while Alison fastened their hands with a chain that was broken and much too short. I was roused about dawn by a light rap at the door, and, opening it, I found Forbes, in a pair of trousers and a pajama coat. He was as pleasant as most fleshy people are when they have to get up at night, and he said the telephone had been ringing for an hour, and he didn’t know why somebody else in the blankety-blank house couldn’t have heard it. He wouldn’t get to sleep until noon.
As he was palpably asleep on his feet, I left him grumbling and went to the telephone. It proved to be Richey, who had found me by the simple expedient of tracing Alison, and he was jubilant.
“You’ll have to come back,” he said. “Got a railroad schedule there?”
“I don’t sleep with one in my pocket,” I retorted, “but if you’ll hold the line I’ll call out the window to Johnson. He’s probably got one.”’
“Johnson!” I could hear the laugh with which McKnight comprehended the situation. He was still chuckling when I came back.
“Train to Richmond at six-thirty A.M.,” I said. “What time is it now?”
“Four. Listen, Lollie. We’ve got him. Do you hear? Through the woman at Baltimore. Then the other woman, the lady of the restaurant” - he was obviously avoiding names - “she is playing our cards for us. No - I don’t know why, and I don’t care. But you be at the Incubator to-night at eight o’clock. If you can’t shake Johnson, bring him, bless him.”
To this day I believe the Sam Forbeses have not recovered from the surprise of my unexpected arrival, my one appearance at dinner in Granger’s clothes, and the note on my dresser which informed them the next morning that I had folded my tents like the Arabs and silently stole away. For at half after five Johnson and I, the former as uninquisitive as ever, were on our way through the dust to the station, three miles away, and by four that afternoon we were in Washington. The journey had been uneventful. Johnson relaxed under the influence of my tobacco, and spoke at some length on the latest improvements in gallows, dilating on the absurdity of cutting out the former free passes to see the affair in operation. I remember, too, that he mentioned the curious anomaly that permits a man about to be hanged to eat a hearty meal. I did not enjoy my dinner that night.
Before we got into Washington I had made an arrangement with Johnson to surrender myself at two the following afternoon. Also, I had wired to Alison, asking her if she would carry out the contract she had made. The detective saw me home, and left me there. Mrs. Klopton received me with dignified reserve. The very tone in which she asked me when I would dine told me that something was wrong.
“Now - what is it, Mrs. Klopton?” I demanded finally, when she had informed me, in a patient and long-suffering tone, that she felt worn out and thought she needed a rest.
“When I lived with Mr. Justice Springer,” she began acidly, her mending-basket in her hands, “it was an orderly, well-conducted household. You can ask any of the neighbors. Meals were cooked and, what’s more, they were eaten; there was none of this ‘here one day and gone the next’ business.”
“Nonsense,” I observed. “You’re tired, that’s all, Mrs. Klopton. And I wish you would go out; I want to bathe.”
“That’s not all,” she said with dignity, from the doorway. “Women coming and going here, women whose shoes I am not fit - I mean, women who are not fit to touch my shoes - coming here as insolent as you please, and asking for you.”
“Good heavens!” I exclaimed. “What did you tell them - her, whichever it was?”
“Told her you were sick in a hospital and wouldn’t be out for a year!” she said triumphantly. “And when she said she thought she’d come in and wait for you, I slammed the door on her.”
“What time was she here?”
“Late last night. And she had a light-haired man across the street. If she thought I didn’t see him, she don’t know me.” Then she closed the door and left me to my bath and my reflections.
At five minutes before eight I was at the Incubator, where I found Hotchkiss and McKnight. They were bending over a table, on which lay McKnight’s total armament - a pair of pistols, an elephant gun and an old cavalry saber.
“Draw up a chair and help yourself to pie,’ he said, pointing to the arsenal. “This is for the benefit of our friend Hotchkiss here, who says he is a small man and fond of life.”
Hotchkiss, who had been trying to get the wrong end of a cartridge into the barrel of one of the revolvers, straightened himself and mopped his face.
“We have desperate people to handle,” he said pompously, “and we may need desperate means.”
“Hotchkiss is like the small boy whose one ambition was to have people grow ashen and tremble at the mention of his name,” McKnight jibed. But they were serious enough, both of them, under it all, and when they had told me what they planned, I was serious, too.
“You’re compounding a felony,” I remonstrated, when they had explained. “I’m not eager to be locked away, but, by Jove, to offer her the stolen notes in exchange for Sullivan!”
“We haven’t got either of them, you know,” McKnight remonstrated, “and we won’t have, if we don’t start. Come along, Fido,” to Hotchkiss.
The plan was simplicity itself. According to Hotchkiss, Sullivan was to meet Bronson at Mrs. Conway’s apartment, at eight-thirty that night, with the notes. He was to be paid there and the papers destroyed. “But just before that interesting finale,” McKnight ended, “we will walk in, take the notes, grab Sullivan, and give the police a jolt that will put them out of the count.”
I suppose not one of us, slewing around corners in the machine that night, had the faintest doubt that we were on the right track, or that Fate, scurvy enough before, was playing into our hands at last. Little Hotchkiss was in a state of fever; he alternately twitched and examined the revolver, and a fear that the two movements might be synchronous kept me uneasy. He produced and dilated on the scrap of pillow slip from the wreck, and showed me the stiletto, with its point in cotton batting for safekeeping. And in the intervals he implored Richey not to make such fine calculations at the corners.
We were all grave enough and very quiet, however, when we reached the large building where Mrs. Conway had her apartment. McKnight left the power on, in case we might want to make a quick get-away, and Hotchkiss gave a final look at the revolver. I had no weapon. Somehow it all seemed melodramatic to the verge of farce. In
