Chapter 24. The Road To Paris

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_ CHAPTER XXIV. THE ROAD TO PARIS

Over the drenched sea wall gulls whirled and eddied above the spouting spray; the grey breakwater was smothered under exploding combers; _quai_, docks, white-washed lighthouse, swept with spindrift, appeared and disappeared through the stormy obscurity as the tender from the Channel packet fought its way shoreward with Neeland's luggage lashed in the cabin, and Neeland himself sticking to the deck like a fly to a frantic mustang, enchanted with the whole business.

For the sea, at last, was satisfying this young man; he savoured now what he had longed for as a little boy, guiding a home-made raft on the waters of Neeland's mill pond in the teeth of a summer breeze. Before he had ever seen the ocean he wanted all it had to give short of shipwreck and early decease. He had experienced it on the Channel during the night.

There was only one other passenger aboard--a tall, lean, immaculately dressed man with a ghastly pallor, a fox face, and ratty eyes, who looked like an American and who had been dreadfully sick. Not caring for his appearance, Neeland did not speak to him. Besides, he was having too good a time to pay attention to anybody or anything except the sea.

A sailor had lent Neeland some oilskins and a sou'-wester; and he hated to put them off--hated the calmer waters inside the basin where the tender now lay rocking; longed for the gale and the heavy seas again, sorry the crossing was ended.

He cast a last glance of regret at the white fury raging beyond the breakwater as he disembarked among a crowd of porters, _gendarmes_, soldiers, and assorted officials; then, following his porter to the customs, he prepared to submit to the unvarying indignities incident to luggage examination in France.

He had leisure, while awaiting his turn, to buy a novel, "Les Bizarettes," of Maurice Bertrand; time, also, to telegraph to the Princess Mistchenka. The fox-faced man, who looked like an American, was now speaking French like one to a perplexed official, inquiring where the Paris train was to be found. Neeland listened to the fluent information on his own account, then returned to the customs bench.

But the unusually minute search among his effects did not trouble him; the papers from the olive-wood box were buttoned in his breast pocket; and after a while the customs officials let him go to the train which stood beside an uncovered concrete platform beyond the _quai_, and toward which the fox-faced American had preceded him on legs that still wobbled with seasickness.

There were no Pullmans attached to the train, only the usual first, second, and third class carriages with compartments; and a new style corridor car with central aisle and lettered doors to compartments holding four.

Into one of these compartments Neeland stepped, hoping for seclusion, but backed out again, the place being full of artillery officers playing cards.

In vain he bribed the guard, who offered to do his best; but the human contents of a Channel passenger steamer had unwillingly spent the night in the quaint French port, and the Paris-bound train was already full.

The best Neeland could do was to find a seat in a compartment where he interrupted conversation between three men who turned sullen heads to look at him, resenting in silence the intrusion. One of them was the fox-faced man he had already noticed on the packet, tender, and customs dock.

But Neeland, whose sojourn in a raw and mannerless metropolis had not blotted out all memory of gentler cosmopolitan conventions, lifted his hat and smilingly excused his intrusion in the fluent and agreeable French of student days, before he noticed that he had to do with men of his own race.

None of the men returned his salute; one of them merely emitted an irritated grunt; and Neeland recognised that they all must be his own delightful country-men--for even the British are more dignified in their stolidity.

A second glance satisfied him that all three were undoubtedly Americans; the cut of their straw hats and apparel distinguished them as such; the nameless grace of Mart, Haffner and Sharx marked the tailoring of the three; only Honest Werner could have manufactured such headgear; only New York such footwear.

And Neeland looked at them once more and understood that Broadway itself sat there in front of him, pasty, close-shaven, furtive, sullen-eyed, the _New York Paris Herald_ in its seal-ringed fingers; its fancy waistcoat pockets bulging with cigars.

"Sports," he thought to himself; and decided to maintain incognito and pass as a Frenchman, if necessary, to escape conversation with the three tired-eyed ones.

So he hung up his hat, opened his novel, and settled back to endure the trip through the rain, now beginning to fall from a low-sagging cloud of watery grey.

After a few minutes the train moved. Later the guard passed and accomplished his duties. Neeland inquired politely of him in French whether there was any political news, and the guard replied politely that he knew of none. But he looked very serious when he said it.

Half an hour from the coast the rain dwindled to a rainbow and ceased; and presently a hot sun was gilding wet green fields and hedges and glistening roofs which steamed vapour from every wet tile.

Without asking anybody's opinion, one of the men opposite raised the window. But Neeland did not object; the rain-washed air was deliciously fragrant; and he leaned his elbow on his chair arm and looked out across the loveliest land in Europe.

"Say, friend," said an East Side voice at his elbow, "does smoking go?"

He glanced back over his shoulder at the speaker--a little, pallid, sour-faced man with the features of a sick circus clown and eyes like two holes burnt in a lump of dough.

"_Pardon, monsieur?_" he said politely.

"Can't you even pick a Frenchman, Ben?" sneered one of the men opposite--a square, smoothly shaven man with slow, heavy-lidded eyes of a greenish tinge.

The fox-faced man said:

"He had me fooled, too, Eddie. If Ben Stull didn't get his number it don't surprise me none, becuz he was on the damn boat I crossed in, and I certainly picked him for New York."

"Aw," said the pasty-faced little man referred to as Ben Stull, "Eddie knows it all. He never makes no breaks, of course. You make 'em, Doc, but he doesn't. That's why me and him and you is travelling here--this minute--because the great Eddie Brandes never makes no breaks----"

"Go on and smoke and shut up," said Brandes, with a slow, sidewise glance at Neeland, whose eyes remained fastened on the pages of "Les Bizarettes," but whose ears were now very wide open.

"Smoke," repeated Stull, "when this here Frenchman may make a holler?"

"Wait till I ask him," said the man addressed as Doc, with dignity. And to Neeland:

"_Pardong, musseer, permitty vous moi de fumy ung cigar?_"

"_Mais comment, donc, monsieur! Je vous en prie----_"

"He says politely," translated Doc, "that we can smoke and be damned to us."

They lighted three obese cigars; Neeland, his eyes on his page, listened attentively and stole a glance at the man they called Brandes.

So this was the scoundrel who had attempted to deceive the young girl who had come to him that night in his studio, bewildered with what she believed to be her hopeless disgrace!

This was the man--this short, square, round-faced individual with his minutely shaven face and slow greenish eyes, and his hair combed back and still reeking with perfumed tonic--this shiny, scented, and overgroomed sport with rings on his fat, blunt fingers and the silk laces on his tan oxfords as fastidiously tied as though a valet had done it!

Ben Stull began to speak; and presently Neeland discovered that the fox-faced man's name was Doc Curfoot; that he had just arrived from London on receipt of a telegram from them; and that they themselves had landed the night before from a transatlantic liner to await him here.

Doc Curfoot checked the conversation, which was becoming general now, saying that they'd better be very sure that the man opposite understood no English before they became careless.

"_Musseer_," he added suavely to Neeland, who looked up with a polite smile, "_parly voo Anglay_?"

"_Je parle Francais, monsieur._"

"I get him," said Stull, sourly. "I knew it anyway. He's got the sissy manners of a Frenchy, even if he don't look the part. No white man tips his lid to nobody except a swell skirt."

"I seen two dudes do it to each other on Fifth Avenue," remarked Curfoot, and spat from the window.

Brandes, imperturbable, rolled his cigar into the corner of his mouth and screwed his greenish eyes to narrow slits.

"You got our wire, Doc?"

"Why am I here if I didn't!"

"Sure. Have an easy passage?"

Doc Curfoot's foxy visage still wore traces of the greenish pallor; he looked pityingly at Brandes--_self_-pityingly:

"Say, Eddie, that was the worst I ever seen. A freight boat, too. God! I was that sick I hoped she'd turn turtle! And nab it from me; if you hadn't wired me S O S, I'd have waited over for the steamer train and the regular boat!"

"Well, it's S O S all right, Doc. I got a cable from Quint this morning saying our place in Paris is ready, and we're to be there and open up tonight----"

"_What_ place?" demanded Curfoot.

"Sure, I forgot. You don't know anything yet, do you?"

"Eddie," interrupted Stull, "let me do the talking _this_ time, if _you_ please."

And, to Curfoot:

"Listen, Doc. We was up against it. You heard. Every little thing has went wrong since Eddie done what he done--every damn thing! Look what's happened since Maxy Venem got sore and he and Minna started out to get him! Morris Stein takes away the Silhouette Theatre from us and we can't get no time for 'Lilith' on Broadway. We go on the road and bust. All our Saratoga winnings goes, also what we got invested with Parson Smawley when the bulls pulled Quint's----!"

"Ah, f'r the lov' o' Mike!" began Brandes. "Can that stuff!"

"All right, Eddie. I'm tellin' Doc, that's all. I ain't aiming to be no crape-hanger; I only want you both to listen to me _this_ time. If _you'd_ listened to me before, we'd have been in Saratoga today in our own machines. But no; you done what you done--God! Did anyone ever hear of such a thing!--taking chances with that little rube from Brookhollow--that freckled-faced mill-hand--that yap-skirt! And Minna and Max having you watched all the time! You big boob! No--don't interrupt! Listen to _me_! Where are you now? You had good money; you had a theaytre, you had backing! Quint was doing elegant; Doc and Parson and you and me had it all our way and comin' faster every day. Wait, I tell you! This ain't a autopsy. This is business. I'm tellin' you two guys all this becuz I want you to realise that what Eddie done was against my advice. Come on, now; wasn't it?"

"It sure was," admitted Curfoot, removing his cigar from his lean, pointed visage of a greyhound, and squinting thoughtfully at the smoke eddying in the draught from the open window.

"Am I right, Eddie?" demanded Stull, fixing his black, smeary eyes on Brandes.

"Well, go on," returned the latter between thin lips that scarcely moved.

"All right, then. Here's the situation, Doc. We're broke. If Quint hadn't staked us to this here new game we're playin', where'd we be, I ask you?

"We got no income now. Quint's is shut up; Maxy Venem and Minna Minti fixed us at Saratoga so we can't go back there for a while. They won't let us touch a card on the liners. Every pug is leery of us since Eddie flimflammed that Battling Smoke; and I told you he'd holler, too! Didn't I?" turning on Brandes, who merely let his slow eyes rest on him without replying.

"Go on, Ben," said Curfoot.

"I'm going on. We guys gotta do something----"

"We ought to have fixed Max Venem," said Curfoot coolly.

There was a silence; all three men glanced stealthily at Neeland, who quietly turned the page of his book as though absorbed in his story.

"That squealer, Max," continued Curfoot with placid ferocity blazing in his eyes, "ought to have been put away. Quint and Parson wanted us to have it done. Was it any stunt to get that dirty little shyster in some roadhouse last May?"

Brandes said:

"I'm not mixing with any gunmen after the Rosenthal business."

"Becuz a lot of squealers done a amateur job like that, does it say that a honest job can't be pulled?" demanded Curfoot. "Did Quint and me ask you to go to Dopey or Clabber or Pete the Wop, or any of them cheap gangsters?"

"Ah, can the gun-stuff," said Brandes. "I'm not for it. It's punk."

"What's punk?"

"Gun-play."

"Didn't you pull a pop on Maxy Venem the night him and Hyman Adams and Minna beat you up in front of the Knickerbocker?"

"Eddie was stalling," interrupted Stull, as Brandes' face turned a dull beef-red. "You talk like a bad actor, Doc. There's other ways of getting Max in wrong. Guns ain't what they was once. Gun-play is old stuff. But listen, now. Quint has staked us and we gotta make good. And this is a big thing, though it looks like it was out of our line."

"Go on; what's the idea?" inquired Curfoot, interested.

Brandes, the dull red still staining his heavy face, watched the flying landscape from the open window.

Stull leaned forward; Curfoot bent his lean, narrow head nearer; Neeland, staring fixedly at his open book, pricked up his ears.

"Now," said Stull in a low voice, "I'll tell you guys all Eddie and I know about this here business of Captain Quint's. It's like this, Doc: Some big feller comes to Quint after they close him up--he won't tell who--and puts up this here proposition: Quint is to open a elegant place in Paris on the Q. T. In fact, it's ready now. There'll be all the backing Quint needs. He's to send over three men he can trust--three men who can shoot at a pinch! He picks us three and stakes us. Get me?"

Doc nodded.

Brandes said in his narrow-eyed, sleepy way:

"There was a time when they called us gunmen--Ben and me. But, so help me God, Doc, we never did any work like that ourselves. We never fired a shot to croak any living guy. Did we, Ben?"

"All right," said Stull impatiently. And, to Curfoot: "Eddie and I know what we're to do. If it's on the cards that we shoot--well, then, we'll shoot. The place is to be small, select, private, and first class. Doc, you act as capper. You deal, too. Eddie sets 'em up. I deal or spin. All right. We three guys attend to anything American that blows our way. Get that?"

Curfoot nodded.

"Then for the foreigners, there's to be a guy called Karl Breslau."

Neeland managed to repress a start, but the blood tingled in his cheeks, and he turned his head a trifle as though seeking better light on the open pages in his hands.

"This here man Breslau," continued Stull, "speaks all kinds of languages. He is to have two friends with him, a fellow named Kestner and one called Weishelm. They trim the foreigners, they do; and----"

"Well, I don't see nothing new about this----" began Curfoot; but Stull interrupted:

"Wait, can't you! This ain't the usual. We run a place for Quint. The place is like Quint's. We trim guys same as he does--or did. _But there's more to it._"

He let his eyes rest on Neeland, obliquely, for a full minute. The others watched him, too. Presently the young man cut another page of his book with his pen-knife and turned it with eager impatience, as though the story absorbed him.

"Don't worry about Frenchy," murmured Brandes with a shrug. "Go ahead, Ben."

Stull laid one hand on Curfoot's shoulder, drawing that gentleman a trifle nearer and sinking his voice:

"Here's the new stuff, Doc," he said. "And it's brand new to us, too. There's big money into it. Quint swore we'd get ours. And as we was on our uppers we went in. It's like this: We lay for Americans from the Embassy or from any of the Consulates. They are our special game. It ain't so much that we trim them; we also get next to them; we make 'em talk right out in church. Any political dope they have we try to get. We get it any way we can. If they'll accelerate we accelerate 'em; if not, we dope 'em and take their papers. The main idee is to get a holt on 'em!

"That's what Quint wants; that's what he's payin' for and gettin' paid for--inside information from the Embassy and Consulates----"

"What does Quint want of that?" demanded Curfoot, astonished.

"How do I know? Blackmail? Graft? I can't call the dope. But listen here! Don't forget that it ain't Quint who wants it. It's the big feller behind him who's backin' him. It's some swell guy higher up who's payin' Quint. And Quint, he pays us. So where's the squeal coming?"

"Yes, but----"

"Where's the holler?" insisted Stull.

"I ain't hollerin', am I? Only this here is new stuff to me----"

"Listen, Doc. I don't know what it is, but all these here European kings is settin' watchin' one another like toms in a back alley. I think that some foreign political high-upper wants dope on what our people are finding out over here. Like this, he says to himself: 'I hear this Kink is building ten sooper ferry boats. If that's right, I oughta know. And I hear that the Queen of Marmora has ordered a million new nifty fifty-shot bean-shooters for the boy scouts! That is indeed serious news!' So he goes to his broker, who goes to a big feller, who goes to Quint, who goes to us. Flag me?"

"Sure."

"That's all. There's nothing to it, Doc. Says Quint to us: 'Trim a few guys for me and get their letters,' says Quint; 'and there's somethin' in it for me and you!' And _that's_ the new stuff, Doc."

"You mean we're spies?"

"Spies? I don't know. We're on a salary. We get a big bonus for every letter we find on the carpet----" He winked at Curfoot and relighted his cigar.

"Say," said the latter, "it's like a creeping joint. It's a panel game, Ben----"

"It's politics like they play 'em in Albany, only it's ambassadors and kinks we trim, not corporations."

"_We_ can't do it! What the hell do we know about kinks and attaches?"

"No; Weishelm, Breslau and Kestner do that. We lay for the attaches or spin or deal or act handy at the bar and buffet with homesick Americans. No; the fine work--the high-up stuff, is done by Breslau and Weishelm. And I guess there's some fancy skirts somewhere in the game. But they're silent partners; and anyway Weishelm manages that part."

Curfoot, one lank knee over the other, swung his foot thoughtfully to and fro, his ratty eyes lost in dreamy revery. Brandes tossed his half-consumed cigar out of the open window and set fire to another. Stull waited for Curfoot to make up his mind. After several minutes the latter looked up from his cunning abstraction:

"Well, Ben, put it any way you like, but we're just plain political spies. And what the hell do they hand us over here if we're pinched?"

"I don't know. What of it?"

"Nothing. If there's good money in it, I'll take a chance."

"There is. Quint backs us. When we get 'em coming----"

"Ah," said Doc with a wry face, "that's all right for the cards or the wheel. But this pocket picking----"

"Say; that ain't what I mean. It's like this: Young Fitznoodle of the Embassy staff gets soused and starts out lookin' for a quiet game. We furnish the game. We don't go through his pockets; we just pick up whatever falls out and take shorthand copies. Then back go the letters into Fitznoodle's pocket----"

"Yes. Who reads 'em first?"

"Breslau. Or some skirt, maybe."

"What's Breslau?"

"Search _me_. He's a Dutchman or a Rooshian or some sort of Dodo. What do you care?"

"I don't. All right, Ben. You've got to show me; that's all."

"Show you what?"

"Spot cash!"

"You're in when you handle it?"

"If you show me real money--yes."

"You're on. I'll cash a cheque of Quint's for you at Monroe's soon as we hit the asphalt! And when you finish counting out your gold nickels put 'em in your pants and play the game! Is that right?"

"Yes."

They exchanged a wary handshake; then, one after another, they leaned back in their seats with the air of honest men who had done their day's work.

Curfoot blinked at Brandes, at his excessively groomed person, at his rings.

"You _look_ prosperous, Eddie."

"It's his business to," remarked Stull.

Brandes yawned:

"It would be a raw deal if there's a war over here," he said listlessly.

"Ah," said Curfoot, "there won't be none."

"Why?"

"The Jews and bankers won't let these kinks mix it."

"That's right, too," nodded Brandes.

But Stull said nothing and his sour, pasty visage turned sourer. It was the one possibility that disturbed him--the only fly in the amber--the only mote that troubled his clairvoyance. Also, he was the only man among the three who didn't think a thing was certain to happen merely because he wanted it to happen.

There was another matter, too, which troubled him. Brandes was unreliable. And who but little Stull should know how unreliable?

For Brandes had always been that. And now Stull knew him to be more than that--knew him to be treacherous.

Whatever in Brandes had been decent, or had, blindly perhaps, aspired toward decency, was now in abeyance. Something within him had gone to smash since Minna Minti had struck him that night in the frightened presence of Rue Carew.

And from that night, when he had lost the only woman who had ever stirred in him the faintest aspiration to better things, the man had gradually changed. Whatever in his nature had been unreliable became treacherous; his stolidity became sullenness. A slow ferocity burned within him; embers of a rage which no brooding ever quenched slumbered red in his brain until his endless meditation became a monomania. And his monomania was the ruin of this woman who had taken from him in the very moment of consummation all that he had ever really loved in the world--a thin, awkward, freckled, red-haired country girl, in whom, for the first and only time in all his life, he saw the vague and phantom promise of that trinity which he had never known--a wife, a child, and a home.

He sat there by the car window glaring out of his dull green eyes at the pleasant countryside, his thin lips tightening and relaxing on his cigar.

Curfoot, still pondering over the "new stuff" offered him, brooded silently in his corner, watching the others out of his tiny, bright eyes.

"Do anything in London?" inquired Stull.

"No."

"Who was you working for?"

"A jock and a swell skirt. But Scotland Yard got next and chased the main guy over the water."

"What was your lay?"

"Same thing. I dealt for the jock and the skirt trimmed the squabs."

"Anybody holler?"

"Aw--the kind we squeezed was too high up to holler. Them young lords take their medicine like they wanted it. They ain't like the home bunch that is named after swell hotels."

After a silence he looked up at Brandes:

"What ever become of Minna Minti?" he asked.

Brandes' heavy features remained stolid.

"She got her divorce, didn't she?" insisted Curfoot.

"Yes."

"Alimony?"

"No. She didn't ask any."

"How about Venem?"

Brandes remained silent, but Stull said:

"I guess she chucked him. She wouldn't stand for that snake. I got to hand it to her; she ain't that kind."

"What kind is she?"

"I tell you I got to hand it to her. I can't complain of her. She acted white all right until Venem stirred her up. Eddie's got himself to blame; he got in wrong and Venem had him followed and showed him up to Minna."

"You got tired of her, didn't you?" said Curfoot to Brandes. But Stull answered for him again:

"Like any man, Eddie needed a vacation now and then. But no skirt understands."

Brandes said slowly:

"I'll live to fix Minna yet."

"What fixed you," snapped Stull, "was that there Brookhollow stuff----"

"Can it!" retorted Brandes, turning a deep red.

"Aw--don't hand me the true-love stuff, Eddie! If you'd meant it with that little haymaker you'd have respected her----"

Brandes' large face became crimson with rage:

"You say another word about her and I'll push your block off--you little dough-faced kike!"

Stull shrugged and presently whispered to Curfoot:

"That's the play he always makes. I've waited two years, but he won't ring down on the love stuff. I guess he was hit hard that trip. It took a little red-headed, freckled country girl to stop him. But it was comin' to Eddie Brandes, and it certainly looks like it was there to stay a while."

"He's still stuck on her?"

"I guess she's still the fly paper," nodded Stull.

Suddenly Brandes turned on Stull such a look of concentrated hatred that the little gambler's pallid features stiffened with surprise:

"Ben," said Brandes in a low voice, which was too indistinct for Neeland to catch, "I'll tell you something now that you don't know. I saw Quint alone; I talked with him. Do you know who is handling the big stuff in this deal?"

"Who?" asked Stull, amazed.

"The Turkish Embassy in Paris. And do you know who plays the fine Italian hand for that bunch of Turks?"

"No."

"Minna!"

"You're crazy!"

Brandes took no notice, but went on with a sort of hushed ferocity that silenced both Stull and Curfoot:

"That's why I went in. To get Minna. And I'll get her if it costs every cent I've got or ever hope to get. That's why I'm in this deal; that's why I came; that's why I'm here telling you this. I'm in it to get Minna, not for the money, not for anything in all God's world except to get the woman who has done what Minna did to me."

Neeland listened in vain to the murmuring voice; he could not catch a word.

Stull whispered:

"Aw, f'r God's sake, Eddie, that ain't the game. Do you want to double-cross Quint?"

"I _have_ double-crossed him."

"What! Do you mean to sell him out?"

"I _have_ sold him out."

"Jesus! Who to?"

"To the British Secret Service. And there's to be one hundred thousand dollars in it, Doc, for you and me to divide. And fifty thousand more when we put the French bulls on to Minna and Breslau. Now, how does one hundred and fifty thousand dollars against five thousand apiece strike you two poor, cheap guys?"

But the magnitude of Brandes' treachery and the splendour of the deal left the two gamblers stunned.

Only by their expressions could Neeland judge that they were discussing matters of vital importance to themselves and probably to him. He listened; he could not hear what they were whispering. And only at intervals he dared glance over his book in their direction.

"Well," said Brandes under his breath, "go on. Spit it out. What's the squeal?"

"My God!" whispered Stull. "Quint will kill you."

Brandes laughed unpleasantly:

"Not me, Ben. I've got that geezer where I want him on a dirty deal he pulled off with the police."

Curfoot turned his pointed muzzle toward the window and sneered at the sunny landscape.

A few minutes later, far across the rolling plain set with villas and farms, and green with hedgerows, gardens, bouquets of trees and cultivated fields, he caught sight of a fairy structure outlined against the sky. Turning to Brandes:

"There's the Eiffel Tower," remarked Curfoot. "Where are we stopping, Eddie?"

"Caffy des Bulgars."

"Where's that?"

"It's where we go to work--Roo Vilna."

Stull's smile was ghastly, but Curfoot winked at Brandes.

Neeland listened, his eyes following the printed pages of his book. _

Read next: Chapter 25. Cup And Lip

Read previous: Chapter 23. On His Way

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