“Yes, I have it somewhere. Why?”
“Mike told me to get you to run a finger around the edge of it.”
Perplexed, and very prettily perplexed, Camille got up.
“He did? What for?”
“In order that you may find what otherwise you might never discover—a spring on which you are to press and say, ‘Sesame!’ The coin will open like Aladdin’s cave—or was it Aladdin’s? Anyway, that’s what you are to do.”
“And then?”
“I’m not supposed to know anything else. But after you’ve opened the coin, will you telephone?”
“Certainly I will, Victor. But as you’re coming this evening, what do you want me to say?”
“That you want me to come.”
“But I can tell you that now.”
“You see, between now and then, you may change your mind.”
“Oh, now I’m all mixed up again! And you promised not to give me another headache!”
“But I was careful not to promise for Mike. This is his doing, not mine.”
Then, in a moment, after certain ceremonies, Revell went out and on to the St. Jasper, where two men ominously waited.
XII
Late that same afternoon, Tatum, sitting back in his office chair, glowered fiercely at the Archibald episode, which Glendenning, who had got it from Dix, was relating. He glowered the fiercer because already he had been assured by the St. Jasper’s house detective that there was nobody masquerading there, no mysterious guest.
The tale about Archibald, dumped on top of that, knocked momentarily the props from under. But the fiercer Tatum looked, the more gently he talked, and in his mayonnaise voice he summarized it.
“Well, then, we have got to get at it another way, and this, I’ll lay a cooky, is the way of it. Since Mike has no reason to be in hiding and yet can’t be found, he is dead, dead as a doornail. In view of which, we can now accept that Alaska romance as truth—some of it at any rate.”
Glendenning, pulling at his long nose, whinnied:
“Ha! Revell did for him up there, pitched him overboard, drowned him in that White River.”
“Possibly,” Tatum cooed, “and very probably. But previously, in San Francisco, two men were planning to go prospecting for gold far up in a land that has its hazards. One of the men—Revell, let us say—mentions the dangers, and with noble disinterestedness offers to make a will in his partner’s favor; whereat Mike, not to be outdone, makes one in favor of Revell, who, in return, sandbags him at the first opportunity. After which, unable to show that Mike died a natural death, he is up a tree and stays there until, through sheer luck, he happens on and rechristens a moribund tramp. That’s the size of it.”
Glendenning kicked a foot out.
“And it fits!”
“Now,” Tatum, in his prima-donna manner, resumed, “we go to this Mr. Revell, you as your uncle’s heir and I as your counsel. We get him in a quiet corner and drive those two facts quietly home. Then I say: ‘Mr. Revell, we—er—propose to attack the will on the ground that while—er—personally I am convinced that the testator is dead, I know that—er—he did not die in the Morrow House.’ First blood. Eh? What?”
“Good for you! Hit him again!”
“I say to him: ‘Mr. Revell, the proceedings may be long and costly and in any event will have—er—the widest publicity. In the course of that publicity, it may be discovered just—er—well, just what did happen to my client’s unfortunate cousin. Now, Mr. Revell, my client wishes to avoid proceedings, precisely as you, I am sure, wish to escape—er—notoriety. For your own sake, let us spare you that. Moreover, we are not bandits; we are honest men. Deed us two-thirds of your interest under the will and in consideration of that, we, for our part, undertake not to contest it.’ ”
Glendenning jumped up.
“That’s the talk! Let’s be at him!”
Tatum consulted his watch.
“He may be going to make a night of it.”
“Not he!” Glendenning snorted. “He’s one of those devils that sit in their room and read.”
Then, in the subway presently, the two men were en route for the St. Jasper, of which the hall, saturated with tobacco and electricity, full of people, of hurrying pages, of parties coming in for dinner, and of guests eying each other hostilely or with indifference, resounded with voices, with the click of the typewriter, and the noise of lifts that ceaselessly rose and descended.
The two men, entering there, asked for Revell and, learning that he was not then in his room, stood about for a while and waited.
Finally Glendenning nudged Tatum.
“There he is now.”
Through the hall he lounged along and, seeing Glendenning, approached, but without any of the amenities, without even a nod.
Glendenning was more gracious.
“Revell,” he began, “this is Mr. Tatum, my counsel.”
Revell looked the lawyer up and down.
“Well, what of it?”
The insolence was so marked that it gave Glendenning pause, but suavely, in that voice of his, Tatum took it up. “Mr. Revell, we would like a little private conversation with—”
Revell cut him short.
“I dare say. But it will have to be public and it will have to be brief.”
For a man usually so civil, it was all a bit odd. But toward the world at large and these men in particular, Revell felt waspish. He did not know what, at any moment, the telephone might have to say.
“Mr. Revell,” Tatum oleaginously resumed, “it is not a matter that you would wish to have us talk of here.”
Revell, extracting a cigarette, lit it and with the same insolent indifference replied:
“You may scream it, for all I care.”
For a fierce-looking man Tatum could smile very archly. That smile he exhibited.
“Mr. Revell, you are—er—in a very awkward predicament.”
Revell nodded.
“I should say so! It’s always awkward to be held up. What the devil do you want?”
Oilily Tatum rubbed his hands.
“Perhaps we had best adjourn to the café.”
Revell blew a ring of smoke.
“I seldom drink, and never with strangers.”
“Mr. Revell,
