Arthur B. Reeve Crime & Mystery Boxed Set. Arthur B. Reeve
the street," he said, "and wait. Put the window in back of you down so I can talk. I'll tell you where to go presently. Now, Walter, sit back as far as you can. This may seem like an underhand thing to do, but we've got to get what that woman won't tell us or give up the case."
Perhaps half an hour we waited, still puzzling over the scraps of paper. Suddenly I felt a nudge from Kennedy. Antoinette Moulton was standing in the doorway across the street. Evidently she preferred not to ride in her own car, for a moment later she entered a taxicab.
"Follow that black cab," said Kennedy to our driver.
Sure enough, it stopped in front of the Recherche Apartments and Mrs. Moulton stepped out and almost ran in.
We waited a moment, then Kennedy followed. The elevator that had taken her up had just returned to the ground floor.
"The same floor again," remarked Kennedy, jauntily stepping in and nodding familiarly to the elevator boy.
Then he paused suddenly, looked at his watch, fixed his gaze thoughtfully on me an instant, and exclaimed. "By George--no. I can't go up yet. I clean forgot that engagement at the hotel. One moment, son. Let us out. We'll be back again."
Considerably mystified, I followed him to the sidewalk.
"You're entitled to an explanation," he laughed catching my bewildered look as he opened the cab door. "I didn't want to go up now while she is there, but I wanted to get on good terms with that boy. We'll wait until she comes down, then go up."
"Where?" I asked.
"That's what I am going through all this elaborate preparation to find out. I have no more idea than you have."
It could not have been more than twenty minutes later when Mrs. Moulton emerged rather hurriedly, and drove away.
While we had been waiting I had observed a man on the other side of the street who seemed unduly interested in the Recherche, too, for he had walked up and down the block no less than six times. Kennedy saw him, and as he made no effort to follow Mrs. Moulton, Kennedy did not do so either. In fact a little quick glance which she had given at our cab had raised a fear that she might have discovered that she was being followed.
Kennedy and I paid off our cabman and sauntered into the Recherche in the most debonair manner we could assume.
"Now, son, we'll go up," he said to the boy who, remembering us, and now not at all clear in his mind that he might not have seen us before that, whisked us to the tenth floor.
"Let me see," said Kennedy, "it's number one hundred and--er---"
"Three," prompted the boy.
He pressed the buzzer and a neatly dressed colored maid responded.
"I had an appointment here with Mrs. Moulton this morning," remarked Kennedy.
"She has just gone," replied the maid, off her guard.
"And was to meet Mr. Schloss here in half an hour," he added quickly.
It was the maid's turn to look surprised.
"I didn't think he was to be here," she said. "He's had some--"
"Trouble at the office," supplied Kennedy. "That's what it was about. Perhaps he hasn't been able to get away yet. But I had the appointment. Ah, I see a telephone in the hall. May I?"
He had stepped politely in, and by dint of cleverly keeping his finger on the hook in the half light, he carried on a one-sided conversation with himself long enough to get a good chance to look about.
There was an air of quiet and refinement about the apartment in the Recherche. It was darkened to give the little glowing electric bulbs in their silken shades a full chance to simulate right. The deep velvety carpets were noiseless to the foot, and the draperies, the pictures, the bronzes, all bespoke taste.
But the chief objects of interest to Craig were the little square green baize-covered tables on one of which lay neatly stacked a pile of gilt-edged cards and a mahogany box full of ivory chips of red, white and blue.
It was none of the old-time gambling places, like Danfield's, with its steel door which Craig had once cut through with an oxyacetylene blowpipe in order to rescue a young spendthrift from himself.
Kennedy seemed perfectly well satisfied merely with a cursory view of the place, as he hung up the receiver and thanked the maid politely for allowing him to use it.
"This is up-to-date gambling in cleaned-up New York," he remarked as we waited for the elevator to return for us. "And the worst of it all is that it gets the women as well as the men. Once they are caught in the net, they are the most powerful lure to men that the gamblers have yet devised."
We rode down in silence, and as we went down the steps to the street, I noticed the man whom we had seen watching the place, lurking down at the lower corner. Kennedy quickened his pace and came up behind him.
"Why, Winters!" exclaimed Craig. "You here?"
"I might say the same to you," grinned the detective not displeased evidently that our trail had crossed his. "I suppose you are looking for Schloss, too. He's up in the Recherche a great deal, playing poker. I understand he owns an interest in the game up there."
Kennedy nodded, but said nothing.
"I just saw one of the cappers for the place go out before you went in."
"Capper?" repeated Kennedy surprised. "Antoinette Moulton a steerer for a gambling joint? What can a rich society woman have to do with a place like that or a man like Schloss?"
Winters smiled sardonically. "Society ladies to-day often get into scrapes of which their husbands know nothing," he remarked. "You didn't know before that Antoinette Moulton, like many of her friends in the smart set, was a gambler--and loser--did you?"
Craig shook his head. He had more of human than scientific interest in a case of a woman of her caliber gone wrong.
"But you must have read of the famous Moulton diamonds?"
"Yes," said Craig, blankly, as if it were all news to him.
"Schloss has them--or at least had them. The jewels she wore at the opera this winter were paste, I understand."
"Does Moulton play?" he asked.
"I think so--but not here, naturally. In a way, I suppose, it is his fault. They all do it. The example of one drives on another."
Instantly there flashed over my mind a host of possibilities. Perhaps, after all, Winters had been right. Schloss had taken this way to make sure of the jewels so that she could not redeem them. Suddenly another explanation crowded that out. Had Mrs. Moulton robbed the safe herself, or hired some one else to do it for her, and had that person gone back on her?
Then a horrid possibility occurred to me. Whatever Antoinette Moulton may have been and done, some one must have her in his power. What a situation for the woman! My sympathy went out to her in her supreme struggle. Even if it had been a real robbery, Schloss might easily recover from it. But for her every event spelled ruin and seemed only to be bringing that ruin closer.
We left Winters, still watching on the trail of Schloss, and went on uptown to the laboratory.
Chapter XVIII
The Burglar's Microphone
That night I was sitting, brooding over the case, while Craig was studying a photograph which he made of the smudge on the glass door down at Schloss'. He paused in his scrutiny of the print to answer the telephone.
"Something has happened to Schloss," he exclaimed seizing his hat and coat. "Winters has been watching him. He didn't go to the Recherche. Winters wants me to meet him at a place several blocks below it Come on. He wouldn't say over the wire what it was. Hurry."