His Great Adventure. Robert Herrick
for one minute!”
“Well, what will you do about it?”
The girl tapped sullenly with her foot, without replying.
“Want to let that friend of yours know about me?” Brainard continued meaningly. As the stenographer tossed her head and moved again toward the telephone, he added, “Come over here where I can watch you! Quick now, pack those bundles into the bag.” As she still hesitated, defying him, he said sharply, “Get down on your knees and go to work!”
She whimpered, but fell to her knees. They worked silently for several minutes. The vault was stripped bare. The smaller papers were packed into the bag, and the bulkier stuff was stacked on the floor, ready to be thrust into another receptacle.
Brainard glanced at his watch. Peters had been gone more than a quarter of an hour. Had he been detained, or had he become suspicious and decided to get advice before going any farther? Brainard considered departing with what he had already packed in his bag, which he judged was the more important part of the safe’s contents.
“I guess it’s about time for me to be going home now,” the stenographer remarked, plucking up her courage. “I’ll leave you and Mr. Peters to lock up.”
“You want to see that friend badly, don’t you?” Brainard asked. “Not quite yet; the day’s work is not over yet. Be patient!”
He did not dare to trust her beyond his sight, nor did he think it wise to leave her behind him. The girl walked idly to the window, then edged along the wall. Beside the safe there was a recess, from which the rear door opened. When the stenographer reached this, she, darted for the door.
“Good-by!” she called. “I guess the police will take care of you!”
The little door fortunately stuck. Before she could open it, Brainard had dragged her back into the room.
“You’re just a common second-story man!” she cried angrily.
“Exactly! How clever of you to penetrate my disguise! I’m a car-barn bandit—Texas Joe—anything you please! But before you skip, I want you to look through those drawers in the vault, to see if I have missed anything.”
He shoved the surprised woman into the empty vault, and swung the door. As the bolts shot back into place, a muffled cry escaped from within. Brainard called back:
“Save your breath! There’s enough air in there to keep you alive for some hours; and I’ll see that you get out in plenty of time to join that friend for dinner. Just keep quiet and save your breath!”
A sob answered him from the vault.
VIII
At that moment a low, confidential knock came on the door of the outer office, followed by a discreet rattling of the knob.
“There he is at last!” thought Brainard, with a sense of relief.
He hurried to unbolt the door; but instead of Peters’s mild face, a chubby, spectacled young fellow, wearing his derby hat pushed far back on a round, bald head, confronted him.
“Who are you?” Brainard demanded, trying to close the door.
The man grinned back:
“And who are you?”
He had shoved his right leg into the opening, and with his question he gave a powerful push that almost knocked Brainard from his feet.
“Well?” he said, once within the office, grinning more broadly. “I’m Farson—Edward, Jr.—from the Despatch. We just had a wire from New York that Krutzmacht’s been found, dead!”
“Dead!” Brainard exclaimed.
“Had a stroke or something, and died this morning in a hospital. One of our old men down East got on to it, and tipped us the wire.”
The intruder settled himself comfortably on the top of the stenographer’s little desk, and drew out a cigarette. Dangling his fat legs, he eyed Brainard with an amused stare.
The latter stood for the moment dumfounded. Although he had at first looked for this outcome, as the days had gone by he had come to believe that the old man was recovering. Now he realized swiftly that with Krutzmacht dead his power of attorney was no better than a piece of blank paper. His position was doubly tenuous.
“Say!” The reporter interrupted his meditation in a burst of cynical confidence. “The old man was a good pirate—fought to the last ditch, and then got out.”
“What makes you think he got out?” Brainard inquired.
The reporter shrugged his shoulders.
“They had him, and he must have known it. That railroad crowd would have taken the hide off him, and put what was left in the penitentiary.”
“Perhaps they made away with him,” Brainard suggested meaningly.
“You think so? My, that would be a fat scoop! What makes you think so?”
Brainard raised his eyebrows mysteriously, and the reporter nimbly filled in a reasonable outline of the story.
“You mean he got the money down East that he needed to stop this receivership, and they knew it, and put him out of the way, so that he shouldn’t interrupt the game?”
“Possibly,” Brainard admitted.
The reporter jumped from his seat briskly. “Well, I must get busy—they’re holding the paper for me. Who’s in charge here?”
“I am,” Brainard replied promptly.
“And what’s your name?”
He pulled a dirty note book from his hip-pocket.
“Wilkins,” Brainard answered quickly, “of Wilkins & Starbird, Mr. Krutzmacht’s New York attorneys.”
The reporter looked at Brainard and whistled, but he wrote down the name.
“You folks didn’t lose any time in getting busy! I s’pose there’ll be litigation and all that. Do you expect to save much from the wreck?”
“That’s what I am here for—to keep those pirates from making off with the stuff!” His eye fell upon his valise, and a sudden resolution came to him. “See here, Farson,” he said confidentially, laying a hand on the reporter’s pudgy thigh, “do you see that bag? The Pacific Northern that they’re after and the Shasta Company are right inside that bag, together with a lot of other valuable property. I’m going to take it where those pirates can’t lay a finger on it, in spite of all the courts in California!”
The reporter’s eyes grew round.
“You’ve got your nerve!” he said admiringly.
“You see, time’s money—big money. So I can’t stay here all night gassing with you. There is a train on the Santa Fé at ten, isn’t there?”
“Ten ten,” the reporter corrected.
“I must make that train, or—”
“Lose the trick?” the reporter suggested affably.
“I’m going to make it!”
“You’ll need some help in the get-away, I suppose?”
“Just so! If I make that train all right with this stuff, there’ll be a couple of hundred dollars for you, my boy; and what’s more, you can have the story all to yourself. It will be better than the old man’s death.”
A pleasant smile circled around the reporter’s chubby