Stamped in Gold/Chapter 1

RANK ALWIN lifted his manacled hands and gingerly pulled off his mustache. The sound of the orchestra playing the audience out came faintly through the heavy curtains which divided the stage from the auditorium. He looked round as the property man came forward with an apology.

“Sorry, sir,” he said. “I didn't know the curtain was down. We finished earlier to-night.”

Frank nodded and watched, as the man deftly unlocked the handcuffs and took them into his charge.

Five minutes before, Frank Alwin had been the wicked Count de Larsca, detected in the act of robbing the Bank of Brazil, and arrested by the inevitable and invincible detective.

He stood on the stage absent-mindedly as the nimble stage hands “struck” the scene. Then he walked to the whitewashed lobby which led to the dressing rooms.

A girl was waiting in her street clothes, for her tiny part had been finished an hour before. Frank, his mind fully occupied with other matters, had a dim sense of obligation. He had a keener sense that he had failed to surrender a great wad of paper “money” which he had filched from the property safe, and which now reposed in his pocket. He smiled into the girl's anxious face as he approached her and slipped half a dozen bills from his pocket. These he folded solemnly and pressed into her hand.

“For the che-ild, Marguerite,” he said extravagantly, saw the amazement in the open eyes, chuckled to himself, and mounted the stairs to his dressing room, two at a time.

He was near the top when he remembered and cursed himself. He dashed down again to find she was gone.

Wilbur Smith, late Captain Wilbur Smith but now just Wilbur Smith of the secret service, was lounging in a big armchair in the actor's dressing room, filling the small apartment with blue smoke. He looked up as his friend entered.

“Hello, Frank!” he exclaimed. “What's the matter? Didn't the show go?”

“I'm an ass,” said Frank Alwin, dropping into a chair before his dressing table.

“In some things, yes,” said Wilbur Smith genially; “in other things quite a shrewd man for an actor. What particular asinine thing have you done now?”

“There's a girl” began Frank, and the other nodded sympathetically.

“I'm sorry. I didn't intend probing into your indiscretions. If you are that kind of an ass, why that counts nothing against you.”

“Don't be a fool,” said Alwin irritably. “It isn't that sort at all. There's a little girl in this company” He hesitated. “Well, I can tell you. Her name is Maisie Bishop. She has a small part in the show.”

The other nodded. “I have seen her, a very pretty girl. Well?”

Again Frank hesitated. “Well, the fact is,” he said awkwardly, “she came to me to-night as I was going on and said she was in some kind of trouble—her people I mean. And she asked me if I would lend her some money. It was only a few seconds before I went on. I promised her I would and forgot all about it.”

“Well, you can find her,” said the other.

“It isn't that that is worrying me. Look here!” He thrust his hands in his pocket and threw a roll of bills on the table. “Stage money! I saw her waiting for me and clean forgot our conversation, so far forgot it that I acted the fool and gave her half a dozen of these by way of a joke.”

Wilbur laughed,

“Don't let it worry you,” he said. “I promise you if she is arrested for trying to pass fake money I'll see her and you through.”

He rose from the chair, and, walking across to the dressing table, picked up the bundle of notes. It was a very thick bundle, and the bills were of large denomination.

“That's pretty good stage money,” he said.

In the process of rubbing his face with cold cream Alwin stopped to look. “It isn't the usual stage money, either,” he said. “Why, you might think that was real stuff.” He wiped his hand on a towel, and, picking up one of the bills, examined it. “Silk threads O. K. Now what the devil does this mean? I've never had stage money like this before. That girl ought to be able to pass every one of those bills. Wilbur, I wish you would go down and see her. She lives on the East Side somewhere. The stage doorkeeper will give you her address.”

“Queer, isn't it?” said Wilbur Smith thoughtfully, fingering a bill. “The realest-looking stuff I have ever seen and—good Lord!”

He had turned the bill over and was staring at its back.

“What is it?” asked the startled Alwin.

The detective pointed to a little yellow design which had evidently been stamped upon the bill.

“What is it?” asked Alwin again.

“What do you think it is?” demanded Wilbur Smith in a strange voice.

“Well, it looks to me like the picture of an idol.”

The other nodded.

“You're nearly right. It is a picture of The Golden Hades!”

“The who?”

“The Golden Hades!” replied the other. “Have you never heard of Hades?”

“Yes,” said Frank with a smile. “It is a place you send people to when they are in the way.”

“It is also the name of a deity,” said Wilbur Smith grimly, “a gentleman who is also called Pluto.”

“But why do you call it golden? Because of its color?”

The other shook his head.

“This is the third Hades I have seen, but the others were in sure-enough gold.”

He picked up the bills and counted them carefully.

“Ninety-six thousand dollars!” he said.

“Do you mean,” asked Frank with a gasp, “that these are”

“They are real enough,” said the detective, nodding. “Where did you get them?”

“I got them in the usual way from the property man.”

“Can you bring him up?”

“If he hasn't gone home,” said Frank. Going to the door he roared for his dresser. “Send Hainz up.”

Fortunately Hainz was intercepted at the door just as he was leaving, and was brought back to the dressing room. As he passed through the door his eye fell upon the money on the table and he uttered an impatient “Tchk!”

“Why, I knew I had forgotten to collect something from you, Mr. Alwin,” he said, “but being late for the curtain rattled me and made me forget it. I'll take these”

“Wait a moment!” It was Wilbur Smith who spoke. “You know me, Hainz?”

“Yes, sir,” said the man, grinning; “not professionally, but I know you well enough.”

“Where did you get this money?”

The other stared. “Money? What do you mean? This?” He jerked his thumb to the bills on the table.

“I mean that,” said Smith.

“Where did I get it?” repeated the property man slowly. “Why, I bought those from a bill man. I was running short of stage stuff and he had a lot. He was using 'em as a border for that movie, 'The Lure of Wealth.'”

“Where did he get them?” asked Smith.

“I don't know. He just had 'em given to him.”

“Do you know where I can find him?”

The man produced a dingy little note-book and read an address.

“I know where he lives because he sometimes does a bit of work for me,” he said.

When the man had gone Wilbur Smith faced his astonished friend.

“Get that paint off your face, Frank, and make yourself human,” he said good-naturedly. “If you don't mind I'll take charge of that money and we will go and have supper somewhere.”

“But what the devil does it all mean?” asked Frank Alwin.

“I'll tell you while we are eating,” evasively replied Wilbur Smith.

He had little to tell as he frankly admitted half an hour later.

“The first time I saw The Golden Hades it was real gold,” he explained. “It had been stamped on the back of a thousand-dollar bill, and had been dusted over with gold leaf. Then it had the word 'Hades' in Greek beneath it, and that's how I came to identify the picture; it is pretty easy to identify from any classical dictionary.

“The bill came into my hands in a very curious way. There was a poor woman down on the East Side who worked as a helper in a Brooklyn hotel. According to her story she was returning home one night when a man walked up to her and gave her a big package of bills and walked away. She got back to her room, lit the gas, for the dusk was falling, and found that she had a hundred thousand dollars. She couldn't believe her eyes; she thought somebody was having a joke with her and thought, as you thought, that the money was fake. She put the money under her pillow, intending in the morning to take it to some one who could tell real money from counterfeit. In the night she was awakened by hearing somebody in her room. She was about to cry out when a voice told her to be silent; somebody lit the gas and she discovered that there was not only one but three masked men standing about her bed.”

Frank looked at the detective. “Are you stringing me?”

Wilbur Smith shook his head. “This is dead serious,” he said. “They asked where the money was, and she, speechless with terror at the sight of their guns, pointed to the pillow and fainted off. When she recovered the money was gone, all except one bill, that which I mentioned, which they had overlooked in their hurry. She brought this to the police the next day and told her story. They turned the case over to us. The chief thought it was a lie, and that the woman had stolen the money from the hotel where she was working, and, getting scared, had prepared this very thin yarn to exonerate herself.”

“And was this so?”

The detective shook his head. “No,” he said. “I took the case in hand. There was no money missing from the hotel. The woman had a very good character; was, in fact, one of the poor but transparently honest type, and we had no other course to pursue but to hand over the thousand dollars to her. This was the first time I ever met The Golden Hades.

“The second time,” he went on, “was in almost as remarkable circumstances. This time the notes, several of them, were in the possession of a man named Henry Laste, a confirmed gambler who was picked up drunk in the street by a patrolman and rushed into the station. I happened to be making a call at the moment, and when the man was searched, eight of these bills for a thousand dollars were found in his pocket. We got him sober and he told us a story that his wife had found the notes between the leaves of a book she bought somewhere downtown. I got this information from him about eight o'clock in the morning,” Wilbur Smith went on slowly, “and, as our operatives and the police work more or less together on a case in which both of us are interested, I started off with them for his house to interview his wife. He lived in a tenement, and when we got to the door and knocked there was no answer. I was deeply interested in the business and I knew there was something big behind it. I got the janitor to unlock the door with a master key.”

“And the woman was gone?” asked Frank.

The detective shook his head. “The woman was there,” he said simply, “dead! Shot through the heart with an automatic pistol, every room ransacked, drawers turned out, wardrobes”

“The Higgins Tenement Murder!” exclaimed Alwin.

Wilbur nodded gravely. “The Higgins Tenement Murder,” he said.

“And did you find any notes?”

“None. We wanted to bring a charge against the husband, but he had no difficulty in proving an alibi. He had been at a gambling house the whole of the night, had been in the police station since one o'clock in the morning, and the murder had been committed at ten minutes past two. The shot that killed the woman passed through her body and through an alarm clock which stopped at that hour.”

They sat looking at each other in silence. The clatter and chatter of the restaurant jangled in the ears of Frank Alwin and there came to him a sudden realization of danger, mysterious, menacing, and real.

“I see,” he said slowly. “Everybody who has handled those notes stamped with The Golden Hades have been”

“Held up,” the detective finished the sentence. “That's just it, and that is why I am going to stick with you through the night, Frank.”

They had been friends for many years, the leading man at the Imperial and his old-time school fellow who had more crime discoveries to his credit than any of his colleagues.

Frank Alwin himself had three strenuous years of good service to his credit in the secret service, and had he not been a born producer, a brilliant actor, and a comfortably rich man, he might have made a reputation equally great with that which he enjoyed, in the same service as his friend.

“I don't like it,” said Alwin after a while. “It is uncanny. Who was Pluto, anyway?”

“He was the deity of the nether regions, the one deity who is worshiped to-day by certain cranks. I suppose there is something about him that appeals to the modern demonologist.”

A waiter came to the table at that moment.

“Mr. Alwin,” he said, “there's a phone message for you.”

Frank got up and the detective half rose to accompany him.

“Don't worry,” said Frank with a laugh. “They are not going to kill me by phone. Anyway, they couldn't get the money, as you have it in your pocket.”

Three minutes passed and he did not return. Five minutes went by and the detective grew uneasy. He beckoned the waiter.

“Go see if Mr. Alwin is still at the phone,” he said.

The man returned almost immediately.

“Mr. Alwin is not there, sir,” he said.

“Not there?”

Wilbur Smith was on his feet in an instant. He pushed the chair aside and left the dining room. The hall porter said he had not seen Alwin go out but he had been absent from the entrance for five minutes. He had seen a car waiting at the door which was gone when he returned.

The detective ran into the deserted street. There was nobody in sight. The entrance stood between and at equal distance from two electric-light standards, whose rays were so thrown that immediately before the entrance of the restaurant was a little patch of darkness.

He saw something on the edge of the pavement, stooped, and picked it up. It was Frank's hat,—battered and damp. He carried it to the light. One look was sufficient. His hand, where he had touched the crushed crown, was red with blood.