"What!" Phelan exploded, jumping to his feet and turning white as his boiled shirt.
"Yes, nabbed him for breaking the speed limit," Gladwin nodded, leaning back against a table and lighting a cigarette.
"Fer, fer, fer breakin" the speed limit; fer, fer--yez made an arrest?"
"Exactly! He was going so slow he deserved to be arrested, and what"s more, he was making love to a pretty girl without shame. I got in and told him to drive me to the station."
Phelan threw up his hands with a groan.
"An" did yez take him to the station?"
"How could I?" chuckled Gladwin. "I didn"t know where it was--that is, your station--so I told him most any would do. We rode about a bit and as he didn"t seem anxious to be locked up, I compromised for fifty dollars. It was really quite simple, Phelan, and if I"d only had more time I might have got back that five hundred."
[Ill.u.s.tration: "GIVE ME ME UNIFORM AN" LET ME GIT OUT OF HERE."]
"You"ve lost me me job--that"s what you"ve done!" moaned Phelan, while his brain reeled with pictures of police headquarters, trial rooms and ruthless commissioners. "Come, give me me uniform," he cried, with a sudden accession of pa.s.sion.
"What"s that?" asked the young man, quickly, his grin vanishing.
"Me uniform!" rasped Phelan, with a rush toward the young man. "Give me me uniform an" let me git out of here."
Gladwin dodged around the table, protesting:
"No, no--not yet. The burglar--that is, my friend--will be here any moment."
"Your friend?" Phelan stopped, again a prey to bewilderment.
"Yes, yes--I explained all that before. The one I"m playing the joke on. You don"t suppose I"m going to take it off now, do you?"
"Yez can bet your life, yez are," roared Phelan, with another savage rush round the table. "I"ve had enough of this, an" too much!"
"Now, just a minute," pleaded Gladwin. "I a.s.sure you everything is all right, and I"m not going to leave the house again. If anything happens so you need your uniform I"ll be right here where you can get it. I"m not going to leave the house. Tell me, where"s Barnes?"
"Who?" said Phelan, more calmly, and pausing in his pursuit.
"My friend--the one I left here."
"I dunno--there was a ring at the bell here a while ago and in come a wild woman and"----
"Great Scott! I hope my friend wasn"t scared off! If that fellow was to meet her here at 10.30--why, it"s after that now!"
"Here! Phelan, quick--help me put these covers on the chairs and things. Over there in the corner, back of the chest. He mustn"t know that anybody"s been here. Hurry, man; hurry! we haven"t a second to spare."
Phelan submitted to the breathless commands as if he were hypnotized, puffing and blowing like a porpoise as he struggled to slip the linen covers over the chairs. Gladwin worked at top speed, too; and just as he was covering the great chest he gave a start and held up his hand.
"Sh!" he whispered. "There"s a motor stopping outside. You go down into the kitchen and be ready to come up if you hear me whistle."
"But ye"ll promise yez won"t leave the house with them clothes,"
gasped Phelan.
"No, no--certainly not. Be quick now--I"ll switch off this light and step out on the balcony. Close that door tight after you and be sure you switch out the lights in the back hall."
Gladwin only waited for the disappearance of Phelan and the soft closing of the door when he plunged the room into darkness. He could hear the click of a key in the front door lock as he groped his way to the window curtains and pressed back into the semi-circular recess that led out onto a window balcony. As he did so he unlatched the heavily grilled balcony window, drew out his penknife and slit a peephole in the curtain.
CHAPTER XXVI.
GLADWIN MEETS HIMSELF.
Standing as stiff and immovable as if he had been turned to stone, Travers Gladwin peered with one eye through the narrow aperture he had slashed in the heavy brocade portiere. Still gazing into inky darkness he could hear the cautious tread of two persons. His senses told him that one of the visitors was a heavy, sure-footed man and that the other was of lighter build and nervously wary. His deductions ceased instantly as a flash of light crossed his vision.
For a moment the concealed watcher saw nothing save the incisive ray of light that cut like a knife thrust through the darkness; then as he followed the shaft of light to its source he made out the silhouette of a man in evening dress--a white shirt front, square shoulders that branched off into the nothingness of the cloaking shadows and a handsome, sharp profile that lost itself in the gloom of a silk hat.
He also made out a cane from which the flashlight beamed. It was a new device to the experience of Travers Gladwin, and he watched it with the same fascination that a man is wont to manifest in the gleam of a revolver muzzle that suddenly protrudes itself from the mysterious depths of night.
The wielder of this smart burglar"s implement did not move as he gashed the darkness with the ray of light, and to Gladwin he seemed inordinately calm. His companion was somewhere behind him, groping, and did not come into the picture until suddenly he found the push b.u.t.ton in the wall and switched on the full glare of the electroliers suspended from the ceiling.
Gladwin saw and recognized. He drew in a deep breath of surprise.
It was Watkins, the thieving butler he had discharged in London. His attention did not linger on this familiar soft-shuffling tool of the master thief, however, but snapped back to the big, good looking young man with the branching shoulders and erect, confident carriage.
Used as he was to immaculate exteriors, Travers Gladwin had never seen a better groomed man. He had never seen a man with a quicker eye and more unconscious grace of movement.
It was no wonder that bitter envy gnawed his heart for a little while as there rose again before him the picture of that bewilderingly pretty girl and her pa.s.sionate insistence that she would elope with "Travers Gladwin" in spite of any and all obstacles.
That underneath all these splendid sheathings the man had the mean spirit of a deceiver and a robber never entered the young man"s head.
But presently things began to happen with such avalanching rapidity of action that there was not even a second to spare for speculation upon the vast gap between their social positions.
The lights had hardly been switched on before the big fellow put the sharp query to his companion:
"Watkins, is this room just as you left it when you went away with Mr.
Gladwin?"
"I don"t know, sir," replied Watkins, with characteristic deference of tone. "Bateato, the j.a.p, closed the house."
"H"m," said the other, laying his cane and hat on a table and drawing from the pocket of his light overcoat a blue print diagram of the house. Casting his eyes about the room, he unfolded the diagram and pointed to it, nodding his head behind him for Watkins to come and look.
"We"re in this room now," he said, easily.
"Yes, sir."
"Out that way is the corridor to the kitchen."
He pointed to the panel-like door which a few minutes before had swallowed the very much undressed Officer 666.