CHAPTER V

KING'S PAWN TO KNIGHT'S

Arnold Frean came over the next morning in his car, and was out with Brenda Gelette until noon. I viewed the incident with misgiving and dislike, though, of course, it was no earthly business of mine. Perhaps for that very reason I made it my business. Anyway, Frean wasn't the kind that does a girl any good.

My acquaintance with him was of the briefest, but it had left a distinct and unpleasant impression. He was one of the gay crowd I had picked up with after coming into my Uncle Peter's money, his family was a wealthy New York one, and he the only worthless member in it. That he grafted generally I didn't mind, but when he repaid several loans I made him by attempting to cheat at dummy bridge, I grew hot.

"Look here," I said, "if you want money, you've only to ask me, but I object to being robbed, and especially in such a clumsy fashion. A blind man could have seen you stack that deck. I'm not a fool, Frean, except when I want to be."

We were alone in my rooms at the time, the lie was passed, and, after a mild passage at arms, he owned up to the cheating and begged me to say nothing about it.

"The fact is, Lawton," he said, "I'm hard up. Yes, I know my governor's rolling in money, and that I'm supposed to hold down a good job in his Wall Street office. But we had a row, and--well, I'm hunting a new berth. You don't know what a rotten old skinflint he is. I wouldn't work for him at any price."

I heard later through underground channels that Arnold Frean had been mixed up in a shady brokerage deal, and had only escaped jail through his father's influence. This and an affair with a girl, also hushed up, had capped a long series of "indiscretions," and his sorely tried parent had at last fired him from home and business, lock, stock, and barrel.

It was after the dummy-bridge incident that Frean gibed me into taking my first drink, and I know now, as I suspected then, that it was his oblique method of revenge, for he never deceived me by his apparent contrition and affected friendship; he had tried to rough-house me, and found it a poor business, and I knew he had a knife waiting for me whenever he saw a chance of getting it home.

Understand that I'm not trying to shoulder him with the blame of starting me drinking, and I bore him no ill will on that score. With all the worst intentions in the world, he couldn't have succeeded but for my help. He simply gauged my inherited failing better than I, and played on my vanity and self-confidence.

I saw little enough of him after that, but I knew positively he had not changed his life for the better, made up the row with his father, or engaged in any legitimate business. Therefore, what he had told Varney was a lie. The elder Frean wasn't one to publish his son's evil doings broadcast, and, as Varney did not live in New York, it was evident he knew nothing of what had happened--or else he knew and condoned it.

I was curious to learn more about Varney himself, but this wasn't easy, it being the first time he had visited that part of the coast, and therefore trades-people and neighbors' servants--the best news bureaus--knew nothing about him. Nor could I learn anything from the domestic staff, whose members, from Horace downward, were all middle-aged, and not given to discussing their master or mistress. I can't say there was any conspiracy of silence, as if there was something to conceal.

As I was supposed to hail from Philadelphia, to have left the employment of an acquaintance of Varney, I couldn't put any direct questions, and nothing was volunteered. I got the impression of a loyal and clannish band of servants, devoted to their master, and grown old in his service, who regarded me as a new member, taken on probation, who could not be admitted to the inner circle and the secrets of the house until I had proved myself by faithful service. In brief, such a domestic staff as you don't see nowadays, of the old Southern darky or English retainer type. Yet old Varney seemed hardly the sort to inspire this kind of loyalty and devotion; rather, I wondered he could get any one to serve him, for I heard him speak to Horace, Mrs. Stower, and the equally venerable housemaids, Lena and Mary, just as he spoke to me.

"Nasty old cock, that boss of yours," said Williams, the gardener, who came twice a week. "Looks like a hop fiend. Say, what was wrong with Jules, the other guy that was here? Too much booze?"

"So I understand."

"I thought as much. I told him what would happen if he didn't keep away from Knight's."

"Which?" said I.

"Knight's. Oh, you're new to this part? Well, it's a road house near the Shrewsbury. From what I seen of him, Jules would have been all right if he'd left the booze alone. I feel real sorry for him, for he's one of these rum hounds, I guess, that's got to quit the stuff cold or take the count. You know there's guys like that, eh?"

"I've heard so," I said noncommittally. "It's too bad to have such a failing."

"It ain't a failing; it's a disease," said Mr. Williams. "Jules told me he'd been on the wagon two years, until he fell off with a bang and began hittin' it up in Philly just before he come here. Got in with a bad crowd, see? And stayed with 'em. I ain't got no use for a guy that gets another guy to booze, knowin' he can't take it like a white man."

I agreed with this excellent sentiment, and that evening asked Miss Gelette if I might have an hour or so off. She attended to all such matters instead of Mr. Varney, who took little to do with the running of the house.

"Certainly," she said. "Of course, Friday is your regular evening. I suppose you wish to see about your trunk?"

"No, not exactly, ma'am."

"But don't you think you should? It's about time you did."

"The fact is, ma'am, I don't think it will ever turn up; it's lost this time for good. I don't remember anything about it, ever getting it expressed or put on the train." Which was the literal truth.

"I don't see how you could have lost it, Peter."

"Why, ma'am, I even lost myself!"

"Well, that's true." And she smiled. "In that case you will need to be buying some things. Here is a week's wages," handing me two ten-dollar bills and a five. "Now remember, Peter, your promise to me. Above all, keep away from a place called Knight's. It has a bad name and was the ruination of Jules."

"I'm sorry, ma'am, but that's just where I'm going."

"To Knight's? And after my telling you the sort of place it is?"

"I can't help that, ma'am; I've got to go."

"You don't; nothing of the sort! However," suddenly checking herself, "it is no affair of mine. Of course you can do what you please, go where you like, after hours. And you're not precisely a child."

"I'm not going there to drink, ma'am."

"Oh," she said, looking mollified. "What are you going for then?"

"To see about a chess problem."

"A chess problem!"

"Yes, ma'am, I've an appointment there with a fellow I knew in Philadelphia--I saw him this morning in Sea Bright--and he's very keen on the game, too. He has a problem for me."

She looked at me for some time in silence. "It was honorable of you to tell me you were going to Knight's, and it does you great credit that you're so fond of such an intellectual pastime as chess. But I wish this friend of yours had picked some other place to discuss problems. It's only putting temptation in your way. However, that is your affair, not mine. You must bear in mind that you won't have a second chance if there is a repetition of what happened the other night. You understand?"

"Yes, ma'am. But I mean to keep my promise. If I may say so, it seems to me that running away from a thing never did much good. I mean, ma'am, you can't call yourself a victor simply because you've never given the other fellow a chance to beat you."

"And in this instance the other fellow is----"

"Mr. Barleycorn, ma'am."

"Oh," she said. "Then--then that affair of the other night _wasn't_ your first experience? Come, Peter, I want the truth."

"I mean you to have it, ma'am. That's been my failing, though Mr. Fremstad knew nothing about it. Mr. Barleycorn has floored me more than once, but now I've taken him on for a finish fight."

"I hope you win it," she said. "In fact you must. Of course temperance in all things is only a means to an end, Peter, but a failing like that, if not taken in time and fought to a finish, becomes such a frightful vice. As you say, it is a bigger and better thing to face the enemy and beat him; yet it's a wise man who knows when to run."

"I'd rather face it, ma'am. I can't be running away from every gin mill I meet. I intend to win this fight. I've given you a promise, ma'am, and I mean to keep it."

She looked at me for a moment, and then, as if satisfied, dismissed me with the injunction to be home before eleven.

And so the King's pawn set out to meet the Bishop's at Knight's as per written instructions. I knew far better than Miss Gelette the temptation I was deliberately courting, but I had steeled myself to meet it. Something, too, far stronger for the moment than the Demon urged me on--curiosity and love of adventure.

Knight's seemed to be well, if not favorably, known, for I got minute directions from the first passer-by, and a short ride in the trolley brought me almost to its doors. It was a garish place of the cheaper class, displaying an electric sign, showing what purported to be a knight on a charger, and it had the inevitable open-air restaurant with a boisterous piano and several gentlemen of color who posed very badly as musicians. The main building had a pool room and bowling alley opening off the bar, while upstairs there were rooms to let, with or without board.

I went into the open-air restaurant--though so styled, it was little more than a beer garden--had a look at the various couples, dodged the attentions of several vulpine waiters, had a peep into the pool room and bowling alley, and then entered the bar.

Here I was face to face with the Demon in his lair, and the mere smell rose up and took me by the throat. I need not try to analyze my feelings, all I suffered. If you've ever had the craving, you'll know what I mean; if you haven't, then nothing I might say would give you an adequate idea. Just think of any normal desire you've had when it has reached the aching point, then double it twice over.

I'll admit I had to conjure up and take a firm grip of everything I held sacred--such as my promise to Miss Gelette--to keep me from making a bolt right there for the bar and drinking my back teeth awash; but I fought it down and looked round for the man I had come to meet. I didn't see him, however, among the fair-sized crowd, and I was thinking the suspicions I had formed were all wrong when a curiously dead voice at my elbow whispered: "The Bishop's pawn."

I turned to confront the man with the bulging forehead, rudimentary chin, and pale-blue eyes, eyes that were as lifeless as his voice. He was dressed now in sober black, and, with his colorless face, he somehow put me in mind of such cheerful things as the mattock and the shroud. Indeed, he looked what a gravedigger is supposed to look like, but seldom, if ever, does.

"The King's Bishop's pawn," he repeated, in the same discreet, dead voice.

"The King's pawn," I answered, aware I was supposed to say something.

Evidently this was the correct formula, for he motioned me politely to a table in an obscure corner of the back room, and called a waiter. I was about to remark that I was "off the stuff" when he saved me the trouble by asking gravely whether I preferred ginger ale, root beer, or lemon soda. "For myself," he added, "I take buttermilk whenever I can get it. It's really excellent here."

So I said to make it two and the waiter brought a three-pint pitcher and a dish of pretzels. I marveled that such an order could be served in the place, but as we were served without bloodshed, it would seem that this wasn't my companion's first buttermilk orgy at Knight's. Of course, after a thick night, buttermilk is the best thing one can drink; so no wonder they had it in stock. Doubtless it was in frequent requisition by the patrons.

"Your name, I understand, is Joyce?" said my companion politely when we were alone.

"Yes, that's right. And yours?"

"Corby," he replied, raising his lifeless eyes to mine.

There is a peculiar suitability in some names; but then this might be an assumed one. Or perhaps he was unaware that the Scotch call a crow or raven a corbie. "Muckle black corbie"--that's what he looked; a carrion crow, a foul bird of ill-omen.

"You come from headquarters?" he pursued.

"Yes, that's right. And you?"

"New York."

It followed then that headquarters, whatever that might represent, wasn't in New York. Where was it?

He raised his glass and murmured softly: "The Black Company."

"Long may she wave!" said I heartily.

"I beg your pardon, sir?"

"Merely a figure of speech, Mr. Corby--like the black flag, you know. _Vive le_ Black Company! Here's to it." And we pledged the sentiment in buttermilk.

"You haven't been with us long, Mr. Joyce?"

"No, not very--that is, comparatively speaking. You see, what may seem long at one time may seem short at another; it is merely a matter of conditions and circumstances," I replied, aware that the skating was pretty thin, and feeling exhilarated at the possibility of crashing through up to my neck at any moment and without warning.

"And yet," he said meditatively, "you're attached to the King himself."

"Quite so," I agreed, endeavoring to look more important. "As you say, the King himself."

"You must have made good right off the reel and in no uncertain way."

"Quite so; of course. Certainly."

"In what particular way, may I ask?"

"That, Mr. Corby, is a deep secret. I simply can't tell you," I replied with refreshing candor. "It is a secret between--er--well, you understand?"

To my relief he did, though I didn't. He nodded. "You mean the King?" And he regarded me with increasing respect.

"Quite so; the King--God save him. Let us drink to the King, Mr. Corby."

We had another go at the buttermilk, a cold-blooded, miserably unresponsive beverage, especially when one is after information. You cannot get excited and enthusiastic over buttermilk; it doesn't unloosen tongues and fill one with good-fellowship, make you forget the rent is overdue, or anything like that. I believe the death of Cæsar was plotted on buttermilk. Now a good bottle of the stuff that killed father--I could drink Mr. Corby under the table, and Corby, for all his present passion for buttermilk, was no natural-born milk fiend. I guessed that; I knew his type--the pale kind of souse that can lap up hooch like a sponge. If he wasn't taking it, he had a good reason; perhaps he was just getting over a burst. But if I persuaded him? He had nothing on me when it came to punishing redeye; not for nothing had I and my family paid homage to King Alcohol. To warm this human refrigerator sitting opposite me, to unloosen his tongue, to make him glow and enthuse over this mysterious adelphia and part with further information--surely I was justified! I had always drunk for pleasure, but this would be business, a sacred duty.

And then I remembered my promise to Miss Gelette and knew that the Demon, with his usual specious arguments, had been trying to get to windward of me again. He had thought to take me in an unguarded moment and by this new device. Moreover, the thought came that if Corby's total abstinence was enforced, then mine might be expected to be so too. It might be a cardinal rule of this secret society that such measures were obligatory at certain times--say, while its members were on active duty, carrying out some undertaking. By ordering whisky, and persuading Corby to indulge, I might awaken suspicion if not actually betray myself.

So I returned to my buttermilk, with an inward grimace, and, as it turned out, I had no need of artificial stimulant--virtue being thus rewarded for once--for Corby obligingly parted with more information of his own volition, and very astonishing information it was.

"I'm down here in charge of a new member," he said. "Of course you've heard of him?"

"Oh, yes; certainly."

"You saw him at the house?"

Had I? I tried to think of all the people who had called at the Varney's. But was it their house he meant?

"I mean Frean, of course," said Corby.

"Oh, of course," said I. "Yes, I know him, but he doesn't know me. I mean he doesn't know I'm a member."

"No, of course," said Corby again. "Were you not instructed as to that?" raising the dead eyes to mine.

"No," I said boldly, seeing it was a case of plunging. "I was told nothing about him."

"You will in good time. I don't think I've exceeded instructions in telling you now. You know the precautions against possible treachery that we must take with new members before they've been thoroughly tested. The idea is for you also to be a watch on him without his knowing."

"I see; a very good idea. No doubt my orders to that effect will come later. You knew me, of course, because of my being with old Varney?"

"Certainly. We finished a good job, begun through headquarters, with your predecessor." And he smiled in his melancholy fashion.

I was afraid to put any further questions, the man being no fool if that forehead of his went for anything, and after an aimless general conversation, principally about motor cars, he finished off the last of the buttermilk and proposed a rubber of pinochle. This was played without stakes, very cleverly on his part, but in the lifeless way peculiar to him. Then he murmured that he would have to be getting along, and, our riotous evening at an end, we adjourned to the sidewalk.

He accompanied me into Long Branch, and then gave me a hand like a dead fish. "Good night, Mr. Joyce. Friday evening is your regular one off? Then you will always find me on that evening at Knight's."

"Where is Frean stopping?"

"At the Queen, here." I knew this to be the name of a local hotel, so he wasn't referring to another piece on the strange chessboard. "I'm his chauffeur. You'll know not to recognize me, of course, until we meet in the regular way. Even then it won't do to be seen too much together, and until you get your orders, be sure not to let Frean see that you know him. It might get me in hot water at headquarters."

He left me, and when I got home, Horace informed me that Miss Gelette wanted me to fix an incandescent in the drawing-room.

I soon saw that this business about the light was only an excuse, that Miss Gelette wished to see for herself if I had kept my promise; for as I put in the bulb, she came and stood very close to me as though to catch the aroma of John Barleycorn or any disinfectant I might have used, so close indeed that it was all I could do to keep from kissing her. I am really not given to promiscuous embraces, nor philandering in any form, but when a very pretty and charming girl----However, you've been in the same position yourself and know the temptation.

"You're home early, Peter," she said, apparently satisfied and pleased when she saw I was eminently sober. "I see you are to be trusted. Well, did you see your friend and get the chess problem?"

"Yes, ma'am. But I haven't solved it yet."

"Is it so difficult then?"

"Yes, a real brain-twister, ma'am."

"You must show it to me some time," she smiled. "I'm very fond of the game myself. By the way, are you a strong player?"

"Pretty good, ma'am. Of course, it all depends on my opponents."

"I think you're too modest, Peter. I've an idea you're a very good player, that you must have a natural gift for the game; for, of course, you can't have had the opportunity of playing much. And so I'm going to ask you something. It is possible that my uncle will want you to play with him some night. He's a crank on the game and will play with anybody he can find--if he thinks he can beat them. You understand?"

"Yes, ma'am. I've met players like that--and not only at chess. It's a fine game so long as they always win."

"Well, Peter, if you can beat him, will you try not to? I'm quite sure you're clever enough at the game to lose it in such a way that he'll never suspect. You'll put up a good fight; but you'll let him win, won't you?"

"Certainly, ma'am, if you say so; and of course, he may be able to beat me without any faking."

"I'm sure he can't; he's not half so good a player as he thinks he is--though I wouldn't let him know that for the world. If you let him beat you, it will mean nothing to you, but a great deal to him--and to me. You won't forget, Peter? Thank you so much. Oh, and another thing, Peter; please don't try to help him, as you did the other morning. It was very good of you, but he doesn't like it."

Alone in my room, I thought over my meeting with the Bishop's pawn and the problem he had set me. I was reckoned a very strong player, having played top board for my university, but here was a chess game of another kind into which I had stumbled, thanks primarily to getting drunk. The interview at Knight's confirmed the suspicions I had been forming since the receipt of that strange message, and now, with pencil and paper, I set to work on the problem. Here is what I evolved:

A secret society known as the Black Company, whose members represent the black set of chessmen, therefore at least sixteen in number--viz., King, Queen, two Bishops, two Knights, two Rooks, and the eight Pawns. They are black, say, because it represents evil, and they play against the white--meaning good--which may stand for Society in general.

The headquarters are in Philadelphia, but its members are scattered over different cities, and some of the pawns aren't known to one another by sight, because it is clear that Corby can't ever have seen Joyce. It's not a case of "doubles," for though Joyce approximated my height and weight, color of hair and mustache, Hewitt would have known unquestionably it wasn't I, if the remains hadn't been so badly mutilated. These pawns are attached to and serve under the orders of the various subleaders--Bishops, Knights, Rooks.

For some reason, at present quite obscure, it was planned to replace Jules, Varney's chauffeur, by a member of the Black Company. To this end, and in order that his discharge would occur naturally, they discovered and played upon his old weakness for drink. Begun in Philadelphia, it was finished here. Joyce, the King's pawn, came to take his place, probably on forged recommendation papers.

Queries: Of precisely what nature is the Black Company? Is Theodore Varney a member? If so, why the campaign to get Joyce placed here? Was it to deceive his niece or some one else?

Why did Joyce act as he did, instead of coming here to fill the position? Did he get cold feet at the last moment, is such defection punishable by death, and did he try to make his escape, changing his identity to mine? This is a feeble explanation, but the only one I can advance at present.

How long can I play the rôle of Joyce? Clearly, if I make no mistakes, until such time as a member appears who knew him by sight. Perhaps long enough for me to discover and checkmate whatever move they're up to. They don't know that Joyce is dead and buried under my name.

After some further speculation, which led me nowhere, I destroyed the paper and went to bed, where I dreamed that Corby, a gigantic and animated black bishop, was trying to drown me in a vat of buttermilk.