Gibbs George
The Maker of Opportunities

“You’ve bought experience.”

“Cheap at any cost. You can’t buy fear. Love comes in varieties at the market values. Hate can be bought for a song; but fear, genuine and amazing, is priceless – a gem which only opportunity can provide; and how seldom opportunity knocks at any man’s door!”

“Crabb the original – the esoteric!”

“Yes. The same. The very same. And you, how different! How sober and rounded!”

There was a silence, contemplative, retrospective on both their parts. Crabb broke it.

“Tell me, old man,” he said, “about your position. Isn’t there any chance?”

Burnett smiled a little bitterly.

“I’m a consular clerk at twelve hundred a year during good behavior. When I’ve said that, I’ve said it all.”

“But your future?”

“I’m not in line of promotion.”

“Impossible! Politics?”

“Exactly. I’ve no pull to speak of.”

“But your service?”

“I’ve been paid for that.”

“Isn’t there any other way?”

“Oh, yes,” Burnett laughed, “that treaty. I happened to know something about it when I was out there. It has to do with neutrality, trade ports and coaling stations; but just what, the devil only knows, and his deputy, Baron Arnim, won’t tell. Arnim is now in Washington, ostensibly sight-seeing, but really to confer with Von Schlichter, the ambassador there, about it. You see, we’ve got rather more closely into the Eastern question than we really like, and a knowledge of Germany’s attitude is immensely important to us.”

“Pray go on,” drawled Crabb.

“That’s all there is. The rest was a joke. Crowthers wants me to get the text of that treaty from Baron Arnim’s dispatch-box.”

“Entertaining!” said Crabb, with clouding brow. And then, after a pause, with all the seriousness in the world: “And aren’t you going to?”

Burnett turned to look at him in surprise.

“What?”

“Get it. The treaty.”

“The treaty! From Baron Arnim! You don’t know much of diplomacy, Crabb.”

“You misunderstood me,” he said, coolly; and then, with lowered voice:

“Not from Baron Arnim – from Baron Arnim’s dispatch-box.”

Burnett looked at his acquaintance in a maze. Crabb had been thought a mystery in the old days. He was an enigma now.

“Surely you’re jesting.”

“Why? It oughtn’t to be difficult.”

Burnett looked fearfully around the room at their distant neighbors. “But it’s burglary. Worse than that. If I, in my connection with the State Department, were discovered tampering with the papers of a foreign government, it would lead to endless complications and, perhaps, the disruption of diplomatic relations. Such a thing is impossible. Its very impossibility was the one thing which prompted Crowthers’ suggestion. Can’t you understand that?”

Crabb was stroking his chin and contemplating his well-shaped boot.

“Admit that it’s impossible,” he said calmly. “Do you think, if by some chance you were enabled to give the Secretary of State this information, you’d better your condition?”

“What is the use, Crabb?” began Burnett.

“It can’t do any harm to answer me.”

“Well – yes, I suppose so. If we weren’t plunged immediately into war with Emperor William.”

“Oh!” Crabb was deep in thought. It was several moments before he went on, and then, as though dismissing the subject.

“What are your plans, Ross? Have you a week to spare? How about a cruise on the Blue Wing? There’s a lot I know that you don’t, and a lot you know that I’d like to. I’ll take you up to Washington whenever you’re bored. What do you say?”

Ross Burnett accepted with alacrity. He remembered the Blue Wing, Jepson and Valentin’s dinners. He had longed for them many times when he was eating spaghetti at Gabri’s little restaurant in Genoa.

When they parted it was with a consciousness on the part of Burnett that the affair of Baron Arnim had not been dismissed. The very thought had been madness. Was it only a little pleasantry of Crabb’s? If not, what wild plan had entered his head? It was unlike the Mortimer Crabb he remembered.

And yet there had been a deeper current flowing below his placid surface that gave a suggestion of desperate intent which nothing could explain away. And how illimitable were the possibilities if some plan could be devised by which the information could be obtained without resort to violent measures! It meant for him at least a post at the helm somewhere, or, perhaps, a secretaryship on one of the big commissions.

The idea of burglary, flagrant and nefarious, he dismissed at a thought. Would there not be some way – an unguarded moment – a faithless servant – to give the thing the aspect of possible achievement? As he dressed he found himself thinking of the matter with more seriousness than it deserved.

CHAPTER IV

A week had passed since the two friends had met, and the Blue Wing now lay in the Potomac near the Seventh Street wharf. It was night and the men had dined.

Valentin’s dinners were a distinct achievement. They were of the kind which made conclusive the assumption of an especial heaven for cooks. After coffee and over a cigar, which made all things complete, Mortimer Crabb chose his psychological moment.

“Burnett,” he said, “you must see that treaty and copy it.”

Burnett looked at him squarely. Crabb’s glance never wavered.

“So you did mean it?” said Burnett.

“Every word. You must have it. I’m going to help.”

“It’s hopeless.”

“Perhaps. But the game is worth the candle.”

“A bribe to a servant?”

“Leave that to me. Come, come, Ross, it’s the chance of your life. Arnim, Von Schlichter and all the rest of them dine at the British embassy to-night. There’s to be a ball afterward. They won’t be back until late. We must get into Arnim’s rooms at the German embassy. Those rooms are in the rear of the house. There’s a rain spout and a back building. You can climb?”

“To-night?” Burnett gasped. “You found out these things to-day?”

“Since I left you. I saw Denton Thorpe at the British embassy.”

“And you were so sure I’d agree! Don’t you think, old man – ”

“Hang it all, Burnett! I’m not easily deceived. You’re down on your luck; that’s plain. But you’re not beaten. Any man who can buck the market down to his last thousand the way you did doesn’t lack sand. The end isn’t an ignoble one. You’ll be doing the Administration a service – and yourself. Why, how can you pause?”

Burnett looked around at the familiar fittings of the saloon, at the Braun prints let into the woodwork, at the flying teal set in the azure above the wainscoting, at his immaculate host and at his own conventional black. Was this to be indeed a setting for Machiavellian conspiracy?

Crabb got up from the table and opened the doors of a large locker under the companion. Burnett watched him curiously.

Garment after garment he pulled out upon the deck under the glare of the cabin lamp; shoes, hats and caps, overcoats and clothing of all sizes and shapes from the braided gray of the coster to the velvet and sash of the Niçois.

He selected a soft hat and a cap and two long, tattered coats of ancient cut and style and threw them over the back of a chair. Then he went to his stateroom and brought out a large square box of tin and placed it on the table.

He first wrapped a handkerchief around his neck, then seated himself deliberately before the box, opened the lid and took out a tray filled with make-up sticks. These he put aside while he drew forth from the deeper recesses mustachios, whiskers and beards of all shapes and complexions. He worked rapidly and silently, watching his changing image in the little mirror set in the box lid.

Burnett, fascinated, followed his skillful fingers as they moved back and forth, lining here, shading there, not as the actor does for an effect by the calcium, but carefully, delicately, with the skill of the art anatomist who knows the bone structure of the face and the pull of the aging muscles.

In twenty minutes Mortimer Crabb had aged as many years, and now bore the phiz of a shaggy rum-sot. The long coat, soft hat and rough bandanna completed the character. The fever of the adventure had mounted in Burnett’s veins. He sprang to his feet with a reckless gesture of final resolution.

“Give me my part!” he exclaimed. “I’ll play it!”

The aged intemperate smiled approval. “Good lad!” he said. “I thought you’d be game. If you hadn’t been I was going alone. It’s lucky you’re clean shaved. Come and be transfigured.”

And as he rapidly worked on Burnett’s face he completed the details of his plan. Like a good general, Crabb disposed his plans for failure as well as for success.

They would wear their disguises over their evening clothes. Then, if the worst came, vaseline and a wipe of the bandannas would quickly remove all guilty signs from their faces, they could discard their tatters, and resume the garb of convention.

Ross Burnett at last rose swarthy and darkly mustached, lacking only the rings in his ears to be old Gabri himself. He was fully awakened to the possibilities of the adventure. Whatever misgivings he had had were speedily dissipated by the blithe optimism of his companion.

Crabb reached over for the brandy decanter.

“One drink,” he said, “and we must be off.”

The night was thick. A mist which had been gathering since sunset now turned to a soft drizzle of rain. Crabb, hands in pockets and shoulders bent, walked with a rapid and shambling gait up the street.

“We can’t risk the cars or a cab in this,” muttered Crabb. “We might do it, but it’s not worth the risk. Can you walk? It’s not over three miles.”

It was after one o’clock before they reached Highland Terrace. Without stopping they examined the German embassy at long range from the distant side of Massachusetts Avenue. A gas lamp sputtered dimly under the porte-cochère. Another light gleamed far up in the slanting roof. Crabb led the way around and into the alley in the rear. It was long, badly lighted and ran the entire length of the block.

“I got the details in the city plot-book from a real-estate man this afternoon. He thinks I’m going to buy next door. I wanted to be particular about the alleys and back entrances.” Crabb chuckled.

Burnett looked along the backs of the row of N Street houses. They were all as stolid as sphinxes. Several lights at wide intervals burned dimly. The night was chill for the season, and all the windows were down. The occasion was propitious. The rear of the embassy was dark, except for a dim glow in a window on the second floor.

“That should be Arnim’s room,” said Crabb.

He tried the back gate. It was unlocked. Noiselessly they entered, closing it after them. There was a rain spout, which Crabb eyed hopefully; but they found better luck in the shape of a thirty-foot ladder along the fence.

“A positive invitation,” whispered Crabb, joyfully. “Here, Ross; in the shadow. Once on the back building the deed is done. Quiet, now. You hold it and I’ll go up.”

Burnett did not falter. But his hands were cold, and he was trembling from top to toe with excitement. He could not but admire Crabb’s composure as he went firmly up the rungs.

He saw him reach the roof and draw himself over the coping, and in a moment Burnett, less noiselessly but safely, had joined his fellow criminal by the window. There they waited a moment, listening. A cab clattered down Fifteenth Street, and the gongs on the car line clanged in reply, but that was all.

Crabb stealthily arose and peered into the lighted window. It was a study. The light came from a lamp with a green shade. Under its glow upon the desk were maps and documents in profusion. And in the corner he could make out the lines of an iron-bound chest or box. They had made no mistake. Unless in the possession of Von Schlichter it was here that the Chinese treaty would be found.

“All right,” whispered Crabb. “An old-fashioned padlock, too.”

Crabb tried the window. It was locked. He took something from one of the pockets of his coat and reached up to the middle of the sash. There was a sound like the quick shearing of linen which sent the blood back to Burnett’s heart. In the still night it seemed to come back manifold from the wings of the buildings opposite. They paused again. A slight crackling of broken glass, and Crabb’s long fingers reached through the hole and turned the catch. In a moment they were in the room.

The intangible and Quixotic had become a latter-day reality. Burnett’s spirits rose. He did not lack courage, and here was a situation which spurred him to the utmost.

Instinctively he closed the inside shutters behind him. From the alley the pair would not have presented an appearance which accorded with the quiet splendor of the room. He found himself peering around, his ears straining for the slightest sound.

A glance revealed the dispatch-box, heavy, squat and phlegmatic, like its owner. Crabb had tiptoed over to the door of the adjoining room. Burnett saw the eyes dilate and the warning finger to his lips.

From the inner apartment, slowly and regularly, came the sound of heavy breathing. There, in a broad armchair by the foot of the bed, sprawled the baron’s valet, in stertorous sleep. His mouth was wide open, his limbs relaxed. He had heard nothing.

“Quick,” whispered Crabb; “your bandanna around his legs.”

Burnett surprised himself by the rapidity and intelligence of his collaboration. A handkerchief was slipped into the man’s mouth, and before his eyes were fairly opened he was gagged and bound hand and foot by the cord from the baron’s own dressing gown.

From a pocket Crabb had produced a revolver, which he flourished significantly under the nose of the terrified man, who recoiled before the dark look which accompanied it.

Crabb seemed to have planned exactly what to do. He took a bath towel and tied it over the man’s ears and under his chin. From the bed he took the baron’s sheets and blankets, enswathing the unfortunate servant until nothing but the tip of his nose was visible. A rope of suspenders and cravats completed the job.

The Baron Arnim’s valet, to all the purposes of usefulness in life, was a bundled mummy.

“Phew!” said Crabb, when it was done. “Poor devil! But it can’t be helped. He mustn’t see or know. And now for it.”

Crabb produced a bunch of skeleton keys and an electric bull’s-eye. He tried the keys rapidly. In a moment the dispatch-box was opened and its contents exposed to view.

“Carefully now,” whispered Crabb. “What should it look like?”

“A foolscap-shaped thing in silk covers with dangling cords,” said Ross. “There, under your hand.”

In a moment they had it out and between them on the desk. There it was, in all truth, written in two columns, Chinese on the one side, French on the other.

“Are you sure?” said Crabb.

“Sure! Sure as I’m a thief in the night!”

“Then sit and write, man. Write as you never wrote before. I’ll listen and watch Rameses the Second.”

In the twenty minutes during which Burnett fearfully wrote, Crabb stood listening at the doors and windows for sounds of servants or approaching carriages. The man swaddled in the sheets made a few futile struggles and then subsided. Burnett’s eyes gleamed. Other eyes than his would gleam at what he saw and wrote. When he finished he closed the document, removed all traces of his work, replaced it in the iron box and shut the lid. He dropped the precious sheets into an inner pocket and was moving toward the window when Crabb seized him by the arm. There was a step in the hallway without, and the door opened. There, stout and grizzled, his walrus mustache bristling with surprise, in all the distinction of gold lace and orders, stood Baron Arnim.

CHAPTER V

For a moment there was no sound. The burglars looked at the Baron and the Baron looked at the burglars, mouths and eyes open alike. Then, even before Crabb could display his intimidating revolver, the German had disappeared through the door screaming at the top of his lungs.

“Quick! Out of the window!” said Crabb, helping Burnett over the sill. “Down you go – I’ll follow. Don’t fall. If you miss your footing, we’re ruined.”

Burnett scrambled out, over the coping and down the ladder, Crabb almost on his fingers. But they reached the yard in safety and were out in the alley running in the shadow of the fence before a venturesome head stuck forth from the open window and a revolver blazed into the vacant air.

“The devil!” said Crabb. “They’ll have every copper in the city on us in a minute. This way.” He turned into a narrow alley at right angles to the other. “Off with the coat as you go – now, the mustache and grease paint. Take your time. Into this sewer with the coats. So!”

Two gentlemen in light topcoats, one in a cap, the other in a hat, walked up N street arm in arm, thickly singing. Their shirt fronts and hair were rumpled, their legs were not too steady, and they clung affectionately to each other for support and sang thickly.

A window flew up and a tousled head appeared.

“Hey!” yelled a voice. “Burglars in the alley!”

“Burglars!” said one of the singers; and then: “Go to bed. You’re drunk.”

More sounds of windows, the blowing of night whistles and hurrying feet.

Still the revelers sang on.

A stout policeman, clamorous and bellicose, broke in.

“Did you see ’em? Did you see ’em?” he cried, glaring into their faces. Bleary eyes returned his look.

“W-who?” said the voices in unison.

“Burglars,” roared the copper. “If I wasn’t busy I’d run ye in.” And he was off at full speed on his vagrant mission.

“Lucky you’re busy, old chap,” muttered Crabb to the departing figure. “Do sober up a little, Ross, or we’ll never get away. And don’t jostle me so, for I clank like a bellwether.”

Slowly the pair made their way to Thomas Circle and Vermont Avenue, where the sounds of commotion were lost in the noises of the night.

At L Street Burnett straightened up. “Lord!” he gasped. “But that was close.”

“Not as close as it looked,” said Crabb, coolly. “A white shirt-front does wonders with a copper. It was better than a knock on the head and a run for it. In the meanwhile, Ross, for the love of Heaven, help me with some of the bric-à-brac.” And with that he handed Burnett a gold pin tray, a silver box and a watch fob.

Burnett soberly examined the spoils. “I only wish we could have done without that.”

“And had Arnim know what we were driving for? Never, Ross. I’ll pawn them in New York for as little as I can and send von Schlichter the tickets. Won’t that do?”

“I suppose it must,” said Burnett, dubiously.

By three o’clock they were on the Blue Wing again, Burnett with mingled feelings of doubt and satisfaction, Crabb afire with the achievement.

“Rasselas was a fool, Ross, a malcontent – a fainéant. Life is amazing, bewitching, consummate.” And then, gayly: “Here’s a health, boy – a long life to the new ambassador to the Court of St. James!”

But Ross did not go to the Court of St. James. In the following winter, to the surprise of many, the President gave him a special mission to prepare a trade treaty with Peru. Baron Arnim, in due course, recovered his bric-à-brac. Meanwhile Emperor William, mystified at the amazing sagacity of the Secretary of State in the Eastern question, continues the building of a mighty navy in the fear that one day the upstart nation across the ocean will bring the questions complicating them to an issue.

But life was no longer amusing, bewitching or consummate to Crabb. The flavor of an adventure gone from his mouth, the commonplace became more flat and tasteless than before. Life was all pale drabs and grays again. To make matters worse he had been obliged to make a business visit in Philadelphia, and this filled the cup of insipidity to the brim. He was almost ready to wish that his benighted forbears had never owned the coal mines in Pennsylvania to which he had fallen heir, for it seemed there were many matters to be settled, contracts to be signed and leases to be drawn by his attorney in the sleepy city, and it would be several days, he discovered, before he could get off to Newport. Not even the Blue Wing was at his disposal, for an accident in the engine room had laid her out of commission for two weeks at least.

So he resigned himself to the inevitable, and took a room at a hotel, grimly determined to see the matter through, conscious meanwhile of a fervid hope that the unusual might happen – the lightning might strike. Hate he had known and fear, but love had so far eluded him. Why, he did not know, save that he had never been willing to perceive that emotion when offered in conventional forms – and since no other forms were possible, he had simply ceased to consider the matter. Yet marry some day, he must, of course. But whom? Little he dreamed how soon he would know. Little did Miss Patricia Wharton think that she had anything to do with it. In fact, Patricia’s thoughts at that time were far from matrimony. Patricia was bored. For a month while Wharton père boiled out his gout at the sulphur springs, Patricia had dutifully sat and rocked, tapping a small foot impatiently, looking hourly less a monument of Patience and smiling not at all.

At last they were in Philadelphia. Wilson had opened two rooms at the house and a speedy termination of David Wharton’s business would have seen them soon at Bar Harbor. But something went wrong at the office in Chestnut Street, and Patricia, once a lamb and now a sheep of sacrifice, found herself at this particular moment doomed to another weary week of waiting.

To make matters worse not a girl Patricia knew was in town, or if there were any the telephone refused to discover them. Her aunt’s place was at Haverford, but she knew that an invitation to dinner there meant aged Quaker cousins and that kind of creaky informality which shows a need of oil at the joints. That lubricant Patricia had no intention of supplying. She had rather be bored alone than bored in company. She found herself sighing for Bar Harbor as she had never sighed before. She pictured the cottage, cool and gray among the rocks, the blue bowl of the sea with its rim just at her window-ledge, the clamoring surf, and the briny smell with its faint suggestion of things cool and curious which came up newly breathed from the heart of the deep. She could hear “Country Girl” whinnying impatience from the stable when Jack Masters on “Kentucky” rode down from “The Pinnacle” to inquire.

Indeed, as she walked out into the Square in the afternoon she found herself relapsing into a minute and somewhat sordid introspection. It was the weather, perhaps. Surely the dog-days had settled upon the sleepy city in earnest. No breath stirred the famishing trees, the smell of hot asphalt was in the air, locusts buzzed vigorously everywhere, trolley bells clanged out of tune, and the sun was leaving a blood-hot trail across the sky in angry augury for the morrow.

Patricia sank upon a bench, and poked viciously at the walk with her parasol. She experienced a certain grim satisfaction in being more than usually alone. Poor Patricia! who at the crooking of a finger, could have summoned to her side any one of five estimable scions of stupid, distinguished families. Only something new, something difficult and extraordinary would lift her from the hopeless slough of despond into which she had found herself precipitated.

Andromeda awaiting Perseus on a bench in Rittenhouse Square! She smiled widely and unrestrainedly up and precisely into the face of Mr. Mortimer Crabb.