Complete Weird Tales of Robert W Chambers, page 1025
“Moreover, you are invited to leave the United States at your early convenience.
“France, England, Russia, and Italy are closed to you. Without doubt you understand that. Also, doubtless you have no desire to venture into Germany, Austria, Bulgaria, or Turkey. Scandinavia remains open to you, and practically no other country except Spain, because we do not permit you to go to Mexico or to Central or South America. Do you comprehend? We do not permit it.
“Therefore, hold your tongue and control your furor scribendi while in New York. And make arrangements to take the next Danish steamer for Christiania.
“This is a friendly warning. For if you are still here in the United States two weeks after you have received this letter, other measures will be taken in your regard which will effectually dispose of your troublesome presence.
“The necessity which forces us to radical action in this affair is regrettable, but entirely your own fault.
“You have, from time to time during the last two years, received from us overtures of an amicable nature. You have been approached with discretion and have been offered every necessary guarantee to cover an understanding with us.
“You have treated our advances with frivolity and contempt. And what have you gained by your defiance?
“Our patience and good nature has reached its limits. We shall ask nothing further of you; we deliver you our orders hereafter. And our orders are to leave New York immediately.
“Yet, even now, at the eleventh hour, it may not be too late for us to come to some understanding if you change your attitude entirely and show a proper willingness to negotiate with us in all good faith.
“But that must be accomplished within the two weeks’ grace given you before you depart.
“You know how to proceed. If you try to play us false you had better not have been born. If you deal honestly with us your troubles are over.
“This is final.
“THE WATCHER.”
CHAPTER XVI
THE WATCHER
“THE WATCHER,” REPEATED Barres, studying the typewritten signature for a moment longer. Then he looked at Westmore: “What do you think of that, Jim?”
Westmore, naturally short tempered, became very red, got to his feet, and began striding about the studio as though some sudden blaze of inward anger were driving him into violent motion.
“The thing to do,” he said, “is to catch this ‘Watcher’ fellow and beat him up. That’s the way to deal with blackmailers — catch ’em and beat ’em up — vermin of this sort — this blackmailing fraternity! — I haven’t anything to do; I’ll take the job!”
“We’d better talk it over first,” suggested Barres. “There seem to be several ways of going about it. One way, of course, is to turn detective and follow Thessa around town. And, as you say, spot any man who dogs her and beat him up very thoroughly. That’s your way, Jim. But Thessa, unfortunately, doesn’t desire to be featured, and you can’t go about beating up people in the streets of New York without inviting publicity.”
Westmore came back and stood near Thessalie, who looked up at him from her seat on the Chinese couch with visible interest:
“Mr. Westmore?”
“Yes?”
“Garry is quite right about the way I feel. I don’t want notoriety. I can’t afford it. It would mean stirring up every French Government agent here in New York. And if America should ever declare war on Germany and become an ally of France, then your own Secret Service here would instantly arrest me and probably send me to France to stand trial.”
She bent her pretty head, adding in a quiet voice:
“Extradition would bring a very swift end to my career. With the lying evidence against me and a Senator of France to corroborate it by perjury — ask yourselves, gentlemen, how long it would take a military court to send me to the parade in the nearest caserne!”
“Do you mean they’d shoot you?” demanded Westmore, aghast.
“Any court-martial to-day would turn me over to a firing squad!”
“You see,” said Barres, turning to Westmore, “this is a much more serious matter than a case of ordinary blackmail.”
“Why not go to our own Secret Service authorities and lay the entire business before them?” asked Westmore excitedly.
But Thessalie shook her head:
“The evidence against me in Paris is overwhelming. My dossier alone, as it now stands, would surely condemn me without corroborative evidence. Your people here would never believe in me if the French Government forwarded to them a copy of my dossier from the secret archives in Paris. As for my own Government — —” She merely shrugged.
Barres, much troubled, glanced from Thessalie to Westmore.
“It’s rather a rotten situation,” he said. “There must be, of course, some sensible way to tackle it, though I don’t quite see it yet. But one thing is very plain to me: Thessa ought to remain here with us for the present. Don’t you think so, Jim?”
“How can I, Garry?” she asked. “You have only one room, and I couldn’t turn you out — —”
“I can arrange that,” interposed Westmore, turning eagerly to Barres with a significant gesture toward the door at the end of the studio. “There’s the solution, isn’t it?”
“Certainly,” agreed Barres; and to Thessalie, in explanation: “Westmore’s two bedrooms adjoin my studio — beyond that wall. We have merely to unlock those folding doors and throw his apartment into mine, making one long suite of rooms. Then you may have my room and I’ll take his spare room.”
She still hesitated.
“I am very grateful, Garry, and I admit that I am becoming almost afraid to remain entirely alone, but — —”
“Send for your effects,” he insisted cheerfully. “Aristocrates will move my stuff into Westmore’s spare room. Then you shall take my quarters and be comfortable and well guarded with Aristocrates and Selinda on one side of you, and Jim and myself just across the studio.” He cast a sombre glance at Westmore: “I suppose those rats will ultimately trail her to this place.”
Westmore turned to Thessalie:
“Where are your effects?” he asked.
She smiled forlornly:
“I gave up my lodgings this morning, packed everything, and came here, rather scared.” A little flush came over her face and she lifted her dark eyes and met Westmore’s intent gaze. “You are very kind,” she said. “My trunks are at the Grand Central Station — if you desire to make up my disconcerted mind for me. Do you really want me to come here and stay a few days?”
Westmore suppressed himself no longer:
“I won’t let you go!” he said. “I’m worried sick about you!” And to Barres, who sat slightly amazed at his friend’s warmth:
“Do you suppose any of those dirty dogs have traced the trunks?”
Thessalie said:
“I’ve never yet been able to conceal anything from them.”
“Probably, then,” said Barres, “they have traced your luggage and are watching it.”
“Give me your checks, anyway,” said Westmore. “I’ll go at once and get your baggage and bring it here. If they’re watching for you it will jolt them to see a man on the job.”
Barres nodded approval; Thessalie opened her purse and handed Westmore the checks.
“You both are so kind,” she murmured. “I have not felt so sheltered, so secure in many, many months.”
Westmore, extremely red again, controlled his emotions — whatever they were — with a visible effort:
“Don’t worry for one moment,” he said. “Garry and I are going to settle this outrageous business for you. Now, I’m off to find your trunks. And if you could give me a description of any of these fellows who follow you about — —”
“Please — you are not to beat up anybody!” she reminded him, with a troubled smile.
“I’ll remember. I promise you not to.”
Barres said:
“I think one of them is a tall, bony, one-eyed man, who has been hanging around here pretending to peddle artists’ materials.”
Thessalie made a quick gesture of assent and of caution:
“Yes! His name is Max Freund. I have found it impossible to conceal my whereabouts from him. This man, with only one eye, appears to be a friend of the superintendent, Soane. I am not certain that Soane himself is employed by this gang of blackmailers, but I believe that his one-eyed friend may pay him for any scraps of information concerning me.”
“Then we had better keep an eye on Soane,” growled Westmore. “He’s no good; he’ll take graft from anybody.”
“Where is his daughter, Dulcie?” asked Thessalie. “Is she not your model, Garry?”
“Yes. She’s in my room now, lying down. This morning it was pretty hot in here, and Dulcie fainted on the model stand.”
“The poor child!” exclaimed Thessalie impulsively. “Could I go in and see her?”
“Why, yes, if you like,” he replied, surprised at her warm-hearted interest. He added, as Thessalie rose: “She is really all right again. But go in if you like. And you might tell Dulcie she can have her lunch in there if she wants it; but if she’s going to dress she ought to be about it, because it’s getting on toward the luncheon hour.”
So Thessalie went swiftly away down the corridor to knock at the door of the bedroom, and Barres walked out with Westmore as far as the stairs.
“Jim,” he said very soberly, “this whole business looks ugly to me. Thessa seems to be seriously entangled in the meshes of some blackmailing spider who is sewing her up tight.”
“It’s probably a tighter web than we realise,” growled Westmore. “It looks to me as though Miss Dunois has been caught in the main net of German intrigue. And that the big spider in Berlin did the spinning.”
“That’s certainly what it looks like,” admitted the other in a grave voice. “I don’t believe that this is merely a local matter — an affair of petty, personal vengeance: I believe that the Hun is actually afraid of her — afraid of the evidence she might be able to furnish against certain traitors in Paris.”
Westmore nodded gloomily:
“I’m pretty sure of it, too. They’ve tried, apparently, to win her over. They’ve tried, also, to drive her out of this country. Now, they mean to force her out, or perhaps kill her! Good God! Garry, did you ever hear of such filthy impudence as this entire German propaganda in America?”
“Go and get her trunks,” said Barres, deeply worried. “By the time you fetch ’em back here, lunch will be ready. Afterward, we’d all better get together and talk over this unpleasant situation.”
Westmore glanced at his watch, turned and went swinging away in his quick, energetic stride. Barres walked slowly back to the studio.
There was nobody there. Thessalie had not yet returned from her visit to Dulcie Soane.
The Prophet, however, came in presently, his tail politely hoisted. An agreeable aroma from the kitchen had doubtless allured him; he made an amicable remark to Barres, suffered himself to be caressed, then sprang to the carved table — his favourite vantage point for observation — and gazed solemnly toward the dining-room.
For half an hour or more, Barres fussed and pottered about in the rather aimless manner of all artists, shifting canvases and stacking them against the wall, twirling his wax Arethusa around to inspect her from every possible and impossible angle, using clouds of fixitive on such charcoal studies as required it, scraping away meditatively at a too long neglected palette.
He was already frankly concerned about Thessalie, and the more he considered her situation the keener grew his apprehension.
Yet he, like all his fellow Americans, had not yet actually persuaded himself to believe in spies.
Of course he read about them and their machinations in the daily papers; the spy scare was already well developed in New York; yet, to him and to the great majority of his fellow countrymen, people who made a profession of such a dramatic business seemed unreal — abstract types, not concrete examples of the human race — and he could not believe in them — could neither visualise such people nor realise that they existed outside melodrama or the covers of a best-seller.
There is an incredulity which knows yet refuses to believe in its own knowledge. It is very American and it represented the paradoxical state of mind of this deeply worried young man, as he stood there in the studio, scraping away mechanically at his crusted palette.
Then, as he turned to lay it aside, through the open studio door he saw a strange, bespectacled man looking in at him intently.
An unpleasant shock passed through him, and his instinct started him toward the open door to close it.
“Excuse,” said he of the thick spectacles; and Barres stopped short:
“Well, what is it?” he asked sharply.
The man, who was well dressed and powerfully built, squinted through his spectacles out of little, inflamed and pig-like eyes.
“Miss Dunois iss here?” he enquired politely. “I haff a message — —”
“What is your name?”
“Excuse, please. My name iss not personally known to Miss Dunois — —”
“Then what is your business with Miss Dunois?”
“Excuse, please. It iss of a delicacy — of a nature quite private, iff you please.”
Barres inspected him in hostile silence for a moment, then came to a swift conclusion.
“Very well. Step inside,” he said briefly.
“I thank you, I will wait here — —”
“Step inside!” snapped Barres.
Startled into silence, the man only blinked at him. Under the other’s searching, suspicious gaze, the small, pig-like eyes were now shifting uneasily; then, as Barres took an abrupt step forward, the man shrank away and stammered out something about a letter which he was to deliver to Miss Dunois in private.
“You say you have a letter for Miss Dunois?” demanded Barres, now determined to get hold of him.
“I am instructed to giff it myself to her in private, all alone — —”
“Give it to me!”
“I am instruc — —”
“Give it to me, I tell you! — and come inside here! Do you hear what I’m saying to you?”
The spectacled man lost most of his colour as Barres started toward him.
“Excuse!” he faltered, backing off down the corridor. “I giff you the letter!” And he hastily thrust his hand into the side pocket of his coat. But it was a pistol he poked under the other’s nose — a shiny, lumpy weapon, clutched most unsteadily.
“Hands up and turn me once around your back!” whispered the man hoarsely. “Quick! — or I shoot you!” — as the other, astounded, merely gazed at him. The man had already begun to back away again, but as Barres moved he stopped and cursed him:
“Put them up your hands!” snarled the spectacled man, with a final oath. “Keep your distance or I kill you!”
Barres heard himself saying, in a voice not much like his own:
“You can’t do this to me and get away with it! It’s nonsense! This sort of thing doesn’t go in New York!”
Suddenly his mind grew coldly, terrible clear:
“No, you can’t get away with it!” he concluded aloud, in the calm, natural voice of conviction. “Your stunt is scaring women! You try to keep clear of men — you dirty, blackmailing German crook! I’ve got your number! You’re the ‘Watcher’! — you murderous rat! You’re afraid to shoot!”
It was plain that the spectacled man had not discounted anything of this sort — plain now, to Barres, that if, indeed, murder actually had been meant, it was not his own murder that had been planned with that big, blunt, silver-plated pistol, now wavering wildly before his eyes.
“I blow your face off!” whispered the stranger, beginning to back away again, and ghastly pale.
“Keep out of thiss! I am not looking for you. Get you back; step once again inside that door away! — —”
But Barres had already jumped for him, had almost caught him, was reaching for him — when the man hurled the pistol straight at his face. The terrific impact of the heavy weapon striking him between the eyes dazed him; he stumbled sideways, colliding with the wall, and he reeled around there a second.
But that second’s leeway was enough for the bespectacled stranger. He turned and ran like a deer. And when Barres reached the staircase the whitewashed hall below was still echoing with the slam of the street grille.
Nevertheless, he hurried down, but found the desk-chair empty and Soane nowhere visible, and continued on to the outer door, more or less confused by the terrific blow on the head.
Of course the bespectacled man had disappeared amid the noonday foot-farers now crowding both sidewalks east and west, on their way to lunch.
Barres walked slowly back to the desk, still dazed, but now thoroughly enraged and painfully conscious of a heavy swelling where the blow had fallen on his forehead.
In the superintendent’s quarters he found Soane, evidently just awakened after a sodden night at Grogan’s, trying to dress.
Barres said:
“There is nobody at the desk. Either you or Miss Kurtz should be on duty. That is the rule. Now, I’m going to tell you something: If I ever again find that desk without anybody behind it, I shall go to the owners of this building and tell them what sort of superintendent you are! And maybe I’ll tell the police, also!”
“Arrah, then, Misther Barres — —”
“That’s all!” said Barres, turning on his heel. “Anything more from you and you’ll find yourself in trouble!”
And he went up stairs.
The lumpy pistol still lay there in the corridor; he picked it up and took it into the studio. The weapon was fully loaded. It seemed to be of some foreign make — German or Austrian, he judged by the marking which had been almost erased, deliberately obliterated, it appeared to him.
He placed it in his desk, seated himself, explored his bruises gingerly with cautious finger-tips, concluded that the bridge of his nose was not broken, then threw himself back in his armchair for some grim and concentrated thinking.
