“As it happens, I bought an elephant from Wong. Paid cash for it.”

  “Got a receipt?”

  Hollis was silent. The girl touched his arm.

  “How much did you pay for that elephant?” she whispered. “I don’t see how you got it away from Wong. He knew it wasn’t for sale—and he’s quick with his gun.”

  He grinned cheerfully.

  “So it’s the elephant you want, Gladys? Well, I paid fourteen dollars and a half for it—told Wong to keep the change. Only the compartments in the legs were empty. I suppose you want whatever was in those concealed cavities? What is it?”

  The girl drew in her breath quickly. She carefully studied her companion; then she frowned.

  “Do I look that much like a sucker, Hollis? You know what was in the thing. You shot up Wong to get it. There’s another guy who’s lookin’ for the same stuff I am—tried to get it from you in the train. I don’t know who he is. I’ll give you one more chance. Now you’d better hand over the stuff.”

  Hollis looked up just as Ruth Carruthers, his aunt, and an elderly, well-dressed man entered the room. They took a table on the farther side of the place, yet a certain stiffness in his aunt’s back and Ruth’s elaborate indifference showed him that they had seen him.

  His first thought was to go over to their table. Then he decided that it would be useless. It was a stroke of ill-luck that brought them to the Green Pig, after he had excused himself from dining with them. The other man, he decided, was the Frenchman whom Ruth had intended to meet.

  “Gladys,” he said decisively, “I’m not the man who shot Wong Li. And I have nothing of his. The fellow you want is the man who monkeyed with my bag in the sleeper—a Chinaman. You won’t get anything whatsoever from me. Is that clear?”

  Out of the corner of his eye, he was aware that the group at the other table were staring at him. He kept his glance grimly fixed on the girl in front of him. Her glance wavered.

  “Say—you have nerve. You talk like you wasn’t headed for the cooler—but you’re the guy they want, all right. And tomorrow they’ll know what I know—see? You’ll put on the soft pedal when they find fifty thousand bucks’ worth of stolen goods on you.”

  Her tone was bitter, and the warmth had died from her blue eyes, leaving them hard and cold. Hollis glanced at Ruth instinctively, hoping that they had not heard what was said. The sight of the trim, quiet figure of the girl at the other table stirred him. She was smiling at something her companion was saying.

  Hollis felt a pang of jealousy. He cursed his unfortunate speech of the other day. Poor relations! The girl was a thoroughbred, and he would have given every dollar he possessed to be sitting in the other man’s shoes that minute.

  Instead, he paid for the dinners and followed Gladys to the street. Outside the Green Pig he stopped her.

  “Look here, Gladys,” he said, “you may be right, and I may be in the devil’s own mess over this ivory elephant. But I have one card up my sleeve you don’t know about.”

  “What’s that?” the woman asked, with quick curiosity.

  “A clear conscience,” he grinned. “Good night, Gladys.”

  CHAPTER IX

  Negotiations

  The next morning went badly for Hollis. At the office he found his thoughts straying from trade and market statistics to a dark-eyed, dark-haired girl who treated him with queenly indifference. The sight of Ruth in the Green Pig had made it clear to him that she would never be absent from his thoughts—that he was held fast by the charm of a low, Southern voice and a wonderful pair of frank, friendly brown eyes.

  The telephone at his elbow whirred, and he picked up the receiver.

  “This is Mr. Hollis?” a man’s hesitating voice asked, with a curious lisp.

  “I am Hollis: who is this?”

  There was a brief pause. Then—

  “I want to buy an ivory curio that you own, Mr. Hollis. I am a collector. It is an old ivory Ming elephant with very delicious carving. I am greatly in desire of it. You will sell?”

  Hollis had forgotten the Chinese customer who had promised to call him up. This was he, judging by the twisted, Oriental English of the speaker.

  “I might be willing to sell the Ming elephant,” Hollis assured him, reflecting that his purchase was in growing demand, and wishing to draw out the Oriental further. “What price will you give me? Your best figure.”

  Another silence followed.

  “Five hundred dollars for the elephant and stand,” vouchsafed the voice at length.

  “Not enough.”

  “Six hundred.”

  “I have taken up collecting lately, Mr.—,” grinned the newspaperman. “I also am enamored of the delicious carving. The Ming elephant is a wonderful specimen. I don’t know that I want to sell at all.”

  “Eight hundred dollars. I need it, Mr. Hollis, to complete my series of Ming ivories.”

  “So do I.”

  “One thousand dollars for the elephant and stand.”

  “Wait a minute.”

  Hollis leaned the receiver against his ear and reflected. Obviously the man at the other end of the wire was aware of the secret value of the antique. Gladys had mentioned fifty thousand dollars. Where the great value of the elephant lay Hollis did not know. Certainly he and Ruth had made a thorough search of the curio.

  But the man at the other end of the wire knew the explanation of the mystery. He could tell Hollis—or be made to tell The fact that the ivory elephant reposed on his aunt’s what-not in the parlor at New Hampshire would not prevent him from getting in touch with the Oriental.

  “I might be willing to sell at that figure,” Hollis said slowly. “Suppose you meet me somewhere and we’ll talk it over—tonight.”

  The other pondered over the proposition for a moment.

  “All right, Mr. Hollis. Be at Chinese Delmonico’s, Pell Street, in the upper room. Ten o’clock. You will come?”

  “I’ll come.”

  He hung up as the other started to say something about bringing the elephant with him. Chinatown, reflected Hollis, was an unusual place for curio collectors—which agreed with his suspicion that the other was no collector, but one of the crowd looking for the missing valuables.

  Hollis dismissed the matter from his mind, picked up his hat, and took the subway uptown. He sought Washington Square and the door of his apartment house. He would see Ruth, he thought, and make a clean breast of things.

  At the door of the building, however, he found Mrs. Henderson, who approached him with a worried look.

  “Miss Carruthers says she ain’t to home, Mr. Hollis.”

  He stared at the housekeeper blankly.

  “Is Miss Carruthers in?”

  “Yes, sir. They have a gentleman caller—a fine-lookin’ man in one of them flyaway suits. But the young lady and her aunt said to tell you they wasn’t in, if you called.”

  “Confound it, Mrs. Henderson—do you mean I can’t go up to my own rooms?”

  The housekeeper’s good-natured face clouded sympathetically. Evidently Hollis’s aunt had spoken very plainly.

  “They said if you wanted anything of yours they’d be glad to send it down by me, sir.”

  The humor of the situation struck Hollis, and he grinned. Going to the switchboard by the door, he asked to be connected with his apartment. Ruth answered his call.

  “Good morning, cousin,” said Hollis amiably. “Hope you had a pleasant night”

  “Thank you, Mr. Hollis,” her soft voice responded coolly. “We did have a right nice sleep. I trust we did not interfere with your—business transaction last night. Professor de Bacourt, to whom I had that letter of introduction, was kind enough to take us out to dinner. The professor is a charming gentleman. Aunt Emma is quite in love with him.”

  Hollis mentally consigned the professor to other regions.

  “It was about last night,” responded Hollis doggedly, “that I wanted to see you, Cousin Ruth. I owe you an apology for leaving you. But I had to see that person. In fact, I‘m involved in quite a serious mess. I may be locked up on a charge of robbery in the next few hours.”

  He waited breathlessly for the girl’s response.

  “Why, that is too bad, Mr. Hollis,” she said coldly. “Aunt Emma had promised that you would show us all over New York, I’ve been wanting to see it for years. Professor de Bacourt has been too kind. He is going to take us to Chinatown tonight. To the—Chinese Delmonico’s. That’s the name, isn’t it? Aunt Emma has a cold, but I reckon I can go without a chaperon just this once.”

  He wondered if he had heard aright. Surely the girl could not be so indifferent to his own plight! And to go to Chinatown alone—

  “Do you think that’s safe, Ruth?” he asked anxiously. “You don’t know anything about this professor chap. He may be all right—but I don’t want you to run any risk, in this city—”

  “Why, Mr. Hollis,” she broke in indignantly, “Professor de Bacourt is a distinguished Orientologist, known to the best people in New Orleans. He is a talented Frenchman and a very charming gentleman.”

  Hollis gritted his teeth and cursed the breed of ivory elephants from alpha to omega.

  “What did you say, Mr. Hollis?” asked Ruth demurely. “It sounded right like a cuss word to me. I don’t think you should use such language. Professor de Bacourt wouldn’t.”

  The newspaperman took a long breath.

  “Look here, cousin,” he demanded. “I’m in trouble, unexpected trouble. Things may break badly for me. I don’t want to spoil your enjoyment of the sights of the town. But I’d like to see you to explain things. I never meant that idiotic remark at Aunt Emma’s to apply to you—and there are a lot of things I want to talk over. I think,” he smiled grimly, “that a lady should give a gentleman a chance to apologize if he asks for it nicely. That’s what they usually do in New Orleans, isn’t it?”

  “Well—” the girl’s soft voice hesitated. Hollis thought he caught a smothered laugh.

  “And I seem to be mixed in a gang of robbers here,” he added, hoping to enlist her sympathy.

  “Did you see yesterday’s paper, Mr. Hollis?” Ruth’s voice was cold again.

  “Good Lord, no!” he groaned. “What’s happened now?”

  “Mrs. Hoffman,” explained the girl precisely, “offers a thousand dollars’ reward and no questions asked for the return of her sapphire stones. The story in the paper a week ago said that they were worth fifty thousand. You see, it’s a habit of us poor country folks to read your New York papers. And don’t you think it might be well to return the sapphires before it’s too late?”

  Hollis blinked. He had noted the newspaper account of the robbery. And the figure named was fifty thousand dollars—by Gladys and now by Ruth. It was barely possible that the Hoffman sapphires might be the valuables wanted by the Oriental gang and blond Gladys. But how were the jewels connected with ivory elephants; and what in the name of absurdities did his cousin know about it all?

  “I thought,” she went on quietly, “that the information might be of service to your—friends. You see, Mr. Hollis, I don’t know anything about how you-all do things in New York.”

  “Of course not! That is—you don’t really think I’ve got the Hoffman sapphires, do you, Ruth?” His voice took on an appealing note.

  “Why, I don’t guess so, Cousin Hollis,” she drawled. “But you said that you were so involved in a robbery—I—”

  “Great Scott, Ruth! I’m beginning to believe I have them, after all. That is—that Aunt Emma has. No, that couldn’t be. Look here,” he groaned, “I can’t explain all this over the phone. Why can’t you let me see you, Ruth? Shake the professor tonight. I’ll make a counter proposition. We’ll go to dinner at Guffarone’s and to the best show in town afterward.”

  “Professor de Bacourt could chaperon us.”

  “No—I must see you alone, Ruth. Supper after the show, anywhere you like. Dancing—I know you are a great little dancer.”

  He waited anxiously for her response.

  “It does sound attractive,” she meditated. “I love dancing. And I’ve heard so much about the New York cafés—”

  “I’ll come in a taxi for you at seven!” Hollis closed the bargain swiftly. “I’ll send up word—if Aunt Emma doesn’t want to see me—for you.”

  He left the switchboard, directed Mrs. Henderson to have his evening clothes, hat, and stick sent to the near-by hotel, and returned to the office exultantly. From there he reserved a table at Guffarone’s and two seats for a fashionable musical comedy. Not until then did he stop to wonder if his conversation over the telephone had not convinced Ruth Carruthers that he was a professional gangster, with a penchant for jewelry.

  CHAPTER X

  Closing the Nets

  At six thirty that evening Tom Lemoire entered the elaborate facade of the Riverside Drive apartment without waiting for the elevator he ascended the stars three at a time to the Lemoire rooms. In the parlor he found Gladys dozing. At her brother’s hasty entrance she roused with an inquiring glance.

  “Move swiftly, sister,” snapped Lemoire. “Get your bag packed. The Lemoire family is leaving town tonight. I got a buzz over the wire from one of Wong’s men. The bulls have traced the Hoffman stones, somehow. Traced ’em to us.”

  As Gladys hurried into her room and began throwing articles into a suitcase, she talked.

  “We ain’t got ’em.”

  “No—but the bulls are wised that we had ’em at the Charity Ball.”

  Gladys’s mouth curled in a sneer.

  “I thought you and Fo Lon was going to get the stones, Tom.”

  Lemoire swore under his breath.

  “Fo Lon is through with us—quit, see? He’s hangin’ out in Chinatown. Wouldn’t go to see Wong. He said we left him out in the cold over them sapphires. Fo Lon told me something. He was in Wong’s when the shooting was pulled off. Followed a guy who grabbed the Ming elephant, to the Boston train. Wanted to get even for the shooting, I expect; all them Chinks is nuts on squaring accounts—”

  “Then it was Fo Lon tried to switch elephants through the curtains of lower eight,” guessed Gladys swiftly. “How’d he get the dummy?”

  “What the—does that matter? He ain’t got the sparklers—or he wouldn’t be tryin’ to get hold of the guy he followed out of Wong’s. I ain’t got ’em. I’m beginnin’ to think you ain’t got ’em—”

  “Thanks,” smiled the girl coldly. “Listen, Tom. A fellow named Hollis was in Wong’s the time of the shooting. He’s got the other elephant, and the stones. I tipped off the cops about him. They’ll get after him before they tackle us. We got time—”

  “About two minutes. I tell you, the cops or Mrs. Hoffman have traced the stones. They’re on to us—somehow. We’re leaving New York—first stop Buffalo, then Toronto, if we ain’t pinched, and our luck holds—”

  Gladys ran to the window and looked out. A touring car bearing three men in plain clothes was swinging in to the curb by the building. She waited long enough to see that all three went into the front entrance. Then she called to Tom, snapped out the lights of the rooms, and made for the servant’s entrance of the apartment.

  A rear stairway for servants led down to the court behind the building. The Lemoires descended this in safety. The court opened into a side street. There they sighted a taxi.

  At seven o’clock the Lemoires were installed on a fast, north-bound train.

  And at seven o’clock, precisely, Andrew Hollis, immaculately dressed, halted his taxi before the apartment house in Washington Square. He waited impatiently in the street for Ruth’s coming.

  Here was his opportunity to clear up the muddle of circumstances that had estranged him and Ruth. He thought, with a quickening of the pulse, that she had broken her engagement with the professor to be with him. It would be an evening to be remembered, showing the night life of the city to his cousin from New Orleans. He might even have a chance to tell her—

  He greeted her with a strange shyness. Ruth had evidently been visiting one of the shops. She wore a dark-red cloak, tipped with fur, that harmonized with her dark hair. Her eyes were bright with all a girl’s expectancy of an evening’s entertainment. As he helped her into the taxi a hand fell on his shoulder.

  “You’re wanted at police headquarters, Hollis.”

  He whirled and saw two men with bulky shoulders and clean-shaven faces standing beside him.

  “Wanted?” he demanded. “For what? Have you a warrant?”

  “We got a warrant,” announced the speaker. “Sorry to take you away from the lady. But there’s some things you got to explain.”

  The girl leaned forward and watched the three anxiously. Hollis felt the touch of her gloved hand on his arm. He shrugged his shoulders, remembering what Gladys had said.

  “As a favor to me,” he asked calmly, “would you tell me what I’m wanted for and why? I’ve never been arrested before and I’d like to understand the procedure from the first.”

  The plain-clothes men glanced at each other.

  “Well—if you want to know,” said the first speaker, “we got you on two counts. First, you was in Wong Li’s shop at the time he was shot—and left an envelope that looked like a pay envelope with your name on it. You left in a hurry and quit the burg. Then you come back to another hotel—not to your rooms. Since Gladys Lemoire tipped us off, we been watching you, Hollis.”

  “And the second count?” he inquired, with a sinking heart.

  “Well, Gladys spilled the dope you knew something about the stolen Hoffman sapphires. Said you had ’em. If you haven’t, you can clear it up easy. Just come along with us.”

  “Just a minute,” assented Hollis. He met the girl’s anxious glance squarely, and cut off her quick protest. He gave her the envelope containing the theater tickets.

  “I’ll have to keep this date with the police, Ruth,” he grinned. “But that needn’t spoil your evening. Call up De Bacourt and get him to take you to the show. Don’t worry about me.”

  He waved his hand and moved off between the detectives. If he had looked back he would have seen that the girl was watching him with flushed face and eyes in which gleamed a suspicion of tears. It occurred to Hollis presently to make a suggestion to his escort. Wong Li, he explained, could tell them, if he was faced with Hollis, that the latter was not the man who shot him.

 

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