A Forced Acceptance

Chapter I. The Biggest Thing In Months

I WAS going to take a vacation. I had earned it and I needed it. Furthermore, I had made all of the necessary and delightful preparations. Since the one thing which I yearned for just then was to get out of the city, to forget it and the grim, sordid sort of thing with which I rubbed elbows day after day, I was impatient to be off for four weeks in the Canadian Rockies. I wanted nothing in the world but to cleanse my lungs of the atmosphere of crooks, criminals, and courts, and to breathe a little fresh air and whip a stream. I know of for the speckled beauties. That was six months ago. I haven't had my vacation yet; I have sworn not to take it until I have done a certain bit of work, and so God and Tom Reagan know best if I'll ever take it.

I had made all of the arrangements at the New York end of the proposed adventure; my imagination was already busy with the details of the final preparations when I should get down from the Canadian Pacific in the little town of Moose Jaw. I had cleaned and oiled a long-dusty rifle; I had disinterred a rod from the chaos of a basement store-room; in fancy I had chosen saddle horse and pack horse and bought bacon and coffee in Moose Jaw. These and many other wonderful things had I done, and to-morrow, from a speeding observation platform, I was going to blow contemptuous whiffs of smoke back toward Broadway. And then, as I was smiling in slippered content over my ideal camp pitched in the ideal valley upon the ideal stream, the furious ringing of a doorbell heralded a miserable little boy in uniform with a yellow envelope.

“To-morrow,” I remember having thought as I drew out the folded bit of paper, “I'll be scooting for a land where telegrams are not.”

It was from my chief. He was now speeding from Chicago back to New York, and he must see me in the morning, nine o'clock sharp.

I knew what that meant. Ferguson's laconic note had spilled over a bit into the curt statement: “It's the biggest thing in months.” I gave the miserable little boy a quarter and told him that I had a notion to spank him. But I vowed when he had gone about his business and I had gone to bed that, Chief Ferguson or no Chief Ferguson, I was going to take my train to-morrow for Moose Jaw.

At nine o'clock sharp I was in Ferguson's office. It is a square office, furnished principally by a square table and tenanted, as I came in, by a square man. Ferguson is that from his jaw to his fingers, from his shoulders to his character. I saw in his penetrating eyes that he had been waiting for me and that he was very much in earnest about something. He jammed his hands deep down into his pockets, leaned back in his chair until his cigar aimed at the ceiling after his manner when deeply thoughtful, and when I was seated made the blunt statement:

“The Merchants' National Bank of San Franscisco has been looted of a hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars.”

I waited for him to go on, and when he got ready he did.

“You were figuring on some sort of a vacation, weren't you, Steele?”

“Yes,” I answered. And to be sure that he caught my point of view, I added, “I am.”

“I see. Now, listen to this.”

He sketched the details of the robbery. In spite of me I began to feel interested. From start to finish, through all of its details, the job had been engineered by men who knew their business. Many months before, upon the twelfth of December, to be exact, they had made their beginning. That is an old story, and the papers have pretty well worn it out. Suffice to say here that upon the twelfth of December a man had signed a year's lease for a first-floor suite of rooms in the big office building adjoining the Merchant's National Bank. These rooms had been fitted up as real-estate and insurance offices. The man who had negotiated the lease and who at the time posed as the president of the company doing the real-estate stunt, had made his heavy advance payment and hadn't been seen since. One of the two other men who managed the affairs of the office saw to the subsequent payments. So far as could be ascertained now they had been actively engaged in the pursuit which the sign upon their windows informed the public they were occupied with. They had hired three girls for routine work, and their books showed that they had been making money.

They had used three of the four office rooms. The fourth had never opened to the public. The first man from outside to come into it was the bank employee, who, the morning following the robbery, crawled into it through the fifty-foot-long tunnel running underground from the bank vaults,

“They've been patient and they've been careful,” Ferguson admitted. “There was a lot of dirt in the back office, and a lot must have gone out in suit cases. What do you think of it, Steele?”

“Expenses must have been considerable,” I grunted, growing angry with myself for allowing a little filmy mist to rise and obscure my mental vision of the ideal camp. “But a hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars will go a long way. I guess it paid.”

“Expenses must have been considerable,” the chief repeated after me. “It takes capital to go into business that way. Have you got a guess yet?”

No, I hadn't. My interest had been a quick little spurt, flaring up, dying down, dead now, I thought. I thought more longingly than ever of Moose Jaw and what lay beyond. That, I suppose, is the reason that I didn't think of Reagan at all until the chief sprung his little surprise on me. He swung about in his chair, bringing his square-jawed face to bear upon me, his unlighted cigar clamped tight in his big, strong teeth. For a moment he stared at me as he stared that first day, seven years ago, when he put me on his pay roll. Then he drew open a drawer of his table, brought out the red-backed book which I knew so well, and opened it at a place marked with a strip of paper. He passed the book across the table to me, his finger indicating the words I was to read. And then, of course, I remembered Tom Reagan.

The entry, made in Ferguson's fine hand, was as follows:

Merchants' National Bank, San Francisco. Reports that with the morning mail, December 10th, came a typewritten demand for $10,000. Two days given in which to make the payment.

“So,” I said, staring back at Ferguson, “it's 'King' Reagan again?”

“I think so, Billy; I think so.” He rubbed his hands together, and in his eyes I read a glint of Ferguson's sort of pleasurable anticipation. “You note that the bank was given until December 12th to come across? Of course they didn't do any such thing. You'll note again that upon December 12th the offices in the next building were leased. Yes, it looks like our friend King Reagan again. And I guess you'll put off that vacation a little; won't you, billy?”

“You want me to go to San Francisco?” I demanded.

“I have had a long wire from Merivale. He does the Ferguson Detective Agency the honor to hope that we'll be interested. He even went so far,” and Ferguson's eyes twinkled, “as to suggest that the man who sent 'Brooklyn Dave' up the river be given the assignment. Yes, Billy, he mentioned Mr. William Steele. That's one thing, Billy. Another is that I'd like to have you postpone your trip to Canada a little while and take a spin out to San Francisco. Think of the old friends there you haven't laid eyes on for ten years. And then,” as though this were a mere trifle, carelessly spoken, “I really do believe that Reagan has paid out pretty nearly enough rope to hang himself.”

Well, that was the end of my vacation dreaming. I swore then that I'd never take a vacation as long as King Reagan lived and remained outside of jail. If it hadn't been for him I'd be hurrying down Broadway to get the shotgun I'd had my eye on for a month.

I spent a good part of the morning with Ferguson. I was on the verge of leaving the office when the telephone at the chief's elbow rang.

“Mr. Steele?” demanded Ferguson of the mouthpiece. “He's right here.”

I took the instrument, and as a deep, richly musical voice asked, “Mr. Steele?” I knew who it was.

“Before you start for San Francisco,” Reagan was saying over the wire, “I'd like to talk with you. Run in for lunch, will you? I can give you a letter to a man in San Francisco who will be of use to you in the Merchants' National case.”

And while was seeking for words in which to answer, King Reagan's deep, musical laughter made me believe that the man had guessed the expression of my face across a mile of houses.

Chapter II. Finding My Niche

I KNEW San Francisco as I knew my own hat. I had been born there; I had sold newspapers in the shadow of the Ferry Building at the foot of Market Street when I should have been putting red and green and yellow sticks together in a nice, clean kindergarten with an adored but not necessarily adorable lady teacher endeavoring beautifully to keep my young mind the pure vacuum, which God made it but did not intend it to remain. Later I attended night school at the old Court House School, where I learned that it is vastly surer, though less spectacular, to strike for the point of the jaw than for the nose. I matched nickels with Mike, the dago, down in the bad lands South of Market one day and stood awestruck and breathless the very next week listening to old Judge Hackett sentence him to the reform school up at Waterman. I remember Mike pulling at his forelock and grinning at the compliment when the judge regretted that my friend, the wharf rat, wasn't a few years older so that he could go straight to San Quentin and not tarry on the way to contaminate the comparatively clean souls of the reformatory school boys.

Blood does tell. While poor Mike, the dago, born of a drunken mother and an evil father, went his way to Waterman, graduated into crime, and finally found his predestined niche in the State penitentiary, I got through the grades and into high school. Heaven knows our environment was pretty nearly the same. I, however, had come of clean-lived parents and had an astute old-maid aunt. She has admitted in recent years that she despaired of me constantly, but, grimly set in her purpose, she did much for me. The greatest thing she or any one else ever did for little Billy Steele was to get me interested in reading decent, but never dull, books.

So I suppose I have aunt Harriet as well as my blood to thank for the fact that I hammered away until I reached the campus on the other side of the bay. Here I learned three things that counted: to study, to play poker, and to do the hundred-yard dash in a shadow less than ten flat. The lessons I had learned from poker helped me with the bar exams, and, like many another misguided youth before me, I displayed a gaudy shingle for a brief twelve months upon Market Street. I am glad that I did it; it was such a source of delight to aunt Harriet.

The day my lease expired aunt Harriet had me to lunch with her in her prim, trim old maid's quarters. We had got to her tea and my cigar before she mentioned business,

“Now, William, tell me: How have you done during your first year as a lawyer?”

“Nothing spectacular,” I assured her. “Just what the other fellows of my class are doing.”

“To be explicit,” she insisted, “your receipts?”

“Only three hundred and twenty-five dollars less than my expenses.”

“H'm,” said aunt Harriet, stirring her tea, “What you need is perhaps a larger field, William. How would you like to go to New York?”

She knew that I had been wanting to go East for a long time, and so I waited for her to unburden her mind. Also I appreciated the aunt Harriet style of humor in the remark concerning a larger field.

“I sold my little place out by the park last month,” aunt Harriet continued. “It wasn't paying and was going to ruin. I got five thousand for it. I don't need it, and when I die it would go to you anyway. And I have a curiosity to see what you would do with it.”

I had never suspected aunt Harriet of doing a thing like this, and only after I had stared at her a moment did I try to stammer how good she was. She cut me short by saying that she was no such thing, but that she was rather proud of me. I don't know yet for what, since aunt Harriet had never evinced any great interest in either track meets or poker, but I suppose her emotion was founded upon the fact that I had kept out of jail.

Another year of sitting like a spider in a law office, this time on Broadway instead of Market Street, waiting for the flies which didn't come. Having wooed, won, and espoused the law, I came to look on her as a sorry jade and to yearn for the interlocutory decree. I had looked up “Bunny” Graydon and Pete Anderson, two university classmates, who had come immediately to New York after leaving Berkeley, and spent more time with them running down their stories than in my office. They had both found berths reporting for daily newspapers, and could show me many things and people of interest. Bunny was doing police for the Ledger, and my going around with him helped me to “find myself.” It was the criminal, not criminal law, calling me. Then a first case after a couple of months of free lancing, a lucky day, and my name in the papers connected with the arrest and conviction of a man the police had been after six months. Bunny stood pat with the force, and consequently I got the credit which I really deserved and a little bit more. And then, in due course of time, an interview with Chief Ferguson of Ferguson's Agency and my finding my niche as Mike, the dago, had found his.

Graydon, Pete Anderson, and myself met once or twice a month for dinner in a little café on Park Row. Thus we kept pretty close tab on one another, taking stock of successes and disasters, of times of hard luck and such matters as a raise in salary. In due course of time they gained the proud titles of star men on their respective sheets, and could feel that my chief counted on me a little more than on Danbury and Edmonds, the two older men, who had once been his right and left hands. We were young, we had found the grooves into which we fitted, and I think each one of us, meeting with a success, thereby inspired the others as well as himself to “go it one better.”

Then came Thomas Reagan, already known as King Reagan.

Chapter III. The Hunted Look

IT was not by any means the first time I had lunched at King Reagan's well-regulated home. I knew that the door would open for me before I had run up the flight of steps leading from his roses and violet beds. I knew that Nagi, his Japanese servant, would invite me within with a beautiful bow. I knew that I would be shown down the long hall where the temperature was the same upon the first of January as on the Fourth of July, and where there were always fresh violets upon a table. I knew that Nagi, his duty done, would disappear, and that before I had gone ten steps I would be greeted by Havens, Reagan's private secretary, and conducted to the library, where Reagan himself would be waiting for me.

It all happened as it had always happened before, save that when Havens was about to withdraw Reagan called to him to come in a second.

“You'll pardon me a moment, Mr. Steele?” Reagan asked with his unfailing courtesy. “It has been a very busy forenoon with me, and I have not had an opportunity of speaking with Mr. Havens.”

Havens came in then, closing the door behind him, and waiting. Reagan had smiled at me, and now was smiling at his secretary. I wonder if Havens guessed what was coming? It seemed that there was a hint of nervousness in his manner, although it all but passed me at the moment.

“You forgot, didn't you, Havens,” Reagan was saying quietly, “to tell me about everything that happened yesterday?”

Now I know that Havens guessed what was coming. His quick “What do you mean?” gave him away. There was a note almost of challenge in his voice.

“I mean,” smiled Reagan, taking time to shove across the great table a box of my favorite cigarettes, “that you forgot to mention your casual meeting and subsequent conversation with Johnnie Margrave at half-past ten last night in a little room at the Arcade.”

In many ways I have come to look upon Ned Havens as almost as much the man as his employer. His manner was now as gravely placid as Reagan's was carelessly good-humored. And yet, unless this whole thing was some hoax cooked up for me, there were black depths and cruel rocks under the smooth flow of their words. Johnny Margrave I had known intimately for a matter of years. It had been Bunny Graydon who had introduced me to him. Since the organization of the Lippet Detective Agency a couple of years ago, Johnnie had been with them and had made history, along with bringing his agency into prominence, fame, and a lucrative work. And Johnnie had managed an interview with Ned Havens. I wondered then if Johnnie Margrave were on the Merchants' National Bank case. It was certain that I would see him before I left New York.

“There was nothing of importance connected with my talk with Margrave,” Havens answered quietly. “Otherwise I should not have failed in reporting the matter.”

“If I should tell you exactly what was said at the Arcade,” continued Reagan, “which I am not going to do, since you know and I know and Mr. Steele will no doubt learn from Margrave before he buys his tickets for San Francisco. I wonder if you would still maintain that there was nothing of importance said?”

Well, after all Havens was merely almost the man Reagan was, and as the old copybeoks have it, “Almost is but to fail.” The man was frightened and couldn't hide the fact.

“It's the first time I have ever had to speak to you about negligence,” Reagan went on soothingly. “And I know it won't happen again. By the way, I notice that that scar on the back of your hand has almost gone! That's good, Havens.”

No, I never again suspected Havens of being the man Reagan was. Caught unexpectedly as he was by Reagan's remark, he whipped his hand behind him, and a look which men of my profession know so well came into his eyes, the look of the hunted.

“I remember,” went on Reagan as though he had not seen Havens' gesture, “that you have a birthday this week. If you will call at the bank you will find that I have left something there for you. I'll not need you again until evening, Havens.”

Havens jerked out, “Thank you, sir,” and fled. That is the word for the manner of his going. He fled as if a pack of bloodhounds was behind him, that hunted look still in his eyes.

“Now, Mr. Steele,” and King Reagan turned his piercing black eyes upon me and settled his immense frame more comfortably in the soft leather of his chair, “tell me about this little trip of yours to San Francisco.”

Spoken for all the world as though it were the natural thing for him to ask and for me to answer; almost as though he were a superior officer to whom I was to make my report; quite as though he didn't suspect that I knew him for what he was, the cleverest crook in New York—and that means in the world.

I marveled at the man. Had I seen him every day and three times a day I should have marveled at him just the same every time I saw him. You may have seen his picture in a newspaper or perhaps in the columns of a magazine devoted to notable or remarkable men. But the picture was never taken which showed what the man looked like. A portrait painter, an artist like Stephen Blair, might get him down on canvas. I don't know. There was something emanating from the man which you felt rather than saw, which defied analysis, which was like nothing else than an electrical force that gave him his personality. It is possible to look at his picture and fail to understand in a flash why men should call him King Reagan. It is not possible to be in his presence two seconds and fail to understand. I have heard Bunny Graydon call him an oak tree among saplings. Pete Anderson once mentioned him as a lion among jackals. Their impressions are pretty much the same. And yet neither Graydon nor Anderson ever fully appreciated King Reagan.

I have never seen a handsomer man. I have seen him stripped in his little gymnasium. I knew that he was one of the biggest men I had ever seen. A sight of his naked body, the muscles that slipped like Damascus steel under satin skin, made me gasp. I had seen many beautifully built men in old college training quarters, but I had never seen a man like this one. Had I been asked to guess his weight I should have put it around a hundred and eighty. I saw him turn the scales at two hundred and thirty-two pounds. And there wasn't any of it fat, either.

Having one of the biggest bodies I ever saw, King Reagan certainly had the largest hands. And they, like the rest of the man's physique, were nothing short of beautiful. They gave you, just as his eyes did, a sense of power. And after seeing his eyes and his hands I was not surprised that the man loved music and played the violin like a virtuoso. Well, be he whatever else you please, King Reagan is a man. And a man is many-sided.

“Why are you so certain that I am going to San Francisco?” I gave him back for his question.

“Come, come, Steele,” he laughed, “you and I are not the men to bandy words, are we? You leave on the next train, I suppose? I am having lunch early so that you'll have all the time you want.”

“As you said while Havens was in here,” I told him, “I'll probably want a word with Johnnie Margrave first.”

“Knowing that you would have no time to waste, and to recompense you for the hour you give me,” Reagan said, “I have taken the liberty of sending word to Margrave that you'd like to see him. My car is at your disposal; it will bring him here, and the two of you can talk on your way to the station. I am afraid, Mr. Steele,” and he smiled rather deprecatingly, “that I may be laying myself open to a suspicion of wishing to intrude? For my next question is rather personal—under the circumstances! If you don't mind answering it: What do you intend to do when you first get to San Francisco?”

A direct question, and I thought that it merited a direct answer.

“Naturally I shall go straight to the bank to look things over. Then, perhaps, I shall try to locate the man who leased the offices last December.”

“Exactly,” nodded Reagan thoughtfully. “Second question: Do you think that already you can guess who the man is who has really engineered this thing?”

“Yes,” I told him, without hesitation.

“And you think that I am that man?”

“Yes.

“Exactly. I see.” Reagan again nodded thoughtfully. Then, “You are the only man I know of your profession, Steele, that I can ever get any satisfaction out of. You were heart-set on your vacation and now you figure that I have spoiled it. I am sorry, sincerely sorry, that this thing couldn't have been arranged to happen four weeks later.” His eyes met mine kindly, and I believe that his words and the next were sincere. “You have been working too hard, and it shows on you. Well, we mustn't get sentimental. Now, of course you have already seen that you may expect a lot of trouble in locating the man who leased the offices so long ago and who hasn't been seen since?”

“I have tackled harder jobs,” I told him. And yet I was wondering what lay in the depths of his brain, behind the clear frankness of his eyes.

“Oh, you'd do it,” he did me the honor to say. “It might take a month, it might take ten years. But if the man lived, you'd find him. You see, I have a great respect for your ability, Steele. I have followed you with immense interest. If you were only on the other side of the table2” He sighed and broke off, his big, shapely fingers toying with a paper knife on the table. Then, hooking up swiftly, “I promised to give you a letter which would help you, didn't I? Here it is, all ready for you.”

It was lying at his hand in its envelope, and he handed it to me. A glance at the names written with bold legibility in Reagan's strong script and I sat up straight in my chair and stared at the man who so coolly had sprung one of his new surprises on me without having the air of doing any but the most natural thing in the world. The letter was addressed to Anthony Waldron, esquire, alias “Klondike Jim,” alias “Seattle Black,” alias “Knockout Tony.” No street was given, but in the corner was the one word, Reagan.

“So he is alive, after all?” I demanded. “You know that at police headquarters it is thought2”

“That he has been dead six months. A dead body in the river, a bit of careful work on Waldron's part, a bit of blind stupidity on the part of a police officer, and there you are. Yes, he's alive, Steele. So very much alive that I suggest that you have him covered before you present my little note. He's a fine fellow, is Tony Waldron, but given upon occasions to fairly ungovernable flashes of anger.”

I opened the envelope and read the note within. It was a jewel of brevity:

My Dear Mr. Waldron: This will introduce Mr. William Steele, who has my heartiest cooperation in his work upon the Merchants' National Bank case. Faithfully yours,

Thomas Reagan.

I slipped the note into my pocket. For a moment I was upon the verge of asking a question. But I thought better of it. Reagan, whose eyes never missed the twitch of a muscle, nodded approvingly.

“Exactly, Steele,” he replied to my thought. “Anything I have to offer will come without questions asked.” He touched an electric button set into the table top and rose. “Remember that I advise that you hand Waldron your letter on the end of the barrel of your automatic. And be sure that your gun is working right.”

Nagi must have been waiting near the door. He came in with a tray and cocktails. Reagan helped me with his own hand and then took up his glass.

“A new cocktail,” he said lightly. “I hope that you'll like it. I am drinking this to your success with Waldron and to a quick and happy return to New York. And I have kept you from your lunch long enough. Your health, Steele.”

“Your health, Reagan.”

We drank gravely, our eyes meeting steadily. And he knew and I knew that between us a struggle was on which could end only with his fall or mine. And then we went in to lunch.

Chapter IV. A Tense Situation

NEVER did a case shape up for me so beautifully, so swiftly until the very crisis. It was like putting together bits of a puzzle with the right block always just at your hand when you reached out for it. And then the finale staged by a master of his technique. Perhaps I should have foreseen what the curtain would be. But after all my business is not that of a fortune teller.

As Reagan had arranged, I saw Johnnie Margrave before I left New York. All I learned was that Johnnie was not working on the case which was carrying me westward and that, while he had hoped to get something from King Reagan's secretary, he had got nothing as yet. He felt that Ned Havens wanted to talk and was afraid to. I told him of Reagan's casual mention of the scar on Haven's hand, and so Margrave got more from me than I from him. So much for that.