The Dark Star by Robert W. Chambers (best fiction novels of all time TXT) 📖

open a elegant place in Paris on the Q. T. In fact, it’s ready now. There’ll be all the backing Quint needs. He’s to send over three men he can trust—three men who can shoot at a pinch! He picks us three and stakes us. Get me?”

Doc nodded.

Brandes said in his narrow-eyed, sleepy way:

“There was a time when they called us gunmen—Ben and me. But, so help me God, Doc, we never did any work like that ourselves. We never fired a shot to croak any living guy. Did we, Ben?”

“All right,” said Stull impatiently. And, to Curfoot: “Eddie and I know what we’re to do. If it’s on the cards that we shoot—well, then, we’ll shoot. The place is to be small, select, private, and first class. Doc, you act as capper. You deal, too. Eddie sets ’em up. I deal or spin. All right. We three guys attend to anything American that blows our way. Get that?”

Curfoot nodded.

“Then for the foreigners, there’s to be a guy called Karl Breslau.”

Neeland managed to repress a start, but the blood tingled in his cheeks, and he turned his head a trifle as though seeking better light on the open pages in his hands.

“This here man Breslau,” continued Stull, “speaks all kinds of languages. He is to have two friends with him, a fellow named Kestner and one called Weishelm. They trim the foreigners, they do; and––”

“Well, I don’t see nothing new about this––” began Curfoot; but Stull interrupted: 271

“Wait, can’t you! This ain’t the usual. We run a place for Quint. The place is like Quint’s. We trim guys same as he does—or did. But there’s more to it.”

He let his eyes rest on Neeland, obliquely, for a full minute. The others watched him, too. Presently the young man cut another page of his book with his pen-knife and turned it with eager impatience, as though the story absorbed him.

“Don’t worry about Frenchy,” murmured Brandes with a shrug. “Go ahead, Ben.”

Stull laid one hand on Curfoot’s shoulder, drawing that gentleman a trifle nearer and sinking his voice:

“Here’s the new stuff, Doc,” he said. “And it’s brand new to us, too. There’s big money into it. Quint swore we’d get ours. And as we was on our uppers we went in. It’s like this: We lay for Americans from the Embassy or from any of the Consulates. They are our special game. It ain’t so much that we trim them; we also get next to them; we make ’em talk right out in church. Any political dope they have we try to get. We get it any way we can. If they’ll accelerate we accelerate ’em; if not, we dope ’em and take their papers. The main idee is to get a holt on ’em!

“That’s what Quint wants; that’s what he’s payin’ for and gettin’ paid for—inside information from the Embassy and Consulates––”

“What does Quint want of that?” demanded Curfoot, astonished.

“How do I know? Blackmail? Graft? I can’t call the dope. But listen here! Don’t forget that it ain’t Quint who wants it. It’s the big feller behind him who’s backin’ him. It’s some swell guy higher up who’s payin’ Quint. And Quint, he pays us. So where’s the squeal coming?” 272

“Yes, but––”

“Where’s the holler?” insisted Stull.

“I ain’t hollerin’, am I? Only this here is new stuff to me––”

“Listen, Doc. I don’t know what it is, but all these here European kings is settin’ watchin’ one another like toms in a back alley. I think that some foreign political high-upper wants dope on what our people are finding out over here. Like this, he says to himself: ‘I hear this Kink is building ten sooper ferry boats. If that’s right, I oughta know. And I hear that the Queen of Marmora has ordered a million new nifty fifty-shot bean-shooters for the boy scouts! That is indeed serious news!’ So he goes to his broker, who goes to a big feller, who goes to Quint, who goes to us. Flag me?”

“Sure.”

“That’s all. There’s nothing to it, Doc. Says Quint to us: ‘Trim a few guys for me and get their letters,’ says Quint; ‘and there’s somethin’ in it for me and you!’ And that’s the new stuff, Doc.”

“You mean we’re spies?”

“Spies? I don’t know. We’re on a salary. We get a big bonus for every letter we find on the carpet––” He winked at Curfoot and relighted his cigar.

“Say,” said the latter, “it’s like a creeping joint. It’s a panel game, Ben––”

“It’s politics like they play ’em in Albany, only it’s ambassadors and kinks we trim, not corporations.”

“We can’t do it! What the hell do we know about kinks and attachés?”

“No; Weishelm, Breslau and Kestner do that. We lay for the attachés or spin or deal or act handy at the bar and buffet with homesick Americans. No; the fine 273 work—the high-up stuff, is done by Breslau and Weishelm. And I guess there’s some fancy skirts somewhere in the game. But they’re silent partners; and anyway Weishelm manages that part.”

Curfoot, one lank knee over the other, swung his foot thoughtfully to and fro, his ratty eyes lost in dreamy revery. Brandes tossed his half-consumed cigar out of the open window and set fire to another. Stull waited for Curfoot to make up his mind. After several minutes the latter looked up from his cunning abstraction:

“Well, Ben, put it any way you like, but we’re just plain political spies. And what the hell do they hand us over here if we’re pinched?”

“I don’t know. What of it?”

“Nothing. If there’s good money in it, I’ll take a chance.”

“There is. Quint backs us. When we get ’em coming––”

“Ah,” said Doc with a wry face, “that’s all right for the cards or the wheel. But this pocket picking––”

“Say; that ain’t what I mean. It’s like this: Young Fitznoodle of the Embassy staff gets soused and starts out lookin’ for a quiet game. We furnish the game. We don’t go through his pockets; we just pick up whatever falls out and take shorthand copies. Then back go the letters into Fitznoodle’s pocket––”

“Yes. Who reads ’em first?”

“Breslau. Or some skirt, maybe.”

“What’s Breslau?”

“Search me. He’s a Dutchman or a Rooshian or some sort of Dodo. What do you care?”

“I don’t. All right, Ben. You’ve got to show me; that’s all.” 274

“Show you what?”

“Spot cash!”

“You’re in when you handle it?”

“If you show me real money—yes.”

“You’re on. I’ll cash a cheque of Quint’s for you at Monroe’s soon as we hit the asphalt! And when you finish counting out your gold nickels put ’em in your pants and play the game! Is that right?”

“Yes.”

They exchanged a wary handshake; then, one after another, they leaned back in their seats with the air of honest men who had done their day’s work.

Curfoot blinked at Brandes, at his excessively groomed person, at his rings.

“You look prosperous, Eddie.”

“It’s his business to,” remarked Stull.

Brandes yawned:

“It would be a raw deal if there’s a war over here,” he said listlessly.

“Ah,” said Curfoot, “there won’t be none.”

“Why?”

“The Jews and bankers won’t let these kinks mix it.”

“That’s right, too,” nodded Brandes.

But Stull said nothing and his sour, pasty visage turned sourer. It was the one possibility that disturbed him—the only fly in the amber—the only mote that troubled his clairvoyance. Also, he was the only man among the three who didn’t think a thing was certain to happen merely because he wanted it to happen.

There was another matter, too, which troubled him. Brandes was unreliable. And who but little Stull should know how unreliable?

For Brandes had always been that. And now Stull 275 knew him to be more than that—knew him to be treacherous.

Whatever in Brandes had been decent, or had, blindly perhaps, aspired toward decency, was now in abeyance. Something within him had gone to smash since Minna Minti had struck him that night in the frightened presence of Rue Carew.

And from that night, when he had lost the only woman who had ever stirred in him the faintest aspiration to better things, the man had gradually changed. Whatever in his nature had been unreliable became treacherous; his stolidity became sullenness. A slow ferocity burned within him; embers of a rage which no brooding ever quenched slumbered red in his brain until his endless meditation became a monomania. And his monomania was the ruin of this woman who had taken from him in the very moment of consummation all that he had ever really loved in the world—a thin, awkward, freckled, red-haired country girl, in whom, for the first and only time in all his life, he saw the vague and phantom promise of that trinity which he had never known—a wife, a child, and a home.

He sat there by the car window glaring out of his dull green eyes at the pleasant countryside, his thin lips tightening and relaxing on his cigar.

Curfoot, still pondering over the “new stuff” offered him, brooded silently in his corner, watching the others out of his tiny, bright eyes.

“Do anything in London?” inquired Stull.

“No.”

“Who was you working for?”

“A jock and a swell skirt. But Scotland Yard got next and chased the main guy over the water.”

“What was your lay?” 276

“Same thing. I dealt for the jock and the skirt trimmed the squabs.”

“Anybody holler?”

“Aw—the kind we squeezed was too high up to holler. Them young lords take their medicine like they wanted it. They ain’t like the home bunch that is named after swell hotels.”

After a silence he looked up at Brandes:

“What ever become of Minna Minti?” he asked.

Brandes’ heavy features remained stolid.

“She got her divorce, didn’t she?” insisted Curfoot.

“Yes.”

“Alimony?”

“No. She didn’t ask any.”

“How about Venem?”

Brandes remained silent, but Stull said:

“I guess she chucked him. She wouldn’t stand for that snake. I got to hand it to her; she ain’t that kind.”

“What kind is she?”

“I tell you I got to hand it to her. I can’t complain of her. She acted white all right until Venem stirred her up. Eddie’s got himself to blame; he got in wrong and Venem had him followed and showed him up to Minna.”

“You got tired of her, didn’t you?” said Curfoot to Brandes. But Stull answered for him again:

“Like any man, Eddie needed a vacation now and then. But no skirt understands.”

Brandes said slowly:

“I’ll live to fix Minna yet.”

“What fixed you,” snapped Stull, “was that there Brookhollow stuff––”

“Can it!” retorted Brandes, turning a deep red. 277

“Aw—don’t hand me the true-love stuff, Eddie! If you’d meant it with that little haymaker you’d have respected her––”

Brandes’ large face became crimson with rage:

“You say another word about her and I’ll push your block off—you little dough-faced kike!”

Stull shrugged and presently whispered to Curfoot:

“That’s the play he always makes. I’ve waited two years, but he won’t ring down on the love stuff. I guess he was hit hard that trip. It took a little red-headed, freckled country girl to stop him. But it was comin’ to Eddie Brandes, and it certainly looks like it was there to stay a while.”

“He’s still stuck on her?”

“I guess she’s still the fly paper,” nodded Stull.

Suddenly Brandes turned on Stull such a look of concentrated hatred that the little gambler’s pallid features stiffened with surprise:

“Ben,” said Brandes in a low voice, which was too indistinct for Neeland to catch, “I’ll tell you something now that you don’t know. I saw Quint alone; I talked with him. Do you know who is handling the big stuff in this deal?”

“Who?” asked Stull, amazed.

“The Turkish Embassy in Paris. And do you know who plays the fine Italian hand for that bunch of Turks?”

“No.”

“Minna!”

“You’re crazy!”

Brandes took no notice, but went on with a sort of hushed ferocity that silenced both Stull and Curfoot:

“That’s why I went in. To get Minna. And I’ll get her if it costs every cent I’ve got or ever hope to get. 278 That’s why I’m in this deal; that’s why