LITMIR.BIZ

      THE BLACKMAILERS

      I

       Table of Contents

      THE BLACKMAILERS

       I

      The want ad—after the manner of want ads—had read simply: “Boy, over 14, intelligent, trustworthy, for confidential office work, references. Address B-67 Evening Express.”

      Several scores of boys, who were neither very intelligent nor peculiarly trustworthy, exposed their disqualifications—after the manner of boys—in the written applications that they made. Of these scores, a dozen boys received typewritten requests to call next morning at room 1056, in the Cranmer Building, ​on Broadway, for a personal interview with “H. M. Archibald.” But of the dozen, only one knew what sort of confidential office work might be waiting for him in room 1056.

      He was little Barney Cook. And he kept his information to himself.

      The directory, on the wall of the building’s entrance, did not assign 1056 to any of the names on its list. The elevator boys did not know who occupied 1056. The door of 1056 had nothing on its glass panel but the painted number; and the neighboring doors were equally discreet. The “Babbing Bureau” was the nearest name in the corridor, but its doors were marked “Private. Entrance at 1070.”

      Nor was there anything in the interior aspect of 1056 to enlighten any of Barney Cook’s competitors when they came there to be interviewed. It was an ordinary outer office of the golden-oak variety, with a railing of spindles separating a telephone switchboard and two typewriter desks from two public ​settles and a brass cuspidor. There were girls at the desks and the switchboard. The boys were on the settles or at the railing. The girls were busy, indifferent, chatty (among themselves) and very much at home. The boys, of course, were quite otherwise. They might have been suspected of having assumed a common expression of inert and anxious stupidity in order that each might conceal from all the others the required intelligence with which he hoped to win the “job.”

      Barney Cook alone betrayed the workings of a mind. He sat erect—stretching his neck—at the end of a settle nearest the gate of the railing, watching the door of an inner room and scrutinizing every one who came out of it. He paid no heed to the girls; he knew that they were merely clerks. But when he saw a rough-looking man appear, with a red handkerchief around his neck, he stared excitedly. Surely the bandana was a disguise! Perhaps the black mustache was false!

      Forty-eight hours earlier, in the uniform of ​a telegraph boy, Barney had been in the public office of the Babbing Detective Bureau; and he had been asked to deliver an envelope to the advertising department of the Evening Express as he went back. The envelope was not sealed. It did stick slightly in places—but it was not sealed. And it contained the want ad. “Confidential office work”! For the famous Walter Babbing!

      Young Barney had been delivering telegrams to the Babbing Bureau for months, without ever getting past the outer office at 1070, and without so much as suspecting the existence of these operatives’ rooms and inner chambers down the hall. He had seen Babbing only once, when “the great detective” came out with one of his men while Barney was getting his book signed. Babbing stood in the doorway long enough to say: “I ’ll meet you at the station. Get the tickets. I ’ll send Jim down with my suit-case.” The operative replied: “All right, Chief.” And Barney knew that this was Walter Babbing.

      ​He was a brisk-looking, clean-shaven, little fat man—rather “a dude” to Barney—with a quietly mild expression and vague eyes.

      Barney knew nothing of the scientific theory of “protective coloring” in detectives; he did not know that the most successful among them naturally look least like anything that might be expected of their kind. He went out, with his book open in his hand, absorbed in study of the picture of Babbing that had been photographed on his instantaneous young mind.

      Subsequently, he decided that he had seen Walter Babbing without any make-up, in the private appearance that he reserved for office use among his men. And he was assisted to this conclusion by his knowledge of the adventures of Nick Carter which he read on the street cars, in the subways, on the benches in the waiting room of the telegraph office, or wherever else he had leisure. And it was the influence of these Nick Carter stories that had brought him now to 1056 in his Sunday best, with his hair brushed and his shoes polished, ​as guiltily excited as a truant, having lied to his mother and absented himself from his work in the wild hope of getting employment—confidential and mysterious employment—in the office of the great Babbing.

      He was a rather plump and sturdy youth of sixteen, with an innocent brightness of face, brown-eyed, black-haired, not easily abashed and always ready with a smile. It was a dimpled smile, too; and he understood its value. In spite of his boyish ignorance of many things outside his immediate experience—such as famous detectives, for example—he knew his world and his way about in it; he met the events of his day with a practical understanding; and when he did not understand them he disarmed them with a grin. He was confident that he could get this job in the Babbing Bureau, in competition with any of the “boobs” who were waiting to dispute it with him, unless some one among them had a “pull.” Being an experienced New Yorker, it was the fear of the pull that worried him.

      ​He waited alertly on the edge of his settle, watching for an indication that the interviews with “H. M. Archibald” were to begin, and ready to rise and thrust himself forward as the first applicant. For a moment he did not recognize Babbing when the detective entered, from an inner office, in a spring overcoat and a fight felt hat.

      He had a small black satchel in his hand. He spoke to the telephone girl. Barney heard her ask: “The Antwerp?” Babbing added: “Until three o’clock.”

      He came towards the gate of the railing, and Barney rose to open it for him. Babbing did not appear to notice him, so Barney preceded him to the door and opened that also. Still Babbing did not heed. “I ’ll take your satchel, Mr. Babbing,” Barney said, authoritatively. And Babbing gave it to him in the manner of an absent mind.

      The whole proceeding had been a sudden inspiration on Barney’s part, born of a desire to distinguish himself, in Babbing’s eyes, from ​the other prospective office boys on the settles. Now, with Babbing’s satchel in his hand, he followed the detective into a well-filled elevator, confident of Babbing’s notice; but as they dropped in the cage

Скачать книгу