The Best Man (3 page)

All this came gradually to the young man as the meal with its pleasant formalities began. As yet nothing had been said about the reason for his being there.

“Did you tell me you were in a wreck?” suddenly asked the hostess sweetly, turning to him, and the table talk hushed instantly while the host asked: “A wreck! Was it serious?”

Gordon perceived his mistake at once. With instant caution, he replied smilingly, “Oh, nothing serious, a little breakdown on a freight ahead, which required time to patch up. It reminded me –” and then he launched boldly into one of the bright dinner stories for which he was noted among his companions at home. His heart was beating wildly, but he succeeded in turning the attention of the table to his joke, instead of to asking from where he had come and on what road. Questions about himself were dangerous he plainly saw, if he would get possession of the valued paper and get away without leaving a trail behind him. He succeeded in one thing more, which, though he did not know it, was the very thing his chief had hoped he would do when he chose him instead of a man who had wider experience:: he made every man at the table feel that he was delightful, a man to be thoroughly trusted and enjoyed; who would never suspect them of having any ulterior motives in anything they were doing.

The conversation for a little time rippled with bright stories and repartee, and Gordon began to feel almost as if he were merely enjoying a social dinner at home, with Julia Bentley down the table listening and haughtily smiling her approval. For the time the incidents of the dog and the newsboy were forgotten, and the young man felt his self-respect rising. His heart was beginning to get into normal action again and he could control his thoughts. Then suddenly, the crisis arrived.

The soup and fish courses had been disposed of, and the table was being prepared for the entrée. The host leaned back genially in his chair and said, “By the way, Mr. Burnham, did you know I had an axe to grind in asking you here this evening? That sounds inhospitable, doesn’t it? But I’m sure we’re all grateful to the axe that has given us the opportunity of meeting you. We are delighted at having discovered you.”

Gordon bowed, smiling at the compliment, and the murmurs of hearty assent around the table showed him that he had begun well. If only he could keep it up! But how, how, was he to get possession of that magic bit of paper and take it away with him?

“Mr. Burnham, I was delighted to learn through a friend that you are an expert in code-reading. I wonder, did the message that my friend, Mr. Burns sent you this morning give you any information that I wanted you to do me a favor?”

Gordon bowed again. “Yes: it was intimated to me that you had some message you would like deciphered, and I have also sent a letter of introduction from Mr. Burns.”

Here Gordon took the letter of introduction from his pocket and handed it across the table to his host, who opened it genially, as if it were hardly necessary to read what was written since they already knew so delightfully the man whom it introduced. The duplicate cipher writing in Gordon’s pocket crackled knowingly when he settled his coat about him again, as if it would say, “My time is coming! It is almost here now.”

The young man wondered how he was to get it out without being seen, in case he should want to use it, but he smiled pleasantly at his host with no sign of the perturbation he was feeling.

“You see,” went on Mr. Holman, “we have an important message which we cannot read, and our expert who understands all these matters is out of town and cannot return for some time. It is necessary that we know as soon as possible the import of this writing.”

While he was speaking Mr. Holman drew from his pocket a long, soft leather wallet and took therefrom a folded paper which Gordon at once recognized as the duplicate of the one he carried in his pocket. His head seemed to reel, and all the lights go dark before him as he reached a cold hand out for the paper. He saw in it his own advancement coming to his eager grasp, yet when he got it would he be able to hold it? Something of the coolness of a man facing a terrible danger came to him now. By sheer force of will he held his trembling fingers steady as he took the bit of paper and opened it carelessly, as if he had never heard of it before, saying as he did so:

“I will do my best.”

There was a sudden silence as every eyes was fixed upon him while he unfolded the paper. He gave one swift glance about the table before he dropped his eyes to the task. Every face held the intensity of almost terrible eagerness, and on every one but that of the gentle hostess sat cunning – craft that would stop at nothing to serve its own ends. It was a moment of almost awful import.

The next instant Gordon’s glance went down to the paper in his hand, and his brain and heart were seized in the grip of fright. There was no other word to describe his feeling. The message before him was clearly written in the code of the home office, and the words stared at him plainly without the necessity to study. The import of them was the revelation of one of the most momentous questions that had to do with the Secret Service work, a question the answer to which had puzzled the entire department for weeks. That answer he now held in his hand, and he knew that if it should come to the knowledge of those outside before it had done its work through the department it would result in dire calamity to the cause of righteousness in the country, and incidentally crush the inefficient messenger who allowed it to become known. For the instant Gordon felt unequal to the task before him. How could he keep these bloodhounds at bay – for such they were, he perceived from the import of the message, bloodhounds who were getting ill-gotten gains from innocent and unsuspecting victims – some of them little children.

But the old chief had picked his man well. Only for an instant the glittering lights darkened before his eyes and the cold perspiration started. Then he rallied his forces and looked up. The welfare of a nation’s honor was in his hands, and he would be true. It was a matter of life and death, and he would save it or lose his own life if need be.

He summoned his ready smile.

“I shall be glad to serve you if I can,” he said. “Of course I’d like to look this over a few minutes before attempting to read it. Codes are different, you know, from one another, but there is a key to them all if one can just find it out. This looks as if it might be very simple.”

The spell of breathlessness was broken. The guests relaxed and went on with their dinner.

Gordon, meanwhile, tried coolly to keep up a pretense of eating, the paper held in one hand while he seemed to be studying it. Once he turned it over and looked on the back. There was a large crossmark in red ink at the upper end. He looked at it curiously and then instinctively at his host.

“That is my own mark,” said Mr. Holman. “I put it there to distinguish it from other papers.” He was smiling politely, but he might as well have said, “I put it there to identify it in case of theft;” for every one at the table, unless it might be his wife, understood that that was what he meant. Gordon felt it and was conscious of the other paper in his vest-pocket. The way was going to be difficult.

Among the articles in the envelope which the chief had given him before his departures from Washington were a pair of shell-rimmed eye-glasses, a false mustache, a goatee, and a pair of eyebrows. He had laughed at the suggestion of high-tragedy contained in the disguise, but had brought them with him for a possible emergency. The eye-glasses were tucked into the vest-pocket beside the duplicate paper. He bethought himself of them now. Could he, under cover of taking them out, manage to exchange the papers? And if he should, how about that red-ink mark across the back? Would anyone notice its absence? It was well to exchange the papers as soon as possible before the writing had been studied by those at the table, for he knew that the other message, though resembling this one in general words, differed enough to attract the attention of a close observer. Dared he risk their noticing the absence of the red cross on the back?

Slowly, cautiously, under cover of the conversation, he managed to get that duplicate paper out of his pocket and under the napkin in his lap. This he did with one hand, all the time ostentatiously holding the code message in the other hand, with its back to the people at the table. This hand meanwhile also held his coast lapel out that he might the more easily search his vest-pockets for the glasses. It all looked natural. The hostess was engaged in a whispered conversation with the maid at the moment. The host and other guests were finishing the exceedingly delicious patties on their plates, and the precious code message was safely in evidence, red cross and all. They saw no reason to be suspicious about the stranger’s hunt for his glasses.

“Oh, here they are!” he said, quite unconcernedly, and put on the glasses to look more closely at the paper, spreading it smoothly on the table cloth before him, and wondering how he should get it into his lap in place of the one that now lay quietly under his napkin.

The host and the guests politely refrained from talking to Gordon and told each other incidents of the day in low tones that indicated the non-importance of what they were saying; while they waited for the real business of the hour.

Then the butler removed the plates, pausing beside Gordon waiting punctiliously with silver tray to brush away the crumbs.

This was just what Gordon waited for. It had come to him as the only way. Courteously he drew aside, lifting the paper from the table and putting it in his lap, for just the instant while the butler did his work; but in that instant the paper with the red cross was slipped under the napkin, and the other paper took its place upon the table, back down so that its lack of a red cross could not be noted.

So far, so good, but how long could this be kept up? And the paper under the napkin – how was it to be got into his pocket? His hands were like ice now, and his brain seemed to be at boiling heat as he sat back and realized that the deed was done, and could not be undone. If any one should pick up that paper from the table and discover the lack of the six men upon him. They had nothing better to do now than to look at him until the next mercy upon him if they knew what he had done, not one unless it might be the tired, old-looking one, and he would not dare interfere.

Still Gordon was enabled to smile, and to say some pleasant nothings to his hostess when she passed him the salted almonds. His hand lay carelessly guarding the secret of the paper on the table, innocently, as though it just happened that he laid it on the paper.

Sitting thus with the real paper in his lap under his large damask napkin, the false paper under his hand on the table where he from time to time to perused it, and his eye-glasses which made him look most distinguished still on his nose, he heard the distant telephone bell ring.

He remembered the words of his chief and sat rigid. From his position he could see the tall clock in the hall, and its gilded hands pointed to ten minutes before seven. It was about the time his chief said he would be called on the telephone. What should he do with the two papers?

He had but an instant to think until the well-trained butler returned and announced that some one wished to speak with Mr. Burnham on the telephone. His resolve was taken. He would have to leave the substitute paper on the table. To carry it away with him might arouse suspicion, and, moreover, he could not easily manage both without being noticed. The real paper must be put safely away at all hazards, and he must take the chance that the absence of the red mark would remain unnoticed until his return.

Deliberately he laid a heave silver spoon across one edge of the paper on the table, and an ice-cream fork across the other, as if to hold it in place until his return. Then,  rising with apologies, he gathered his napkin, paper, and all in his hand, holding it against his coat most naturally, as if he had forgotten that he had it, and made his way into the front hall, where in an alcove was an telephone. As he passed the hat-rack he swept his coat and hat off with his free hand, and bore them with him, devoutly hoping that he was not being watched from the dining room. Could he possibly get from the telephone out the front door without being seen? Hastily he hid the cipher message in an inner pocket. The napkin he dropped on the little telephone table, and taking up the receiver he spoke: “Hello! Yes! Oh, good evening! You don’t say so! How did that happen?” He made his voice purposely clear, that it might be heard in the dining-room if anyone was listening. Then glancing in that direction saw, to his horror, his host lean over and lift the cipher paper he had left on the table and hand it to the guest on his right.

The messenger at the other end had given his sentence agreed upon and he had replied according to the sentences laid down by the chief in his instructions; the other end hand said good-bye and hung up, but Gordon’s voice spoke, cool and clear in the little alcove, despite his excitement. “All right. Certainly. I can take time to write it down. Wait until I get my pencil. Now, I’m ready. Have you it there? I’ll wait a minute until you get it.” His heart beat wildly. The blood surged through his ears like rushing waters. Would they look for the little red mark? The soft clink of spoons and dishes and the murmur of conversation was still going on, but there was no doubt but it was a matter of few seconds before his theft would be discovered. He must make an instant dash for liberty while he yet could. Cautiously, stealthily, like a shadow from the alcove, one eye on the dining-room, he stole to the door and turned the knob. Yet even as he did so he saw his recent host rise excitedly from his seat and fairly snatch the paper from the man who held it. His last glimpse of the room where he had but three minutes before been enjoying the hospitality of the house was a vision of the entire company starting up and pointing to himself even as he slid from sight. There was no longer need for silence. He had been discovered and must fight for his life. He shut the door quickly, his nerves so tense that seemed as if something must break soon; opened and slammed the outer door, and was out in the great whirling city under the flare of electric lamps with only the chance of a second of time before his pursuers would be upon him.