CHAPTER XXIII

BLUNT EXPLAINS

For a time I was prevented from inquiring further into this amazing matter of Varney's brother, a person, by the way, whose existence I had forgotten. I learned later that he had been transferred to the room we had just quitted, following his first ordeal by fire, which had taken place in the kitchen.

As Blunt and I now passed downstairs to the lower hall, we saw in what was evidently the dining room the body of a man stretched on the table, a policeman standing guard over it. It was covered with a sheet, yet something familiar in the outline, I cannot tell why or how, caused me to pause.

"Is that the fellow who was killed?" I asked rather fatuously.

"Yes, sir," said the policeman.

I entered the room and lifted the sheet. Yes, I had been right; it was Arnold Frean. What a strange working of chance that he should prove the only one to be killed! No doubt but that there were others in the house who deserved such a fate far more than he. I looked at him, his face now ennobled by death, all the vice and meanness gone, and thought of what might have been, had he only taken the right turning. How all too easy it is to take the wrong! I wondered, thinking of those far-off days in Princeton, had he ever had an inkling of such an end to the hectic story he was even then writing in the book of life--to die here, shot down like a dog, an associate of criminals. But who among us has an inkling of his own fate?

"Well," said Blunt, baring his head, "he has settled all earthly debts. Perhaps it's best that he went out when and as he did."

Perhaps; and yet, Heaven knows, I would it had been otherwise. My heart was heavy, and I suddenly felt weary and old. "How did it happen?" I asked the policeman.

"It wasn't none of our doin'," he replied, and then he added ingenuously: "We didn't get a chanst."

"You mean he shot himself?" queried Blunt. "Suicide, eh?"

"No, sir," said the officer, "he shot himself all right, but the funny part was he didn't mean to. It was like this, sir: He was here by his lonely in this room when me and another of the boys come through the windy on the signal. He pulled a gun, but instead of throwin' down on us, he kept wavin' it around like a flag while he hollered blue murder and jumped all over the shop like a crazy flea, us leppin' after him same's a merry game of tag. Then he tripped and fell, and the gun went off and killed him quicker'n winkin'. I never seen anythin' like it. He must have been drunk or bughouse, mebbe both."

But I knew that Frean had only been drunk with fear; he had been scared out of his wits. Yes, best perhaps that the end had come as it did, best at least for his people. With the help of Blunt, I could hush it up so far as the public was concerned. And, indeed, I may add here that, with the exception of a small, and for the most part official circle none has known the real Arnold Frean's connection with the notorious Black Company, and the true incidents leading up to his accidental death.

Owing to the obscure and isolated situation of the house, we weren't troubled with the attentions of inquisitive neighbors or newspaper men, and when the ambulance from Roosevelt had come and gone, and the patrol wagon was loading up with the Black King and his courtiers, Blunt and I left the house.

"I don't think I've thanked you yet for saving me from a very unpleasant interview with Mr. Scallon," I said, as we headed for Broadway and civilization. "I've been a fearful ass, Blunt, and deserved the little I got."

He smiled. "Oh, we can all be wise after the event; and Frean's acting would have fooled anybody."

"How did you know about that?" I demanded.

"Oh, a little bird told me, as Roupell would say. I agree with you that he's an excellent mimic. He'll have time now to learn how to imitate the voice of a hammer on stones. He's neither too old nor too fat for the road gang. It should do him a world of good."

At the thought of the bogus Falstaff forced to such manual labor, I felt considerably cheered. "He'll have a hard time getting a funny story out of that," I said. "But what about this brother of Varney's? What about everything, in fact? You've got to tell me a lot."

"Only on the condition that you keep it under your hat, Lawton." Somehow we had forgotten each other's prefix. "I don't mean simply about Frean. For certain adequate reasons this business about Silas Varney won't be made public."

"Why?"

"Well, did you know he was a prominent member of the United States embassy in Berlin?"

"Lord, no! You don't mean it? I remember hearing he held some government job, but I'd forgotten all about him. I see now why Bright and the Federal government had a hand in this. Then, after all, it had something to do with this Prussian propaganda? Scallon was hired----"

"Not at all," said Blunt. "You're away off. I'm sure the Black Company wouldn't have hesitated to hire itself out for any kind of dirty work, providing it was profitable enough. But they aren't pikers, and had a better graft than that. Scallon always had large ideas about other people's money, and he was out to make a killing."

"In what way?" I asked, wondering what it could be.

"Well," said Blunt, "the idea was this: What do you think it would be worth if you had private information--you alone, mind--that this European war was going to end on a certain date? What would be the effect on the stock market, even if there was only a good possibility?"

Suddenly I understood. "What would it be worth? Why, I could sit into a game of freeze-out with old John D.! Jerusalem! Do you mean to say----"

"Every word of it," nodded Blunt. "Pretty big, eh? You see the Central Powers want peace if they can get it without paying too much. What their offer is, what the chances of peace are, none knows but the Wilhelmstrasse, the American ambassador in Berlin, and the man you saw with the toasted foot--Silas Q. Varney."

"By George, Blunt, I never thought of anything like this. I'm beginning to see the whole thing. I suppose President Wilson is to act as intermediary? And they wouldn't trust it to the cables or in cipher with one of their own men? No, of course they wouldn't; they were afraid of a leak."

"That's the idea," said Blunt as we turned into the Avenue and headed downtown. "No, they weren't taking any chances. It was to go by word of mouth, through the American ambassador, and Varney was the one chosen to convey it here."

"How did Scallon get wind of it?"

"I don't know; of course none knew of it here outside the President himself. What I've told you I got from Bright who had it from Varney. But the tentacles of this crime octopus reach far and deep. We've only nabbed the head and part of the body, you might say. It's certain they've agents on the Continent whom we've yet to discover and run down. These agents cabled Scallon their inside information and the date of Varney's sailing--and that's what was meant by that code message, 'Varney moves on second.' Scallon passed it on to Joyce."

"Joyce brought Silas Varney here? But how?"

"You'll see as I go on. Now I don't know whether Scallon simply meant to sell this information he aimed to force from Varney, or whether he meant to operate on the market himself through a snide brokerage house that Roupell's interested in. He had the capital and organization, and in either event, stood to make a killing."

"Then Theodore Varney never figured in the case at all?"

"Oh, he did," replied Blunt. "He was an innocent but important factor. He knew his brother was coming over on a visit here, but of course, he didn't know the true reason of that visit. Silas was to stay at the house on the Rumson Road as his guest, a natural arrangement, and one which suited Silas all around. For you remember that Shadow Lawn, the summer home of the President this year, is in the immediate neighborhood. Well, that's where Frean and Joyce came in. Theodore Varney, seeing no reason why he shouldn't, naturally mentioned to an old friend like Frean the coming visit of his brother; or if he didn't, then Miss Gelette did. Anyway, Frean found out a whole lot that was necessary."

"I'm sure he did. Even I heard from the servants some talk of the expected visit, but I never thought twice about it. I thought Silas Varney was coming on from Washington maybe, and that he probably held a post-office job. Naturally, they didn't confide all their family affairs to me. They're a close corporation."

"Yes, and you couldn't be expected to guess everything. You found out an invaluable lot as it was. But it was reckoned by the Black Company from the start that Theodore Varney would meet his brother at the dock and bring him home in his car, and Joyce was to see that the car went somewhere else. Of course it was expected that secret-service men would be there to keep an eye on Silas, but as his mission wasn't to be known, they couldn't guard him publicly. They wouldn't suspect anything, either, Silas being with his brother, and his car run by a chauffeur who had the best credentials. But if the secret-service men tailed them, careful plans had been laid to deal with them. Everything had been mapped out carefully beforehand, as carefully as the surprise Germany sprung on Europe. They knew, from the time Silas' boat sailed, that she couldn't pass quarantine before this evening, and therefore they'd have a better chance at night. These irregular sailings, the result of the war, suited them down to the ground.

"Well, Varney and his niece came up in the car yesterday----"

"Yes, I know." And I thought injuredly that Brenda Gelette might have explained to me more fully the nature of the business that had brought them to town. But then I remembered that she hadn't remained very long in a confiding mood.

"Luck seemed to be playing into the Company's hands," continued Blunt. "The boat was due at eight thirty, special customs arrangement having been made, and Silas Varney----"

"Wait a minute," I said. "I understand everything so far, but let us leave Silas Varney and work back to him. I want to know how you figured this thing out. It's beyond me."

"Not when you understand it," he replied. "Tim Scallon calls it fool's luck, but it was just plain hard work, Lawton. I've told you the story so far just as if all along I was dead sure of what was going to happen--but I wasn't; not by any means. I had only suspicions and theories. I'd no more idea than the man in the moon, or you yourself, what particular use Scallon meant to make of Silas Varney, though I was sure he meant to kidnap him. When I was satisfied it wasn't Theodore Varney the Company was after, then it followed logically it must be his brother. That was obvious."

"Yes, now that you say so. But it didn't seem obvious to me."

"Because you didn't think of looking Silas Varney up. When I found that he held that government job in Berlin, and had sailed on the second, the whole thing looked pretty clear. It explained that code message, why Joyce had been planted with Varney, why Frean had been snooping around--everything. Knowing Scallon of old, as I did, it didn't take any great intelligence to guess that he meant to make capital out of some information Silas Varney was bringing over."

"Yes, but how did you know that Scallon was the Black King?"

"That's where the hard work came in--routine stuff, you know," said Blunt with a shrug. "If I gave you the whole works piecemeal, all the clews we ran down, all the bloomers we opened, I'd be talking for a week. But I got my first line from this fellow, Howard Roupell, whom you'd mentioned. He had changed a lot since I last saw him, put on fat, and grown that beard, but I knew him for 'Andy' Rose, one of Scallon's old henchmen. This fellow Corby--that isn't his real name, of course--is another. That discovery sent us looking up Scallon, that and the fact that you'd asked him about Fremstad and Varney. He was supposed to be living in retirement, repenting of all his old sins. But we found his humble home was only a stall, that he had half a dozen big bank balances under various names, and that there was a swell house in another part of Philly, with a fake entrance, where he spent most of his time. It was clear he hadn't turned over any new leaf, and was getting big graft from somewhere--and, by the way, running chinks and smuggling hop was a side line of the company. That's evidently what took your friend Ashton to the Chinese quarter. He may have been decoyed, but I think he stumbled on some evidence connecting Joyce or Scallon with this organized crime trust, struck a trail which, properly followed up, might have led to anything. And they put him away before he could use it."

"How did you know I was going to be jobbed by Frean to-night?"

"I suspected something of the sort, but didn't actually know until it happened. You see, I heard every word that passed; there's a dictaphone in your study, and it leads into the vacant apartment next door. I had it installed one night when you and Watkins were out. The manager of the Belvedere's an old friend of mine."

"Well, you're a fine, trusting bird! Did you suspect _me_?"

He laughed shamelessly. "No, but you must admit you hadn't shown much enthusiasm about obeying orders--I know all the times you tried to ditch Nast. Besides, your acting would be more convincing if you weren't wise; this dictaphone stunt is pretty old stuff, but it still makes good if the enemy doesn't suspect. It was put there to get evidence, and for your own protection, for I knew that before Silas Varney arrived the Company would make a stiff effort to put you away. They were hard up, anyway, for accurate information, to find out just how much you knew and what steps you'd taken. Frean spoke the truth when he told you they weren't sure if you'd engaged me. We managed to keep everything so quiet that we had 'em guessing."

"Then, if you were virtually in the next room, heard all that Frean said, and took it down, why did you let him work his game? Why didn't you step in and collar him?"

"Why is a crook given enough rope to hang himself?" countered Jimmie, with a grin. "That was the whole point of the game--to let them nab you and Silas Varney. We needed this red-hot evidence, and we got it----"

"So did Silas Varney, and I guess he knows just how red-hot it was."

"Yes, that was a slip-up we couldn't help--not getting to the house quite soon enough. But you can't bank on everything. I followed your taxi, but, as luck would have it, our engine stalled and held us up. Bright and Lannigan should have got there on time, only they had unexpected troubles of their own, Joyce and his pals ditching 'em a bit better than we had planned. So we all got there together. There was a risk of their killing Varney and you if we didn't get the jump on them----"

"Hold on; we've worked back to Varney but you've skipped a lot. I want to know what happened at the dock."