Sly, the human octopus, was talking to John Lambert.
“Of course, he’s peculiar in his demands, but I’ve done everything I could. I’m free to admit that I want Lois, but, on the other hand, I’ve tried by every means in my power to protect you. You can see this letter for yourself. The man is desperate, and perhaps not all there, but he claims to have proofs, and I believe he will use them. You can follow your own judgment.”
There was a silence for a few moments, and then the rustle of paper, the clang of the safe door, and something said in such low tones that I couldn’t make it out. A chair scraped, and the two men left the room.
I waited a decent interval, and then came on back into the ballroom.
“Say, what’s the matter with you men?” asked Lois. “Here everyone goes out and I almost miss a dance. Come on, let’s pep it up. Have some punch, everybody. We just spilled a whole bottle of hair tonic in it by mistake…”
John Lambert held up his hand.
“Folks, the object of this little party is to announce to a select circle of our friends the engagement of Lois to Mr. Ogden Sly. Lois is our only daughter and Ogden is one of the city’s most enterprising and successful young businessmen. Fill up your glasses with punch and drink to their health.”
Mrs. Lambert’s face paled at the words, and I saw her hand rub over her eyes. Lois stood upright, smiling, red lips parted, and she looked over and directly into my eyes at the words, and in her face was a challenge. Ogden Sly wiggled his arms around, patted his hair with a great, hairy hand, and twisted his narrow, parrot-like mouth. Walter Carter took a deep breath, and acted as though he were on the point of saying something, but breeding got the better of impulse, and he kept silent.
That is the worst of breeding.
I bowed, drank their health, took advantage of the opportunity to slip away, and went after the safe in the study. As a crook I wasn’t hampered by etiquette, breeding or conventions.
The safe was duck soup. I’ve been in the game long enough to know more about combination locks than the man that invented ’em. When I get up against a regular safe I sometimes have to use some combination detectors of my own invention, but the ordinary bread box opens with a little pocket stethoscope, and that’s all there is to it.
John Lambert’s safe didn’t amount to much.
The letters I wanted to look over were tied with a string, and lying in plain sight. The handwriting was peculiar, one of those straight up and down affairs that has a tendency to a backhand slant.
The bird that had written those letters was named C. W. Kinsington and he didn’t mince words. Apparently he didn’t need to. He had been mixed up with John Lambert in some big paving contract litigation, and the engineer had taken a bribe for his work. It had been a long time ago, and young Lambert had apparently been green, ambitious and weak in those days. He seemed to have thought the writer of the letters was dead and the evidence had perished with him, and then the man had cropped up with a letter showing he was alive and demanding blackmail. He had selected Ogden Sly as his agent, and wrote that he didn’t want to meet John Lambert personally as there was no need. Lambert would recognize his handwriting and the description of the evidence that the man had, etc., etc.
I took a hasty run through the letters, and then I made a copy of some portions of the handwriting. I didn’t have any very substantial idea right then, but I wanted a specimen of the handwriting. I’ve specialized on three things in the criminal game, one of ’em is opening safes, another is forgeries, and the third is using my wits. There’s damn few safes I can’t open, and I’ve never seen the handwriting that’s had me stumped. A little practice and I can dash it off before witnesses as rapidly as though it was my regular style, and I’ll defy ’em to tell it from the genuine when I’ve finished.
Apparently the thing had been going on for about a year, and Ogden Sly, always as the agent of the other man, had been milking Lambert of all his surplus cash. There were letters, statements, accounts and what not. His last demand had been that Lois marry Ogden Sly. He gave no reasons, simply made the demand.
I skimmed though the papers, made my samples of handwriting on the off chance they might come in handy, and closed the safe. Then I turned, moved by some subtle sixth sense that told me I wasn’t alone. There in the doorway stood Mrs. Lambert, red haired and keen eyed.
“Hell!” I exclaimed involuntarily. I had grown so accustomed to having Bobo with me to stand guard while I pulled jobs like the one I’d just finished, that I’d grown careless, and forgotten to watch my back trail.
“I beg your pardon?” she said.
I was mad. Mad at myself, at conventions, and at the silly custom of having a woman say she “begged pardon” when she heard a simple cuss word.
“I said ‘hell,’Ю” I told her, mad clear through, and determined to start the ball rolling right then and there.
“That’s what I thought you said,” she remarked dryly. “We are missing you in the ballroom. Lois said she would like very much to dance with you.”
She spilled that and stood there. She must have seen me at the safe, certainly knew that I was fooling around in her husband’s study with things that didn’t concern me. Was she going to pass the occasion off without comment, and, if she was, was it because of her sense of her obligations as a hostess or because of some other reason? I didn’t know, so I bowed and went in to dance with Lois.
It was some dance.
Lois laughed, breathed her fragrant, warm breath upon my cheek and taunted me with being a “lukewarm daddy.” I could see that there was a game afoot, but I didn’t know just what it was or where the cards were coming from, so I said but little.
“Come on, you lukewarm daddy,” taunted the girl. “I’m not supposed to be dancing around supported by the atmospheric pressure. Snuggle up enough so I can feel that I’ve got a partner. You learned that clinch dancing the Virginia Reel back in the old days when Sunday School picnics represented the hectic height of entertainment. Liven up a little bit. What do you suppose they wrote all those jazzy bits in the music for? Swing around enough to let the folks feel my new friend isn’t an animated manikin from the window of a clothing store. Come on, Ed, snap into it!”
“Where’s the suit you wore the night you first met me?” I countered.
A frown came over her face.
“Girls don’t wear tailored suits at a dance,” she observed.
“Would you mind letting me see it?”
She looked thoughtful for a long moment.
“I can tell you what you want to know,” she said at length. “Someone went into my closet and tore a piece out of the cloth on the arm. I couldn’t figure out what it was all about.”
I glanced at her bare arm on which there was no mark of fang, not even the suggestion of a bruise, and pondered upon her explanation. It would really have been impossible for her to have been in the room when Bobo was shot. She had been with me that evening. The music blared to a stop, the swaying couples parted, and the human octopus made his way forward.
“That’s the last dance before the concluding number, and the supper dance is mine, Lois.”
She nodded, still clinging to me as though loath to break away from the embrace of the dance, or as though clinging to me for support.
“Sorry, Jenkins,” said the human octopus to me, “but it happens that in this little game I hold all the cards, and I know you’ll be a good loser.”
There was that in his voice and manner which made me more than mildly irritated.
“I haven’t lost anything yet,” I told him, “and don’t be too sure about holding the cards. I have a hole card you haven’t seen yet.”
“What’s a hole card?” asked Lois, her brow puckered, but a devil dancing in each eye.