The Brand of Silence: A Detective Story by Johnston McCulley (read book txt) 📖

compensation. For what you have done, you must pay."

Sidney Prale gasped when he read that message, and went back to the ground floor.

"Who left this note for me?" he demanded of the clerk.

"Messenger boy."

"You don't know where he came from?"

"No, sir."

Prale turned away and started for the elevator again. A bell hop stopped him.

"Manager would like to see you in his office, sir," the boy said. "This way, sir."

Prale followed the boy, wondering what was coming now. He found the manager to be a sort of austere individual who seemed impressed with his own importance.

"Mr. Prale," he said, "I regret to have to say this, but I find that it cannot be avoided. When you arrived yesterday, the clerk assigned you to a suite on the fifth floor. He made a mistake. We had a telegraphic reservation for that suite from an old guest of ours, and it should have been kept for him. You appreciate the situation, I feel sure."

"No objection to being moved," Prale said. "I have unpacked scarcely any of my things."

"But—again I regret it—there isn't a vacant suite in the house, Mr. Prale."

"A room, then, until you have one."

"We haven't a room. We haven't as much as a cot, Mr. Prale. We cannot take care of you, I'm afraid. So many regular guests, you understand, and out-of-town visitors."

"Then I'll have to move, I suppose. You may have the suite within two hours."

"Thank you, Mr. Prale."

Prale was angry again when he left the office of the manager. It seemed that everything was conspiring against his comfort. He got a cab, drove to another hotel, inspected a suite and reserved it, paying a month in advance, and then went back to the big hotel on Fifth Avenue to get his baggage. He paid his bill at the cashier's window, and overheard the room clerk speaking to a woman.

"Certainly, madam," the clerk was saying. "We will have an excellent suite on the fifth floor within half an hour. The party is just vacating it. Plenty of suites on the third floor, of course, but, if you want to be up higher in the building——"

Sidney Prale felt the blood pounding in his temples, felt rage welling up within him. He felt as he had once in a Honduras forest when he became aware that a dishonest foreman was betraying business secrets. He hurried to the office of the manager, but the stenographer said the manager was busy and could not be seen.

Prale whirled away, going through the lobby toward the entrance. He met Kate Gilbert face to face. She did not seem to see him, though he was forced to step aside to let her pass.

CHAPTER IV A FOE AND A FRIEND

After settling himself in the other hotel, Prale ate a belated luncheon. For the first time that day, he looked at the newspapers. He had remembered that a New Yorker reads the papers religiously to keep up to the minute; whereas, in Honduras, it was the custom for busy men to let the papers accumulate and then read a week's supply at a sitting.

Aside from his name in the list of arrivals, Prale found no word concerning himself, though there was mention of other men who had come on the Manatee, and who had no special claim to prominence.

"I don't amount to much, I guess," said Prale to himself. "Don't care for publicity, anyway, but they might let the world know a fellow has come home."

He went for another walk that afternoon, returned to the hotel for dinner, and decided that, instead of going to a show that evening, he would prowl around the town.

He walked up to the Park, went over to Broadway, and started down it, looking at the bright lights again, making his way through the happy, theater-going throngs toward Times Square. In the enjoyment of the crowds he forgot, in part, the discourtesies of the day, but he could not forget them entirely.

Why had the banker acted in such a peculiar fashion? It was not like a financial institution to refuse a deposit of a round million. Why had Griffin refused to see him? Why had he as good as been ordered out of the hotel?

"Coincidence," he told himself. "No reason on earth why such things should happen unless I am being taken for somebody else—and that wouldn't be true in the case of Griffin."

He came to a prominent hotel and went into the lobby, looking in vain for some friend of the old days with whom he could spend an hour or so. Down in Honduras he had had his million and friends, too; and here, in his old home, he had nothing but his money. At this hour, down in Honduras, the band would be playing in the plaza, and society would be out in force. There would be a soft breeze sweeping down from the hills, bringing a thousand odors that could not be detected in New York. Here and there guitars would be tinkling, and men and maidens would be meeting in the moonlight.

There would be a happy crowd at a certain club he knew, at which he always had been made welcome. A man could sit out on the veranda and look over the tumbling sea, and hear the ship's bells strike. Sidney Prale found himself just a bit homesick for Honduras.

"Got to get over it," he told himself. "No sense in feeling this way. I'll have a hundred friends before I've been in town a month!"

He went out upon the street, made his way down it, and dropped in at another hotel. There he saw Rufus Shepley sitting in an easy-chair, smoking and looking at an evening paper.

Well, he knew Shepley, at least. Shepley was only a steamship acquaintance, but he was a human being and could talk. Prale was just a bit tired of confining his conversation to waiters and cigar-store clerks.

He stopped before Shepley and cleared his throat.

"Well, we meet again, Mr. Shepley!" he said.

Rufus Shepley looked up, and then sprang to his feet, but his face did not light and he did not extend a hand in greeting. Instead, his countenance grew crimson, and he seemed to be shaking with anger.

"You presume too much on a chance acquaintance, sir!" Rufus Shepley thundered. "I do not wish you to address me again—do you understand, sir? Never again—either in public or private!"

"Why——" Prale stammered.

"I don't want anything to do with a man of your stamp!" Rufus Shepley went on. "Ten years in Honduras, were you? We all know why men go to Honduras and spend years there."

Shepley had raised his voice, and all in the lobby could hear. Men began moving toward them, and women began walking away, fearing a scene and a quarrel.

Sidney Prale's face had flushed, too, and he felt his anger rising again.

"I am sure I do not wish to continue the acquaintance if you do not, sir," he said. "I can be courteous, at least."

"Some men are not entitled to courtesy," Shepley roared.

"What do you mean by that?" Prale demanded.

"I mean that I don't want anything to do with you, that's all! I don't want you to speak to me again! I don't want anybody to know that you even know me by sight!"

"See here!" Prale cried. "You can't talk to me like that without giving me some explanation! You can't defame me before other men——"

"Defame you?" Shepley cried. "You can't make a tar brush black, sir?"

Rage was seething in Prale now. There was quite a crowd around them, and others were making their way forward.

"I don't pretend to know what is the matter with you, and I don't much care!" he told Shepley. "If your hair wasn't gray, I'd take you out on the sidewalk and smash your face in! Please understand that!"

"Threaten me, will you?"

"I'm not threatening you. I don't fight a man with one foot in the grave."

"Why you——"

"And I don't care to have you address me in public again, either," Sidney Prale went on. "It probably would be an insult."

"Confound you, sir!" Shepley cried.

He reached forward and grasped Prale by the arm. Sidney Prale put up a hand, tore the grasp loose, and tossed Rufus Shepley to one side.

"Keep your paws off me!" he exclaimed. "I think that you're insane, if you ask me!"

The hotel detective came hurrying up.

"You'll have to cut that out!" he said. "What's the row here, anyway?"

"The place is harboring a maniac!" Prale said.

"It's harboring a crook!" Shepley cried.

Prale lurched forward and grasped him by both arms, and shook him until Rufus Shepley's teeth chattered.

"Another word out of you, and I'll forget that your hair is gray!" Prale exclaimed, and then he tossed Shepley to one side again.

"Either of you guests here?" the house detective demanded. "No? Then maybe you'd both better get out until you can cool off. If you want to stage a scrap, go down and rent Madison Square Garden and advertise in the newspapers. I wouldn't mind seeing a good fight myself. But this lobby isn't any prize ring. Get me?"

Sidney Prale, his face still flaming, whirled around and started for the entrance, the crowd parting to let him through. Rufus Shepley, fuming and fussing, followed him slowly. The house detective accompanied him to the door.

Prale was waiting at the curb, a Prale whose face was white now because of the temper he was fighting to control. He stepped close to Shepley's side.

"I don't know why you insulted me, but don't do it again!" Prale said. "I ought to settle with you for what you've said already."

The house detective, who had heard, stepped forward again, but Sidney Prale swung across the street and went on his way.

He walked rapidly for a dozen blocks or more, paying no attention to where he was going, until his anger began to subside.

"Why, the raving maniac!" he gasped, once or twice.

He didn't pretend to guess what it meant. Shepley had seemed to be friendly enough when they had separated aboard ship. What could have happened to make the man change his mind and attitude?

"Must be some mistake!" Prale told himself. "If there is any more of this, I'll have to get to the bottom of it!"

He reached Madison Square, and sat down on a bench to smoke and regain his composure. He knew that he had a terrible temper, and that it had to be controlled. A temper that flashed was all right at times in the jungles of Honduras, but it was not the proper thing to exhibit in the heart of New York City. It might get him into serious trouble with somebody.

He finished his cigar, listened to the striking chimes, and lighted another smoke. A pedestrian stopped beside him.

"Old Sid Prale, or I'm a liar!" he cried.

Prale looked up, and then sprang to his feet.

"Jim Farland, the sleuth!" he cried in answer. "Old Jim, the holy terror to evildoers. Now I am glad that I'm home!"

"When did you get in?"

"Yesterday. Sit down. Have a cigar. You're the first old friend I've met!"

Detective Jim Farland sat down and lighted the cigar. "You've been gone some time," he said.

"Ten years, Jim."

"Went away rather sudden, didn't you?"

"I did. I made my decision one night and sailed the night following," said Prale.

"I always wondered why you went, and what became of you. Had a good job with old Griffin, didn't you?"

"The job was all right, Jim. But there was a girl——"

"Ah, ha!"

"And she threw me over for a fellow who had some money. That made me huffy, of course. I swore I'd shake the dust of New York from my shoes, go to some foreign country, take with me the ten thousand dollars I had saved, and turn it into a million."

"And came back broke!" Farland said.

"Nothing of the sort, Jim. I came back with a million."

"Great Scott! I suppose I'd better be on my way then. I ain't in the habit of having millionaires let me associate with 'em."

"You sit where you are, or I'll use violence!" Prale told him. "I suppose you are still on the force? Still fussing around down in the financial district watching for swindlers?"

"I left the force three years ago," Jim Farland replied. "Couldn't seem to get ahead. Too honest, maybe—or too ignorant. I'm in a sort of private detective business now—got an office up the street. Doing fairly well, too—lots of old friends give me work. If you have anything in my line——"

"If I have, you'll get a job," said Prale.

"Let me slip you a card," said Farland. "You never know when you may need a detective. So you came back with a million, eh?"

"And ran into a mess," Prale added.

"I can't imagine a man with a million running into