Chapter VI · DUTCH VON HOLZEMAN, SPECIAL AGENT.

Jimmie Grant, sitting on the cool veranda of Captain Johnston's ranch house, grinned at the young man sitting opposite, from whom he had received a telephone message the night before asking for a meeting place.

"What happened to you, Dutch?" Jimmie asked with a grin. "I thought you were planted on board until the finish?"

"It came," said the young man who had, up to the day before, been an ordinary seaman on the yacht Carmen, "as far as I was concerned, Jimmie, old kid. Boy, howdy, I heard Monckton tell Clark to drown me that night, just as he would tell him to drown a sick kitten or something. Hot damn—I'd just as soon be in a den of rattlers. I could sleep sounder. They think as much of a human life as I do of a cigarette."

"Which is a hell of a lot sometimes, when you've only got one, and I want it," said Jimmie. "You big piece of Limburger cheese!"

"Yeah?" grinned Dutch von Holzeman, one hundred per cent American in spite of his name, and a crack special agent for Uncle. "If you'd buy you some cigarettes once in awhile I wouldn't feel like that, you grifter."

"So's your grandma," said Jimmie. "Tell me about it."

Dutch told him about the fight on board the Carmen and the killing of Langdon, also about Wang Li and the Chang Kwang Tong.

"Hot damn," said Jimmie; "that's the stuff I want. Boy, as a special agent you're a fine shoemaker. How'd you come to get out of the boat, though?"

"I'd heard plenty, and I knew the boson was due any minute huntin' for me. He'd stop way back and ask permission to come aft. He'd be looking for me with blood in his eye and bawl out the fact that I'd been missing for a couple of hours. So I thought I better take a chance and show. I figured I could alibi myself in some way."

"Except to explain how come they didn't see you coming to the boat, dumb-bell," grinned Jimmie.

"Easy. I'd stick it that I walked along the rail, and that they were taking a drink and didn't notice me. Well, what to do now, Jimmie?"

"Well, now we know that what Uncle suspected before is plenty true. Monckton is top cutter of the outfit; Carewe, the one that engineered the jewel robbery, is eliminated; Monckton has the stuff planted somewhere. Langdon, who helped Carewe grab off the stones, is out also. That leaves Monckton.

"We can't touch him on what we got—unless we could pull him on a charge of killing Langdon: rotten—he didn't, Clark did the killing; you say you saw him crack down. Besides, he would alibi with every man on the boat that he was below. Let's dope it out, Dutch; we darn near got him."

"He's wounded pretty badly; maybe-so he's dead by now. I didn't wait to inquire, but when they brought him down deck he looked all in."

"No chance," said Jimmie positively. "You can't kill those birds like Monckton; you got to hang 'em or put 'em on the hot chair. I wish to heck I knew where the junk was that they copped in England. That Scotland Yard man is foaming at the mouth."

"Yeah? Where is he, Jimmie?"

"In San Francisco, holed up at the Palace. I told him I'd break this case for him right away and then he'd have a better chance to get a line. He gently insinuated the last time I saw him that he was muchly disappointed at the Americano much-touted speed."

"I know where the junk is—it's on board the yacht," said Dutch, lighting a cigarette.

"What?" yelled Jimmie Grant, so loud that Captain Johnston stuck his head out of one of the feed barn doors. "You know that! Well, you poor nit-wit! By gosh, Dutch, if you had forty-nine per cent more brains you'd be half human. Why the heck didn't you say so, fish?"

"Aw, I haven't seen 'em. One—"

"There you go! What good does all that 'I heard,' 'he said,' 'they acted like' stuff do? We got to catch 'em red-handed, boy."

"You're teachin' your grandma how to fry eggs," answered Dutch. "Well, anyway, one night I was where I oughtn't to be, as usual, and I heard Monckton raising hell and high water with that sweetie of his about putting on a lot of stuff, and she comes back with the fact that she wanted to see how she'd look wearing some of the crown jewels or what-not, and that she had as much of an interest in them as he did.

"He said she had an interest that would put her away for the rest of her life if she didn't show any more sense than to be parading 'em. Just then some nosey bird came along and I had to play dead."

"Boy, you done noble," said Jimmie admiringly. "You're better than nine regiments of marines. We might try to get a United States Commissioner to give us a search warrant."

"First, find one that would, on that dope," answered Dutch pityingly. "This bird Monckton stands too darn high at the moment for them to take any chances. If we got one, we might search the darn hooker from stem to stern and not find a thing. Then what, Jeems?"

"You and I would get ze one grand bawling out," admitted Jimmie. "Well—here we are: Monckton is the lad, all right; Carewe is dead; Langdon, who killed Carewe, also is very much dead, unless Clark missed him?"

"He didn't," said Dutch positively. "I saw it."

"We know where Clark is. We can take him on a murder charge any time on your say-so. But we don't want him now, unless he could be made to talk on a promise of an easy one—Langdon being a crook anyway."

"He wouldn't," asserted Dutch. "That bird is probably wanted for a few killings himself. Boy, he's got a cold eye like a fish."

"Never mind studying natural history; Uncle sent us down here to get Monckton, not to talk about eyes. Remember you're drawing pay, feller."

"Man, you get on that old bum-boat for awhile, and you'd be earning yours, for a change. Let me be top cutter for awhile, and you get in and do some work. And say, Jimmie, that lady of Monckton's has got the same kind of an eye, only worse."

"What did I just tell you?" chided Jimmie severely. "Well, we now have Monckton, the fish-eyed lady, Kentuck, and the jewels, with Clark as a side issue. Does he know about things in general, Dutch?"

"Who—Clark?" asked Dutch, who had been watching a young colt in one of the corrals.

"No, President Nicholas Murray Butler! Pay attention! Here I am working my massive brain overtime and you moon around looking at colts. I asked if Clark is in the know, all around?"

"He seems to be; but he's more of a top sergeant, Jimmie."

"Well, we got to rib up something to get Monckton and his boat in a place where we can give it the once-over, that's all. How about your going back and—"

"What?" yelled Dutch almost as loud as Jimmie had. "Me? Go back on that? Dilly, dilly, come and be killed. You're crazy, boy. I couldn't get back any more than—"

"I mean to San Francisco, fool," interrupted Jimmie. "You go back there and see if you can't horn in. Say, have they got licker on board?"

"Yeah, plenty of it, and fine stuff, boy."

"How do you know?" demanded Jimmie enviously.

"Me and one of the stewards were just like that," smiled Dutch, holding up two fingers close together.

"Fine! The next time she comes into port we'll get the Prohibition outfit to jump her. You can swear out the information; that lot isn't fussy about evidence. She flies the American flag, I suppose?"

"Sure," Dutch chuckled, "and also she keeps out of American waters, old slute. Any old time Monckton or any of them go ashore they land in Mexico; so there goes your old ball game, Chames."

"All wet," admitted Jimmie. "How's this, Dutch: you go to San Francisco, get to this bird Wang Li, tell him you've got the dope that Monckton himself had the Kid put on the spot because the Kid had found out that Monckton was double crossing the Chang Kwang, and—"

"How was he double crossing?"

"How the heck do I know? Make up some of it yourself. He was sending in a poor brand of chandoo—no, that won't do; they'd know it as soon as he did it. Here—how's this? Monckton has been hired by the Mock Duck Tong to kill off as many of the Chang Kwang crowd as he can, claiming that they got knocked off by the John Laws. That ought to get their goat."

"Boy, that's some dope," said Dutch admiringly. "No wonder they pay you a couple of dollars a day. I got me a friend in the Mock Ducks that'll fix me up papers to prove it, and I got dates and everything about landings. Take two chairs, feller."

"When Wang Li hears that, being naturally suspicious of all foreign devils," Jimmie smiled angelically, "he'll sharpen his best little hatchet and go out and scrag Mr. Monckton on general principles, and investigate later. Man, that'll start a Tong war from who-laid-the-chunk."

"Over which I will no doubt shed a lot of tears," said Dutch, "coming from California as I do, and loving Chinks with all my heart. Well, when I get Wang Li all het up I'll restrain him from using the said hatchet and propose a more subtle way of revenge. We will frame on Mr. Monckton to get him and his boat in 'Melican waters with some yellow gents on board. I'll have Wang Li insist that Monckton himself be present in person, himself and no other, with his boat and all, to show good faith. Savvy?"

"Now you are teaching your grandma," admitted Jimmie. "It may work. We'll try it anyway. Then when we take the hooker the gal is mine."

"You can have 'er!" answered Dutch, with deep feeling. "I prefer something a little farther south than Greenland's well-known icy mountains."

"Maybe your peculiar style of beauty didn't register, Dutch," grinned Jimmie. "Well, go and frame up with your Chink friend. We got the yacht covered outside. Frank McGee and old Doc Cook are on the job in San Diego and Yuma. I'll attend to Kentuck at this end. There won't be much doing for a week or so, until Monckton gets better. We put an awful crimp into them, or rather Langdon and Kentuck did, for us. We might pick up Kentuck and tell him that Mike and the Kid both said he was the big noise before they kicked off, and then see what happens. Get going, boy."

"Hey, listen! I swam ashore from that floating hearse expecting any second to hear that same Winchester go pow! and get it in the back of my head—"

"You'd get it first and hear it afterward. Be more careful in your language," Jimmie smiled sweetly.

"Yeah? Well, anyway, I swam ashore, walked twenty miles, rode a blamed old mule for forty more without a saddle before I could get to a telephone, with nothing to eat but some cold beans I collected en route. Then the minute I get here you give me the bum's rush. Du hast mein Herz gebrochen, James."

"I'll break more than your heart if you don't snap into it," answered Jimmie with a stern air. "We got to get this thing ribbed up before Monckton comes to. On your way, feller. Want any jack?"

"All you got," answered Dutch. "When I left the Carmen flat, all I had on me was my working whites. Bet four dollars that the Bureau of Accounts won't allow me a nickel for my clothes or anything."

"You win," said Jimmie, grinning. "All you'll get is: 'Disallowed; agent should have taken clothes and belongings with him.'"

"I'll try 'em out, anyway. Come through with all the jack you got, Jimmie. I'll need a bundle in Frisco."

"I'll go in with you as far as Phoenix and draw some."