He had the calm tone of a man who knows the surest means of attaining his desires and does not hesitate to use it.
“There’s an extra for us!” Mr. Scraggs cried enthusiastically when Mr. Winford left. “Rush to your mill, Laury, old pal, and fix us a good one! ‘Heartbroken father in
Dawn
’s office’ . . . and all that, you know!”
“You seem to be in an unusually happy humor, today,” Mr. Scraggs chuckled, watching Laury’s sparkling eyes and swift fingers dancing on the typewriter keys. “So am I, boy, so am I!”
When Laury went home, late that evening, there was under every streetlamp an enthusiastic newsboy yelling himself hoarse with:
“Extree-e! Big ree-word for missin’ goil! Here’s yer cha-ance!”
And the headlines announced:
DESPERATE FATHER OFFERS $5,000 REWARD
That, in Mr. Scraggs’ eyes, had been the most sensational sum he could name. . . .
Laury’s heart missed a few beats when he walked up the steps to his apartment and turned the key in the door lock. Was everything all right?
As he entered, Jinx dashed gaily to meet him. He gasped. She was wearing his best violet silk pajamas! They were too big for her and she draped them gracefully in soft, clinging folds around her little body.
“Hello, darling!” she greeted him. “Why so late? I’ve missed you terribly!”
“Why . . . why did you put these on?”
“These? Pretty, aren’t they? Well, you didn’t leave me anything to change and I was tired of wearing the same dress for two days!”
She led the way into the living room, and he stopped short with another gasp. The living room had been thoroughly cleaned, and not a single object stood in its former place. The whole room had been rearranged to look like a very impressionistic stage setting. The window curtains were hanging over the davenport, forming a cozy, inviting tent. The sofa cushions were capriciously thrown all over the floor. Jinx’s colored silk scarf hung on the wall over his desk, like an artistic banner. The fishbowl stood at the foot of the davenport, and some incense that she had unearthed in one of his desk drawers was burning in it, a long, thin column of blue smoke swaying gracefully like a light, misty scarf.
“What did you do that for?” he muttered, amazed.
“Don’t you like it?” She smiled triumphantly. “Your room looked as though it needed a woman’s influence badly. I thought that you ought to have a little beauty in your hard life, to relax after a day of danger and gun-shooting!”
Laury laughed. She looked at him calmly, with a sweet look that seemed too innocent to be trusted.
“By the way,” she said casually, “you better disconnect that phone. You left it here and I might have called up the police, you know!”
Laury’s face went crimson, then white; with one jump, he snatched the phone and tore the wires furiously out of the wall. Then he turned to her, puzzled.
“Well, why didn’t you?” he asked.
She smiled, a smile that seemed at once indulgent, cunning, and perfectly naive.
“I wanted to,” she answered innocently, “but I had no time, I was too busy.” And she added imperatively: “Take off your coat. Dinner is ready.”
“What?”
“Dinner! And hurry up, ’cause it’s late and I’m darn hungry!”
“But . . . but . . .”
“Come on, now, help me pull that table out!”
In a few seconds he was seated at a neatly arranged table covered with one of his pillowcases, there being no tablecloth in the house. And Jinx was serving a delicious dinner, hot, steaming dishes whose tempting odor made him realize how very tired and hungry he really was after this exciting day.
“Now, don’t look so dumbfounded!” she said, settling down to her plate. “I’m a good cook, I am. I got the first prize in high school. I don’t care much about cooking, but I like first prizes, no matter what for!”
“I must thank you,” Laury muttered, eating hungrily, “although I didn’t expect you to . . .”
“I bet you haven’t had a homemade dinner in ages,” she remarked sympathetically. “I bet you’re used to eating in dingy pool parlors and saloons, where you meet to divide the loot with your gangsters. See, I know all about it. They must have pretty tough food, though, don’t they?”
“Why . . . y-yes . . . yes, they do,” Laury agreed helplessly.
After dinner, she asked for a cigarette, crossed her legs in the violet silk trousers, like a little Oriental princess, and leaned comfortably back in her chair, sending slowly graceful snakes of smoke to float into space.
“Get me a drink!” she ordered.
“Oh, sure!” He jumped up, eager to serve her in turn. “What do you wish? Tea, coffee?”
She smiled and winked at him significantly.
“Well, what do you wish?” he repeated.
“Well, now, as though you didn’t understand!” She frowned impatiently.
“No, I don’t understand. Surely, you don’t mean to say that . . . that you want . . . liquor?”
“Oh, any kind of booze you’ve got will do!”
Laury stared at her with open mouth.
“Well, what’s the matter?” she asked.
“I never thought that you would . . . that you might . . . that you . . .”
“You don’t mean to say that you haven’t got any?”
“No, I haven’t!”
“Well, I’ll be hanged! A crook, a real crook, with nothing to drink in his house! What kind of a gangster are you, anyway?”
“But, Miss Winford, I never thought that you . . .”
“You’ve got a lot to learn, my child, you’ve got a lot to learn!”
Laury blushed; then remembered that he was the kidnapper and had to show some authority.
“Now, don’t disturb me,” he ordered, sitting down at his desk before the typewriter. “I’ve got something very important to write. . . . Here,” he added, “you might be interested in this!” And he threw to her the day’s newspapers.
“O-oh! Sure!” she cried. “The papers!”
She jumped on the sofa, the cushions bouncing under her, folded her legs criss-cross, and bent eagerly over the papers, her tousled hair hanging down over her face, almost touching the wide sheets.
He attacked the typewriter furiously, pounding the keys energetically in an attempt to write the important message he had in mind. But it was not so easy. The words did not seem to him impressive enough. He started one sheet after another, and tore them to pieces, and flung them into the wastebasket.
Jinx interrupted him every few seconds with a gasp of sincere delight: “Oh, look,
my
picture! . . . Oh, what a fuss for the old town! . . . Aren’t they dumbfounded! . . . Don’t worry, they’ll never find you out, not that bunch of saps! . . . Lizzie Chatterton’s going to chew her nails to the bone from envy—she’s never been kidnapped! . . . Say, what’s this about my car? Who wrecked it and why?”
“Some reporter must have done it,” Laury answered disdainfully. “It makes better copy.”
“Oh, listen to this!” she laughed happily. “ ‘Every heart in our town is convulsed with anxiety at the thought of this helpless young beauty in the cruel claws of some pitiless beast. . . .’ Oh boy! Who wrote that? Gee, what a sap that McGee fellow must be!”
Laury was working hard, very hard—writing the ransom letter. It was not easy, since it had to be good front-page stuff. And a blissful smile of satisfaction spread on his face when he finished it at last and turned to Jinx.
“Here,” he said. “Listen—it concerns you.”
And he read:
Dear Sir,
This is not an offer or a request, this is a command and you will do well to obey it at once or hell itself will seem a sweet baby’s dream compared to the fate I have in store for you. At an hour and place that I will communicate to you later, you will deliver into my hands ten thousand dollars cash, as the price of your daughter’s freedom. Be careful not to oppose me, for you are dealing with the most dangerous enemy that any mortal has ever encountered. You are warned.
Damned Dan
Jinx sprang to her feet, her eyes blazing, her body shaking with indignation.
“How dare you?” she cried. “You cheap scoundrel! How dare you ask my father for
ten
thousand dollars?”
She snatched the letter from him and tore it to pieces furiously.
“Now sit down!” she commanded, pointing proudly at the typewriter. “Sit down and write another one—and ask for
one hundred thousand dollars!
”
And as Laury did not move, she added:
“Ten thousand dollars! It’s an insult to be sold for ten thousand! I won’t stand for my price being that low! Why, it’s only the price of a car, and of not such a very good one, at that!”
It was a long time before Laury had recovered enough to sit at the typewriter and obey her order. . . .
“But that is not all, Miss Winford,” he said severely, when he had finished the new ransom message. “You, too, are going to write a letter to your father.”
“Oh, with pleasure!” she answered willingly.
He gave her a pen and a sheet of paper. She wrote quickly: “Dear Pop.”
“What do you mean?” he shouted. “Dear Pop! Do you realize that your letter will be published in all the papers? You write what I dictate!”
“All right,” she agreed sweetly and took another sheet.
“Dear Father,” he dictated solemnly. “If there is in your heart a single drop of pity for your unfortunate daughter, you will . . .”
“I never write like that,” she observed.
“Never mind, write now! ‘. . . you will come to my rescue at once.’ Exclamation point! ‘I can’t tell you all the suffering I am going through.’ Have you got that? ‘Please, oh! please save me.’ Exclamation point! ‘If you could only see what your poor daughter is doing now . . .’ ”
“Say, don’t you think that if he could see that, he’d be rather surprised, and not in the way you want?”
“Go on, write what I say! ‘. . . is doing now, your heart would break!’ ”
“Most probably!”
“Go on! ‘I can’t write very well, because my eyes are dimmed with tears . . .’ ”
“Aren’t you laying it on too thick?”
“ ‘. . . with tears! I implore you to spare no effort to save me!’ Now sign it! ‘Your desperate daughter . . .’ No! Gosh! Not Jinx! ‘Juliana Xenia Winford.’ ”
“Here you are,” she said, handing him the letter.
He read it and frowned slightly.
“Let’s make it a little stronger,” he said. “Write a postscript to it: ‘P.S. I’m miserable, miserable.’ Exclamation point—two of them! Have you finished? Here, fold it and put it into this envelope. Fine! Thank you, Miss Winford!”
He put the envelope with the two letters into his pocket. He smiled triumphantly. It had turned out better than he had expected. Of course, he did not intend to take any ransom money from Mr. Winford; he did not even intend to fix an hour and place for it; and he was certain that, anyway, Mr. Winford would never agree to pay ten thousand dollars, much less a hundred thousand.
He stretched himself with a sigh of relaxation.
“Well, I’m going to bed. I’ve got to get up early tomorrow.”
“Are you going out tomorrow?” Jinx asked.
“Yes. Why?”
“I’ve got a little errand for you. There are a few things that you’ll have to buy for me tomorrow.”
“A few things? What things?”
“Why, if you intend to keep me here for quite a while, you can’t expect me to wear the same clothes all the time, can you? A woman needs a few little things, you know. Here’s the list I’ve written for you.”
He took the list. It occupied four pages. It included everything from dresses and slippers to underwear and nightgowns to nail polish and French perfume at forty dollars an ounce.
He blushed. He thought with a shudder of what would be left of his bank account, if anything. But he was too much of a gentleman to refuse.
“All right,” he said humbly. “You’ll get it tomorrow.”
“Now, don’t forget, I want the chiffon dress flame-red and the silk one electric-blue. And I want the panties real short, see, like the ones I have.”
And she held out the dainty little cloud of lace that she had thrown into one of his desk drawers. She didn’t blush; but he did.
“All right,” he said, “I’ll remember. . . . Goodnight, Miss Winford.”
“Goodnight—Mr. Damned Dan!”
——IV——
“I can’t figure it out!” Vic Perkins was saying acidly, on the next morning. “Spray me with insect powder if I can figure it out! For one thing, I don’t see anything so brilliant in these stories of his. And for two things, all this news he’s getting first, well, it’s just a fool’s luck. And why all this fuss the Editor’s raising over that McGee bum what never got two words in print before is more than my intellect can digest!”
Vic Perkins was not quite satisfied with the turn of events. The
Dawn
’s morning number had come out with blazing stories, each bearing a line in big black print: “by Laurence H. McGee.” Practically the whole front page was by Laurence H. McGee. There was even a picture of him. And Victor Z. Perkins, the
Dawn
’s star, had to be satisfied with two measly columns on the third page, where he expressed his opinions on the great crime, and they sounded like a mouse’s squeal, compared to the roar of Laury’s flaming stories.
It had been reported, to City Editor Jonathan Scraggs’ extreme satisfaction, that the
Dicksville Globe
was seriously perturbed by his brilliant new reporter’s activity. There could be no one to compete with Laurence H. McGee. He was getting all the news hours ahead of everybody else. He seemed to know just where to go to get it. He interviewed Miss Winford’s parents, her servants, her friends. He wrote heartbreaking stories on the vanished girl. He wrote terrifying warnings to parents to watch their children. He seemed to burst with inspiration, and Dicksville’s citizens were beginning to gulp eagerly every issue of the
Dawn
for its gripping, thrilling articles.