh, the railroad man and financier,
sir. On the Waring matter, sir.”
Kelcey had done more than tell Herkomer
that he had assigned men to the pursuit of
Waring. He had written their names and
their posts on a slip of paper on the Commis-
er


160 RANSOM !



sioner’s desk. Herkomer glanced at this list,
now.
“You were detailed to the Exploration
Club, Dooling.”
“Yes, sir. And the doorman there is Tom
Fields. Before your time, Commissioner.
He was ‘broke’ for drunkenness. But he ain’t
a bad sort, and we remembered‘each other, and
he gave me the tip—off on Waring. Waring
had been in there half an hour before I got
there. Been in with Mr. Sinsabaugh. They
only stayed a minute or two—had a drink, I
guess; then they left in a taxi outside the club.
The chauffeur was there, and I asked him
where they’d gone. Straight to the Sinsa—
baugh house, he told me. I chased right up
here, and Officer Carmichael was on the cor-
ner. He knows Sinsabaugh by sight, and he
said he’d been on fixed post at the corner
for half an hour, and he hadn’t seen Sinsa-
baugh nor anyone else come out. He’s watch-
in’ the house now while I ’phone. I told him
if Waring came out—Tom Field described him
pretty well, and Carmichael says the man that
got out of the taxi with Sinsabaugh is that man


RANSOM 161



—which, of course, the chauffeur havin’ no
reason to lie————”
Loquacity under excitement was a thing
that Herkomer had to contend with frequent-
ly. As he had brought Kelcey up awhile ago,
so now he brought Dooling back to earth.
“Well, what are you driving at, Dooling?”
he demanded.
Dooling coughed deprecatingly. “Sergeant
Kelcey said to make a pinch, sir, and if \Var-
ing should come out of the Sinsabaugh house
I’ll do it—or Carmichael, if he should come
this minute. But I didn’t know but perhaps
you was in a hurry, Commissioner, and break-
in’ in to the house without a warrant and takin’
him away ”
He paused, to let the Commissioner digest
the inalienable rights of Anglo-Saxons.
“That’s all right,” said Herkomer. “You
don’t need a warrant for murder. I am in a
hurry. G0 to the Sinsabaugh house with Of-
ficer Carmichael. Ask for Waring. If he
won’t come out to see you, effect an entrance
any way you see fit. The charge is murder.
If he asks you questions, don’t answer them.
Bring him in!”


162 RANSOM !




“Right,” said Dooling. The receiver clicked,
and Herkomer leaned back comfortably in his
chair. He forgot all about his worry of a lit-
tle while back; a policeman was all that was
needed—so far. This superhuman detection
business was all rot, anyway. And the acci-
dent to the unknown man in front of Waring’s
house was suspicious enough to justify the
charge of murder and protect Herkomer from
action for false arrest.
The telephone rang again. Eagerly Herko-
mer answered it, to hear a very discomfited Of-
ficer Dooling state that Waring had slipped
through his fingers.
“I didn’t believe Sinsabaugh, s1r. The serv-
ant who answered the door told me that Mr.
\Varing was dining with the Sinsabaughs, but
Sinsabaugh came out and said there was a mis-
take. Mr. Waring had gone half an hour
ago, and I searched the house, and—he ain’t
there, sir. Only guest was a young lady. The
butler said Waring hadn’t been there, and
there wasn’t any place set for him, and then
the servant that answered the door said he
must of been mistaken, and—what’ll I do, sir?”
Herkomer sighed. Then he felt his spine


RANSOM! 168



stiffen. William Sinsabaugh was a rising man
in the city’s affairs, but the law was bigger
than any man. Dooling was a painstaking of-
ficer; Carmichael was no fool; there was no
question but that Waring had been in the Sin-
sabaugh heme. There was no reason for Sin-
sabaugh to lie about the time of Waring’s de-
parture, unless—h’m! William Sinsabaugh
was a most daring financier, who had rehabili-
tated himself after losing one fortune, with
amazing rapidity. Could it be possible that—
why not? No more impossible than that Philip
Waring was mixed up in the beWildering plot!
“You watch the house, Dooling. If Sinsa-
baugh goes out right away, follow him, and
when you get a chance, ’phone here. I’ll rush
a relief, so that Sinsabaugh won’t know that
he’s being followed, right up to you.”
He hung up the telephone and pressed the
button. To the clerk who entered, he said that
he wanted Sergeant Kelcey to come to him.


CHAPTER TEN
A HAND, touching him on the shoulder, made
Waring experience the sensation that must al-
ways be lurking close at hand for the fugitive
criminal—the sensation of being “wanted.”
He turned like a shot, his right hand clenched,
to meet the grinning face of Billy Sinsabaugh.
Waring’s hand relaxed, and he forced an an-
swering smile.
“Jove, Phil, you act as though you expected
some one to knife you in the back! You
started as though you were sadly in need of a
drink. And right here is the place!”
Gripping \Varing’s hand within his own
mighty fist, Sinsabaugh impelled his friend to-
ward the portals of the Exploration Club, in
front of which he had stopped Waring.
A drink would do no harm, thought War-
ing.
“With you, Billyl”‘he exclaimed.
Together they entered the club.
“Glad I caught you,” said Sinsabaugh.
164


RAN SO M ! 165


“And before I forget it, my thanks for pilot-
ing Mrs. Bill Wife home for me.”
“Some day, if you continue neglecting her
in the shameful fashion that has become your
practice, Mr. William Sinsabaugh, I shall pilot
her away from the Sinsabaugh mansion,” said
Waring.
“Well,”—and Sinsabaugh eyed his drink
knowingly,—“if you ever elope with my wife,
Phil Waring, I’ll strike you off my list of ac-
quaintances.”
“Devilish unclubby of you, Billy! Do you
see me?” ‘
“Here’s looking at you!”
They set their glasses down. Sinsabaugh
looked the least bit embarrassed.
“Phil!”
“Fire away!” 4
“About that position I offered you awhile
back. Mrs. Bill Wife told me this morning
something of what you’d been telling her yes-
terday—very crude, I thought it, talking about
another man fifteen minutes after I’d been
summoned for speeding from the railroad-sta~
tion to the house; but let it pass!” He frowned
heavily at Waring.


166 RANSOM !



“1\Irs. Willy must be more careful or you’ll
be shooting me,” laughed Waring.
“Uh-huh! l/Vell, Phil, how about it?”
“Many thanks, old top, and will you let a
beggar starve in his own good} way?”
“Told her so! You’re a stubborn jackass,
Phil Waring. But you can’t get out of it as
easily as all that. Mrs. William Sinsabaugh
has been giving much thought to you, and——
Well, I’ve telephoned your apartment three
times, and Mike said you were out somewhere,
and I didn’t dare go home without you, so—
come on.”
“Eh? Sorry; it can’t be done,” said War-
ing.
. “How chipper we are! Do you realise that
Mrs. Bill WVife told me to come home with
you, or not at all ?”
“Sorry.” Waring smiled, but he began to
itch with impatience. Billy Sinsabaugh was
one of the very best, but—and “raring’s eyes
grew merry—~Waring had a most important
engagement: to seek himself and do murder.
The merriment left his eyes. Somewhere in
this city Claire was undergoing cross-examina-
tion at the hands of Bergson.


RANSOM ! 167


“Got to toddle along, Billy,” he said. Not
for a moment did he think of confiding in his
friend. Sinsabaugh would listen, exclaim
loudly, and—take matters into his own hands.
That meant the police.
“Nothing doing! Listen, Phil! Madge in-
sists that you come up to dinner. Didn’t you
promise her yesterday that you would?”
Waring had forgotten all about his promise.
“Yes, but something has turned up, Billy,
and—”
“And you think we’ll let you off, eh? I like
that.”
“But I intended to telephone, Billy.”
“You’d forgotten all about it,” reproached
Sinsabaugh. “And after Madge has dug up
Miss Claire Sorel, niece of some eccentric old
buck named Randall, worth a pot of money—
eh, what’s wrong, old man?”
“What’s her uncle’s name?” demanded War-
ing, harshly.
“Randall—Peter Randall. Expatriate.
Lives in Paris, I believe. What about it?”
Waring controlled his features as best he
could.


168 RANSOM!



“You say that she’s going to be at your
house to-night? Sure?”
“Why not? I ’phoned Madge awhile ago
saying that I hadn’t been able to locate you,
and she said that she’d found Miss Sorel at
the Plutonia and that Miss Sorel was coming
to dinner all right and that I must locate you.
You see, Phil, you’ve been so blamed shy and
ofli'sh since the Carey Haig smash that we don’t
trust you. You’re too frequent with your last-
minute regrets.”
There was some little truth in Sinsabaugh’s
remarks. People urged Waring; they refused
to take “no” for an answer. Waring had been
compelled—or felt that he had been, which
amounted to the same thing—to accept many
invitations, to send regrets later. It was silly
of him, he knew, and yet he had a stubborn
pride that recked not of silliness. He was not
the decently-well-to-do Phil Waring any
more; and he would not become a hanger-on
at society’s affairs—which, if he but knew it,
was one of the reasons, though perhaps a mi-
nor one, why people still wanted him so badly.
It was impossible that the Claire of the
Paris restaurant, of the house on Camp Ave-


RANSOM ! 169



nue, should be the Claire Sorel that was Mrs.
Willy Sinsabaugh’s friend. But it was also
quite impossible that \Varing should be em-
barked upon so amazing and desperate an ad-
venture as he found himself let in for. It was
still more impossible that Burton Conybear
should be the captive of a band of criminals.
Yet these last two things had come to pass.
And it seemed that the first had, also.
“Are you sure that Miss Sorel will be there?
Has Madge heard from her to-day?”
“Ten minutes before I ’phoned—and that
was half an hour ago—Madge had her on
the ’phone at the Plutonia. Why, Phil vW'ar-
ing, you old hider-out in the tall grass, have
you seen Miss Sorel? Do you know her?”
“VVhy—er—maybe I do,” said Waring
stammeringly. “I—I’d better run home and
dress and ”
“Not to-night. This is informal to the last
notch. I made Madge promise that it would
be on my first night home with her in months.
You come as you are, and you come now, d’ye
hear?”
“I hear,” said WVaring.
They left the club and taxied directly to the


179. RANSOM!



utes alone with Claire would solve the mystery,
would free Conybear, would round up Berg-
son, would restore him his pilfered fortune, re-
action was too great. For the tall girl with
the bloom of youth gone from her was not his
Claire!
Mechanically he proceeded to the dining-
room. Seated, he rallied himself. Mrs. \Villy
Sinsabaugh was nothing if not open. She
threw the two at each other’s heads without a
pretence at disguising her match-making in-
tentions. And big, blundering Sinsabaugh.
who was so clever at business but such a pup-
pet in the hands of his butterfly wife, yielded
to Madge’s desire. He began telling her of
his trip to Chicago, and Waring eyed the girl
across the table from him. It was not Mrs.
Willy’s intention to make the conversation
general, and though Waring could have cheer-
fully spanked his hostess, she was, after all, his
hostess.
“You have been in New York some time,
Miss Sorel?” he said.
“Not of recent years,” she answered. “You
see, I have been in a convent so many years,
in France.”


RANSOM ! 173



More coincidence! The Claire that Waring
knew had been brought up in a French con-
vent!
“Indeed!” said Waring.
“Yes. Had it not been for my great good
fortune in meeting him. Sinsabaugh, some
months ago, in Paris, I should not have an ac-
quaintance in this country.”
“No relatives?”
“Distant. And not near New York.”
.Mrs. Willy, one ear cocked to overhear what
they might say, entered into the conversation
here.
“Yes, Phil. I met this dear girl at the Rus-
sian Embassy, at a tea, and she told me that
she wanted to visit America—small wonder,
her birthplace!—but that her uncle was defi-
nitely tied to Paris, and I told her to come
over and that I would find friends for her. It
shows how highly I regard you, Philip War-
ing, that you are the first I find for her.”
The colour receded from Miss Sorel’s face.
Waring had come to the conclusion that her
rather high colouring was not natural. Some-
how, he sensed that this girl was not exactly
the sort of girl that Mrs. Willy would ordi-


174 _ RANSOM!



narily take up. Subconsciously he had come
to this conclusion, influenced perhaps by the
idea that she rouged quite boldly.
But he was wrong; she did not rouge. Her
face was now as pale as wax. Indeed, she
seemed startled and, oddly enough, a trifle
younger than he had mentally put her down as
being. It was as though her face, schooled
to certain expressions, took on a hardness that.
when she gave way to a natural emotion, van-
ished. At least, if it did not entirely vanish,
the rigidity of expression that had made her
seem—well, thirty—disappeared. She didn’t
look over twenty-five now, as she leaned across
the table.
“I——-I——I’m sorry, but—when we were in-
troduced—I’m stupid at such things. Your
name is—Philip Waring?”
“Why, yes,” said Waring, surprised.
“That’s funny,” exclaimed Sinsabaugh.
“When I told Waring your name, he acted
as though I’d struck him. And now you seemed
all fussed up because Phil’s name is what it is.”
“Yes. I thought he was named Deering,”
said the girl.
Mrs. Willy looked from one to the other


RANSOM! 177



But having come to this healthy conclusion,
Waring had no opportunity to act upon it.
The butler came to Sinsabaugh’s side and said
something softly.
“Absurd!” exclaimed Sinsabaugh. “There’s
some mistake.”
“They are very insistent, sir,” said the but-
ler.
“What you been doing, Phil?” demanded
Sinsabaugh. “Candace, here, says that two
policemen, one in uniform, are in the front
hall, and want to see you.”
Waring was on his feet in a moment. What
the police wanted with him he could not know
for certain, but it undoubtedly had to do with
the abduction of Burton Conybear; the abduc-
tion was known; Waring had been seen with
the financier. And once in the hands of the
police, Waring could be of no more aid to
Claire, or to Conybear, for that matter, he was
certain. - -
“This—this is an odd affair, Billy,” he said.
“Come with me, will you?”
“Surely!” Sinsabaugh was on his feet.
So too was Miss Sorel, staring wildly at
Waring. But he had no time to ponder on


178 RANSOM!


the meaning of her expression. He whispered
swiftly to Sinsabaugh.
“Send Candace out to tell them that I’m not
here; he is mistaken. Clear away my place at
the table; say I haven’t been here—”
“What’s wrong, Phil ?” demanded Sinsa-
baugh.
“Can’t tell you now. Got to get away. Can
you let me out the side door—quickly ?”
“Wait here,” snapped Sinsabaugh to the
butler. The big man had not regained his lost
fortune several times over by hemming and
hawing. He was a big blunderer socially, but
he was a steel trap when it came to action.
He led Waring to the side door. “Hustle,”
he said. “And—Phil, can’t you give me a
hint?”
“Not now, old man.” Waring peered down
the side-street. There were no policemen in
sight.
“Need anything? Money—anything?”
“Not a thing. I’ll ’phone, or something, and
——Billy, if you hear anything, it’s ”
“Go on, man; if it should happen to be the
truth, it’ll be all right, because you did it.
But I’ve a pull in this town, Phil, and ”


RANSOM ! 179



He didn’t finish the sentence; Waring was
gone. Sinsabaugh tugged at his moustache.
He returned thoughtfully to the dining~room.
Rather blood-and-thundery, this, he told him-
self. What the deuce had Phil been doing?
But it didn’t matter what; Phil \Varing was
his friend. He went to see the policemen in
the front hall. Billy Sinsabaugh was loyal
to the core.


RANSOM! 181


word, left the room. He leaned back in his
chair.
“The papers,” he said harshly.
As though a king had expressed the com-
mand, one of his satellites handed him a bun-
dle of evening newspapers. Only Cantrell,
who, with Durney, seemed a cut below the men
who had come with Bergson from the Hancock
Square house, dared break the silence that fol-
lowed.
“It’s my idea,” he said heavily, “that we
ought not to delay at all. We got Conybear
and that bunch, and with this Waring guy
around loose, the longer we delay the more
dangerous it gets for us.”
“You think so?” queried Bergson softly.
“Why, sure,” said Cantrell. “He’ll go to
the police, most likely, and ”
“You were engaged by me, I believe, be-
cause you were a thoroughly unscrupulous
scoundrel,” said Bergson, “——not to give ad-
vice.”
“Eh ?” Cantrell’s face shrieked amazement.
“Say, look here, Mr. Bergson, no guy can talk
to me this way without ” '


182 RANSOM !


“Well, without what?” Bergson’s mouth
quivered in a smile.
Cantrell’s hands involuntarily rose as though
to protect himself. He cast a glance about
him; he looked pleadineg at his companion of
the Camp Avenue house, Durney. But that
worthy’s face was rigid.
“Say, I didn’t mean to get gay, chief,” said
Cantrell whiningly.
There had been no threat uttered; but death
had spread its wings over Cantrell as surely as
though Bergson had held a revolver to the
man’s head. And Cantrell knew it. Beads of
sweat stood on his forehead.
“No ?” said Bergson. “We will hear no
more from you, my friend Cantrell. We will
hear no advice, no objections. You will obey
orders and think not at all, and talk not at all.
Otherwise, my Cantrell, there will be no James
Cantrell any more. Am I understood?”
He was still smiling when he opened a
newspaper; but the man whom he addressed
shivered involuntarily. Bergson’s smile held
something icy in it, something incredibly
dreadful. Cantrell would not offend in this
fashion again.


184.- RANSOM !


treated the men who followed him, so he
treated this woman at the other end of the tele-
phone; even though he spoke lightly, affection-
ately, his words were commands.
He resumed his chair and took up his news-
paper again. Again the room was deathly
still, save for the rustling of the news-sheets as
Bergson’s sunken eyes roamed their columns.
His nostrils suddenly twitched. He reread an
item.
He stared blankly at Ranney. His nostrils
quivered faintly. He seemed like a hound that
has scented something it cannot identify, but
that instinct tells it is dangerous. He dropped
the paper to the floor and slumped low in his
chair; his lips moved slightly, as though to him—
self he recited certain facts. But if that recital
brought him to any sound conclusion, it could
not be read in his expression.
The door-bell rang; at a nod from Bergson,
Ranney answered. He was gone but a
moment, and when he returned he was pre-
ceded by Henderson, the secretary-valet of
Burton Conybear.
“Well, you got him ?” cried Henderson.


RANSOM! 185


Bergson looked at the newcomer malig-
nantly.
“Got whom?” he rasped.
“Waring!”
“Got him! No—you idiot!”
For a moment it seemed that the word was a
fighting one. Henderson’s impassive coun-
tenance flushed; but the flush passed imme-
diately; immobile of feature, he sank into a
chair and lighted a cigar. All the time he kept
his eyes upon the eyes of Bergson, and it was
the latter who looked away. There was the
faintest touch of scorn in Henderson’s eyes as
Bergson fumbled with the newspaper he had
been reading. And Cantrell shot a glance at
Durney; that worthy, too, had observed the
byplay and understood its pregnance; he
nodded almost imperceptibly at Cantrell. It
was as though he agreed inaudibly to an un-
uttered question. And he had; as surely as
though Durney and Cantrell had discussed the
matter pro and con, so surely had they decided
that if there were two camps in the establish-
ment that retained them, the camp of Hender-
son was the stronger, and to the stronger they
would attach themselves.


186 RANSOM !


Even Ranney, ablest of those devoted fol-
lowers of Bergson now present, stirred un-
easily. Something was afoot; Henderson had
said nothing in reply to Bergson’s angry ob-
jurgation; Henderson took Bergson’s wrath
silently; and yet there was something in Hen-
derson’s manner, his cool lighting of a cigar,
that stirred Ranney’s resentment and aroused
something else: a vague fear.
But Ranney forgot this as Bergson, lift-
ing his eyes from his newspaper again, glared
furiously at Conybear’s erstwhile secretary.
To Cantrell and Durney, less able than Ran-
ney, but more cunning, it was obvious that
Bergson was attempting to convince himself by
his browbeating manner, but to Ranney, Berg-
son’s speech served as dissipation of the
former’s doubts.
“Why didn’t you tell me in the first place
that the police knew of our plans?” demanded
Bergson.
“I thought I’d thrown dust in their eyes,”
answered Henderson.
“You thought ” Sheer disgust, appar-
ently, stopped Bergson. “Had I known that


RANSOM! 187


the men who were to surround me were
sue ”
He stopped again, for the telephone was
ringing. He waved Ranney aside and an~
swered it himself.
“Bostwick? Well? . . . A Jap servant?
Yes. . . . Do? Stay there, you fool, until
Waring comes!”
He rang ofl’ and returned to his seat. “This
VVaring—Philip Waring, you said his name
was—Bostwick telephones me from near his
apartment. He and Velie went there. They
looked him up in the telephone-book. There
were two or three Philip Warings, but they
think they located the right man. I know
they did. He was not at home. His J apa-
nese servant admitted them. They questioned
him. Waring had not been home all night.
The servant grew suspicious; he will not be
suspicious again—for some time to come.
They are there now. If Waring enters ”
“You say you know they have the right
Waring? How do you know?”
“There was a man named Carey Haig,”
said Bergson. “.When he—died, there was
newspaper talk. The name of one Philip


190 RANSOM!


French. He came on the Montam'a. He is
of the right stamp. I sent him to the bank
with Conybear. He did well. And he is not
the sort who hesitates. If he can get near
W'aring—”
Once again the telephone rang, and once
again the nervous Bergson answered it him-
self.
“Dora? What?” His voice rose in a
scream. “Do? Do? Do anything! What
do I care—” He rang ofl’.
“Well?” Henderson’s voice was cold.
Bergson threw himself into his chair.
“There is no one—no 00%Wlth brains—or
daring. Dora is at the Sinsabaughs’—the
William Sinsabaughs’-—di-ning. .VVaring has
been there.”
“Waring!” Henderson gasped.
“And the police came there; they want him
—on a. charge of murder!”
It was Henderson’s turn to lose his calm.
“What do you mean?”
“What I, have said. There is in this even-
ing’s paper an account of the killing of a
foreigner—a Frenchman—by an- automobile
in front of \Varing’s apartment. It must have


RANSOM ! 191


something to do with that. . . . But he was
there—in the same room with Dora—and she
let him go!”
“\Vell, if he’s dodging the police—did he
make a get-away ?”

“Yes, bu ”
“Then we haven’t to worry about him this
moment,” declared Henderson. “We’ve
enough to do worrying about Conybear
and——”
“Which means this Waring,” cried Berg-
son. “For if he knew that Conybear was our
prisoner—and he told you that he came from
Hancock Place. That sounds as though he
had been in the house.”
“How could he? The police are after him,
and he's dodging them, so he won’t———”
“Yet to know at all about me, he must have
been studying, searching, ever since Carey
Hai ”
His voice died away, as his eyes fascinatedly
stared at the newspaper before him. When he
spoke again it was chokily.
“Listen, my friends, to this headline:
‘Dubuque importer would teach New Yorkers
styles. Jacques Pelletier returns from Paris


192 RANSOM!


and stops on way to Iowa to tell New York
how to dress.’ ”
“Well?” prompted Henderson.
“Raoul Carvajal,” said Bergson softly,
‘who brought me a letter from Peter Randall—
Raoul Carvajal told me that he crossed the
Atlantic, on the Blontam'a, under the name of
Jacques Pelletier. And this newspaper says
that Jacques Pelletier arrived from his an-
nual trip abroad on the Dlontam'a!”
Henderson wet his lips. “You mean—”
“Could two men of the same name and ad-
dress have crossed on the same boat? Does
it sound possible? And a Frenchman is killed
in front of .VVa-ring’s apartment. And Carva-
jal arrives at Hancock Place. And from
Hancock Place, Philip Waring goes to the
telephone to inform you, Henderson, that
Conybear is a captive.”
“But this Carvajal helped get money from
the bank; he was one of Conybear’s guards,”
gasped Henderson.
Bergson’s hands went above his head. “Un-
reasonable, yes, but—what would you? In
what other way——”


CHAPTER TWELVE
THE Third Avenue elevated deposited VVar-
ing at Fourteenth Street. He walked slowly
westward to the subway. He had not been
seen leaving the side door of the Sinsabaugh
mansion; that much he knew. So, for a few
moments, there had been time to think, to
plan.
But what was there to plan? If the police
had traced him to the home of Sinsabaugh,—
and he hoped that the railroad man would get
into no trouble through aiding in his escape,—
then the police by this time must have efi'ected
an entrance to his apartment, must be lying in
wait for him there. There must be a great
many detectives upon his trail for two police-
men to have traced him to the Sinsabaugh
home. It was hardly credible that a detective,
in search of “raring, had seen Waring upon
the street and followed him to Sinsabaugh’s.
Had that been so, there would undoubtedly
have been no delay in an arrest. Therefore—
in.
195


196 RANSOM!


well, there were his clubs. The police evi-
dently knew of Conybear’s abduction; he
(Waring) had been seen with Conybear; the
dragnet had been cast; Waring’s rooms and
clubs had been visited. But he had been over
all that several times already, and had each
time come to the same conclusion: that it was
not safe for him to go any place where he was
known. It would not even do to telephone his
apartment.
In common with most other people, War-
ing, while he openly jeered at the intelligence
of the police, had really an absurd respect for
its powers. Those powers had just been mani-
fested; he had been traced to the Sinsabaugh
home. If he telephoned his own apartment, it
was within the bounds of reason that a detec-
tive would greet him as he stepped from the
telephone-booth. And though he did wish he
could warn Mike, there was really nothing
about which to warn his valet. Hitherto his
reason for wishing to speak with Mike had
been to tell Mike not to be alarmed, not to tell
the police that his master was missing. But
as the police already knew that, and had prob-
ably interviewed Mike by this time—


RANSOM! 197


He must go to the Plutonia and register as
Jacques Pelletier, and await some word from
Bergson that would bring him to Claire once
more—his Claire, not the Claire Sorel whom
he had just unceremoniously left, and who
was— He shook his head; mystery piled upon
mystery. Still this latter mystery, this odd-
ity of there being two girls with the same given
name, and with uncles who were apparently
one and the same person, was a mystery that
would be cleared up in two minutes’ conversa-
tion with his Claire. His Claire! He col-
oured faintly as he entered the subway.
At Fifty-ninth Street he turned east. A lit-
tle below that cross-town artery, on Fifth Ave-
nue, stands the Plutonia. It is not a big hotel,
as modern hotels g0, and it is not so luxurious
as some of the later ones. But fashion still
clings to it, and .VVaring entered its doors with
some slight trepidation. Though it was well
past the dinner-hour now, some one who knew
him might see him. Well, the fact that the
police “wanted” him was not common prop
erty yet, although it might be to-morrow. He
shook off the slight air of furtiveness and went


198 RANSOM!




directly to the desk. He registered as
“Jacques Pelletier, Dubuque, Iowa.”
No, he had no baggage with him; there had
been some delay and mistake on the trains.
He would, however, pay in advance, and on
the morrow. . . . Quite so. . . . The clerk
was most courteous. Waring was assigned to
a room on the fourth floor.
As he followed the bellboy from the desk, 9.
man bowed to him. Short, thick-set, sullen-
mouthed and surly-eyed—since Carey Haig
had died, Waring had seen many men like this
in the offices of the detective agency he had
employed. “Plain-clothes-man” was written
all over the man. The house detective, prob-
ably—a police oflicer graduated into private
work.
Waring stared at the man. He could not
remember ever having seen this particular
specimen of the genus sleuth before. But the
man evidently knew him! Waring looked
through the man unrecognisingly. The man,
who had started forward as though to speak,
flushed and stepped aside. Waring, enter-
ing the elevator, glanced over his shoulder;
the man was looking at the register.


RANSOM ! 199



In his room Waring considered this new
complication. To-morrow morning even the
newspapers, doubtless, would know that Philip
\Varing was wanted by the police. He had
thought that registering under a false name
would securely protect him from discovery for
a while. But the morning papers— There
was one sheet, devoted to racing and theatri-
cals, that was issued at midnight. Trust an ex-
plain-clothes-man to follow racing! In a few
hours, then, this man downstairs, if he knew
Waring’s name, would know where the object
of a police search was stopping.
Waring paced up and down the room. If
he left here, he would escape any unpleasant
results of the recognition by the house detec-
tives. But also he would cut himself off from
communication with Bergson.
He stood by the window, peering down the
Avenue. He wondered if any of the limou-
sines that passed held persons as beset by cir-
cumstance as he. Were there other mysteries,
as complex, as fraught with menace, threaten-
ing other dwellers in this city? He shrugged
his shoulders. Impossible! He turned back
from the window just as the door of his room


200 RANSOM l


opened. Through it stepped the stocky man
who had bowed to him downstairs.
He looked at .VVaring with a knowing leer.
He closed the door carefully behind him.
“Well, what’s the little game, Mr. Waring ?"
he asked.
“My name is Pelletier,” said Waring.
“Will you kindly explain just what this ”
“Easy’s the word, sir,” grinned the man.
“This is a high-class hotel, Mr. Waring, and
the funny stuff don’t get a laugh here.
What’s the answer? Why the Pelletier and
the Dubuque stufi' ? Why, say, you got a fine
chance passing for a French hick from I-o-way,
now, ain’t you? Dolled up like you never got
off the Big Alley in your life, too? Rather
coarse work, I call it.”
“So? Will you leave quietly, or must I
ring for some one to throw you out?” de-
manded Waring.
He moved toward the telephone as he spoke.
But the thick-set man laughed unpleasantly.
“Never mind the bluff,” he counselled. “I’m
the house detective here, Mr. Waring. If any-
body’s thrown out, it’ll be you. But I ain’t a
crab. I don’t plan to spoil a gentleman’s nice


RANSOM! 201


time, supposin’ he’s not a piker. VVhere’s the
lady?”
“Lady?” But Waring’s indignant surprise
served only to amuse the house detective.
“You heard me. ‘Lady,’ I said. I’ll say
it again if you want me to. But you don’t
want me to, do you? Course not. Well, then,
suppose you write me a little check, Mr. War-
ing. Oh, no, I’m not a bit afraid you’ll stop
it, or do anything unpleasant. And I think
I’m quite generous not demanding cash. But,
of course, on this kind of a little party, a gent
needs all the spot cash he’s got with him. A
check for a hundred, Mr. Waring. What
say?”
Waring sat down; he lighted a cigarette.
He eyed, speculatively, the man leaning
against the door. He had been recognised,
yes; but he was in no immediate danger. It
served as a distraction from the major perils
that surrounded him, to listen to this minor
afi' air.
“Would you mind telling me just exactly
what your little game is ?” he asked, quietly.
“That’s reasonable enough,” said the in-
truder. “Well, listen: here’s me, Dan Grim-


RANSOM! 203



I looked at the name you’d written in the reg-
ister, I knew I hadn’t gone wrong this time.”
“Yes? Is Jacques Pelletier so much like
Philip Waring?” said Waring, a jeer in his
voice.
“You ain’t read the afternoon papers very;
close, have you? No? Well, I have. And
there’s an interview in one of them with a Mr.
Jacques Pelletier, of Dubuque, Iowa, and he
ain’t stoppin’ at this hotel, either. Well, mis-
takes happen, you know; accidents are com-
mon. But I called up Pelletier’s hotel and got
him on the wire. Soon’s I got him and he
said who he was, I rang ofl’. I’d found out
enough. There wasn’t two Pelletiers from
Dubuque. What’s the joke?” he demanded.
Waring was smiling somewhat ruefully.
He wished he could solve the mystery of per-
sons similarly named as quickly as Grimfel
had solved this affair.
“Nothing; you interest me; go on,”'said
WVaring.
“Go on? Why, there ain’t much more to
say. You’d picked a phony name; why you
picked that particular name I don’t know and
don’t care. ‘Live and Let Live,’ is my motto


204 RANSOM !



—if I get something to live on. You was
Waring, all right, and men don’t register un-
der false names unless they got something to,
hide. Comin’ here without baggage and all——
well, something to hide usually wears petti-
coats. Do I get the check ?”
Waring had done, in the past day or two,
things that, a week ago, he would have thought
impossible; he had in various ways helped to
outrage the law; but submitting to blackmail
was a cut beyond his endurance. He held him-
self in hand, however.
“Not admitting for a moment that you are
right in this matter of identity—why the lady
part of it?” he asked.
Grimfel winked wisely. “Well, when a man
that I know ain’t a ‘gun’ registers under a
phony name without baggage, even if he does
pay in advance—”
“And if I give you my solemn word of
honor that a lady is not concerned in the mat-
ter?”
“Sure; I’ll believe you; but I’ll take your
check just the same and—word of honor!”
He held out his hand to Waring. “The check,
please,” he said.


RANSOM ! £05



And then—-
Waring looked at the girl whose pressure
upon the door had caused Grimfel to step aside.
Pale, breathing heavily, she leaned against the
wall. It was Claire, his Claire. She did not
speak—merely looked from Waring to the
house detective. The latter coloured faintly
under her glance but still held out his hand.
“Will you wait ?” snapped Waring. “I will
send you ”
“I’ll ring the office, and there’ll be a nice
scandal in the mornin’ papers,” jeered Grim-
fel. “Come through!”
Waring turned to the girl. “This man—
misunderstands ”
Her heavy breathing had subsided a trifle.
“Never mind—him. Let—us—go-—”
“Nothin’ doin',” said Grimfel. “You’ll
pay, or ”
Waring silenced the girl with a gesture.
“Have you a blank check ?” he asked the detec-
tive.
“You bet—and a fountain pen.” Grimfel
gave both to .Waring. The latter walked to a
desk and wrote a check for the amount Grim-
fel named. He gave it to the man. Grimfel


206 RANSOM !



folded it and placed it in an inside pocket.
He walked to the door, where he stopped a
minute.
“I can see,” he said, “why you didn’t notice
the little stenographer.”
Waring made no answer, and Grimfel closed
the door behind him. Waring locked it. He
turned to the girl questioningly.
“Who was that man?” she asked.
“The house detective, a—an unclean person.
He————” But he did not have to explain to
her; a slight colour was visible, suddenly,
against the pallor of her cheek.
“Then he does not know about
gan, slightly relieved.
“The matters we know of?” Waring shook
his head. “But tell me—”
She interrupted him. “Come, at once!
They will be here—”
“Who?”
“Bergson knows that you—are not Carva-
jal. In a room over him, I could hear him tell-
ing the others—he sent them here—to kill you.
He knows that you are Philip Waring,
and-—-”
“But how did you get here?”
” she be-


RANSOM ! 207



“He didn’t think of me—no one noticed—
as I crept downstairs. I got a taxicab—it’s
at the side entrance. If we hurry, they may
not miss me. We might get back there——
with the police—before Bergson knows ”
Waring saw the point. A surprise capture,
before Conybear could be injured. . . . They
stepped into the hall together.
“You—you’re a wonder,” he told her. “But
how did you know my room?”
“I registered; I saw the name Jacques Pel-
letier—that, I knew, was the name you were
to use. I got a room on your floor and—here,
this elevator.”
They descended. Through a narrow hall——
from which opened parlours that would be filled
a little later when ladies, returning from the
theatre, paused to arrange their hair before
supper—they passed, to come out upon the
street through an inconspicuous door.
“He’s waiting—the taxi,” said the girl.
“We can go right to the nearest police-station,
and—”
Her words were lost to Waring in the roar
that came from the engine as the chauffeur
cranked the car. He handed her in, and still


208 RANSOM!


the engine’s roaring made him miss her next
words. He knew that she spoke, but that was
all. He thrust his head through the door.
“Did you ask someth—” he began. But he
did not finish the question. He felt suddenly
sick and limp, and his head seemed very large,
so large that it filled the whole taxicab, would
burst it in another moment, he was certain.
He felt hands drag him into the interior of
the machine; he felt the machine start; he won-
dered what had happened. Then he knew: he
had been struck a heavy blow on the head;
Claire, his Claire, had inveigled him into the
taxi. . . . No, he wouldn't believe that; he’d
ask her; she’d tell him that it wasn’t so. . . .
He lost consciousness.


CHAPTER THIRTEEN
THE telephone in his bedroom awoke Commis-
sioner Herkomer from a restless sleep. He
had not retired until two o’clock, and at the
time of retiring he was no nearer the solution
of the kidnapping mysteries than when Peter
Perkins had first brought him the note signed
by Burton Conybear. Samuel Balch, \Var-
ing’s attorney, had been unable to give any
information about NVaring that would explain
the latter’s apparent dealings with Conybear.
True, Waring owned a bit of real estate, but
he would hardly have mortgaged that Without
asking Balch’s assistance in drawing the
papers, and such assistance had not been asked.
Henderson, Conybear’s private secretary,
had not returned to Portsmouth, and could not
be located in town. And there was no further
news of Prendergast, Larned, Mikells and
Clurg, the other missing financiers.
Fortunately the newspapers had learned
nothing of the afi' air; at least, the first editions
209


210 RANSOM!



that Herkomer had scanned at Headquarters
at a quarter of two that morning held nothing
about the matter. And Herkomer’s late pres-
ence at his office had been accounted for, to the
reporters’ satisfaction, by the spectacular raid,
headed by Lieutenant Dan McGaw of the
strong-arm squad, upon Tex Granville’s gam-
bling-house.
Herkomer had gone to bed with the scant
satisfaction that, although he was facing a
turning—point in his ambitious career, the press
and public knew nothing of it—yet.
But now—this morning. . . . In the short
space of time it took for him to reach over
and grasp the telephone, Herkomer reviewed
all that had happened since Peter Perkins
brought him the creased and wrinkled note.
And though the lightning review brought him
dismay, his voice was alert and crisp as he
asked who called.
“It’s Kelcey speakin’, Commissioner. Le-
gay and Dibblee are dead.”
Herkomer swung his legs out of bed.
“What?”
“Yes, sir.’
,
Kelcey’s voice held a mixture


RANSOM! 211



of excitement and regret. “And Waring’s
J ap servant, too.”
“Then they got Waring?”
“No, sir. You know Legay and Dibblee
was sent to Waring’s apartment, sir. Well, I
got down here to Headquarters an hour ago,
and no report had come in from them during
the night. I thought that was funny, so I tele-
phoned the Thirtieth Street ‘House,’ that bein’
the nearest statiOn, and told ’em to rush a
man over to give Waring’s place the once-over.
Vi" ell, Commissioner, he got the janitor to let
him in, and he finds a J ap—the janitor said
it was Waring’s servant—and Legay and Dib-
blee, dead. K-nifed. The whole three of ’em.
No weapons found on any of ’em. Janitor
don’t know nothin’ about it. Havin’ him
brought to Headquarters, but the man that
went over from the ‘House’ says he’s ignorant
of anything. He ’phoned that he’s bringin’
him in, thong .”
“Right. I’ll be down as soon as I’ve had a
bite—”
“Somethin’ else, Commissioner,” said Kelcey
quickly. ‘.‘Though the janitor of Waring’s
place don’t seem to know anythin’, the hallboy


RANSOM! 213



the tenants will admit having four men, or
two men visit ’em last evenin’, and—J’
“\Vell, well?” snapped Herkomer.
“\Vhy, the boy knows Waring by sight, and
he says that neither of the first two men was
him. And he says that the first two come out
in about ten minutes and walked away swift,
scared—like. That’s all, sir. Nothin’ else has
come up.”
“’ell, it was enough, mused Herkomer as
he swiftly dressed. Two policemen and VVar—
ing’s servant—murdered! And on the hasty
evidence thus far gathered, not murdered by
\Varing. But Waring was one, and only one
certainly, of a gang. Still, why should that
gang wish to kill Waring’s servant? He shook
his head despairingly. The answer to this
question and to many others—well, he prayed
that they would come. But they would not
come to him while he sprawled in bed. He
dressed swiftly and breakfasted at a rate that
made his motherly old housekeeper shake her
head mournfully and utter prognostications
that contained references to her late lamented
husband, who had dug his grave with his teeth.


214 RANsou!



The telephone rang again as he was leaving
the house, and he turned back impatiently.
“Kelcey talkin’, Commissioner.”
“I’m on my way downtown now,” said Her-
komer.
“Don’t, sir. There’s somethin’ new come
’up. The Traders’ Loan just telephoned, sir.
A check was just presented for cashing there.
It was dated yesterday, and was for a hun-_
dred dollars.” - -
“Are they holding the man?” cried Her-
komer.
“We hadn’t told them to, sir,” Kelcey de-
fended himself. “Your orders was simply to
round up Waring’s bank-account and tell the
bank to notify us if a check from him went
through, and to hold Waring himself on some
pretext or other.”
Kelcey was right. A bank wouldn’t hold a
person who simply presented a check, without
some definite reason therefor, and Herkomer
had not felt like giving definite reasons just
now. Waring himself—that was different.
Waring’s bank had been informed that the
Police Department would stand behind it.
“But it don’t make no difference, Commis-


RANSOM! 215



sioner,” shouted Kelcey. His desire for the
dramatic had made him save his climax. “The
paying-teller Was no boob. The check was a
blank of another bank, with the Traders’
Loan’s name written in. And while the check
was made out to ‘cash,’ the teller hemmed and
hawed and said this was a bit unusual, and—
well, anyway, he got the guy to write his name
on it, and then he ’phoned the bank whose name
was scratched out, and—why, I know the guy
who presented it, Dan Grimfel. And the pay-
ing-teller didn’t have to tell me where he
worked, neither. He’s house detective at the
_ Plutonia, and a fine second—story-man he is,
too. The Greenhams wouldn’t stand for some
of the coarse stuff he pulled, and how he landed
the job he’s got is a mystery to me. Anyway,
Commissioner, it looks like he seen Waring last
night, and if he did—+—”
“And you think he’s at the Plutonia now?”
“I made sure of that before I ’phoned you,
sir. I telephoned the hotel, and he got in just
as I was talkin’ to the clerk. I got him on the
wire, and I told him that Commissioner Her-
komer would be wantin’ to See him, and for


216 RANSOM!



him to hang around until he heard from me
again.”
“But he may take alarm, and
Kelcey gufi' awed. “I know that bird, Com-
missioner. He’s as crooked as a ram’s horn,
and yellower than a canary! Run? Him?
Say, he’s sweatin’ blood now if he done any-
thin’ wrong, and too scared to move. He’ll
be waitin’ for you, Commissioner.”
Herkomer hung up—fairly ran to the car
awaiting him.
It was a very nervous Dan Grimfel, some-
what difi'erent from the blustering blackmailer
that had talked with Phil Waring, who met
Commissioner Herkomer at the desk of the
Plutonia. Herkomer did not have to ask for
the man. Grimfel approached, saluting
clumsily, before the Commissioner could speak
to the clerk.
“You wanted a little talk with me, Commis-
sioner?” said Grimfel.
“You’re Grimfel, eh? The man that cashed
a check drawn by Philip Waring, this morn-
ing?”
“Sh-sh!” Grimfel’s eyes pleaded. The
curious clerk, recognising Herkomer,—the
Q,


RANSOM! 219


“That all, - Commissioner?” questioned
Grimfel.
“Yes—here,” replied Herkomer. “But I
want you to ride downtown with me.”
“Eh? But I got my job here, Commis-
sioner.” '
“Not any more, Grimfel,” said Herkomer
very kindly. “There’s a nice little cell down
at Headquarters where you belong. Come
on!”
His voice was suddenly crisp and hard.
Grimfel stared at him. But Herkomer
smiled. I
“You see, Grimfel, it’s very important to
me that I acquire all the information about
Philip Waring that it’s possible for me to ac-
quire. And I must acquire it in about five
minutes—five seconds, if possible. You’re in
a mood to lie, Grimfel; I’m in the mood to hear
the truth. I won’t change my mood; a cell
may change yours. Come on l”
But Kelcey knew the Grimfel character, and
had not erred in his description thereof. Grim-
fel seemed physically to curl up.
“Sit down, Commissioner,” he said huskily,


220 RANSOM!


He had been fooled; Herkomer had not been
fooled.
And Grimfel told the truth, the whole truth
and nothing but the truth. Herkomer lis-
tened. The contempt that he felt for Grim-
fel at the latter’s recital he hid. A man low
enough to commit blackmail is low enough to
be immune to contempt; why waste it on him?
“You’d better stay around here; I may want
you,” was all his response to Grimfel’s story.
Then he went upstairs and telephoned Kelcey
to come at once to the Plutonia. That matter
attended to, and fortified by Kelcey’s assurd
ance that he would be at the hotel as soon as
the swiftest police automobile could convey
him there, Herkomer turned his attention to
the register, the clerk ofi'ering no objection.
He found the name “Jacques Pelletier.”
There was no question in Herkomer’s mind as
to the truth of Grimfel’s story. A man does
not confess blackmail unless he is telling the
truth. “Jacques Pelletier” was Philip VVar-
ing. And ‘Grimfel had said that the girl whom
he had seen in Waring’s room had registered
under the name of “Doris Marchant.”
Little as one man may know of another’s


222 RANSOM !


istered,—shehad paid in advance for her room,
——that her baggage and her maid would be
along in an hour or so.
The night room-clerk was not on duty, but
he had told his relief this much. The Plutonia
was not modern enough to have floor-clerks,—
which accounted for Claire’s ability to proceed
unquestioned to Waring’s room,——but like all
hotels it was suspicious of pretty girls, un-
attended, whose baggage does not arrive on
schedule. Hence “Miss Doris Marchant” had
been telephoned. No answer coming from her
room, a clerk had gone up there, unlocked the
door and found her gone. And a porter had
seen a young lady answering to “Miss Mar-
chant’s” description leave the hotel with a gen-
tleman who answered to the description of _
“Jacques Pelletier.”
The clerk winked at Herkomer. “Two of
’em—both without baggage—changed their
minds about staying here. That’s all.”
Herkomer heard the man but did not heed
him. If Waring had had a “date” with a girl,
neither he nor the girl would have gone to
quite such roundabout methods of keeping it.
Hotel parlours—there were a hundred semi-


RANSOM! 223



\
private places where a couple might meet.
And according to what the porter who had
seen the couple leave had told the night-clerk,
Waring and the girl had left the Plutonia
within ten minutes after the girl had registered.
The girl, then, had come for \Varing. But
why hadn’t she telephoned? He shrugged his
shoulders. That was unimportant. The
point was: she had taken Waring away with
her. Where had she taken him?
Kelcey arrived as Herkomer reached this
question. Swiftly the Commissioner told what
he had learned.
““"ell, there’s a taxi-starter,” suggested the
sergeant.
Herkomer nodded. He turned to the desk,
behind which now stood ,the manager of the
hotel, anxious for his hostelry’s reputation.
He mentioned his private office, and Herkomer
allowed himself to be led there, followed by
Kelcey. There was no necessity for taking
the manager into his confidence, and the Com-
missioner did not do so. He merely stated
that he wished to learn where the two flee-
ing guests of the hotel had gone to. The taxi-
starter had a room in the servants’ quarter of


224- RANSOM!


the hotel. He came down, bristly as to beard
and dulled as to eye, but able and willing to
tell what he knew of the departure of Waring
and the girl.
“They stepped into a taxi like they was in
a hurry,” he said, “and the taxi went 01?.
That’s all there was.”
“Did you hear the address they gave ?”
The starter shook his head. “I don’t be-
lieve they gave any. The lady said something,
and the gent stuck his head in the door, and
then he climbed in the rest of the way and the
car started.”
“H’m! Left instructions before she en-
tered the hotel. That proves that it wasn’t a
‘date.’ She came to get him,” mused Her-
komer, aloud.
“Who drove the taxi? Happen to recog-
nise him?” asked Kelcey.
But it was Herkomer who caught the shifty
glint in the starter’s eye, the too-honest bluff-
ness of his voice.
“No, sir; some one was coming out the door,
a guest, sir, and I turned to him to ask if he
wanted a taxi, sir.”


RANSOM! 2'25


“A guest, eh? You mean a person that
lives here ?”
“VVhy—er—yes—no, sir.”
“You’re not sure?” queried Herkomer in the
same kindly voice that he had used when ques-
tioning Grimfel. Herkomer was kindly, as
the Force knew, but he hated a liar.
“Why, why, yes, sir, I am sure. It wasn’t
a person that lives here. He’d just been din-
ing here.”
“But as I understood it, he left through the
door that is nearest the reception parlours.
Quite a distance from the restaurant, isn’t it?"
“Well, maybe he was lookin’ for a lady.
How do I know?” replied the starter.
His tone was sulky now, and a man telling
the truth would have had no reason for sulki-
ness.
“How much did some one give you to tell
this story?” asked Herkomer.
“How much—say, what d’ye think I am?”
“A liar!” snapped Herkomer. “Out with it,
now! As if a. starter wouldn’t make it his
business to know a regular guest when he saw
one! And you weren’t sure. Out with it!”
Authority works marvels. The taxi-starter


29.6 RANSOM!


could have blustered and blufi'ed a civilian,
even as Dan Grimfel could have done. But
behind Herkomer was the majesty of the law,
with all its vague, mysterious threats.
“Come, I’m in a hurry,” insisted Herkomer.
And as Grimfel had yielded, so this man
yielded.
“Well, I didn’t know there was anything in
it, or ”
“We won’t bother with the excuses, please,”
said Herkomer.
“Well,” the starter gulped, “it was like I
said. The lady and gent got into a taxi, only
—it wasn’t the one that the lady had drove up
in and that she’d told to wait. Just as she
went into the hotel, three men stepped out of
a taxi that had followed hers to the curb. One
of them spoke to the chaufi'eur that had driven
the lady and handed him something, and the
chaufi'eur cranked up and drove off. The
other machine moved up a little, and the guy
that had been talkin’ with the chauffeur no-
ticed me lookin’ on, kind of curious, and he
come up to me and he says: ‘Playin’ a little
joke, Starter. Buy yourself a smoke. And


228 RANSOM!


Monte Messerman. Find out where he picked
up the girl before bringing her here.”
“Yes, sir. And are you going to Headquar-
ters, sir?”
Herkomer shook his head. “I’m going to.
call on Sinsabaugh. It seems to me that he
may be able to give me some information.”
He spoke to the manager, who had drawn
apart, beyond earshot.
“It’s hardly necessary to tell you that what
you’ve overheard this morning is to be kept
quiet?” -
“I have my hotel to think of, sir,” was the
reply. “I am not anxious for newspaper
notoriety. My guests are not the sort
that—”
“Quite so,” agreed Herkomer. He nodded
and left the ofiice with Kelcey.
A page passed by, droning: “Tel’phone for
hIr.IIerkfiner,lIr.Ilerkfinercnithe’phonef’
Herkomer stopped the boy and verified his
hearing. The telephone was for him. He
went to a booth, wonderingly. It was Mal-
colm, president of the Seventy-third National
Bank; and his voice was the voice of a man in
agony.


RANSOM ! 229

“Herkomer? Thank God! I had the
devil’s own time getting your damned Head-
quarters to tell me where you were, but
7’

l10“'
Herkomer heard a gusty sigh of relief. It
was so different from what might have been
expected from the suave and debonair Malcolm
that he was shocked.
“What’s wrong?” he demanded.
“You haven’t seen a ticker? It’s hardly
time for the papers to have it, though they will
in a minute or two.”
“Have what?”
I “The news of what’s going on in Wall
Street, in Boston, in Philadelphia—all over the
country!”
“What?” roared Herkomer.
“The worst bear market in history. Worse
than when the Great War broke out. Every—
thing being thrown overboard! By God,
they’re crying the first extras now! It means
ruin, ruin for the whole country, Herkomer,
unless—”
“Pull yourself together, Malcolm,” advised
Herkomer. “What can I do?”


CHAPTER FOURTEEN
A POLICEMAN peremptorily stopped Her-
komer at Twenty-third Street.
“I s’pose you think forty miles is crawlin’,
doneha?” he asked. Then his jaw dropped as
be recognised the Commissioner. “Scuse me,
sir,” he began. “I didn’t know—”
“Jump in here,” Herkomer cut him short.
“I don’t want any other fools holding me up.
Not that you didn’t do your duty,” he added
hastily as the officer flushed at the epithet.
“It’s all right; jump in.”
Hereafter, nearsighted policemen, not rec-
ognising their chief and not granting him the
right of way over all traffic, would yield to the
blue uniform of the traffic-officer. As for the
cross-town corner whence Herkomer had
dragged the guardian of the law—well, Twen-
ty-third Street must look after itself. Wall
Street needed the Commissioner more than
Twenty-third Street needed a policeman.
But as Herkomer thought of \Vall Street’s
231


RANSOM! 233



teller’s windows. Herkomer pursed his lips.
A panic that, a quarter of an hour after the
newsboys are shrieking it on the streets, has
started incipient runs upon banks, is pretty
serious.
But Herkomer hid his feeling from the
banker, and was smiling as he faced Malcolm
across a desk in the latter’s private ofiice.
“Now, let’s have it—briefiy,” he said.
A certain calm about Herkomer made Mal-
colm ashamed of his own fright. He swal-
lowed painfully, and when he spoke, he spoke
deliberately :
“The Exchange opened steadily enough.
Exactly one hour after opening time, however,
it was deluged with selling-orders. Selling-
orders that didn’t come in thousand-share lots,
but in ten-thousand-, in twenty-thousand-share
orders.
“Something was wrong—radically, desper-
ately, terribly wrong. Since the Exchange
closed shortly after the beginning of the Great
War, there’s been nothing like this. And this
panic—why, there’s no excuse for it. The
country is prosperous, making money ”
“Don’t wander,” advised Herkomer.


23a RANSOM !



Malcolm brought himself back to the ques-
tion of the moment.
“I was at the office of one of the governors
of the Exchange when the thing started.
From the beginning I could see that it prom-
ised to be bad, so I raced over here to my bank,
to steady my people against the rush that was
inevitable, to try and steady our customers.
But I’ve kept in touch with the governors.
While you were on your way down here, they
’phoned me again—it’s the Conybear-Clurg-
Prendergast - Larned - Mikells crowd that
started this. Their brokers—we know that the
big selling-houses are operating for them, al-
though they’ll admit nothing—started with an
attack on Conybear’s own pet stock, Amalga-
mated Products—to throw dust in somebody’s
eyes, I guess. But that was only the begin-
ning; transportation, textiles, steel—every-
thing is being thrown overboard.
“And it’s been done without any rhyme or
reason except the greed of Conybear and his
crowd! That’s why he t00k his cash reserve
from my vaults this morning. I don’t know
how much he had in gold-certificates, but I
do know that it was over fifty millions, for he


RANSOM! 235



said as much once. Think! In addition to
the prestige of his name, in addition to the
credits he’ll establish with all the stock he’s
sold, he’ll have fifty millions—and millions,
tens of millions more that the others will fur-
nish—to buy at the low marks that will be es-
tablished to-day; and ”
“But what’s his game? Just to make money
on a bear market?”
B’Ialcolm shook his head despairingly.
“There’s been a rumour that he intended to
combine Amalgamated Products and all the
transcontinental railroads and coastwise ship-
ping lines. I know that he and several others
went to the President a year ago, asking him
what were the chances for the repeal of the
Sherman Law and the other anti-trust laws.”
“A megalomaniac!” cried Herkomer.
“Maybe. But Conybear had it worked out
wonderfully. He showed the President
exactly how such a combination would reduce
the cost of living, would make for efficiency
and all that sort of thing. Government own-
ership of everything—only Conybear and his
associates were to be the Government!
“But the President dismissed him imme-


236 RAXSOM!


diately. It was absurd for Conybear to pro-
pose such a thing. But the laws can’t pre-
vent him from owning a majority of- the dif-
ferent industries. He can go around having
interlocking directorates, too. He can, with
his crowd, own practically everything of im-
portance, do away with wasteful competi—
tion—”
“It sounds worthy," interpolated Herkomer.
“Of course. Those things always sound
well. Only, Conybear will use the thing as a
means to further wealth. But only a saint
from heaven bearing St. Peter’s seal would be
able to get the consent of the American people
and Government to what, on the face of it,
is a return to those principles of private owner-
ship without public responsibility from which
we have only recently escaped!
“But Conybear seems to have been obsessed
with the idea of combination. And if not
combination in name, combination in effect.
And what better time than now, when Europe
is dreadfully in debt, when we’ve loaned mil-
lions, billions, almost, abroad, and Europe is
buying none of our stocks or bonds l”


238 RAN 50M !



market for the legitimate investor now. Wall
Street is essential to the business life of the
nation, and the business life means the actual
life. Wall Street has survived a thousand
blows. It can survive no blow like this. If
the people come to realize that their life sav-
ings are still at the mercy of a buccaneer like
Conybear—God help Wall Street! So it’s up
to you—up to you to find Conybear, and if he
won’t listen to reason, then it’s up to you to
make him heed force!”
“You mean?”
“I mean that when one man can jeopardise
a nation, it’s up to the guardians of the law to
enforce its spirit, not its letter. It’s up to you
to place a dangerous megalomaniac like Cony-
bear under restraint.”
Herkomer shrugged his shoulders at this
phase of the situation. '
“First catch your rabbit,” he said laconically.
“Where is Conybear?”
Malcolm thumped the desk with a knotted
fist. “I shut up that fool out in Portsmouth,”
he snapped. “It’s bad enough for people to
know that one man can do a thing like this,
but if they realised that the kidnapping of one


RANSOM! 9;:5)


man—but that’s absurd,” he ended more
calmly. “Conybear has just decided to get
under cover for a while. And you want to
drag him out.”
“But his brokers—he left instructions with
them?” asked Herkomer.
“They won’t admit it; they simply grin and
say nothing,” was Malcolm’s reply. “But I
happen to know—one of the governors told me
this half an hour ago—that a list of brokers
had sealed orders from Conybear to be opened
this morning. And those sealed orders con-
tained instructions to sell, all along the line,
until further word from him. That is in the
strictest confidence, of course.”
“And you think I can make Conybear give
that word?”
“I could, if I were Police Commissioner,”
said Malcolm savagely.
“But you spoke of kidnapping? 'How can
that be, if Conybear was at your vaults this
morning? You saw him?”
Malcolm shook his head. “No; I was down
at the Exchange conferring with one 'of the
governors on a private matter—it has to do
with a new course at my golf-club,” he grinned


RANSOM ! 24-1


appeared; panic follows upon their disappear-
ance, and you bid me keep quiet!”
“But you must realize what public knowl-
edge of this matter means,” parried Herkomer.
“Can it possibly mean more than what is
happening now?” cried Symons. “You’ve had
plenty of time in which to apprehend the kid-
nappers, restore their victims; and yet when I
telephoned your office a moment ago, your man
Kelcey, whom I talked with first, tells me that
there is nothing to report as yet. Nothing to
report!”
“But you’re talking to me now, not Kelcey,”
said Herkomer, sweetly.
“Well, what have you to report? Have
you found Conybear?”
“No, but I know where he is.”
“You do? Where? For God’s sake tell
me, so that—”
“Easy. I can’t tell you—yet.”
“Why not?”
“Do you happen to remember that I am
Commissioner of Police?”
“Well?
“I don’t tell department business to every
one. But you may take my word for it—take


RANSOM! “21-8



Malcolm cast a rueful glance at the door
of his office, the glass panels of which mir-
rored him fairly well. He smoothed his
tousled head.
“Can you locate Conybear before to-mor-
row morning?”
“If I don’t, I’ll resign.”
“That won’t help much.”
“But I’d hate to resign,” said Herkomer.
Malcolm threw up his hands impatiently.
“Never mind the cryptic stuff now,” he said.
“.VVhat are you going to do? You didn’t let
Symons finish—or I didn’t. What about
those others?”
Herkomer looked the young banker over
carefully. True, Malcolm was excited, but so
was Herkomer, though he hid it a bit better.
And Malcolm had brains. He might be able
to aid. Swiftly, not wasting a word, Her-
komer told the banker the events that had tran-
spired since Peter Perkins had come into the
Commissioner’s office with the note signed by
Conybear. .
Malcolm waited, with a patience rather re-_
markable considering his excitement, until
Herkomer had finished. And now Malcolm


24-6 RANSOM!


comes up—man, there’s no cryptogram in that
note!”
For the banker was studying the note that
was signed by Conybear, but the body of which
was, indisputably if Malcolm said so, a for-
gery.
“No,” said Malcolm, “but it’s odd paper.
This waterproofed stuff—it’s Government
stuff—limited supply, sold only to the Gov-
ernment, to the State Department—fused for
messages carried by secret-service agents and
all that sort of thing. Note-paper’s a hobby
of mine, you know,” he added half-apologeti-
cally.
“I see,” said Herkomer. He reached for
the note, put it in his pocketbook, and with an
effort at a cheerful farewell and a promise to
keep Malcolm in touch with events, he left the
bank. In the lobby special policemen were
keeping back the panic-stricken crowd, that
feared that every second of delay might add
years to the time when it should receive its
money. Panic is an ugly thing, and the faces
of the crowd were ugly. .
And upon Herkomer it rested to relieve the
fears of this crowd and thousands of other


RANSOM! 24-7


crowds, all over the country, like this one.
Herkomer must find Conybear, who, if not
kidnapped, was apparently as lost to the busi—
ness world, although he had been in the Seven-
ty-third National Bank and had drawn over
fifty million dollars in gold-certificates from
his vaults this very morning. This very morn~
ing!
The traffic-policeman was waiting in the car.
He served once more to clear the path for the
Commissioner as the automobile raced toward
Headquarters. There,-in his office, Herkomer
found Kelcey in a fever of impatience. But
another man was there, even more excited.
This man was William Sinsabaugh, and Her-
komer was very glad indeed to see Mr. Sinsa-
baugh.


CHAPTER FIFTEEN
IT was no time for evasions, for keeping mat-
ters in the dark. By to-morrow morning, un-
less the Commissioner of Police had located the
missing financiers, the whole city, the whole
country, the whole world, would know of the
kidnappings—if, in parenthesis, kidnappings
they were. William Sinsabaugh was a business
man, a big business man. If he were in some
fashion connected with what Herkomer had
begun to term, to himself, the Great Plot,
then any information that the Commissioner
could give him would be no surprise. And if
he were innocent of any complicity, he would,
being a. man of affairs, know enough to be
silent.
Sinsabaugh spoke first.
“This ofiicer here”——and he pointed to Kel-
cey—“has placed me under arrest. He re-
fuses to state why. May I beg that you will
explain to me?”
“I ain’t arrested him, Commissioner,” cor-
m


RANSOM ! 24-9


rected Kelcey. “I knew you wanted to see
him, and when I run across him at the desk
of the Plutonia,—I went back there to quiz
the employees once more, just on general prin-
ciples,——I told him that you’d like to see him,
and was kinda firm about his comin’ down here.
But I didn’t arrest him.”
Sinsabaugh smiled sourly. “A distinction
with _mighty little difference,” he stated.
“What do you want of me, Commissioner?”
he demanded.
Kelcey had found Sinsabaugh at the desk
of the Plutonia—where Waring had been, for
a few moments, last night!
“Were you looking for Philip Waring?”
asked Herkomer.
“Waring?” Sinsabaugh's face expressed
blank surprise. “Is he at that hotel ?”
“He was,” said Herkomer grimly.
He eyed the other man. Then he placed his
cards upon the table.
“You’ve heard the newsboys crying panic,
Mr. Sinsabaugh?”
“It may perhaps occur to you that this panic
is one reason why I’d like to be at my desk,”
snapped Sinsabaugh.


RANSOM ! 251


much,” he said stubbornly. .“And I believe
him, and will believe him. But, under the cir-
cumstances, I can see your side of it, the
mighty suspicious side of it, Mr. Herkomer.
And Phil—Phil’s level-headed enough, and
honest as the day, but he might, innocently
enough, have let himself in for something.
Yes, he was at my house last night.”
It was not disloyalty toPhil that loosened
his tongue; it was not the fear that his business
interests would suffer by his detention here
during the panic. It was simply that, after
all, Herkomer represented the law, and the law
had made out a case plausible enough to de-
mand Sinsabaugh’s aid. Sinsabaugh was a
good friend, but he was also a good citizen,
and citizenship rises above friendship—or
should. , I
“How’d he get away?” demanded Her-
komer. '
“Side door.”
Herkomer waved aside Sinsabaugh’s last-
night’s denial to the police of Waring’s pres-
ence in the Sinsabaugh mansion. The truth,
not reasons for previous evasion or falsehood,
was what the Commissioner wanted now.


254- HANSOM!



have had some sense! But Sinsabaugh evi-
dently knew what was passing through the
Commissioner’s mind, and relieved his chagrin
by the remark:
“Not every one knows of that side entrance,
Dir. Herkomer. There are times when a rail-
road man likes a private conference without
newspaper men knowing about it, you know.”
Herkomer nodded. It always relieved him
to find that the men under him were not so
blameworthy as they appeared.
“And Miss Sorel seemed to have heard of
Waring,” he said thoughtfully. “I’d like to
speak with her.”
“So would I,” said Sinsabaugh. “My wife
picked up a rather expensive brooch that she’d
dropped, and as it was on my way to my of—
fice, I thought I’d drop in and deliver it to
her. But the clerk told me that she had left
early this morning, leaving no address.
Merely took a taxi to the Grand Central.”
“H’m.” Herkomer pursed his lips. Then
he shrugged his shoulders. This was unim-
portant. However:
“Better let me have the brooch, then, hadn’t
you?” he said. “You say it’s valuable ?”


RANSOM ! 255



“I’ve bought trinkets like it,” said Sinsa-
baugh wryly. “They don’t come under a
couple of thousand.”
Herkomer whistled. “Most women would
have been at your house before this.”
He examined the trinket. “Wore it at her
breast? Yes? Don’t see how she could have
missed it.” He laughed. “But leaving a
trinket at a friend’s house hardly comes under
the ‘lost and found’ category, does it? Force
of habit made me ask for it, I guess.”
He started to hand it back; then his eye was
caught by engraving on the back.
“ ‘From S. to D.,’ eh? Thought her name
was Claire?”
“May be an heirloom,” suggested Sinsa-
baugh.
“Rather modern design,” doubted Her-
komer. He passed the brooch to Sinsabaugh, ,
who put it in his pocket.
“Is there anything else I can do for you,
Commissioner ?” asked the railroad man.
“No. You could have done it last night;
you could have delivered Waring over to my
men. However, the fat’s in the fire. And we
don’t prosecute people for helping their friends


RANSOM! 257


“There’s been too much letter in all law,”
snapped Herkomer. “I believe in the spirit
of it, and in stretching the spirit, too, on occa-
sion. What have you found out?” "
Kelcey dropped his argumentative manner.
His voice took on its usual drone.
“I sent a couple of men out to look up this
Monte Messerman, who drove the taxi this
‘Doris Marchant’ came to the Plutonia in. I
went myself to the Hotel Anson and talked
with this Jacques Pelletier; he’s an importer,
lives in Dubuque, and landed only the other
day on the lilontam'a. He didn’t know why
any one should have taken his name and ad-
dress. I asked him if he had many friends in
New York, and he said only business acquaint-
ances. I described Waring to him, and he rec-
ognised him at once.”
“Knew Waring ?” cried Herkomer.
Kelcey shook his head. “No, sir; he recog-
nised Waring, but he recognised him as some
one else. Pelletier identified this description
I gave him as fitting a fellow-passenger of his
on the Illo'ntam'a, a guy named Pierre Carnot.
He hadn’t had much conversation with this
Carnot, Pelletier says, Carnot havin’ been sea-


258 RANSOM!



sick in his cabin most of the time. But the
last night out they spoke to each other in the
smoke-room, both bein’ Frenchmen, you see,
and had a drink together. That’s where he
learned Carnot’s name.”
“And Carnot’s destination?”
“I telephoned the steamship company right
from Pelletier’s room, and they ran over the
list of passengers for me, that arrived on the
lilo'ntam'a. Carnot, in spite of his name and
bein’ French, lives in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Naturalized, I suppose. And,” Kelcey went
on before Herkomer could put the next ques-
tion, “I sent a wire immediately to the chief
of police in Grand Rapids, asking for dope on
this guy Carnot. There’s no answer yet, of
course.”
“And I hardly see what bearing any an-
swer can have on this affair, anyhow. The
man we’re after isn’t a man that looks like
Waring; we’re after Waring. . . . And still,
why should Waring use the name and address
of a man that landed from the M ontam'a?’ ’
Herkomer puzzled over this. He gave it up
and attacked Kelcey with further questions.
“Messerman? The man that drove the girl


RANSOM ! 259


to the Plutonia? What did he have to say?
\Vas he located?”
“Yes, sir. He told the men I sent to round
him up that he picked up his fare on the cor-
ner of Sixth Avenue and Forty-eighth Street.
He didn’t know what house she come from.
She was walkin’ along, half-runnin’, when she
spied him and he spied her. She jumped in
and told him to drive as fast as he could to
the Plutonia. There she told him to wait for
her. While she was goin’ into the hotel, an-
other taxi drove up, and a man asks Messer-
man if his fare said wait. And he hands Mes-
serman fifty when Messerman answers yes, and
tells him to blow. Messerman’s one of these
night-hawks around the Tenderloin. He don’t
ask no questions nor make no parley when half
a century is in it for him. He drives off. But
he noticed the driver of the other car. He was
a guy named Cantrell, a big gun-man. He’s
been mixed up in a lot of gun-play, but we
never had the real goods on him. I’m havin’
the burg combed for him this minute.”
“Good l” Herkomer nodded approvingly.
His head dropped forward on his chest. It
might very well be that finding this gun-man


260 RANSOM !


Cantrell would solve the whole mystery, but
the chances were that it would not. Common
gun-men, known to the police, were not likely
to know much of the plans of masters in crime
such as those who must be with Waring in
this matter. But still, as Messerman had
pointed the way to Cantrell, Cantrell might
point the way to Waring.
And something else cropped up: it would
seem, from Messerman’s story,—and that story
had had previous corroboration from the taxi-
starter at the Plutonia,—that Waring and the
girl had been inveigled into a taxi that was not
theirs. This indicated there were forces within
forces, that— Herkomer lifted his head and
stared around him in despair. He might go
insane if he thought on this problem much
longer. But, and he smiled whimsically, it
had to be thought on.
An officer entered, announcing that a Ports-
mouth policeman had a prisoner for the Com-
missioner. Herkomer ordered them brought
in, and he wasted no time in his verbal assault
upon Peter Perkins, the half-wit who had
brought him the Conybear note on a day that


RAN SOM ! 261



seemed remote as the Commissioner’s birth, so
much had since transpired.
“Peter,” said the Commissioner severely,
“I’m ashamed of you.”
“Well,” said Peter, shufiiing his feet, “I
give you a good chance to gimme a big re-
ward, and you can’t call two dollars much, can
you? Leastwise, it’s a lot, but I kinda
thought that if I took my time I might get
more.”
Herkomer hid a smile. Peter had the cun-
ning of a naive child who, possessing a secret,
and knowing that it is important, hides it—
and yet does not realise how very important
it is.
“Well, if I gave you two dollars the last
time you were here, and you kept something
back from me, how much should I give you to
get everything you know?”
It was better to placate than to browbeat.
“Twenty dollars,” cried Peter.
A moment later, a twenty-dollar bill crum-
pled in his pocket, Peter was telling the true
history of the Conybear cry for help.
“Well,” he said, “I didn’t find the note at
four o’clock in the mornin’ like I said. It was


RAN SOM ! 263



home,’ wailed Peter, forgetful of the twenty
in his pocket.
Herkomer reminded him of his fortune, and
Peter’s tears were quickly dried. But nothing
more, by the shrewdest questioning, could be
elicited from the half-wit; he could not even
describe the man who had given him the note,
but was certain that it was not Conybear him-
self. And Herkomer dismissed the man, con~
vinced that he finally told the truth.
Another mystery! If the man had written
the note in Peter’s presence, Malcolm had been
right in declaring it a forgery. And, of
course, the signature might have been on the
paper beforehand—doubtless had been, in fact,
unless lVIalcolm was less a chirographic expert
than Herkomer believed him to be.
Once again Herkomer’s thoughts were in-
terrupted, this time by the telephone. The
speaker was one of those officers detailed to
find Cantrell, the gun-man chauffeur. . . .
Herkomer put down the receiver with a groan.
For Cantrell had been found; but in a hos-
pital—dead. Two men, so the officer said, had
been brought into the hospital in the early
hours of the morning. They had been in a


26-1- RANSOM!



taxicab, both apparently on the front seat:
they had been speeding along Riverside Drive,
had skidded in a pool formed by a slight
shower, had been overturned, and both were
dead. The man Cantrell had been identified
by his chaufi’eur’s license, and friends sum-
moned from the garage where he stored his car
had recognised his companion as a man named
Durney. Both, hurried to the hospital in an
ambulance, had died without recovering con-
sciousness. There was no evidence of foul
play. Accident had robbed Herkomer of a
link in his chain.
He gritted his teeth as he turned back to
his desk. Kelcey stood silently by, with no
suggestion to off er. Herkomer reviewed
eVents once more:
The note signed by Conybear; the disap-
pearance of the millionaires; Conybear’s asso-
ciation with “’aring in the matter of drawing
twenty-five thousand dollars from the bank;
the murders of the two policemen and the
Japanese servant in lVaring’s apartment;
“’aring’s swift departure from the Plutonia
with the girl “Doris Marchant;” Conybear’s
withdrawal of his gold-reserve from his vaults


RANSOM ! 265



this morning; the panic, which doubtless had
now temporarily ceased with the closing of the
Exchange for the day, but which would be-
gin with renewed fury to-morrow morning, un-
less—unless—
“A telegram, sir,” said Kelcey, loath to inter—
rupt his chief’s brown study.
Herkomer took it; he read it mechanically;
then, his eyes burning, he ran through it again.
It read:
Herkomer, Police Department, N. Y.
Peter Randall, Government agent in Paris, cabled
to-day great plot against finances of world frus—
trated by arrests made by him. Says has been em-
ploying this end discredited agent this Government
named Chesley. Advises us disregard Chesley’s
former record place ourselves his disposal and ad—
vise metropolitan police departments obey Chesley
and place forces at his disposal. Randall trusts
Chesley and Department will do as he says. Plot
concerns kidnapping of financiers. Has New York
panic spreading all over country any relation to this
information? Randall states sent two agents re-
cently to work with Chesley, girl named Claire Sorel
and French stool-pigeon named Carvajal. Latter
just arrived this country via Monia'm'a traveled


266 RANSOM!



under name of Carnot and was to report arrival to
you and disclose details. Have you heard from him?
The message was signed by the chief of the
secret service of the United States Govern-
ment, and even as Herkomer was feverishly
composing a reply, another telegram arrived
from the same person. This one stated that a
cable just received from the French police
stated that Peter Randall had been assaulted
by persons unknown just outside a cable-office
in Paris, and was now unconscious in his apart-
ments.
The business was narrowing down—but nar-
rowing down to what? Once again the Com-
missioner dropped into a study. Light began
to filter through the mystery here and there.
For instance, Malcolm, who ought to know,
had said that the Conybear appeal for rescue
was written on a note-paper peculiar to the
secret-service branch of the Government. The
discredited agent, Chesley, might have had such
paper in his possession. But if Chesley had
written the note, why hadn’t he merely called
the police on the telephone? It would have
been much simpler, and there would have been


RANSOM ! 267



no kidnappings, no murders. Herkomer shook
his head, puzzled.
And Claire Sorel! If she were a Govern-
ment agent, why had she disappeared from the
Plutonia this morning? And was her failure
to recognise .VVaring,—-or her recognition, or
whatever had been the underlying cause of
what Sinsabaugh had described as her peculiar
manner toward \Varing,—-—was that important
or unimportant? Did it have any bearing
whatsoever? It was so hard to know what was
important and what was not. It was safer,
perhaps, to figure everything as important.
Peter Randall could explain, but if the French
police, who undoubtedly knew of Randall’s
part in the exposure of the plots in Europe,
stated that he was unconscious, Randall was
surely unable to explain. For the French
police would be only too ready to give informa-
tion to their colleagues across the ocean. That
they did not volunteer it was proof sufficient
that they had none to give——none, at least, bear-
ing upon Randall’s or Chesley’s activities in
America.
Herkomer scratched out the message that
he had begun, a message that contained a de-


RANSOM! 26.0


fitting that description to some one else—to
the unidentified man, apparently a French-
man, who had been picked up dead, killed by
an automobile in front of Waring’s apartment-
house.
Pelletier's description would fit this man
Carnot, or Carva al. And Carva al’s descrip-
tion, then, would fit the victim of the automo-
bile accident. Was there a connection? The
man had been killed in front of I'Varing’s
apartment, killed fleeing from Waring. There
must be a connection—in which case it was
possible that Waring was playing Carvajal’s
part. But why, then, had he chosen the name
of Jacques Pelletier?
Herkomer’s brain, travelling all around the
edges of this mystery of mysteries, touched
again at a salient point. The man who had
given Peter Perkins the note was apparently,
from what Peter said, one of the Conybear
household. Only one member, besides Cony-
bear, of that household was missing. That
one was Henderson, the secretary-valet with
whom Herkomer had himself talked regarding
Conybear’s note. Could Henderson, the sec-
retary-valet, be Chesley, the secret agent? But


270 RANSOM!


if so— And Herkomer was up against the
everlasting questions again. Why hadn’t
Henderson, or Chesley, told Herkomer about
the note, that he had himself written it, when
Herkomer telephoned?
Herkomer bethought himself of something.
He telephoned Portsmouth and told the police
department there to meet the Portsmouth chief
and Peter Perkins on their arrival home, and
tell the chief to take Perkins to the Conybear
country-house and have the half-wit endeavour
to identify any member of the household as the
person who had given him the note. But the
Commissioner instinctively felt that this was a
waste of effort: Henderson, the missing man,
was the one that had written it. So instinct
told him, and Herkomer believed instinct.
The hours passed. Portsmouth reported
that Peter Perkins recognized no member of
the Conybear household as the writer of the
note. It must have been Henderson.
A deputation of the governors of the Stock
Exchange, headed by President Symons of
Amalgamated Products Company, called, to
beg, to beseech, to pray Herkomer for infor-
mation which he could not give them. They


RANSOM! 273



mon sense that a man like Sinsabaugh wouldn’t
stand for a woman like that unless she were
more than a doll. Had brains.”
“Well, what about it ?”
“Oh, nothing much,”—smiled Herkomer
wearily,—“except that she’s just given me a tip
that The woman Claire Sorel left a brooch
at Sinsabaugh’s house. It was engraved ‘From
S. to D.’ That didn’t mean much, either to me
or to Mr. Sinsabaugh. But a scrap of paper
that Mrs. Sinsabaugh found by her desk-tele-
phone in her boudoir—the telephone that Miss
Sorel had asked permission to use last night
It happened that Miss Sorel had once
told Mrs. Sinsabaugh that the brooch was a
gift to her. Naturally, when her husband
pointed out the engraving, Mrs. Sinsabaugh
thought that it was funny.
“In her boudoir to-night Mrs. Sinsabaugh
chanced upon the scrap of paper I just men—
tioned. Instead of berating her maid for un-
tidiness, she looked at the paper. On it was a
telephone-number, ‘Bryant 272727.’ No, I
didn’t write it down—three twenty-sevens
aren’t hard to remember. And on it also was
the name ‘Simon Bergson.’ That name doesn’t


RANSOM ! 275


Sinsabaugh, all by herself, is watching that
house into which, as she walked by ten minutes
ago, having dismissed her car at the corner, as
she reconnoitred,——bless her kid heart,—she
saw Burton Conybear walk!”
“Then what in the name of heaven are we
sitting here idling for?” cried the man from
Washington.
“Because the minute I hung up the ’phone
I pressed a button under my foot,” smiled Her-
komer, “and it’s taken until just about now for
reserves to pile into autos. I think we’ll find
them waiting for us if we go downstairs now.
(‘are to come along?”
“Care to—oh, gosh!” said the secret-service
man.
Dumbly but swiftly he followed Herkomer
downstairs—followed Herkomer, whose heart
sang a song, with a somewhat bitter refrain,
about as follows:
“And a woman did it by accident, by acci-
dent, by accident!”
Still, if he, Herkomer, hadn’t followed the
Waring trail, Mrs. Sinsabaugh would never
have had reason to suspect, would never have
examined the scrap of paper, would never have


CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Two automobiles, crowded with plain-clothes
men, stood at Sixth Avenue and Fiftieth
Street. Two others, similarly crowded, stood
at Fifth Avenue and the same street. Four
others debouched a score of officers within a
few doors of where Herkomer’s automobile
had stopped.
Kelcey, the secret-service man, Lieutenant
Dan McGaw and a plain-clothes man fol-
lowed Herkomer up the steps of the Clarkson
Private Hospital. A glance down the street,
just before he rang the bell, showed to Herko-
mer the slim figure of a woman expostulating
with one of the officers guarding the approach.
Doubtless Mrs. I-Villy Sinsabaugh, anxious to
be in at the death! For the electric light under
which she stood showed her to be most expen-
siver apparelled.
Mrs. Willy was game to the point of reck-
lessness. Herkomer smiled. But appreciation
of Mrs. Willy’s merits could wait a later time.
He rang the bell.
For a moment after the door opened Herko-
277


RANSOM! ‘279



his detaining clutch, and it was this that saved
him from being crushed between the two sheets
of steel. And the fact that the plain-clothes
man had thrust a night-stick forward—he had
had experience with gambling-dens as elabo-
rately guarded as this “hospital”——held the
two iron doors apart.
The mechanism was thus deranged. There
was no need of the hydraulic jacks that one of
the police automobiles carried. The doors
would undoubtedly have been a strong barrier
had they met, but parted—they rolled back
easily. Herkomer led the way into the hall
just in time to see the figure of the nurse turn
the corner at the head of the first flight of
stairs. ‘
He did not hesitate, but mounted the stairs.
The woman’s flight seemed to give certain
proof that Mrs. Sinsabaugh was right, but the
Commissioner could not help wondering what
would lie behind that turn, one flight above.
Nothing, he thought, could surprise him—and
yet he was surprised.
For standing in the doorway of a room stood
a lean, eagle-nosed, sunken-eyed man. The re-
volver that he held in his hand was to have


280 RANSOM!


been expected; it was his calm that amazed
Herkomer. Had he shouted, had he threat-
ened, Herkomer would have hurled himself
forward. But the unhurried utterance, the
calm evenness of the man’s voice, halted Her-
komer.
“Stop—please. You have found me. There
is no haste.”
He did not menace with his weapon. He
seemed to know that a threatening gesture with
it would mean an overwhelming rush that he
might stop in part, but not in its entirety.
The very fact that he held the revolver loosely
in his hand, at his side, made him seem more
dangerous.
Herkomer laboured for his breath, lost in
the dash upstairs. He held back, by his own
halt, the men behind him.
“You are under arrest,” he said. “It will go
easier with you if you put up that revolver.”
“So?” The lean man smiled cruelly. “I
think not.” He eyed Herkomer closely. “You
may take my word for it that the men you come
in search of are alive. They are here; there is
no need for haste. If you move toward
’7
HIE—~—


28:2 RANSOM!



had been kidnapped, had not created panic
merely to fatten his purse.
“Don’t worry, Mr. Conybear,” cried Herko-
mer. “This is the Commissioner of Police,
and—”
“I will tak, please,” said the man in the
doorway. “You will listen.”
His lips curled back as he surveyed Herko-
mer.
“You have caught me—yes. But to what
purpose, while I have Mr. Conybear—so?”
His revolver accented the word “so.”
“But you know we have you cornered,” said
Herkomer, persuasively, as though humouring
a child.
“Bah! There is a corner always open, one
corner in which your men cannot stand. A
pressure of a trigger, and I have passed
through the door in that corner—taking your
Conybear with me.”
Out of the side of his mouth Kelcey spoke.
Barely audible, the words reached Herkomer’s
ear.
“I can get him through my pocket, Com-
missioner. Say the word.”


RANSOM ! 288



Herkomer, by the faintest movement of his
head, negatived the suggestion. Kelcey might
miss, and Conybear then would die.
“But you don’t want to die just yet, do
you?” asked Herkomer.
The lean man shrugged his shoulders. “Now
or later! What matters it when one has
failed .l” He eyed Herkomer. “If one has
failed. Listen!” His words were brisk, crisp,
now, no longer sardonically weary.
“How much is Mr. Conybear worth to you
-——alive?”
Herkomer hesitated. When he answered, he
spoke to Conybear. If there were to be risk
in this rescue, Conybear ought to be permitted
to buy insurance against risk. Compromising
with the law, with justice, is wrong, but human
life is very valuable to the possessor.
“What do you say, Mr. Conybear?” he
asked. It was absurd to haggle with a mad-
man, but—it might be more absurd not to do
so. Herkomer was the sort of man that hesi-
tated to strikea friend with a club in order
to kill a mosquito enjoying a siesta on the head
of the friend.
“Say? Why you blasted nincompoop, you’ve


284 RANSOM!


found me, haven’t you? And if you can’t drill
a hole in him before he can get me-——good
Lord, I’ve toed the mark for this crazy lunatic,
with a gun sticking in my ribs or within an
inch of my head, until I’m sick of it. But I
didn’t have no gun at all when they handed
me this deal! You got a. gun! Go to it,
and—b”
Herkomer’s revolver was out, and he was
firing as he ran forward, drowning Conybear’s
words with the crash. Beyond one shot at the
Commissioner, the lean man paid no attention
to Herkomer’s rush, or to his shots; he leaped
into the room. And Herkomer, gaining the
doorway, felt his right hand grow suddenly
numb; his revolver clattered to the floor, and
he stood there blocking the way of his follow-
ers.
It was weeks before he could gain proper
perspective to revisualise that room again, be-
fore he could reduce the whole picture to its
component parts. Then he could get in detail
what just now he got only in the mass.
Burton Conybear sat in an armchair, his legs
and hands manacled. He was moving his body
from side to side to avoid the shots that the


288 RANSOM!


the girls make a fuss over a handsome young
feller with a wounded hand? You bet! Smile.”
’ But Conybear’s words did more than make
Herkomer slightly ashamed of his regret over
a pastime only temporarily lost; it made him
realise clearly all that had happened, or that
must have happened.
“Kelcey, sketch in the bare places, will you ?”
Kelcey grinned. “Well, there’s one guy on
the way to the cemetery—at least he will be to-
morrow.”
“Shot?”
“No.” And the good-natured Kelcey’s tone
was slightly regretful as he made the admis-
sion. “Apoplexy. Leastwise, so the doc’
says.”
He nodded at a bearded man in the back-
ground, who bowed acquiescence.
“Yes, but then?”
“Why, then, Commissioner, why, then, you
see——”
Herkomer wondered why Kelcey should
speak in so singsong a voice. He suddenly
realised that he was being picked up and car-
ried. He knew what they had done. They’d
given him an injection of some sort to ease


RANSOM! ‘ 289

him, and now he was going to sleep, and he
wished they had let him alone. But wishes
rarely alter facts. Herkomer was asleep be-
fore his bearers reached the foot of the stairs.
But it was a calm, restful sleep, undisturbed
by harassing dreams.


292 RAN SOM !



fend himself—I was sure that this man Berg-
son was responsible for my disgrace. Berg-
son was then in the business of procuring, for
any government that hired him, the secrets,
military or naval, of other governments. A
secret of this government was stolen. I was
accused of selling it. I could not prove that
I had not done so.
“No matter. It is all over now. The black
cloud—” He gulped, and went ahead again.
“One friend in the service I had who trusted
me: Peter Randall. But he knew, as well as
I, that there is no return to employment in the
secret service when one has once been dropped
-—unless under most exceptional circumstances.
Randall thought he saw a way—if I would
work and wait.
“He told me- facts I verified. A certain
group of fanatics had decided that the world
was run wrongly. They intended to remedy
matters. They had gathered around them hun-
dreds, thousands of followers—some who were
frankly out for gain, others who were altruists,
though cranks. Those out for gain were paid
for their services, and knew little. I joined this
society. I became acquainted with Bergson,


RANSOM ! 298

who did not know me, and who, I soon learned,
was to handle the American end of this so~
ciety’s plans for the readjustment of the world.
“I met Bergson in Paris, where Randall was
located. Randall had obtained two years’ leave
of absence in which to ferret out this menace
to society. Randall vouched for me. It was
easy, for Randall was high in the society’s
councils.
“I came to this country with Bergson. I
proposed that I afl‘iliate myself somehow with
Burton Conybear. By forging recommenda-
tions I managed to gain entrance to his em-
ploy. The rest was easy, only I did not know
the society’s plans. Indeed, it was only after
Mr. Conybear’s kidnapping that I realised that
Bergson was playing his own associates false,
that he was not working for the imagined good
of humanity, but was a schemer, working to
enrich his own pockets. I thought that the
kidnapping of Conybear wasbut the beginning.
I looked for infinitely bigger things, and de-
layed action in the hope of landing the bigger
game. I did not believe, nor did Randall, that
Bergson was more than a minor figure in the


RANSOM ! 295



tem was builded on sand, that it was a house
of cards. The only true values would be prop-
erty and labour. The medium of exchange,
money, would be dispensed with. Property
and labour would be the mediums of ex-
change.”
“Back to the days of barter and exchange.
All civilisation set back. Absurd!” said Her-
komer.
“Fanatics are rarely logicians,” smiled Ches~
ley. “Anyway, that was the plan. And it was
to be worked out by capturing the leading fi-
nanciers of the world and forcing them to sell
their securities, creating panic.
“This much I gleaned. But I wanted to
know definitely, to capture the fanatics when
their guilt was established. And the only way
I could learn anything was by being one of
them. I spied upon Conybear, that I might
be able to give Bergson definite, valuable in-
formation. I hired for him two gun-men, who
I assured him, wouldn’t stop at anything for
the proper reward. They wouldn’t, either, but
before they ever committed any violence I
hoped to have them behind the bars, to be able
to use them as witnesses. Unfortunately, in


RANSOM I 307



as you did had put me under an obligation to
him—I’d have said that person was insane.”
“Obligation?”
“Sure! I ain’t had an experience with gun-
men since I was twenty-two, and it’s great to
learn that I ain’t lost my pep!”
He cast a grinning glance about the room,
and then he left. The office seemed smaller
after he had gone. He took with him some-
thing of elemental bigness. There was silence,
broken after a moment by a question from
Claire Sorel.
“My uncle is out of danger?” she asked the
man from Washington.
“He is—absolutely,” was the reassuring re-
sponse.
“And will I be needed to testify?” she asked
Herkomer.
The Commissioner shook his head. “Mur-
der and conspiracy to murder is a charge that
will send all the gang to jail. The kidnapping
can be dropped. They’ll pay enough as it is.
And we have ample testimony against the mur-
derers without you.” He smiled quizzically.
“You and Mr. Waring. although you have
been through a lot together, although you were


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Pole Baker. By Will N. Harben.
Pool of Flame, The. By Louis Joseph Vance.
Port of Adventure, The. By C. N. and A. M. Williamson.
Postmaster, The. By Joseph C. Lincoln.
Power and the Glory, The. By Grace McGowan Cooke.
Prairie Wife, The. By Arthur Stringer.
Price of Love, The. By Arnold Bennett.
Price of the Prairie, The. By Margaret Hill McCarter.
Prince of Sinners. By A. E. Phillips Oppenheim.
Princes Passes, The. By C. N. and A. M. Williamson.
Princess Virginia, The. By C. N. and A. N. Williamson.
Promise, The. By J. B. Hendryx.
Purple Parasol, The. By Geo. B. McCutcheon.
Ranch at the Wolverine, The. By B. M. Bower.
Ranching for Sylvia. By Harold Bindloss.
Real Man, The. By Francis Lynde.
Reason Why, The. By Elinor Glyn.
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