CHAPTER VIII.
A DARING VENTURE.
About quarter of two the following afternoon, Alfred Knox Atherton descended in the elevator of the big apartment house, and was about to enter his handsome electric coupé when Max Berne stepped up to him and respectfully raised his hat.
“Hello, Max!” Atherton exclaimed good-naturedly. “What are you doing here? Brought me a message from the club?”
“No, sir,” replied the waiter. “I’ve left the Marmawell. I gave up my position this morning, and paid them a month’s wages in lieu of notice.”
“I’m very sorry to hear that,” declared Atherton. “We shall miss you greatly. You’ve got another and better job, I suppose?”
“Not yet, sir, but with your assistance I hope to get a very much better job. That’s why I’ve come to you now.”
“I see. Well, I will be very glad to do what I can to help you, but I’m sorry to say that I cannot talk with you now. I’m just off to lunch with Professor Tufts. Call again this evening between seven and eight, and we’ll talk the matter over.”
“Thank you, sir, but I can’t wait until this evening. I must see you now.”
Atherton raised his brows.
“Must!” he repeated. “Really, Max, you’re forgetting yourself. That’s hardly the way to speak to me, if you desire my help. However, I don’t suppose you meant to be impertinent.”
“Not at all,” was the reply. “All the same, sir, I repeat that I must see you now.”
“And I repeat that I can’t and won’t see you!” Atherton replied, growing angry.
“I think you will, sir,” Berne assured him suavely.
“And why, pray?” demanded the society man.
The waiter came a step or two nearer, so that the chauffeur could not hear.
“I was at Meadowview at three o’clock this morning,” he murmured.
Alfred Atherton went suddenly white, but he recovered himself almost instantly.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, “but as you seem to think you do, I suppose I can give you five minutes. Come along.”
Without another word he led the way into the building, and entered the waiting elevator. They were shot up a few floors, and Max Berne was ushered into a luxuriously furnished room overlooking the wide avenue.
“Will you sit down?” Atherton asked, in tones of icy politeness.
He pointed to a chair in the middle of the room, but his visitor smilingly shook his head and seated himself at one of the windows.
“This will suit me better, I think,” the waiter answered blandly. “It will be easier for me to attract the attention of the people in the street—if I need to. Also,” he added, as he drew a loaded revolver from his pocket. “I shall feel more at home if I hold this in my hand while I talk.”
Atherton shrugged his shoulders and seated himself in the chair which he had offered to the waiter.
“Well, I’m waiting to hear why you have come to see me,” he said coldly. “Please be as brief as you can, for I can only spare you five minutes.”
Max assumed an air of injured innocence.
“What an ungrateful world it is!” he remarked, with a sigh. “Surely, I deserve a more cordial reception than this, considering the fact that only about twelve hours ago I saved you from arrest and ruin.”
Atherton gave a perceptible start.
“What do you mean?” he asked quickly.
“I mean,” was the reply, “that it was I who fired that bullet which smashed Francis Massey’s wrist, and enabled you and your friends to escape.”
His host jumped to his feet and planted himself in front of Max.
“Is that true?” he demanded.
The waiter nodded.
“I was crouching outside the study window,” he explained, “when Massey burst into the room and covered you with his revolver. I slipped my own gun under the curtain, and drew a bead on him.”
“But why were you outside the window? What were you doing at Massey’s place at that hour?”
“It’s rather a long story,” Berne drawled. “If you’ll sit down again, I’ll tell you all about it.”
Atherton hesitated, staring at him, then resumed his seat.
Max began by explaining how for some time past he had suspected that Atherton and Frost were “in the know,” how he had kept watch on them, and how he had listened to their conversation in Frost’s room at the Marmawell.
“I need not tell you,” he continued, “that what I heard more than confirmed my previous suspicions. I heard you tell Mr. Frost that you had ascertained that Massey had sent to the bank for the family jewels, and that his wife and daughters were going to wear them at the opera last night. You calculated, you said, that they would return to Meadowview about half past twelve, and that the stuff would be deposited for the night in the safe in Massey’s study.
“You explained to Mr. Frost that there was a deserted lane on the north side of the grounds, and that there was a wooden door about in the middle of the wall on that side, from which the footpath led round to the front of the house. You told him to be at your apartment at twelve o’clock, and you said you and he and ‘the other two’—those were your words, but you didn’t mention any names—would motor out to Meadowview, reaching there about three. You said you would leave the car in the lane in charge of the chauffeur while the four of you broke into the study, forced the safe, and made away with the sparklers.
“From certain other remarks which you let fall,” the waiter went on, “I gathered that this was not the first job of the kind on which you and Frost had been engaged. In fact, I came to the conclusion that you and he were members of an organized gang—a secret society, or something of that sort—which had been carrying on a systematic campaign of robbery. At any rate, I realized that I had made a discovery which ought to be worth a great deal of money to me, but before interviewing you and laying my terms before you, I decided to go to Meadowview, partly to find out who ‘the other two’ were, and partly to see you actually commit the burglary.”
He described his visit to the Massey country place and all that he had seen and done there.
“After I had winged Massey,” he concluded, “I hid behind some bushes until you and your friends had entered your car. I then mounted my motor bike, and followed you back to the city. You may possibly remember that just after you had got out of the machine in front of the building, a motorcyclist passed you and called out ‘good night.’ No doubt you wondered who it was. Now you know. It was I.”
“A very interesting story,” Atherton commented sarcastically, as his visitor paused. “May I ask you why you were good enough to fire at Massey, and so enable us to make our escape?”
“That’s plain enough, isn’t it? If you had been captured, all my plans for making money out of my discovery would have been ruined.”
“So I thought. Very well. We’ll get down to business. You spoke just now of laying your terms before me. That means, I take it, that you wish me to purchase your silence?”
“Naturally.”
“In other words—blackmail! Unless I buy your silence, you denounce me and my friends to the police?”
“Blackmail is an ugly word, Mr. Atherton, and I should prefer not to have it brought into this discussion. I certainly intend to denounce you to the police, if you’re foolish enough to reject my terms, but I haven’t come here to demand money as the price of my silence.”
“Then what do you want?”