III—THE SECOND GUEST

IN the hallway of The Iron Tavern, as Dago George descended the stairs from Dave Henderson's room, a slim little figure in black, heavily veiled, stood waiting. Beside her, the greasy waiter, who had previously conveyed Dave Henderson's message to the proprietor, bowed and scraped and wiped his hands on his spotted apron, and pointed to Dago George on the stairs.

“Dat-a da boss,” he announced.

A taxi chauffeur had already deposited two valises in the hall, and had retired. Outside, as the taxi moved away, another taxi, a short, but discreet, distance up the block, started suddenly out from the curb, as its fare, a fat man who chewed upon the butt of a cigar, dug with pudgy fingers into his vest pocket, and handed his chauffeur an address.

“Baggage and all—that's good enough!” said the fat man to himself; and to the chauffeur: “Beat it—and beat it fast!”

The waiter retired from the hall. The almost imperceptible frown on Dago George's face at sight of the valises, was hidden by an ingratiating smile as he hurried forward.

“Madam,” he inquired, “you desire to see me?” The little figure in black nodded her head.

“Yes—in private,” she answered quietly.

“Ah!” Dago George bowed profoundly. “But, yes—certainly! This way, then, if you please, madam.”

He led the way into the rear room, and closed the door.

The little figure in black raised her veil.

“Do you not know me?” she asked.

Dago George stared for a long minute into her face. He shook his head.

“I am desolated!” he murmured apologetically. “It is my memory that is unbelievably stupid, madam.”

“I am Teresa Capriano,” she said.

Dago George moved closer. He stared again into her face, and suddenly into his own there came the light of recognition.

“You—the so-little Teresa—the little bambino!” he cried. “But, yes—yes, it is true!” He caught both her hands, and began to pat them effusively. “Is it possible? Yes, yes! I begin to see again the little girl of the so-many years ago! Ah, no; Dago George has not forgotten, after all! The little Teresa! The little bandit queen! Eh? And you—do you remember that we called you that?” He led her to a chair, and seated her. “Well, well, the little Teresa! And your father, my good friend Nicolo—I had heard that he was sick. He is better—yes? And he is perhaps here, too, in New York?”

“My father is dead,” Teresa answered in a low voice.

“Dead!” Dago George drew back, and stared again, but in a curiously bewildered way now. “Dead!” he repeated. “You say that Nicolo Capriano is—dead?”

“Yes,” she said, and turned her face away from his gaze—only to raise her eyes again, and watch the man covertly, narrowly, as he now began to walk rapidly up and down the room with quick, nervous strides. Her hands tightened a little on the arms of her chair. Here was the end of that long race across the continent, the goal of those fearsome, harried days of haste in San Francisco while her father lay dead. Was she first or last in that frantic race? What did Dago George know? A thousand times she had pictured this scene, and planned for it every word and act that was to be hers—but it was actuality now, and the room for an instant seemed to swirl around her. She remembered Dago George—as one of the most crafty, callous and unscrupulous of the lawless band over whom the man who had been her father had reigned as king. The letter! Had Dago George received it—yes or no? Had Dave Henderson reached here before her? Was he already in danger; or did it require but just a simple bit of acting on her part to undo the treachery of which her father had been guilty—a simple story, for instance, that she was on her way to her father's people in Italy, which would enable her to stay here in this place unsuspected until Dave Henderson came, and she could intercept him, and warn him before any harm was done? Which was it? She dared not ask. If Dago George knew nothing, he must at all costs continue to know nothing. A hint, and Dago George, if he were the Dago George of old, would be like a bloodhound on the scent, and, exactly as though Dago George had actually received her father's letter, Dave Henderson would be the quarry. But if, on the other hand, the letter had already been delivered, well, then—then there was another rôle to play. She dared not ask; not until Dago George had shown his hand, not until she was sure of her own ground. She turned her head away again; Dago George had halted abruptly in front of her chair.

“Dead!” he said uneasily. “You say that Nicolo Capriano, that your father, is dead?”

Teresa nodded without looking up.

Dago George, as abruptly as he had halted, turned and paced the length of the room and back again, and abruptly halted once more in front of her. He leaned toward her, one hand now laid over his heart.

“I am unpardonable!” he said softly. “I say nothing to you of your so-great grief. I do not sympathize. I am heartless! But you will forgive! It is the shock of my own grief for the loss of my friend from which I have not recovered. I bleed for you in your deep sorrow. My poor little bambino! But you understand—yes—do you not?”

Teresa's hands, in her lap now, toyed with one of her gloves which she had taken off. She did not look up.

“Yes, yes,” murmured Dago George. “You understand! But we will speak no more of that now—it is but to depress us both. There are other things—that you have come all this way from San Francisco, and that you have come immediately to me, for you have but just arrived in New York to-night, is it not so?”

“Yes,” Teresa answered. “The train was very late. I came here at once from the station.”

“Then, thanks to your train being late,” said Dago George, with a significant lowering of his voice, “I think I can tell you why you came. If you had been an hour earlier, it would have been you who would have had to tell me. Eh? Is it not so? There was a letter—eh? A letter which you wrote for Nicolo Capriano, for your father—is it not so?”

The blood seemed suddenly to Teresa to grow hot, and as suddenly to grow chill and cold in her veins. Dago George had answered her question. Dave Henderson had already delivered the letter! It brought fear; but it brought, too, a sense of relief. The road was clear now before her. It was her wits against Dago George—to draw, and win, and hold the other's full and unreserved confidence, to make herself appear essential to Dago George—for an hour—a week—a month—until she could reach Dave Henderson, wherever he might be, and meanwhile checkmate any move that this man here might make. She glanced furtively, with well simulated caution, around her.

“Yes,” she said, in a guarded voice. “You are right. It is the letter that brought me. What else? My father died the night it was written. He had no time to communicate with you. I do not know all, but I know enough, I think, to make the matter sure. There is a great deal of money at stake, and so I came.”

“Ah!” Dago George was whispering excitedly now. “Wait! Wait a minute, my little bambino!” He ran to the door, opened it, looked out, closed and locked it again, and, crossing the room, pulled the half drawn roller shade down to the window sill. He drew a chair close up to Teresa's, and sat down. “It is better to be sure, is it not? Yes, yes! And we will continue to speak English, eh? It is less understood here. Ah, my little bambino! You are your father's daughter! Yes, yes! Nicolo Capriano is not dead! Well, the letter, eh? There is money in it, much money in it, you say?”

“Yes,” she replied. Her voice sharpened, and became a little imperious. “Yes, there is money in it, provided you have not lost sight of the man who brought the letter to you.”

Dago George rubbed his hands together softly.

“Have no fear of that!” he whispered eagerly. “Dago George did not serve under Nicolo Capriano for nothing! The young man is upstairs, and safely asleep. He came perhaps a little more than half an hour ago. We had a little glass of wine together, and—” He shrugged his shoulders, and made a significant little circling motion with his thumb and forefinger.

Teresa's eyebrows lifted in frank impatience.

“What do you mean by that?” she asked sharply.

Again Dago George shrugged his shoulders.

“Have I not said that he is—asleep?” he smiled.

“Drugged!” exclaimed Teresa.

“But, yes—naturally! What would you have?” smiled Dago George.

Teresa's glove slipped from her lap to the floor. She was deliberate and long in picking it up.

“But why?” There was irritation and censure in her voice now, as she looked up at him and frowned.

“I don't see why! You know nothing of the reasons that prompted my father to write that letter. Why should you drug him? What could you expect to accomplish by that, except to excite his suspicions when he wakes up?”

“Ah, but you do me an injustice, my little bambino!” said Dago George smoothly. “It was but a pinch of the drug, a drug that I know very well, and that never plays tricks on me. He has had but enough to last for four or five hours, and he will experience no ill effects when he wakes up. You can trust Dago George for that. And as for why—what else could I do? It was precisely because I had had no word from Nicolo Capriano, and because it was all a mystery to me, except that the letter was signed con amore. Eh? You know well enough what that means, and that it was not to be disobeyed. The man must never leave my sight or hands until the little game, whatever it was, was played out. Is it not so? It was also necessary that, having nothing further from the old master to guide me, I should look this Signor Barty Lynch over for myself—yes? Is it not so, my little bambino?”

Teresa preserved her frown.

“Perhaps,” she admitted, with well assumed unwillingness. “Well?”

Dago George drew a little closer.

“Well, he is safe upstairs, then. You see that Dago George had his head about him, after all, eh? And now—the letter! What is it that the old master was about to do?”

Teresa's mind was working swiftly. Dave Henderson was upstairs, drugged, but safe so far. It might be hours before he could make any move; but by morning surely, by morning before daylight, he could get away, and until then she must stay here. There was only one way she could do that without arousing suspicion, and at the same time have freedom of action—as an ally, an indispensable ally, of this man here. There was only one dominating consideration, therefore, to guide her in what, or how much, she told Dago George, for once Dave Henderson had slipped away that was the last Dago George would ever see of him, or her; and the consideration involved was, that, while she knew Dago George too well to trust him in the smallest degree, Dago George must be made to trust her in the fullest measure, and from the strongest of all reasons from Dago George's standpoint—that of self-interest. And the surest way to accomplish that was to tell Dago George enough of the truth to, at one and the same time, arouse his cupidity and leave him in a sense dependent upon her cooperation for his future activities.

“I can only tell you what I heard them saying to each other that night when I wrote that letter for my father,” she said deliberately. “But that is enough, I think; anyway, it was enough to decide me to come here to you. My father, of course, intended to communicate with you—in just what way, I do not know—but he died that same night. The only thing, then, that I could see to do was to get here without a moment's delay, and I left San Francisco immediately after my father's burial. You understand?”

“Yes, yes!” Dago George nodded his head vigorously in assent. “But, of course! Yes, yes, my little bambino! Well—and then?”

She leaned forward impressively toward Dago George.

“This Barty Lynch stole some money,” she said, in a quick, eager voice; “a great deal of money, thousands; I heard them speak of a hundred thousand. My father had helped him to get away from the police; that is why he trusted my father. But this money was stolen again from Barty Lynch by a man who Barty Lynch said had run here to New York for cover. That is what has brought Barty Lynch here—to find that man, and get the money back. You see? Once Barty Lynch gets hold of the money again, he—but that is why my father gave him a letter to you, and——-”

“Signed it con amore broke in Dago George,” whispering feverishly, and almost as though speaking to himself. “Yes, yes! I see! It is the hand of the old master, and it has lost none of its cunning! Yes, yes! I see! There is no risk! It is stolen money to begin with! Signor Barty Lynch has no recourse to the law! And even if Signor Barty Lynch disappeared—eh?—who is to know the difference, since he has already arranged things so nicely in hiding himself away from the police! Eh? Yes! It is excellent, superb! Is it not so?”

Teresa's face was impassive.

“Yes, except that we have not got that money yet!” she said curtly. “It may not be as easy as it looks. That is why I am here—to help; and also”—she stared Dago George levelly in the face—“to see that Dago George does not get more than his share.”

The Italian's hands were raised instantly in protestation.

“But, my little bambino—that you should say that!” He shook his head in an aggrieved way. “I am hurt that you should think I forget Nicolo Capriano, though he is dead, or that you should think I would do anything like that.”

“Nor do I think so,” she answered steadily. “I warn you, that is all. We shall work all the better together if we understand to begin with that Nicolo Capriano's daughter, though Nicolo Capriano is dead, has still some power; and if we understand that this is Nicolo Capriano's plan, and not yours, and that the division will be made on the same basis that Nicolo Capriano would have made it.”

“It is Nicolo himself speaking,” murmured Dago George. He was smiling now. “I had no thought of anything but that. It is understood. I could ask for nothing better.”

“Very well!” she said. “There is nothing to be done at first then, but to watch him in everything he does here in New York. You have plenty of men you can depend upon—I know that; but I think I can do more, or at least as much, as they can, and certainly with all of us working together we should succeed. He is in a room upstairs, you say. You have another one next to his that is empty, perhaps? Yes? Well, that is good. I will take it. He will be surprised to see me here, but he will not be suspicious. He believes that you were a very intimate friend of my father. Naturally, then, it would be at the house of that intimate friend that I would come to stay when, owing to my father's death, I am making arrangements to sail to my father's people back in Italy. Barty Lynch trusted my father absolutely. That is plain. He therefore trusts me equally. It may not even be necessary to watch him; he is even more likely than not—if he is played right—to make a confident of me.”

Dago George rubbed his hands together excitedly. “Yes,” he cried. “It is superb! I salute you. You do credit to Nicolo Capriano! Ah, my little bambino, you have your father's brains!”

Teresa, with a prettily imperious nod of her head, rose from her chair.

“It is getting late,” she said. “It must be nearly eleven o'clock, and I have had a long journey. Since he is drugged, he is safe for the time being, and there is nothing more to be done to-night. To-morrow we can begin our work. Take me to my room.”

“Yes—it is superb!” Dago George repeated exultantly. He bowed Teresa to the door, and, picking up the valises, led the way upstairs. He chuckled with perverted humor, as they passed Dave Henderson's door. “He is in there,” he said; “but we must not disturb his rest, eh? He said he was very tired!” He ushered Teresa into the next room, and turned on the light. “If there is anything that the little bambino requires?”—his head and hands gestured eloquently.

Teresa was looking around the none too clean, and none too well furnished, room.

“Nothing!” she said.

Dago George Retreated to the door. He cleared his throat, and hesitated, and shuffled a little awkwardly with his feet.

“It is that the little bambino will know that I am thinking of her great sorrow, though I have said little, that I speak of it again,” he said softly. “The master has been long dead? It is true you have told me he died on the night you wrote that letter for him, but the letter”—he produced it from his pocket, and scanned it earnestly—“yes, I am right—it bears no date.”

“My father died nine days ago,” Teresa answered tersely, and half turned away her head.

“Ah, yes! Nine days ago!” Dago George shook his head sorrowfully, as he backed across the threshold. “The old master! It is very sad! Nine days ago! It is very sad! I wish you repose, my little bambino. Good-night!”

Teresa closed and locked the door behind Dago George—and stood still for an instant listening. Dago George's footsteps died away on the stairs below. She moved a little then, and stood with her ear pressed against the partition of the next room. There was no sound. And then she began to walk slowly about the room, and a few minutes later, the time that it would ordinarily have taken her to prepare for bed, she turned out the light—and sat down in a chair, fully dressed, and stared into the blackness.

She pressed her hand a little wearily across her eyes. She was here now at the end of those thousands of miles, every one of which had seemed to yawn as some impassable gulf between her and her goal; she was here now, and, in spite of her fears, she had reached that goal—in time. She had even outwitted—for the moment anyhow—Dago George. True, Dave Henderson lay there in that next room drugged, but she was not too late. She smiled a little ironically. In a purely literal sense she was too early! She dared not make a move now for perhaps hours yet, not until she was sure the house was closed for the night, and that Dago George—she did not trust Dago George—had gone to bed.

And so she must sit here and stare into the blackness. She would not fall asleep; there was no fear of that. She could not sleep. Already thoughts and memories, as myriad in divergence as they were in numbers, were crowding upon her, and goading her brain into an abnormal and restless activity.

She twisted her hands together now in her lap. She remembered, and she could not forget, the horror and the fear of that night when her father had died, and of the days thereafter when she had performed—alone—the last duties that had devolved upon her. Yes, it had been alone. She had lied to Dago George. It had been alone! If Nicolo Capriano had had friends and been powerful in life, Nicolo Capriano had been alone in death. She had lied to Dago George; there had been no heritage of power. She had lied—but then her whole life was a lie!

A low sound, a bitter moan, came suddenly from her lips. It was not the Teresa now who had faced Dago George with cool complacence in the room below. She slipped from the chair to her knees, and buried her face in her hands. It was the black hour, of which she had known so many since that fearful night, that surged and swept upon her now again. It whirled scenes and thoughts of the past, and pictures of the future, before her like some bewildering and tormenting kaleidoscope. She could not define to herself her feelings relative to her father's death; grief seemed to mingle indissolubly with bitter abhorrence at his act of treachery. But in another way her father's death meant something to her that she was coming to grasp more clearly. It seemed to release her from something, from—from a tangled life.

All her life had been a lie. She was the daughter of a criminal, and all her life had been a lie; her environment had been a lie. In big things, in little things, it had been a lie. She had lied to herself that night when she had let this man in the next room here go without a word of protest from her lips to carry out a criminal act. She had been a coward that night, and it had shamed her. She had owed something to her father, a loyalty to her father; perhaps, fundamentally, that was the basis for her refusal to face the issue squarely that night; perhaps it was because the habit of years, the lies, and only lies, that had been lived around her, had strangled her and weakened her. Perhaps it was that; but if so, and if she had owed and given loyalty to her father, then she had given more than loyalty—she had given her soul. And her soul turned miserably away from this pitiful landscape of life upon which now she was forcing it to gaze.

But this was a picture of the past, for if it were true, or in any degree true, her father's death had brought her release—her father was dead. And so she faced the future—alone. In so many a different sense—alone. She was alone now, a free agent to mold her own life, and the test was before her; whether the lie, for example, she had acted that night when she had sent Dave Henderson away, was the outcome of things extraneous to her soul, or inherent in that soul itself. Her hands, that clasped her face, tightened. Thank God, she knew! Thank God, that from the moment her brain had staggered out of its blind pit of horror and darkness on that night, she had seen the way clearly lighted before her! Her first duty was to save the man in the next room from her father's treachery, and she was here now to do that; but she was here, too, to do something else. She could, and would, stand between Dave Henderson and the personal harm that threatened him through the trust he had reposed in Nicolo Capriano, and she would do this at any cost and at any sacrifice to herself; but she could not, and she would not, connive at anything that would tend to keep the stolen money from the possession of its rightful owners.

Her hands lifted now and pressed hard against her temples, which had begun to throb. Yes, and she must do even more than that. There had been not only treachery on her father's part toward Dave Henderson, there had been treachery and trickery toward the police in an effort to cover up the stolen money; and, tacitly at least, she had been an accomplice in that, and therefore morally she was as much a thief as that man next door, as much a thief as her father had intended to be—unless now, with all her strength, with all her might, she strove to undo and make restitution for a crime in which she had had a part. If it lay within her power, not adventitiously, not through haphazard, but through the employment toward that end of every faculty of brain and wit and courage she possessed, she had no choice now but to get possession of that money and return it to the authorities. Her conscience was brutally frank on that point, and brutally direct; there was no room to temporize, no halfway course—and here was the final, ultimate and supreme test.

Her face in the darkness whitened. Her lips moved silently. It was strength and help she asked now. Her mind was already made up. She would fight for, and, in any way or by any means that offered, get that money, and return it. And that meant that she must watch Dave Henderson, too. There was no other way of getting it. He alone knew where it was, and since it was not to be expected that he would voluntarily give it up, there seemed left but one alternative—to take it from him.

Her mind was almost overpoweringly swift now in its flow of tormenting thoughts. It seemed an impossible situation that she should warn him of danger from one source, only to do to him again what—no! His life was not in danger with her; that was the difference. But—but it was not easy to bring herself to this. She was alone now, with no bonds between herself and any living soul, except those strange, incongruous bonds between herself and that man in the next room whom she was, in the same breath, both trying to save and trying to outwit. Why was it that he was a thief? They could have been friends if he were not a thief; and she would have been so glad of a friend now, and she had liked him, and he did not look like a thief. Perhaps her mother had liked Nicolo Capriano in the early days, and perhaps Nicolo Capriano then had not looked like a thief, and perhaps her mother had counted on turning Nicolo Capriano into an honest man, and——

Teresa rose abruptly to her feet. She felt the hot color flood her face. She saw the man as he had stood that first night on the threshold of her father's room, and he had looked at her so long and steadily—and there had been no offence in his look. She caught her breath sharply. Her mind was running riot! It must not do that! She had many things to accomplish tonight, and she would need all her wits.

She forced her thoughts violently into another channel. How long would it be before this Iron Tavern closed for the night, and Dago George was in bed and asleep? She did not trust Dago George! She knew him as one utterly without scruples, and one who was insidiously crafty and dangerously cunning. She began to rehearse again the scene that she had had with him—and suddenly drew herself up tensely. Why, at the last moment as he had left the room, had he reverted to her father's death, and why had he waited until then, when it should naturally have been one of his first questions, to inquire—so plausibly—when her father's death had taken place?

Her lips grew suddenly hard. Nine days! She had told him nine days. Was there any significance in that—to Dago George, or to herself? She had been delayed in leaving San Francisco by her father's funeral. Dave Henderson had left there several days earlier, but he had only arrived here at Dago George's to-night. True, the difference in time might be accounted for through Dave Henderson's presumed necessity of travelling under cover; but, equally, it might not. Had Dago George thought of that—as she was thinking of it now? Was it possible that Dave Henderson had already got that money, and had come here for refuge with it; that it was now, at this moment, in that next room there, and that, below stairs, Dago George, too, was sitting, waiting for the hours to pass, and sleep to come to all but himself!

She went mechanically to the window, and stood for a moment staring out upon a vista of dark, shadowy buildings that made jagged, ill-defined points against the sky-line—and then, with a sudden start, she raised the window cautiously, soundlessly, inch by inch, and leaned out. Yes, she was right! The iron platform of a fire-escape was common to her room and to the room next door.

For another moment she stood there, and then returned softly across the room to her chair.

“It is too early yet!” she whispered—and, with her chin in her hands, settled back in her chair, and stared into the blackness.