T was noon when Joe Carden crept from bed and hurried to his bath. He ordered breakfast sent up from the near-by restaurant that supplied meals, and ate it slowly and with evident relish. Nifty Burke, he knew, had been gone for several hours. Nifty had work to do, and after it was done he could rest while Joe Carden did his share.
Just as the crook comedian finished dressing, the telephone rang.
“Hello!” he called.
“Boss?” Nifty’s voice asked.
“Yes.”
“Good guessing, boss. I even followed our man home, and he’s there now. I’ll meet you where you said.”
“Be there in less than half an hour, Nifty.”
Carden hung up the receiver and observed himself in the full-length mirror in his bedroom. He was dressed in a blue suit of conservative cut, wore wide black shoes and a soft black hat. From a pocket of the coat he took a policeman’s shield, glanced at it, and returned it. Then, chuckling again, he started toward the door. Once more the telephone rang.
Carden looked disconcerted as he took down the receiver. He feared what the message would be.
“Hello!” he called.
“How is Mr. Carden to-day?”
It was a woman’s voice that asked the question, and Joe Carden shuddered as he heard.
“Who is this?” he asked.
“This is the Nameless One, silly boy. You know perfectly well. I don’t want to bother or annoy you, but I just thought I’d call up and say that I’m glad you were successful last night.”
“What do you mean?” Carden cried.
“You know—the vase. I hope you sold it for a good round sum, Or perhaps you have turned art lover and are going to keep it for yourself.”
“Pardon me, but I do not know what you are talking about,” Carden said.
“Naughty boy! You know very well,”
“When are you going to let me see you?” Carden demanded, changing his tone.
“Some day, perhaps, but not now. Good-by!”
And there came a soft “snap” from her end of the line that told she had hung up the receiver.
Joe Carden dropped weakly into the nearest chair, almost unnerved. More than three months before it had started. This woman had called and said that she was the Nameless One. She seemed to know every move the comedian made.
Every two or three days she would get Joe Carden on the telephone and speak of things he believed no person knew save Nifty Burke and himself. He had tried to trace her calls, and had found that they came from public pay stations.
What was her object? She had not attempted blackmail, or anything of the sort. She had refused to let Carden meet her. She had said that she admired many of the things he had done, but did not care to meet him personally.
Joe Carden was beginning to fear her. She seemed to know everything that he did. And he was haunted by the idea that some fine day she would make demands that he would have to grant to protect himself. But as yet she had been nothing but pleasant, had voiced no threat of any nature.
“She must be shadowing me closer than Sam Marter ever did,” Carden told himself. “Well, I suppose I’ll understand it some day. And I’ll wager that I’ll not like it when I do!”
Take this last message of hers, for instance. The affair of the Chinese vase had been planned carefully, and Joe Carden failed to understand how she could have learned anything concerning it. The more he thought about it, the more he worried. It would have been bad enough to have had some person he knew aware of his nefarious actions; it was a great deal worse to be at the mercy of some mysterious stranger.
Carden left his apartment and hurried down to the street. Two blocks away he engaged a taxicab, and in this he rode uptown to a certain square. There he paid the chauffeur and dismissed the cab, and walked another block, where Nifty Burke met him on the corner.
“Well?” Carden asked.
“Razelus must have got busy early this morning,” Burke reported. “I was on the job early and watched. Roger Belcher got down there about ten o’clock, and was inside the shop for an hour. He drove away and went to his bank, me after him in a taxi. Then he went back to the old shop again. That bird of a Razelus probably made him pay in cash instead of with a check.”
“Undoubtedly,” Carden said.
“Belcher came from the shop the last time with a small package that was about right to hold the vase. I followed him again, and he drove straight home. He was there a few minutes before I telephoned, and I think he’s there yet.”
“Good enough! Go home, Burke, and get some sleep. I’ll be back there in a couple of hours or so. See anything of Marter?”
“Not a glimpse, and I was keepin’ my eyes open for him, too.”