The Black Eagle Mystery

Iola came back, her eyes big, her expression wondering.

"What do you suppose that means?" she said.

I didn't know exactly myself but – notes, endorsee dead! – it had a bad sound. As Iola reached down her lunch box and tied it up, talking uneasily about the man and what he'd wanted, I remembered the gossip in New Jersey when Miss Whitehall started her land scheme. There'd been rumors then that maybe she was backed, and if Hollings Harland had been behind it – My goodness! you couldn't tell what might happen. But I wasn't going to say anything discouraging to Iola, so to change the subject I moved to the door of the private office and looked in.

"Why does Mr. Ford call this the surgery?"

At the mention of the managing clerk Iola brightened up and said with a smirk:

"Because it's where Miss Whitehall chloroforms her clients with her beauty and performs the operation of separating them from their money. He's always saying cute things like that."

We stood in the doorway and looked in. It was a smaller room than the others, but furnished just as richly, with a mahogany center table, big leather-covered armchairs and photographs of foreign views on the walls. In one corner was an elegant, gold-embossed screen, that, when I spied behind it, I saw hid a washstand. It was the last room of the suite and had only one door that led into the office we'd been sitting in. In the outside wall was a window from which you could see way over the city – a wonderful view.

I walked to it and looked out. Over the roofs and chimneys I caught a glimpse of the Hudson, a silvery gleam, and the Hoboken hills beyond. Pressing my forehead against the glass I glimpsed down the sheer drop of the walls to the roof of a church – a flat, black oblong with a squatty dome at one end – squeezed as close as it could get against the lower stories. Back of that were old houses, dwellings that would soon be swept away, the yards behind them narrow strips with the separating fences as small as lines made by a pencil.

I was so interested that for a moment I forgot Iola, but she brought me back with a jerk.

"It was in the room above this that Mr. Harland was sitting with Mr. Barker, before it happened."

"You don't say," I answered. "Is it like this?"

"Exactly the same. I've seen it – one day when the boss was away and I went up with Della Franks. They were in there just as we are in here and then he went out this way – "

The door had been partly pushed to and she started to illustrate how he had left the room, brushing round its edge. Something caught her, there was a sound of ripping and she stopped, clapping her hand on her back:

"There go my pleats – Ding it!" she craned round over her shoulder trying to see the back of her skirt. "What's got me? Oh, the key. Well what do you make of that – caught me like a hook."

She drew her dress off the key, which fell out of the lock on to the floor.

"It's only ripped," I said consolingly. "I can pin it for you."

"Well, there's always something to be thankful for," she said, as I pinned her up. "But it's an unlucky day, I can feel that. That key's never before been on the inside of the door." She bent and picked it up. "I'd like to know what smart Aleck changed it."

"Probably the scrubwoman."

"I guess so," she grumbled, "put it on the wrong side where it waited patiently and then got its revenge on me. Such is life among the lowly."

That night Babbitts was late for dinner. I expected it but Isabella, who says she never lived out except in families where the husband comes home at six like a Christian, was getting restive about the chops, when he finally showed up, tired as a dog.

"My Lord!" he said, as I helped him off with his coat. "What a day!"

"Because of the suicide?"

"Outcome of the suicide and all the rest of it. The wildest panic on the Street. The Copper Pool's gone smash. Let's have something to eat. I've had no lunch and I'm famished."

When we were at table and the edge off his hunger he told me more:

"It began this morning, and this afternoon when there was still no trace of Barker – Gee whizz! it was an avalanche."

"You mean he's gone? Disappeared?"

"That's the way it looks. They had their suspicions when they couldn't find him last night. And today – nobody knows a thing about him at his house or his office, can't account for it, don't understand. Then we turned up something that looked like a clincher. One of his motors, a limousine, and his chauffeur, fellow called Heney, have disappeared too."

"What do they say about that at the house?"

"Same thing – know nothing. Nobody was in the garage from six to half-past eight. When the other men who sleep there came back Heney and the limousine were gone."

"Did anyone see Barker at the Black Eagle Building?"

"No – that's the strongest proof that he's decamped. You'd suppose with such a scene as that going on he'd have shown up. But not a soul's been found who saw him there. If he wanted to slip out quietly he could easily have done it. Jerome and the Franks girl say they were so paralyzed they never gave him another thought and he could have passed behind them, as they stood in the corridor, and gone down by the side stairs. There's another flight round the corner on the branch hall. The street on that side was deserted – the boys say every human being in the neighborhood was round on the Broadway front."

"But, but," I stammered, for I couldn't understand it all, "what's he done? What's the reason for his going?"

"Reason!" said Babbitts with a snort. "Believe me, there's reason enough. Somebody's welched on the Copper Pool and they think it's he and that he's disappeared with twenty million."

"Twenty million! How could he?"

"By selling out on the rest of the crowd. They think he's been selling copper to the Pool itself of which he was the head."

"Was that what he and Mr. Harland were supposed to be quarreling about yesterday afternoon?"

"Yes. The idea now is that Harland, who was one of the Copper crowd, suspected and accused him, that there was a fierce interview in the course of which the lawyer realized he was beaten and ruined."

"Good gracious!" I said. "What are they going to do with him?"

"If he doesn't show up, go after him. A group of ruined financiers doesn't kneel down and pray for their money to come back. And they've got a man looking after their interests who's a lightning striker. A friend of yours. Guess who?"

"Wilbur Whitney!" I crowed.

"The same," said Babbitts.

"Then," I cried, "they'll have him and the twenty millions served up on a salver before the week's out."

If you don't know the story of the Hesketh Mystery you don't know who Wilbur Whitney is, so I'll tell you here. He's one of the biggest lawyers in New York and one of the biggest men anywhere. You'd as soon suspect that an insignificant atom like me would know a man like him as that the palace ashman would know the Czar of Russia, but I do, well – I guess I'm not stretching things if I say we're friends. The Babbitts and the Whitneys don't exchange calls, but they think a lot of each other just the same. And it's my doing, little Molly's – yes, sir, the ex-telephone girl. In the Hesketh case I did a job for Mr. Whitney that brought us together, and ever since it's been kindnesses from the big house off Fifth Avenue, to the little flat on Ninety-fifth Street. He doesn't forget – the real eighteen-carat people never do – and he'll send me tickets for the opera one night and tip off Soapy to a bit of news so he'll get a scoop the week after. Oh, he's just grand!

And right in his office – Mr. Whitney's assistant this year – is one of our realest, truest, dearest pals, Jack Reddy. If this is your first acquaintance with me you don't know much about him and I'll have to give you a little sketch of him for he's got a lot to do with this story.

To look at he's just all right, brown with light-colored hair and gray eyes, over six feet and not an ounce of fat on him. It's not because he's my friend that I'm saying all this, everybody agrees on it. He's thirty years old now and not married. That's because of a tragedy in his life: the girl he loved was killed nearly three years ago. It's a long story – I can't stop to tell it to you – but it broke him up something dreadful, though I and Babbitts and all of us know it was better that he shouldn't have married her. Ever since I've been hoping he'd meet up with his real affinity, someone who'd be the right woman for him. But he hasn't so far. Babbitts says the girl isn't born I'd think good enough – but I don't know. I guess in the ninety millions of people we've got scattered round this vast republic there's a lady that'll fill the bill.

Once I had a crush on him – Babbitts teases me about it now – but it all faded away when Himself came along with his curly blond hair and his dear, rosy, innocent face. But Jack Reddy's still a sort of hero to me. He showed up so fine in those old dark days and he's showed up fine ever since – don't drop off his pedestal and have to be boosted back. I've put several people on pedestals and seen them so unsteady it made me nervous, but he's riveted on.

He's got a country place out in New Jersey – Firehill – where he used to live. But since he's been with Mr. Whitney he stays in town, only going out there in summer. His apartment's down near Gramercy Park – an elegant place – where his two old servants, David and Joanna Gilsey, keep house for him and treat him like he was their only son. Babbitts and I go there often, and Gee, we do have some eats!

"Well," I said, wagging my head proud and confident at Babbitts, "if Wilbur Whitney and Jack Reddy are out to find that Barker man, they'll do it if he burrows through to China."

CHAPTER III

JACK TELLS THE STORY