"You"ve come to the right place, brother," old Ahearn told him cordially, "you certainly have. You"ll find your Ro-stop-chin fellow right in this office." He aimed a stringy finger at Tom Ware. "Right in that fellow"s head. He can tell you all you want to know about His Imaginary Highness, but he"ll tell you outside, because I"m not going to have him hanging around here another second."
"Kind of peeved," the stranger remarked when he and Tom were on the sidewalk.
"You notice it, too?" Mirth went out of the young man"s eyes and he looked dubiously at the other. "He"s right, though, about that story being all in my head."
The fat man seemed neither disappointed nor surprised.
"I knew it was in somebody"s," he said, "but the photo"s not phoney."
"No." Eagerness came into the young man"s light eyes. "That"s Vincent Hannibal. You want to see him?"
"Yeah, if I can find him without wasting too much time."
"It won"t take any time at all. He lives up on China Hill. You can"t miss the house-a big red one on the top of the hill. Go straight up Broadway to the end of the paving and then take the left-hand road up the hill. Are you-?"
"I think maybe I can do business with him. Now where could I find you if I wanted to talk something over with you?"
"I live around the corner on Second Street-215. I"ll wait there for you, if you want. Do-?"
"Yeah, do that. I won"t be long."
The little fat man climbed into a black touring car, flicked a stubby hand at Tom, and turned the car up Broadway.
At the window of his boarding-house room Tom Ware sat for a while, smoking cigarettes and grinning at the spire of the Methodist church across the street. After a while he stopped grinning, and when he had returned his watch to his pocket for the sixth time he began to fidget in his chair. A little later he got up to walk around the room. He was definitely pacing the floor when he heard his landlady"s thin voice on the stairs.
She brought the little fat man whose eyes and chin disagreed to Tom"s door. The young man welcomed him warmly, insisted on his taking the rocking chair, and asked: "Did you find him?"
"Better close the door," his visitor suggested. Then: "Didn"t have any trouble at all finding the place. Now what can you tell me about this Hannibal?"
Tom hesitated, looking at the man and away from him. The man said, "Oh!" and gave Tom a white card, which read: William F. Roth Roth-Radford Detective Agency 420 Carney Building San Francisco, California "Maybe I ought to give you a little dope on what"s what," the detective said when the young man looked up from the card. "This fellow that you know as Hannibal has been known to marry women that had a dollar or two put away. One of "em died in an accident. Some folks say one thing and some another, but it"s a fact that the district attorney back there would like to see him, and the woman"s relations are spending good money trying to find him."
The detective"s card was a mangled thing in the young man"s hand, and his young man"s eyes were hot things in his face.
"So that"s what he"s up to! He- You got him, did you?"
"Whoah!" Roth ordered over an upheld thick hand. "You haven"t spoken your little piece yet-what you know about him and why you wrote that piece for the papers."
"I was up there last night. I go up there now and then." The words were tumbling out of the young man"s mouth before he sat down on the bed facing his guest. "We were sitting out in the summer house, because she was supposed to be in bed. And he came out there, not knowing I was there, and-"
The stream of words stopped. He squirmed on the bed, his face boyish with pink puzzlement.
"He kissed her, Mr. Roth, but it wasn"t like a father would kiss a daughter. It was-"
"You surprise me," the detective said placidly. "But I get you. Go on. What happened next?"
"Next he saw me-she told him I was there. Then he got mad. He said some things and I guess I said some things, and anyway-" He stopped to look at his bandaged knuckles. "I was sorry afterward that I hit him, but now I"m glad of it. And then he had a gun, only Maud wouldn"t let him use it, and she"-he flushed as if at a humiliating memory-"she sent me away. And that"s all that happened up there."
The detective rubbed his undershot chin with stubby fingers and suggested: "And that led up to the newspaper story."
"Yes. I came down the hill thinking what a mess it was for Jo-for all of us to be mixed up in, and I got to thinking about his carrying a gun in his own home. And I remembered something else that-that I"d heard somewhere, about his not liking to have his picture taken and only having one taken since he came up here. And, putting those things together, it looked like he might be a crook or hiding something.
"So I thought that if I could get his picture published in some newspapers, maybe some of the people who were hunting for him-if anybody was-would recognize him. If they didn"t, maybe he"d see the picture and think he"d better clear out.
"I happened to have that picture of him and his daughter. I got it- I picked it up off the sidewalk. So I came up here and lay across the bed and thought up that Russian prince story. Newspapers like that kind of stuff, and I had to have something that would be copied by other papers, with the photograph, in case the first paper didn"t bring results. And I was afraid to take a chance on a wild story that would give Hannibal a come-back-libel or something of the sort-if I was wrong.
"So I wrote that Russian story. I went down to the Leader office and wrote it that night, and put it on the 3:50 train for San Francisco, sending it to the paper that old Ahearn is local correspondent for. I knew they"d swallow it, coming from the Leader."
"And why?"
"Why what?"
"Exactly why," Roth explained, "did you go to all that trouble to tip Hannibal"s mitt?"
Tom Ware looked away from the questioning blue eyes, looked carefully at familiar things in the room.
"Well," finally and lamely, "I didn"t want to see him get away with anything if he was a crook."
Amus.e.m.e.nt flickered in the detective"s mild eyes.
"Well, what would you say, my boy, if I told you Hannibal cleared out early this morning?"
"Good riddance! But I wish you had caught him."
Roth leaned forward to put a hand on Tom"s knee.
"And if I told you that the young lady whose name you"ve taken so much trouble not to mention went with them?"
"Joan!"
"Now there"s no use tearing your collar," the little fat man protested as he stood up. "I tell you what: suppose you take a run into the city with me. Maybe I can use you, and maybe you"ll be in on the finish."
"You think they"re there?"
"Might be. Suppose your run-in last night stirred him up? Scared him into clinching his game with the young lady before you could tell her about the doings? Maybe he"s been too busy with that to read any newspapers. Anyway, I got a couple of ideas I want to try out."
A thin man with a thin freckled nose joined them when the ferry from Oakland put them in San Francisco an hour and a half later. Roth introduced the thin man as Mr. McBride.
"Everything covered. Nothing stirring," McBride said as he climbed into the car.
They took Tom to the Roth-Radford offices, gave him a newspaper and a chair, and left him alone while the hands of a wall-clock exhausted their repertoire of angles.
Then McBride came in.
"Yup!" he said. "Let"s go!"
In the street, Tom, Roth, and McBride got into Roth"s car.
"Where are they? Is she with them?" Tom asked. "Have you found them?"
Roth patted his shoulder.
"Don"t crowd us," he begged. "You"ll see it all."
The car crept through the traffic of Market Street, turned off to the right for the greater speed of a side street, turned back to the left, and set them down at the Polk Street entrance of the Munic.i.p.al Building. An elevator carried them to the third floor, where a sallow man stood among a litter of cigarette stubs.
"Your meat"s in there."
He nodded at a frosted gla.s.s door, gold-labeled: 302.
COUNTY CLERK.
MARRIAGE LICENSE.
D E P A R T M E N T.
Roth opened the door, McBride at his shoulder, Tom and the sallow man close behind.
On opposite sides of a table, Joan and Hannibal worked with scratchy pens on printed forms. Maud Hannibal stood beside Joan, saying some laughing thing. Hannibal"s back was to the door. He looked around when Joan and Maud, seeing Tom Ware, gasped together. But by then Roth was close to Hannibal on one side, McBride on the other.
"h.e.l.lo, Allender!" Roth greeted him. "We"re a committee of plenty to persuade you to go back to the old homestead in Nixon."
Hannibal stood up, tall and dark, facing Roth.
"I beg your pardon?" he said.
McBride"s hands ran nimbly across Hannibal"s hips. Hannibal spun around-too late. McBride was pocketing the square black pistol he had flicked out of the tall man"s pocket.
"A tough break, Allender," McBride sympathized.
"Allender?" Restrained angry impatience was in Hannibal"s voice. "My name is not Allender."
"Of course not," Roth agreed to his back. "But that"s the name you used in Nixon, so that"s the way the indictment reads, Ferguson."
Hannibal turned to face Roth again.
Tom Ware was looking at Joan. Joan"s eyes were wide and dazed and not definitely focused on anything. One of her hands lay palm-down on the wet ink of the form she had been filling in. Beside her, Maud stood tense, watching Hannibal. On the other side of the room three clerks gaped over their counter.
"My name," Hannibal spoke deliberately, "is Vincent Hannibal. You need not take my word for it. I can furnish you-"
"Sure, you can prove it," Roth agreed again. "But that"s nothing. I can prove you"re Prince Grigori Ro-stop-chin. How do you like that?"
Hannibal frowned in sincere puzzlement.
Maud spoke: "This is ridiculous. The idea of-"
"Now! Now!" McBride protested, looking down his thin freckled nose at her. "We"re only trying to break your husband of his marrying habits, Mrs. Ferguson."
Rage burned in her eyes, twisted her mouth viciously crooked.
"Why you big tramp!" she snarled. "You-"
"Maud!" Hannibal called sharply.
Her hands fell off her hips, her mouth straightened, and she became a small girl of perhaps eighteen again.
Joan Robson stood up, leaning over the hand that smeared her marriage license application, staring at Maud Hannibal with green-brown eyes wherein stupid incredulity was dying.
"Don"t let this disagreeable affair alarm you, Joan," Hannibal said smoothly. "I shall see that someone pays for it."
She did not show that she had heard him. Her eyes were still on Maud, and her eyes were as if Maud"s mask of girlishness had not been put on again.
Roth stepped back to put his mouth to Tom Ware"s ear.
"Get her out of here," he whispered. "We want to take this guy back to Nixon. We don"t want the local people holding him on any two-for-a-cent charges. Get her out and keep her quiet, and there"ll be no need for her being mixed up in it."
Tom went around to Joan"s side.
"Come on, Joan," he said. "Let"s get out of this."
"Come on, Joan," he had to repeat. He took her arm and led her toward the door. She went with neither volition nor unwillingness.
"Wait, Joan!" Hannibal exclaimed, and started toward her.
Roth stopped him by the effective if painful means of a foot solidly down on his instep. Hannibal cursed as Tom and Joan went out of the room.
"I"d-I"d like to sit down," she said as they were going down the street steps.
He found a vacant bench facing a fountain across the street. She sat in the middle of the bench, upright, staring with round eyes just now peculiarly flat at the water tumbling in the shape of a white dwarfed weeping willow tree. He sat near one end of the bench, lighted a cigarette, and looked uneasily from cigarette to her profile. He had the nervous manner of a man who hopes there isn"t going to be a scene.
"It"s a wonder," she said presently, not at all in the properly grateful tone of delivered to deliverer, "you didn"t wait until we were married! It would have been just like you! Letting me make a f-fool of myself all this time, and never saying a word!"
"Aw, Joan-" He broke off as she made a little swallowing sound. "How"d I know you were going to be in such a hurry to land him?" he growled.
"I believe you did know it! I believe you wanted me to marry him! I believe you made him do it!"
The young man thus undeservedly credited with Machiavellian cunning, in addition to early knowledge of the truth about Hannibal, blinked rapidly, but he kept quiet while she went on: "He-he came over early this morning and had Aunt Alice wake me, and he said he had a cablegram that his business a.s.sociate in Vienna was dead, and he"d have to go there immediately, and couldn"t get back for at least six months. And he insisted on my marrying him here today and going with him. And he talked so-so wonderfully about it that I gave in. We"d have to take a train for New York this afternoon, he said, so there wasn"t time to think much about it, and I didn"t tell Aunt Alice because she never liked him anyhow, and she would have raised Cain. And I believe you"re at the bottom of it, Tom Ware. I believe you did something, or said something, to hurry him into it! You did, you know you did!"
Her eyes were no longer flatly dull. They were shiny with moisture that was beginning now to sparkle on the lashes.
Desperate truculence showed in the young man"s face.
"Suppose I did know all about him," he demanded with unnecessary bitterness, "was there any good of my saying anything? You know how pig-headed you are!"
Anger whisked the moisture out of her eyes, and with the going of the moisture he seemed more at ease, more comfortable on the bench.
"Well, you can laugh at me as much as you like," she snapped at him, "and you can invite all Robson to laugh with you. But you needn"t think I"ll be there to see it."
"Now what are you up to?"