Deuces Wild

Front matter

DEUCES WILD

“Do you want me, Jim?”

DEUCES WILD

I. The Woman Across the Street

DEUCES WILD

I

THE WOMAN ACROSS THE STREET

THIS is a story of two stories, separate yet inseparable, of wheels agog and of wheels awhir, the frolic and the business of life. What a woman's switch is to her glory, this tale is to that; but at night, when the game (which really fools nobody is over, the false one may be taken from the true and laid aside.

It all began that day when Forbes wondered who she was. He was always wondering who she was, the blonde, the brunette, the Venetian-red, the October-brown, on the street, at the play, in the restaurant. It was a habit. And why not? It was his bread-and-butter to send the argosies of his imaginative glance scouring the seas for treasure; and whenever he saw a pretty woman, bows-on he followed in her wake. He was an illustrator; he drew exquisite colored covers for the magazines and full-page drawings for the celebrated love-stories of Mr. Popular Piffle. Indeed, he shared honors with Piffle, and made quite as much money.

His pencil rolled from his board, unobserved; and the red-brown dachel under his chair pounced upon it joyously, gurgling over the delicious pungency of the cedar. As a gourmet adores his pâté of goose-livers and truffles, his cobwebbed bottles of Burgundy, so this merry-eyed, long-bodied, short-legged Bavarian puppy adored his master's pencils, the big, fat, unvarnished ones. He made short work of them; they disappeared with the amazing rapidity of those popcorn-balls one tosses on the sacred fish-pond in Rangoon. When Forbes dropped a pencil these days, he reached for a fresh one, having recognized the futility of crawling on his hands and knees over rugs in search of something which had ceased to exist.

Every day now for a week, between three and four in the afternoon, she had gone by, slim, trig, supple. She looked like Somebody; she must be Somebody, for nobody but Somebody could have carried her head the way she did. Where her journey began, where it ended, he had never bothered himself to inquire. It satisfied his needs to expect her at such a time each day and to realize his expectations. Her hair burned like a copper-beech in the sunshine, and her face was as white as milk.

By George! He stood up, pushed aside his board, and accidentally trod on Herr Fritz's tail. Music. Presently it died away, pianissimo, under the divan. Ordinarily Forbes would have consoled his comrade; but his mind was busy with the girl across the street. If he went out now he could follow her. All he wished to know was where she lived. His ingenuity would find means of meeting her, inoffensively. He knew women tolerably well. From the pretty little milliner's assistant, all the way up to the stately czarina of all the Russias, their vanity cried out for perpetuation on canvas.

Ting-a-ling! Confound the telephone at such a moment!

“Hello, hello!... Yes, this is Forbes talking.... Oh, that you, Jillson? ... What? Eight till twelve?... Deuces what? Oh, deuces wild. Sure, I understand. A quiet little game of poker, with the poor artist paying for the cigars and liquors. Deuces wild; I know; you can make the two-spot anything you please.... What? Opening your apartment to-night?... In the Dryden? Where's that?... Why, that's only a block or so away.... Oh, I'll be there. Rather play poker than eat. By-by!”

Forbes made a dash for his hat, rushed out of the studio and down the two flights, madly and recklessly. Too late! She was gone. He dashed Jillson and his poker party breathlessly but fluently. Supposing she never walked past again? It would be just his luck.

As a matter of fact, the unknown meant nothing to Forbes aside from the commercial value of her face and hair. He was always hunting for a new face. Like Piffle, he could work over his ideas just so many times; after that, fresh invention must be called into play; the retroussé nose must give way to the Grecian, and so on and so forth. It was a busy life, for competition was terrific. He had to be on the lookout for the latest capillary wave, the latest style of collars, hats and trinkets. It was he who brought back the Grecian band; and immediately schoolgirls and shop-girls and show-girls went to and fro with heads that looked for all the world like those little fern-pots tasteful housewives place in the center of their dining-tables.

However, Forbes was a mighty sensible chap. He did not take his work seriously; nor more did his confrère, Mr. Popular Piffle. They had had many a laugh and jest together. They carried about in their heads no nonsense about this thing which some wag has called “poor lar” {L'art pour l'art); it was a legitimate business, and together they entertained a vast audience with innocuous pleasure. So then, why paint a Madonna of the Chair, why write a Pere Goriot, which nobody would buy? As it was, they were making splendid incomes; and who cared if Raffael and Balzac writhed in their tombs?

Forbes was philosophical, too. When he was dead he would be very dead; the Hall of Fame and the Temple of Forgetfulness would be all the same to him. At present he liked travel, good clothes, good food, curios; he liked to give expensive teas in his beautiful studio; he rather liked the innocent admiration of the schoolgirls et al.; and he wasn't too proud to accept an occasional thousand from the breakfast-food people and the tinted-soap manufacturers.

“Give us a new fiz, Forbes,” said the editors; “this one is growing stale.”

Ah, those editorial degrees of enthusiasm, which began with slaps on the back, paused at luncheons, and finally petered down to the non-committal “umums!” A new face; he must have it; and for two weeks he had combed the town in vain. Popularity had its drawbacks; one had continually to find new props to keep the thing from tumbling about one's ears. Popularity, the new-collar, the new-hat, the new-shoe kind of popularity, which changes completely every six months, which has to be renewed and twisted about and readjusted. And besides, there were those younger chaps always bobbing up, with fresh invention, a touch of the unusual, a new color.

He renewed his bitter arraignment of Jillson and his bally house-warming. For now he was sure that the girl with the milk-white skin and the copper-beech hair had been fortune, knocking at his door for a whole week with that persistence which she accords only her favorites, often unmeritedly. And all he had done had been to sit tight in his chair and wonder who she was! Well, she might pass again to-morrow. He would throw formality to the winds, rush across the street and speak to her, plead with her to help a poor devil of an illustrator who was working like sixty to hold his job, who in the best of times (during the sale of some beauty-book) never made more than twenty-five thousand the year.

He climbed back to the studio. He found the dachel munching the soft lead which had such a funny, cool, sweet taste; of the cedar there remained no evidences whatever. The puppy growled an invitation for a romp, which the artist accepted; and a great time they had, sliding over rugs, banging against the walls, behind tapestries, over sofas and chairs and divans, till at last Forbes, dizzy and breathless, subsided upon a divan. The tireless puppy jumped up beside him and licked his face. He was a very valuable dog. Only last week he had almost ruined a superb digestion while lunching on a five-hundred-dollar drawing which his master had carelessly forgotten to put back into the portfolio.

The elevator-boy opened the door and tossed in the evening newspaper. Thereupon Forbes filled his calabash, sought the comfy-chair under the reading lamp and idly went over the day's events. The puppy, sniffing the tobacco smoke which he thoroughly detested, retreated under the divan where he had his lion's den of bones, palate-knives, old tubes, brashes and what-nots. From time to time Forbes could hear him rattling round something.

Births, deaths and divorces; murder, robbery and graft; strikes, wars and plagues; the subject-matter never varied, only the names and places could be called news. He read with lazy interest a warmed-over yarn about the clever gentleman-thief who had baffled the metropolitan police for nearly a year. A well-known amateur detective was giving the reporter an exposition of his views. Here was an artist. (Forbes crackled the newspaper peevishly: was there anything left to which this term had not been applied? Anybody who did his work well was an artist. Rot!)

The thief, declared the amateur, was not a professional. He was a man of infinite patience, of infernal cleverness, never took money, had made three daring raids and ceased further to apply his talents. To date the man had taken over a hundred thousand dollars' worth of jewels. His career had begun and ended within three months.

So far, not a single part of the loot had been offered to the known “fences,” here or abroad. This was the phase which puzzled and baffled the police. Now he (Mr. Amateur) held to the theory that the thief was a man who moved in the exclusive circles (two more words Forbes hated) from which the jewels had been purloined. Even the police admitted that he possessed an intimate and accurate knowledge of the habits of his victims. But the genius of the man was made manifest in his ability to wait. Was there a woman? Was there unlucky speculation? Horses and cards? Or was it what he (Mr. Amateur) had stated in a previous article: simply a brilliant hoax, a practical joke, a careless wager by an idle rich young man, who, when the time arrived, would quietly restore the jewels, give a dinner and then search about for some new abnormality? At any rate, in his opinion the Bertillon system would never get hold of the man to measure him for future identification.

In this Mr. Amateur was perfectly correct. They never got hold of the man. Almost, however; only an arm's length away; a clutch, a distance misjudged, and off he went, into space, like an exploded atom.

II. Why Hurry?

II

WHY HURRY?

FORBES lived the way of most bachelor painters: a kitchen, two bedrooms and the studio, which was nothing less than a huge living-room. Upon a time it had been occupied by a fashionable photographer; so Forbes worked in the best of lights. In the hands of his Japanese valet he dressed well, dined well, adding to-night a pint of Chambertin; went out into the studio again, smoked and dreamed of the wonderful things which he very well knew he would never attempt, let alone accomplish.

He was much in demand socially. He was witty, clever, good-looking, with real talent back of his popularity. The young married people and their juniors never omitted him from their frolics; he had a perfect right to play with them. His family history was very good, so good in fact, that his capability of taking care of himself, of standing on his own legs, made him rather interesting, you know. It was ripping fun for a chap to make his own pocket-money and not have to run to papa when some balky filly came in fifth in a field of five. The amazing thing to me was neither the one nor the other of these side-lights, family history and earning capacity: it lay in the fact that Forbes always returned optimistically to his work, unscotched by the prevailing cynicism of the day.

He danced well, never went beyond moderation in tippling, paid his losses and took his gains at cards with an equanimity of heart and countenance truly oriental. The old men liked him for his manliness and independence; and the dowagers eagerly courted his favors, for like all artists he was an exceedingly well-informed gossip. He had the faculty of leading them to the very lip of the precipice and then swerving them back before they had time to look over. The most amiable kind of a gossip, always promising to disclose something and never doing it; and having a good deal of quiet fun out of it without harming any one.

At a quarter to eight he strapped on Herr Fritz's muzzle, and the puppy crept dejectedly into his basket, snuffling. He bore down upon the insulting thing with his strong broad forefeet, without avail. It was a hard world.

“Nothing doing, old top. There won't be any rose-madder in your tummy to-night. See you later. And think well of your chicken; it may be dog-biscuit to-morrow. You never can tell what these poker games are going to do to a fellow. By-by!”

Every man who does one thing well has a craving to do another man's work badly. Forbes was always hungering for detective work. He longed to pick up the tangled skein, unravel it, rescue the heroine, march the villain to jail and all that. Heaven is witness of the plots for detective stories he has offered me! He has, I believe, the best library of detective fiction in town. Well, his longings went unsatisfied. The only thing like detective work he ever did successfully was to recover the new paint-tubes before the dachel poisoned himself.

He walked up-town, wondering who the mysterious burglar could be. He searched carefully among his large acquaintance, principally among the men he disliked; but even then there was nothing tangible. Lots of duffers gambled and didn't pay their debts and never went to jail for it. If only he had a clue of some sort to start with! He knew that he had the ability; and it was a shame he could find no outlet. I'll give him credit for possessing the chiefest attribute of all great detectives—hope.

“Hang about the police-courts,” I once advised him; “study the lesser criminal. Make a friend of the policeman on your beat and go the rounds with him some night. A thousand petty crimes are happening every day, right next door to you. But I know. You're waiting for some one to stage a Gaboriau for you. Rich banker—daughter in love with the cashier—safe robbed—cashier goes to jail—shoe-string is found—behold the criminal in the banker's private secretary!”

He laughed and told me to go to Tophet. But he knew that I had his hide on the wall. He hated the sordid, and I do not blame him; for petty crimes and police-courts are sordid; but in this he lost the true direction of his gifts. Out of poverty and sordidness the great inspirations rise, never out of pleasure and pastime, things to which he devoted his labor and leisure.

He continued on, whistling an air from one of the popular operas. His thoughts, ever volatile, shifted from plots of criminals to the purblindness of the general run of art-editors, and their more or less slovenly minions, the three-color process printers; to the pretty girl he had met at Cannes last winter; to the campaign to-night at poker. For once he was going to play 'em close; he would keep out of every pot that dealt him no two-spot, and when he got a real hand, he would play it hard. With deuces wild even an open player like himself had a chance once in a while. He turned a corner, still whistling. The girl with the copper-beech hair: supposing she never went by again? Could he possibly do her from memory?

Forward with swinging stride, twirling his cane and sometimes striking the ferrule against the flagging, pleased with the spangle of answering sparks; on toward the big drama. For he was only an implement of fate, chosen haphazard to accomplish a destiny not his own.

The Dryden was a new apartment house, built especially for persons who had plenty of money and too small a family for the up-keep of a large house. They were given all the comforts of home, valets, maids, cooks, waiters and bell boys, more like a private hotel. Then were ten apartments, five on each side of the ornate marble entrance. Forbes ran eagerly up the steps; the door-boy swung open the door.

“Mr. Jillson's apartment, please.”

“Third floor, left, sir.”

“Ah!”

Forbes made for the stairs. The elevator (called lift here) was up, and he was too impatient to wait Besides, he wanted to surprise the boys, melodramatically. He scarcely paused at the first landing. He would rather play poker than eat. And in his exuberance he failed to hear the warning call from the door-boy, who had come on that day and was not yet accurately versed in the topography and occupancy of the apartments. Forbes continued his rapid ascent two steps at a time. He wanted to be at the door at precisely eight, like that old chap what's-his-name in Round the World in Eighty Days.

He tiptoed into the private hall, the outer door being unlocked. There was a light over the transom. He could see them in his mind's eye: Jillson, Wheedon, Jones, Carlyle, Miller and Crawford, peering into their hands, their faces like Buddha gods. He listened. Not a sound. In the middle of a play, no doubt. Stealthily he put his hand on the knob, turned and pushed it, with the cry “Police!” on his lips. The word died there, dryly. He saw no poker game in action. Instead, a man in evening dress, full masked, knelt with his back to an open safe. As for the artist, he gazed panic-stricken into the round black sinister hole of a Colt's automatic.

III. A Wild Goose Chase

III

A WILD GOOSE CHASE

AT the exact moment when J. Mortimer Forbes was being apprised of the fact that this was an amazing world and that previously he had been meandering only among the foot-notes of the Great Story, an elderly gentleman and a very handsome young woman sat in a subway train which roared emptily on its way down-town. The elderly man was gray-haired and he wore a closely cropped gray mustache, a style much affected by Americans living in New York. He possessed all the hall-marks of a prosperous clubman. The spats spoke eloquently of the reading-room and of moderately heated political arguments. Attached to his eye-glasses was a heavy cord, up and down which he continually ran his fingers; to those who knew him, a sign of perturbation. Now and then he poked the ferrule of his Malacca walking-stick into the matting on the floor, or tapped it, causing little puffs of dust to rise, like musketry down in a valley.

The young woman stared with unseeing eyes at the opposite window; fine eyes they were, blue as Russian lapis-lazuli, similarly streaked with threads of gold, and heavily fringed. The girl was really and truly beautiful; even the few belated ones realized this, and forgot their nightly study of the alluring advertisements. She was a tonic to the weary eyes; a tonic like the unexpected vision of green fields, crystal waters and the blue haze on the hills far away. Her hair was not the least of her attractions; it smoldered mysteriously, as if fire lay hidden in the deeps of it.

“Wonder what on earth he wants,” said the man, and nibbled the ivory head of his stick.

The girl did not reply. Perhaps she had not heard him.

“I can't think of anything he should want, unless it's about some old investment that's turned out bad. But then, he'd write. I give it up.”

Across the aisle the little shop-girl, who was going home to Brooklyn (imagine having a home there!) dropped her gaze from the brilliant lithograph of Chaffem's toasted wheaties (one of Forbes's earlier pieces) to the furs of the beautiful young lady. She sat up with a start. Sables! she thought Not Manchurian, but the genuine North-Russian. She was a clerk in an up-town furrier's and knew her business. Off-hand she measured the length and breadth of the cloak; not a penny under seven thousand. And riding in the subway when she ought to be in a limousine, with chauffeur and footman! Swells were funny folk; they were always doing things like every-day people. And the muff wouldn't have left more than the price of a theater ticket out of a thousand. And what's more, she knew how to wear them. She wasn't any of those actresses. Catch them riding in the subway!

“Some legal muddle,” the elderly man complained. “Your mother's brother wasn't in his right mind.”

“There's nothing for you to complain of,” spoke the girl at last, without, however, turning her head.

“Wonder what on earth he wants”

“Can't say there is. Three millions, mostly out at seven per cent.” He coughed slightly. “He was novel-reading mad; no sane man would have drawn up such a will. It's as much as our lives are worth to keep all that junk about. Wouldn't give the stuff to the Metropolitan because they wouldn't take any stock in his claim that that ruby belonged to the Nana-Sahib. Anyhow, history says that Hindu beggar died in the jungles and that he took the jewel along with him.”

“Junk! How can you call all those beautiful things junk? I love every one of them. He was right. Only one person in a thousand who visit the museums would understand or appreciate them.”

“That may be, but no light-fingered gentry would be prowling about.”

The beautiful young lady shrugged. She had gone over the ground so often that the subject wearied her. She loved her father, but she could not understand his utter lack of appreciation for the wonderful curios her uncle had bequeathed her, with the single stipulation that she should use them. The shrug discovered for a second the milky depth of the fur. And the little shop-girl shivered with delight. But she vaguely wondered why the beautiful young lady's face wasn't a happy one. Any woman in such sables (even if she had just lost her husband) ought to be supremely happy. The rule which measures happiness is available alike to the field-mouse and the elephant: it's all in the angle of vision.

That the girl in the sables was unhappy was quite apparent. It was not a petulant sadness, as in having had her will crossed, as in having stumbled over some temporary disappointment. Her face reflected a deep sorrow from within; of a kind for which money at her age is no balm. Great peace and great sorrow have the same brushes in limning in a face; the result is generally a beatific placidity. If you looked at the girl's eyes they told you nothing, nor the droop of her mouth, nor the pallor of her fine skin; and yet the ensemble produced a haunting sadness. It made you remember the face for days.

At Madison Square the two got out, and the little shop-girl continued her journey, to dream of dukes and duchesses and wolds and gabled manses.

The girl in the sables and her father hurried over to the monolith of marble and were shot up to the eighteenth floor. The suite of law-offices to which they had been so strangely summoned were in total darkness. The bell rang and rang and echoed eerily through the empty rooms so mightily busy during the secular days of the year.

“Looks like a hoax.”

“Perhaps we've come too late.”

“Too late? It isn't nine yet,” growled the father, recollecting the quiet rubber at the club he had been forced to postpone. “He phoned that it would be very, even exceedingly, important for us to be here before nine. Shall we wait?”

“Certainly.” The girl began pulling down the finger-tips of her gloves and twisting them.

“I'm a doddering old fool!” exclaimed her father suddenly.

“Father!”

“I never telephoned his house to make sure. Why should we come down here to his offices?”

They hastened back to the elevator and went down. The elderly man stepped into the pay-station booth. Presently he emerged, wrathful of countenance.

“Never called up at all. Doesn't know what I'm talking about. A whole evening spoiled!”

“But what can it mean? What can it mean?”

Down into the dank subway again; and twenty minutes later, at nine-fifteen, the two arrived at the apartment on the third floor of the Dryden. The girl opened the door impetuously, fearing she knew not what. In the plain ordinary safe in the living-room reposed the Nana-Sahib's ruby and fifteen thousand dollars.

A few blocks over the way, in a dark and cavernous studio, a lonesome dachel was baying at the intermittent ting-a-linging of the telephone.

Across the city there stood a series of apartments which had never been fashionable, though many of the inhabitants put up brave pretense for such recognition; wherein the real estate agents reaped sundry profits. By some, the indifferent principally, they were called flats. In one of these, comfortably appointed, with a few really good rugs on the floors and furniture which was neither acrobatic nor offensive, there lived a woman. She was young and pretty in a faded way. She was preparing for bed; and as she let down her hair, the many gray threads caused a pucker to come between her eyes. Her expression was placid; but it was the placidity of the crushed and the beaten, not of the resigned.

From a brick house in another quarter of the town, a quarter which had fallen under the edict of mobile fashion along about war-time, a man stepped forth noiselessly and disappeared into the night, became a shadow among shadows.

IV.A Page from Scheherezade

IV

A PAGE FROM SCHEHEREZADE

IN the meantime Forbes was invited by the burglar to come in and sit down. He entered the room, thoroughly hypnotized.

“Sit down in that chair there,” went on the man in the mask, indicating a fine Sheraton. Strange, that Forbes should give any particular attention to the make of a chair. “Theres a good chap,” came hoarsely. “I should hate to give you a crack on the head. If you keep perfectly quiet and do as you're told, I shan't be forced to hurt you. Now listen carefully. Take out your handkerchief. Top pocket, overcoat, if you please! Now tie it over your mouth. That's the way.”

Forbes was by no means a coward; but the unexpectedness of the encounter stunned him. He forgot that he had ever wanted to be an amateur detective. The burglar rose to his feet with astonishing agility, Forbes watched him, under a malevolent enchantment He saw the man whip down from the wall a rare old priest's stole.

“Put your hands behind the chair and hold them there. The automatic's the quickest thing in the world.”

A moment later Forbes felt the rough edges of the stole sink into his wrists. The ends went in and out of the spindles and the knot came under his elbows. Next, the handkerchief was given a precautionary twist. The Bokhara embroidery on the low-boy was also forced into service. This secured his ankles to the legs of the chair.

“Don't know what you came in for, for you opened the door without knocking. Never mind.” The burglar slipped the pistol into a pocket “Now, don't worry. Perhaps sometime before midnight the people who live here will come to your assistance.”

Then the rogue knelt before the safe again and took out an exquisite Florentine jewel-box. He did not bother to try the lock. He was evidently pressed for time. He simply wrapped it up in a newspaper, tied it securely with a string he found in a work-basket, picked up his tools, his hat and coat, and paused for a moment on the threshold. Forbes could see the sparkle of his eyes through the holes in the mask. He also saw that there was a slight gash across the knuckles of the man's left hand.

“Sorry to leave you in this fix.” The man bowed briefly and went out,

Forbes heard the snap of the switch-button. Instantly he was in total darkness. Then he heard the click of the bolt. He was now locked in. Presently his brain resumed its functions; he began to think in little sparks of thought: as if permitting electric fluid to enter a wire by degrees, jerkily. For the last ten minutes he had been as completely hypnotized as if he had been staring for hours into a Swami's crystal. His first coherent thought was one of those best left unspoken, unwritten. He had entered, picturing in his mind a familiar scene, six familiar faces; and this instead! It would have hypnotized any one.

A blockhead! A sheep! To have allowed himself to be trussed up this way, without a single struggle, without a word! A fine detective! He strained at his hands, and then at his ankles, but desisted when the chair threatened to topple over. On the floor he would be absolutely helpless. So he sat there in the dark, mouthing at his handkerchief and trying to get his teeth into it.

The man had a freshly skinned knuckle. He would remember that when the police came. He would never be able to recall the voice, so effectually muffled behind the curtain of the mask. In evening dress, too, and wore it to the manner born: here in little old New York! And then it came upon him with the dazzlement of sunrise. The mysterious burglar of the newspapers! He recollected some of the drawings he had made of heroes in durance vile, ironically recollected them, along with the balderdash they were supposed to illustrate. Why hadn't he flung himself over backward while the fellow was tying his hands together? He was no infant; he was athletic, strong as the average man of his height and weight. He might have got the upper hand.... Oh, rot! It was all very well to think of the things to do when it was too late. Any battle could be won if you fought it backward!