Flaming Jewel — 02 – The Ruling Passion
I
Nobody understood how Jose Quintana had slipped through the Secret Service net spread for him at every port.
The United States authorities did not know why Quintana had come to America.
They realised merely that he arrived for no good purpose; and they had meant to arrest and hold him for extradition if requested; for deportation as an undesirable alien anyway.
Only two men in America knew that Quintana had come to the United States for the purpose of recovering the famous "Flaming Jewel," stolen by him from the Grand Duchess Theodorica of Esthonia; and stolen from Quintana, in turn, by a private soldier in an American Forestry Regiment, on leave in Paris.
This soldier's name, probably, was Michael Clinch.
One of the men who knew why Quintana might come to America was James Darragh, recently of the Military Intelligence, but now passing as a hold-up man under the name of Hal Smith, and actually in the employment of Clinch at his disreputable "hotel" at Star Pond in the North Woods.
The other man who knew why Quintana had come to America was Emanuel Sard, a Levantine diamond broker of New York, Quintana's agent in America.
* * * * * Now, as the October days passed without any report of Quintana's detention, Darragh, known as Hal Smith at Clinch's dump, began to suspect that Quintana had already slid into America through the meshes of the police.
If so, this desperate international criminal could be expected at Clinch's under some guise or other, piloted thither by Emanuel Sard.
So Hal Smith, whose duty was to wash dishes, do chores, and also to supply Clinch's with "mountain beef"--or deer taken illegally--made it convenient to prowl every day in the vicinity of the Ghost Lake road.
He was perfectly familiar with Emanuel Sard's squat features and parrot nose, having robbed Mr. Sard of Quintana's cipher and of ,000 at pistol point.
And one morning, while roving around the guide's quarters at Ghost Lake Inn, Smith beheld Sard himself on the hotel veranda, in company with five strangers of foreign aspect.
During the midday dinner Smith, on pretense of enquiring for a guide's license, got a look at the Inn ledger.
Sard's signature was on it, followed by the names of Henri Picquet, Nicolas Salzar, Victor Georgiades, Harry Beck, and Jose Sanchez.
And Smith went back through the wilderness to Star Pond, convinced that one of these gentlemen was Quintana, and the remainder, Quintana's gang; and that they were here to do murder if necessary in their remorseless quest of "The Flaming Jewel."
Two million dollars once had been offered for the Flaming Jewel;
and had been refused.
Clinch probably possessed it.
Smith was now convinced of that.
But he was there to rob Clinch of it himself.
For he had promised the little Grand Duchess to help recover her Erosite jewel; and now that he had finally traced its probable possession to Clinch, he was wondering how this recovery was to be accomplished.
To arrest Clinch meant ruin to Eve Strayer.
Besides he knew now that Clinch would die in prison before revealing the hiding place of the Flaming Jewel.
Also, how could it be proven that Clinch had the Erosite gem?
The cipher from Quintana was not sufficient evidence.
No; the only way was to watch Clinch, prevent any robbery by Quintana's gang, somehow discover where the Flaming Jewel had been concealed, take it, and restore it to the beggared young girl whose only financial resource now lay in the possible recovery of this almost priceless gem.
* * * * * Toward evening Hal Smith shot two deer near Owl Marsh.
To poach on his own property appealed to his sense of humour.
And Clinch, never dreaming that Hal Smith was the James Darragh who had inherited Harrod's vast preserve, damned all millionaires for every buck brought in, and became friendlier to Smith.
II
Clinch's dump was the disposal plant in which collected the human sewage of the wilderness.
It being Saturday, the scum of the North Woods was gathering at the Star Pond resort.
A venison and chicken supper was promised--and a dance if any women appeared.
Jake Kloon had run in some Canadian hooch; Darragh, alias Hal Smith, contributed two fat deer and Clinch cooked them.
By ten o'clock that morning many of the men were growing noisy; some were already drunk by noon.
Shortly after midday dinner the first fight started--extinguished only after Clinch had beaten several of the backwoods aristocracy insensible.
Towering amid the wreck of battle, his light grey eyes a-glitter, Clinch dominated, swinging his iron fists.
When the combat ended and the fallen lay starkly where they fell, Clinch said in his pleasant, level voice: "Take them out and stick their heads in the pond.
And don't go for to get me mad, boys, or I'm liable to act up rough."
They bore forth the sleepers for immersion in Star Pond.
Clinch relighted his cigar and repeated the rulings which had caused the fracas: "You gotta play square cards here or you don't play none in my house.
No living thumb-nail can nick no cards in my place and get away with it.
Three kings and two trays is better than three chickens and two eggs.
If you don't like it, g'wan home."
He went out in his shirt sleeves to see how the knock-outs were reviving, and met Hal Smith returning from the pond, who reported progress toward consciousness.
They walked back to the "hotel" together.
"Say, young fella," said Clinch in his soft, agreeable way, "you want to keep your eye peeled to-night."
"Why?"
inquired Smith.
"Well, there'll be a lot o' folks here.
There'll be strangers, too....
Don't forget the State Troopers are looking for you."
"Do the State Troopers ever play detective?"
asked Smith, smiling.
"Sure.
They've been in here rigged out like peddlers and lumber-jacks and timber lookers."
"Did they ever get anything on you?"
"Not a thing."
"Can you always spot them, Mike?"
"No. But when a stranger shows up here who don't know nobody, he never sees nothing and he don't never learn nothing.
He gets no hootch outa me.
No, nor no craps and no cards.
He gets his supper; that's what he gets ...
and a dance, if there's ladies--and if any girl favours him.
That's all the change any stranger gets out of Mike Clinch."
They had paused on the rough veranda in the hot October sunshine.
"Mike," suggested Smith carelessly, "wouldn't it pay you better to go straight?"
Clinch's small grey eyes, which had been roaming over the prospect of lake and forest, focussed on Smith's smiling features.
"What's that to you?"
he asked.
"I'll be out of a job," remarked Smith, laughing, "if they ever land you."
Clinch's level gaze measured him; his mind was busy measuring him, too.
"Who the hell are you, anyway?"
he asked.
"_I_ don't know.
You stick up a man on the Ghost Lake Road and hide out here when the State Troopers come after you.
And now you ask me if it pays better to go straight.
Why didn't _you_ go straight if you think it pays?"
"I haven't got a daughter to worry about," explained Smith.
"If they get me it won't hurt anybody else."
A dull red tinge came out under Clinch's tan: "Who asked _you_ to worry about Eve?"
"She's a fine girl: that's all."
Clinch's steely glare measured the young man: "You trying to make up to her?"
he enquired gently.
"No. She has no use for me."
Clinch reflected, his cold tiger-gaze still fastened on Smith.
"You're right," he said after a moment.
"Eve is a good girl.
Some day I'll make a lady of her."
"She _is_ one, Clinch."
At that Clinch reddened heavily--the first finer emotion ever betrayed before Smith.
He did not say anything for a few moments, but his grim mouth worked.
Finally: "I guess you was a gentleman once before you went crooked, Hal," he said.
"You act up like you once was....
Say; there's only one thing on God's earth I care about.
You've guessed it, too."
He was off again upon his ruling passion.
"Eve," nodded Smith.
"Sure.
She isn't my flesh and blood.
But it seems like she's more, even.
I want she should be a lady.
It's _all_ I want.
That damned millionaire Harrod bust me.
But he couldn't stop me giving Eve her schooling.
And now all I'm livin' for is to be fixed so's to give her money to go to the city like a lady.
I don't care how I make money; all I want is to make it.
And I'm a-going to."
Smith nodded again.
Clinch, now obsessed by his monomania, went on with an oath: "I can't make no money on the level after what Harrod done to me.
And I gotta fix up Eve.
What the hell do you mean by asking me would it pay me to travel straight I dunno."
"I was only thinking of Eve.
A lady isn't supposed to have a crook for a father."
Clinch's grey eyes blazed for a moment, then their menacing glare dulled, died out into wintry fixity.
"I wan't born a crook," he said.
"I ain't got no choice.
And don't worry, young fella; they ain't a-going to get me."
"You can't go on beating the game forever, Clinch."
"I'm beating it----" he hesitated--"and it won't be so long, neither, before I turn over enough to let Eve live in the city like any lady, with her autymobile and her own butler and all her swell friends, in a big house like she is educated for----" He broke off abruptly as a procession approached from the lake, escorting the battered gentry who now were able to wabble about a little.
One of them, a fox-faced trap thief named Earl Leverett, slunk hastily by as though expecting another kick from Clinch.
"G'wan inside, Earl, and act up right," said Clinch pleasantly.
"You oughter have more sense than to start a fight in my place--you and Sid Hone and Harvey Chase.
G'wan in and behave."
He and Smith followed the procession of damaged ones into the house.
The big unpainted room where a bar had once been was blue with cheap cigar smoke; the air reeked with the stench of beer and spirits.
A score or more shambling forest louts in their dingy Saturday finery were gathered there playing cards, shooting craps, lolling around tables and tilting slopping glasses at one another.
Heavy pleasantries were exchanged with the victims of Clinch's ponderous fists as they re-entered the room from which they had been borne so recently, feet first.
"Now, boys," said Clinch kindly, "act up like swell gents and behave friendly.
And if any ladies come in for the chicken supper, why, gol dang it, we'll have a dance!"
III
Toward sundown the first woodland nymph appeared--a half-shy, half-bold, willowy thing in the rosy light of the clearing.
Hal Smith, washing glasses and dishes on the back porch for Eve Strayer to dry, asked who the rustic beauty might be.
"Harvey Chase's sister," said Eve.
"She shouldn't come here, but I can't keep her away and her brother doesn't care.
She's only a child, too."
"Is there any harm in a chicken supper and a dance?"
Eve looked gravely at young Smith without replying.
Other girlish shapes loomed in the evening light.
Some were met by gallants, some arrived at the veranda unescorted.
"Where do they all come from?
Do they live in trees like dryads?"
asked Smith.
"There are always squatters in the woods," she replied indifferently.
"Some of these girls come from Ghost Lake, I suppose."
"Yes; waitresses at the Inn."
"What music is there?"
"Jim Hastings plays a fiddle.
I play the melodeon if they need me."
"What do you do when there's a fight?"
he asked, with a side glance at her pure profile.
"What do you suppose I do?
Fight, too?"
He laughed--mirthlessly--conscious always of his secret pity for this girl.
"Well," he said, "when your father makes enough to quit, he'll take you out of this.
It's a vile hole for a young girl----" "See here," she said, flushing; "you're rather particular for a young man who stuck up a tourist and robbed him of four thousand dollars."
"I'm not complaining on my own account," returned Smith, laughing;
"Clinch's suits me."
"Well, don't concern yourself on my account, Hal Smith.
And you'd better keep out of the dance, too, if there are any strangers there."
"You think a State Trooper may happen in?"
"It's likely.
A lot of people come and go.
We don't always know them."
She opened a sliding wooden shutter and looked into the bar room.
After a moment she beckoned him to her side.
"There are strangers there now," she said, "--that thin, dark man who looks like a Kanuk.
And those two men shaking dice.
I don't know who they are.
I never before saw them."
But Smith had seen them at Ghost Lake Inn.
One of them was Sard.
Quintana's gang had arrived at Clinch's dump.
A moment later Clinch came through the pantry and kitchen and out onto the rear porch where Smith was washing glasses in a tub filled from an ever-flowing spring.
"I'm a-going to get supper," he said to Eve.
"There'll be twenty-three plates."
And to Smith: "Hal--you help Eve wait on the table.
And if anybody acts up rough you slam him on the jaw--don't argue, don't wait--just slam him good, and I'll come on the hop."
"Who are the strangers, dad?"
asked Eve.
"Don't nobody know 'em none, girlie.
But they ain't State Troopers.
They talk like they was foreign.
One of 'em's English--the big, bony one with yellow hair and mustache."
"Did they give any names?"
asked Smith.
"You bet.
The stout, dark man calls himself Hongri Picket.
French, I guess.
The fat beak is a fella named Sard.
Sanchez is the guy with a face like a Canada priest--Jose Sanchez--or something on that style.
And then the yellow skinned young man is Nicole Salzar; the Britisher, Harry Beck; and that good lookin' dark gent with a little black Charlie Chaplin, he's Victor Georgiades."
"What are those foreigners doing in the North Woods, Clinch?"
enquired Smith.
"Oh, they all give the same spiel--hire out in a lumber camp.
But _they_ ain't no lumberjacks," added Clinch contemptuously.
"I don't know what they be--hootch runners maybe--or booze bandits--or they done something crooked som'ers r'other.
It's safe to serve 'em drinks."
Clinch himself had been drinking.
He always drank when preparing to cook.
He turned and went into the kitchen now, rolling up his shirt sleeves and relighting his clay pipe.
IV
By nine o'clock the noisy chicken supper had ended; the table had been cleared; Jim Hastings was tuning his fiddle in the big room; Eve had seated herself before the battered melodeon.
"Ladies and gents," said Clinch in his clear, pleasant voice, which carried through the hubbub, "we're a-going to have a dance--thanks and beholden to Jim Hastings and my daughter Eve.
Eve, she don't drink and she don't dance, so no use askin' and no hard feelin' toward nobody.
"So act up pleasant to one and all and have a good time and no rough stuff in no form, shape or manner, but behave like gents all and swell dames, like you was to a swarry on Fifth Avenue.
Let's go!"
He went back to the pantry, taking no notice of the cheering.
The fiddler scraped a fox trot, and Eve's melodeon joined in.
A vast scuffling of heavily shod feet filled the momentary silence, accented by the shrill giggle of young girls.
"They're off," remarked Clinch to Smith, who stood at the pantry shelf prepared to serve whiskey or beer upon previous receipt of payment.
In the event of a sudden raid, the arrangements at Clinch's were quite simple.
Two large drain pipes emerged from the kitchen floor beside Smith, and ended in Star Pond.
In case of alarm the tub of beer was poured down one pipe; the whiskey down the other.
Only the trout in Star Pond would ever sample that hootch again.
Clinch, now slightly intoxicated, leaned heavily on the pantry shelf beside Smith, adjusting his pistol under his suspenders.
"Young fella," he said in his agreeable voice, "you're dead right.
You sure said a face-full when you says to me, 'Eve's a lady, by God!'
_You_ oughta know.
You was a gentleman yourself once.
Even if you take to stickin' up tourists you know a lady when you see one.
And you called the turn.
She _is_ a lady.
All I'm livin' for is to get her down to the city and give her money to live like a lady.
I'll do it yet....
Soon!...
I'd do it to-morrow--to-night--if I dared....
If I thought it sure fire....
If I was dead certain I could get away with it....
I've _got_ the money.
_Now!
_ ...
Only it ain't in _money_....
Smith?"
"Yes, Mike."
"You know me?"
"Sure."
"You size me up?"
"I do."
"All right.
If you ever tell anyone I got money that ain't money I'll shoot you through the head."
"Don't worry, Clinch."
"I ain't. You're a crook; you won't talk.
You're a gentleman, too.
_They_ don't sell out a pal.
Say, Hal, there's only one fella I don't want to meet."
"Who's that, Mike?"
"Lemme tell you," continued Clinch, resting more heavily on the shelf while Smith, looking out through the pantry shutter at the dancing, listened intently.
"When I was in France in a Forestry Rig'ment," went on Clinch, lowering his always pleasant voice, "I was to Paris on leave a few days before they sent us home.
"I was in the washroom of a caffy--a-cleanin' up for supper, when dod-bang!
into the place comes a-tumblin' a man with two cops pushing and kickin' him.
"They didn't see me in there for they locked the door on the man.
He was a swell gent, too, in full dress and silk hat and all like that, and a opry cloak and white kid gloves, and mustache and French beard.
"When they locked him up he stood stock still and lit a cigarette, as cool as ice.
Then he begun walkin' around looking for a way to get out;
but there wasn't no way.
"Then he seen me and over he comes and talks English right away: 'Want to make a thousand francs, soldier?'
sez he in a quick whisper.
'You're on,' sez I; 'show your dough.'
'Them Flics has went to get the Commissaire for to frisk me,' sez he.
'If they find this parcel on me I do twenty years in Noumea.
Five years kills anybody out there.'
'What do you want I should do?'
sez I, havin' no love for no cops, French or other.
'Take this packet and stick it in your overcoat,' sez he.
'Go to 13 roo Quinze Octobre and give it to the concierge for Jose Quintana.'
And he shoves the packet on me and a thousand-franc note.
"Then he grabs me sudden and pulls open my collar.
God, he was strong.
"'What's the matter with you?'
says I. 'Lemme go or I'll mash your mug flat.'
'Lemme see your identification disc,' he barks.
"Bein' in Paris for a bat, I had exchanged with my bunkie, Bill Hanson.
'Let him look,' thinks I; and he reads Bill's check.
"'If you fool me,' says he, 'I'll folly ye and I'll do you in if it takes the rest of my life.
You understand?'
'Sure,' says I, me tongue in me cheek.
'Bong!
Allez vous en!'
says he.
"'How the hell,' sez I, 'do I get out of here?'
'You're a Yankee soldier.
The Flics don't know you were in here.
You go and kick on that door and make a holler.'
"So I done it good; and a cop opens and swears at me, but when he sees a Yankee soldier was locked in the wash-room by mistake, he lets me out, you bet."
Clinch smiled a thin smile, poured out three fingers of hooch.
"What else?"
asked Smith quietly.
"Nothing much.
I didn't go to no roo Quinze Octobre.
But I don't never want to see that fella Quintana.
I've been waiting till it's safe to sell--what was in that packet."
"Sell what?"
"What was in that packet," replied Clinch thickly.
"What was in it?"
"Sparklers--since you're so nosey."
"Diamonds?"
"And then some.
I dunno what they're called.
