Number Six and the Borgia/Chapter 8

Tray-Bong Smith sat in the lounge of the hotel reading the evening papers and watched Mr. Ross come from the dining room and take the elevator to the second floor. After a while he followed, going into his own room and waiting until he heard the snap of the electric switch which told him the old man had retired. He wasn't likely to see his lawyer between the hours of nine and twelve, thought Tray-Bong Smith, and sallied forth into the West End to find amusement.

A man watching the hotel saw him return at eleven-thirty, signaled to the shadow who had followed Mr. Smith all that evening and compared notes. Smith may or may not have known that he was being watched. He might have guessed as much after Hallett's warning. He went upstairs to bed and to sleep, and was on the point of undressing when he heard the soft thud of a door closing, and it seemed that the sound came from the next room. He switched out his light, drew the door open gently, and listened, but there was no further sound.

No. 40, the room occupied by Mr. Ross, was, as he had learned earlier in the evening, not so much a room as a suite. It consisted of two apartments—a bedroom with a bath, and a sitting room which led from the bed- room, and access to which could be had direct from the passage through a door marked 40A.

Smith stepped out into the corridor, walked softly to No. 40, and listened. There was no sound. He went on to 40A and listened again, and after a while he was rewarded by the murmur of voices.

He strolled to the end of the passage to see if there were any hotel servants, but Bilton's is one of those eminently respectable hostelries patronized in the main by elderly people who retire early, and he walked back down the corridor and tried the door of 40. To his surprise it was unlocked and he stepped in, closing the door behind him. It would be a simple matter to explain how he, a stranger to the hotel, had walked into the wrong room.

A line of light along the floor showed him where the communicating door was, and he made bold to turn on the light for a second, and discovered, as he had expected, that the bed was unoccupied and the room empty. He put out the light noiselessly and tiptoed across the room, putting his ear to the door. The people were talking; the one voice gruff and harsh, the second so soft that he could hardly hear a word that was spoken, for it was the voice of a woman. And, somehow, that voice was familiar.

Tray-Bong Smith crouched down and looked through the keyhole, but could see no more than the back of a chair. He listened intently, but could hear nothing intelligible. Once he heard Ross say:

“If they are on earth we will find them,” and he thought he heard the old man say, “it is remarkable—I should have been deceived”

Then most unexpectedly a hand fell on the doorknob and he hurried back through the room and was out in the corridor before it could have been opened. He had no time to close the door, but pulled it to after him and was in his own room in something under two seconds.

He waited patiently behind his own closed door, listening, but there was no sound, and after five minutes had passed he ventured to open it. There he stood in the darkness for nearly half an hour before the two came out. He heard the man say “Good night, my dear. God bless you!” and thought he heard the sound of a kiss. Smith opened the door wider. The lights from the corridor were on full and there was no possibility of making a mistake.

The figure that came past the door was not, as he had expected, a woman—but Ross himself! The old man had gone out and left the woman behind. For a while Smith was too bewildered to make a move, then, seizing his hat from the bed, he raced down the corridor in pursuit of the old man. He must have gone down by the stairs, for the elevator was descending as he reached the end of the corridor and he came to the ground floor in time to see the figure pass through the swing doors, out into the night. There was a car waiting, evidently for him, for he stepped in, without giving the driver instructions, and. it moved off. Smith called a passing taxi.

“Follow that car,” he said.

At a house in Portland Place the car stopped, the old man descended and let himself into the big mansion with a key. Smith noted the number—409. He had stopped his own cab well behind the car, which, contrary to his expectation, did not move off. Mr. Smith dismissed his car and, standing in the cover of a doorway, he waited. In half an hour the door of No. 409 opened and a girl came out, wearing a long, black cloak.

Smith slipped from his place of concealment and walked rapidly toward her. She moved as quickly to the car, but the street standard showed her face clearly.

It was Stephanie—Cæsar's daughter.

“Now, what has happened to old man Ross?” said the puzzled Mr. Smith and went to bed that night with the problem unsolved.

Cæsar sent for him the next morning, adopting in his typewritten note that royal-command tone of his which so suited him. The men met in Green Park, It was a bright, sunny day, and Cæsar was dressed in gray. He was something of a dandy in his attire and again the fastidious Smith approved.

Cæsar motioned his confederate to a garden chair by his side. “I didn't intend sending for you, Smith,” he said, “but one or two things have happened, and I thought it advisable to see you in order to let you know where you can get into touch with me in any emergency.

“I know exactly where I can get into touch with you, with or without an emergency,” said Tray-Bong calmly. “No. 409 Portland Place, I think?”

Cæsar looked at him sharply.

“How do you know?” he demanded. “My name is not in any of the reference books.”

“I know,” said Smith, with a fine gesture.

“You shadowed me! I was out late last night,” said he accusingly, and the other laughed.

“I give you my word that I have never shadowed you in my life,” said he. “Anyway, I don't see how I can shadow Mr. Ross and you at the same time.”

“But how did you know?” insisted Cæsar.

“A little bird told me,” bantered Smith. “Please let me have my mystery, too, Mr. Valentine.”

“You shadowed me,” he said, nodding, and then dismissed the subject. “What do you think of Ross?”

“A worthy old gentleman,” said the other. “I like his appearance.”

He made no reference to the fact that he had seen “the worthy old gentleman,” letting himself into Cæsar's house with a key. That could wait.

“He is worth from ten to twenty millions,” said Cæsar. “He has no heir, he has no will, and on his death his property reverts to the State.”

Smith looked at him in astonishment. “How do you know that?”

“I know that,” said Cæsar. “That is my mystery.” He did not speak again for a moment. He had that queer trick of breaking off a conversation and letting his fancy and thoughts roam at will; but presently he returned to the subject of the old man.

“Men and women work and sweat from morning till night,” he said musingly, “year in and year out, for just sufficient food and rest as will enable them to carry on with more work. I do not work, because I have brains, and because I do not regard human life from the same angle as the commonplace person; neither do you. Do you realize that if Mr. Ross at this moment sat down and wrote on a sheet of paper half a dozen lines, signed it, and had his signature witnessed by a chambermaid or a valet, those few lines would make us enormously wealthy men, and give us all the power in the world?”

“You mean if he made a will in our favor and providentially died?” said Smith.

“You're very direct,” Cæsar laughed softly. “But hasn't it ever struck you how simple a matter is the transfer of property when one of the conditions of transfer is the death of one of the parties? If you or I were to burgle the Bank of England, there would be no hope for us unless we spent years of unremitting labor in organizing and preparing for our coup—and then the chances are that we should fail.”

Smith nodded.

“If you and I wished to forge a little check, say on Mr. Ross' account, we have to overcome the suspicions and safeguards imposed by dozens of very intelligent men, all of whom would have to be hoodwinked separately. And then in the end we might fail.”

“That I have realized,” Mr. Smith agreed, with a grimace.

“Is it not a more simple matter,” mused Cæsar, “to induce Mr. Moss to sign a document of half a dozen lines?”

“That depends,” said Smith. “I should say that it would be a very difficult matter. It would be easier, if you will forgive the directness, to arrange his untimely demise than to induce his signature. Otherwise, if I may be bold, there would be one of your famous wreaths on order.”

Cæsar's eyes twinkled. Any tribute to the inevitability of his success pleased him. “At present my object in life is to prevent him signing those half dozen lines for anybody,” he said. “I particularly desire that Mr. Ross should die without making any provision for the disposal of his fortune.”

Smith looked at him in astonishment. “Do you really mean that?” said he. “I thought you told me that his estate would go to the crown?”

“If he had no heirs,” said Cæsar. “Always remember that, if he had no heirs.”

“But has he?” demanded his companion. “He is a bachelor”

“He is a widower,” said Cæsar. “He had one child, who was estranged from him, and who died. In all probability, if that child was alive, he would make a will leaving his property to a dogs' home, or something equally absurd.”

Slowly an idea was taking shape and form in Smith's mind. Very, very slowly certain dark places were becoming clear. He was a quick thinker, and what were mysteries to most people were not mysteries to him. In some respects even Cæsar could not match his ready powers of inductions Tray-Bong Smith had been genuinely puzzled and baffled by certain experiences in the past few days, but now he began to “see.”

“How old would his daughter be if she were alive?” he asked.

“Forty-seven,” said Cæsar readily. “Three years younger than I.”

So he was fifty. There were days when he looked it, but on this morning he would have passed easily for thirty-five.

“Forty-seven,” he repeated. “She ran away from home when she was something over twenty, and married a fiddler, or something of the sort. The old man made a will leaving his property to an orphan asylum—cut her right out of it. When he heard of her death, he tore up the will, intending, I think, to make another one. You see, I am very well informed upon Mr. Ross' private life.”

“Suppose she isn't dead?” drawled Smith, and the big man swung round in his chair. “What the hell do you mean?” he asked. It was the first time Smith had seen him display any kind of perturbation.

“Suppose she isn't dead?” he repeated.

Cæsar shrugged his shoulders. “In that case she would inherit the fortune—if he died.”

“Would you produce her?”

Cæsar was silent.

“Would you produce her and let her go into an English court and tell of years spent in almost solitary confinement in some forgotten room on your French estate? Would you like her to tell the judge of the high court how you let her out for exercise in the middle of the night, manacled hand and foot?”

Cæsar's face went white and drawn and he looked his fifty, but the man with the absurd nickname went on remorselessly, for he was determined that Cæsar Valentine should put his cards down, face uppermost. “A woman marries a wandering fiddler, you say? I gather that's an extravagance of yours, and means no more than that she married a musician. A fairly prosperous amateur musician, unless I am mistaken, by the name of Welland.”

Cæsar winced—the second score for Smith

“You discover her relationship with Ross, and persuade her to go aboard with you, waiting for the divorce which you think Welland will obtain but which he doesn't. Then the woman gets restless; perhaps her child dies. She certainly remains in the land of the living.”

Cæsar was calm enough now, and a cynical smile was hovering at the corners of his mouth. “Wonderful fellow!” he said mockingly. “You have told almost all the truth. The child died, and, in the meantime, Stephanie is born. It is my intention to produce Stephanie as the heiress of the Ross millions. Now you know it all, or you've guessed it all. You're clever, Smith, a cleverer man than I thought. There's a fortune in this for you if you'll work with me; and if you don't”

“A quick and a painless death, eh?” smiled Smith. “But watch that my knife is not swifter than your alkaloids.”

He looked down. There was an envelope lying at his feet. “Did you drop that?” asked Smith and stooped and picked it up. “It has your name on it.”

Cæsar shook his head.

“I didn't drop it,” he said, and read the superscription: “Cæsar Valentine.”

It was gummed and sealed with wax. He tore open the flap with a frown. Smith saw his face harden and he blinked rapidly. Was there fear in his eyes as he handed the letter to his tool? Smith thought there was.

“Where did this come from?” he gasped and looked around, but nobody was in sight.

There were three lines of handwriting in what is called “pen print;” that is to say, the letters were printed in big capitals. The note began:

It was signed “Number Six.”

Smith read it through with a qualm, but Cæsar, snatching it from his hand, crumbled it into a ball and tossed it away with an oath.

“Welland,” he snarled, “if I find you before you find me, beware of Cæsar!”