Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Jim Regan, Michael Lockey,
and Project Gutenberg Distributed Proofreaders
1919
James Crawshay, Englishman of the type usually described intransatlantic circles as "some Britisher," lolled apparently at hisease upon the couch of the too-resplendent sitting room in the HotelMagnificent, Chicago. Hobson, his American fellow traveler, on theother hand, betrayed his anxiety by his nervous pacing up and down theapartment. Both men bore traces in their appearance of the longjourney which they had only just completed.
"I think," Crawshay decided, yawning, "that I shall have a bath. Ifeel gritty, and my collar—heavens, what a sight! Your trains,Hobson, may be magnificent, but your coal is filthy. I will have abath while your friend, the policeman, makes up his mind whether tocome and see us or not."
His companion treated the suggestion with scant courtesy.
"You will do nothing of the sort," was his almost fierce objection.
"We've got to wait right here until Chief of Police Downs comes along.
There's something crooked about this business, something I don't
understand, and the sooner we get to the bottom of it, the better."
The Englishman pacified himself with a whisky and soda which a waiterhad just brought in. He added several lumps of ice and drained thecontents of the tumbler with a little murmur of appreciation.
"It will be confoundedly annoying," he admitted quietly, "if we've hadall this journey for nothing."
Hobson moistened his dry lips with his tongue. The whisky and soda andthe great bucket of ice stood temptingly at his elbow, but he appearedto ignore their existence. He was a man of ample build, with a big,clean-shaven face, a square jaw and deep-set eyes, a man devoted toand wholly engrossed by his work.
"See here, Crawshay," he exclaimed, "if that dispatch was a fake, ifwe've been brought here on a fool's errand, they haven't done it fornothing. If they've brought it off against us, you mark my words,we're left—we're bamboozled—we're a couple of lost loons! There'snothing left for us but to sell candy to small boys or find a job ona farm."
"You're such a pessimist," the Englishman yawned.
"Pessimist!" was the angry retort. "I'll just ask you one question, myson. Where's Downs?"
"I certainly think," Crawshay admitted, "that under the circumstanceshe might have been at the station to meet us."
"He wouldn't even talk through the 'phone," Hobson pointed out. "I hadto explain who we were to one of his inspectors. No one seemed to knowa goldarned thing about us."
"They sent for him right away when you explained who you were,"
Crawshay reminded his companion.
Hobson found no comfort whatever in the reflection.
"Of course they did," he replied brusquely. "There's scarcely likelyto be a chief of police of any city in the United States who wouldn'tget a move on when he knew that Sam Hobson was waiting for a word. Ihaven't been in the Secret Service of this country for fifteen yearsfor nothing. He'll come fast enough as soon as he knows I'm waiting,but all the same, what I want to know is, if that dispatch was on thesquare, why he wasn't at the station to meet us, and if it wasn't onthe square, how the hell do we come out of this?"
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