The park was lighted by blazing incandescents which attracted the first moths of spring and glittered in shining reflections from the green foliage of the trees.

  But the lights cast shadows over some of the benches, and on these benches young couples sat in close proximity, conversing in low voices.

  Sidney Zoom wasted no time upon such couples. His peering eyes sought out those dark shadows where lone derelicts sat in black despair.

  Here was a man whose pasty features and twitching nerves told of dope; another was sodden with cheap alcohol; a third was a drifter, one of those men who refuse to accept opportunity when it is offered; a fourth was a young man whose gaunt face and haggard eyes showed the pallor of malnutrition as he sat hunched forward, his elbows on his knees, his chin on his hands.

  Sidney Zoom paused in his walk. “A nice evening,” he said.

  The man apparently did not hear him. It was only when Zoom repeated the comment that the man stared upward with strained, incredulous eyes.

  “Yes,” he said at length in a thin voice, then added, after a pause: “A nice dog you have.”

  Sidney Zoom nodded.

  “Getting the air,” he asked, “after a hard day’s work?” The man’s laugh was mocking.

  “A hard day’s work is right,” he said. “I had a hard day’s work two weeks ago. It’s the last I’ve been able to get.”

  Sidney Zoom stared steadily at him. The man spat contemptuously.

  “Go on,” he said, “I’ll take care of myself.”

  Sidney Zoom turned and walked away, the police dog padding at his side.

  The foot and ankle of a woman caught his eyes. He had seen it half an hour before when he had first entered the park. The woman was reclining on one of the park seats. Her head and torso were in the deep shadows. Her left foot and ankle caught a shaft of light which filtered through the trees.

  Presently, the officer on the beat would awaken her. Sleeping upon the park benches was prohibited, but of late the rule had been relaxed so that many of the city’s homeless found a certain inadequate resting place on the hard, cold benches. These unfortunates, by some unwritten understanding with the police, did not descend upon the benches until after midnight.

  Sidney Zoom moved to the side of the young woman, touched her shoulder.

  He could see that she was well formed, that she was in her early twenties, that she was sleeping in an uncomfortable position and that she was sleeping soundly.

  He touched her again.

  The dog at his side gave a low whimper.

  Sidney Zoom took the woman’s shoulders and shook her. A small glass bottle dropped from the limp fingers of her right hand, but she made no motion.

  Sidney Zoom picked up the bottle. A skull and cross-bones caught his eyes. He held the label to the light, then dropped the bottle to his pocket, knelt and smelled of the young woman’s lips. Abruptly, he turned and retraced his steps to where the young man sat hunched upon the park bench.

  “My friend,” he asked, “would you like temporary employment?” The man didn’t look up.

  “Take your sympathy,” he said bitterly, “and go to hell with it.” Sidney Zoom’s voice was patient.

  “My friend,” he said, “this is not sympathy. Every night I make it a rule to find some worthy individual who is out of employment and give him work. The work is not orthodox, nor are my methods, but the employment certainly is not charity. If you want the job, say so; if you don’t want it, there are probably others who do.”

  The haggard features raised to his. There was the glint of dawning hope in the eyes. “You mean it?” the man asked.

  “Your name?” asked Sidney Zoom. “Burt Samson,” he said.

  Zoom nodded.

  “The wages,” he said, “will be adequate. They will be on a basis of profit-sharing.

  The work will be probably within the law.” The man’s laugh was rasping.

  “I didn’t ask any of that,” he said. “Come with me,” Zoom told him.

  They approached the bench where the young woman lay.

  “I want,” said Sidney Zoom, “to get her to a taxicab.” Samson flashed Zoom one swiftly searching look. “How long have you known she was here?”

  “I just found her,” Zoom said. “Do you know who she is?”

  “No.”

  “Why do you want to get her to a taxicab?” Zoom stared at him with steady, uncordial eyes.

  “My friend,” he said, “if you are going to work for me, you are going to follow instructions without a lot of questions. No matter what a job is, there’s only room for one boss.”

  Samson stooped wordlessly, placed his hands under the girl’s shoulders. Sidney Zoom caught one of her arms. They lifted her to her feet. She was motionless, inert, lifeless.

  “A drug?” asked Samson. Zoom made no comment.

  “A taxicab,” he said after a moment.

  They supported her between them, cut across the grass of the park, keeping to the shadows.

  “I’ll hold her,” said Zoom. “Get a cab. Say that the woman passed out after a couple of drinks. Don’t offer too many explanations.”

  The young man nodded, stepped out from the shadows of the park shrubbery to the lighted sidewalk, hailed a passing cab. The driver gave him a searching look, slowed, then speeded on. A second cab answered his hail and stopped. Samson talked for a moment with the cabbie, who opened the door and stared suspiciously toward the park. Sidney Zoom waited for an auspicious moment, then he strode across the sidewalk, the woman in his arms. He deposited her on the cushions of the cab, nodded to the police dog. The dog leapt into the cab, crouched on the floor. Samson climbed in, hesitated for a moment, then pillowed the young woman’s head on his shoulder.

  Sidney Zoom fastened the insolent eyes of the cab driver with a steady stare. “Drive down this street to the waterfront,” Zoom said. “Turn to the left. I’ll tell

  you when to go out on the docks. I want to get aboard the Alberta F.”

  “You mean that millionaire’s yacht that’s moored …”

  “Exactly,” said Sidney Zoom, climbed into the cab and slammed the door shut.

  CHAPTER II

  The Girl Who Wanted to Die

  VERA THURMOND was a most efficient nurse. Years of experience with the strange character whom she served in the dual capacity of assistant and secretary, had fitted her to cope with all sorts of people and conditions.

  She moved back and forth from the dining salon, in which Zoom and Samson sat waiting, to the room where the young woman moaned and retched.

  A pot bubbled on an electric stove, and the smell of coffee filled the air.

  “She’ll be all right now,” Vera Thurmond said, “the emetic has done its work, and I’m going to get some coffee down her. You’d better help me.”

  Sidney Zoom strode into the bedroom, looked at the features of the young woman, features that were now white with misery. Her eyes were red-rimmed from the nausea which had been induced by the emetic. Her lips were pale and bloodless.

  She stared at Sidney Zoom with wide blue eyes, looking at him as though he had been a creature from another world.

  “So you took laudanum?” said Sidney Zoom.

  She moved her lips but there was no sound. Her eyes filmed over with drowsiness even as he looked at her.

  Vera Thurmond appeared with coffee steaming in a cup, coffee that was black and bitter.

  “We’ve got to get this down her,” she said, “and make her keep it down. Then you’ve got to walk her around the deck where she can get the fresh night air.”

  Together they got two cups of coffee down the young woman’s throat. Samson and Zoom got her to the deck, started walking her along the moist planks—planks that were kept spotlessly clean and on which the night dew had left a thin film of moisture.

  “Let me alone,” she said thickly, “I want to lie down.”

  Zoom paid no attention to her, but kept pushing her along. By degrees, the fresh air of the night and the coffee got in its work.

  “I think we can take her down below now,” Zoom said.

  “Oh, I’m all right now,” she told him in a voice that was bitter. “Why didn’t you leave me alone? Now I’ve got to do it all over again.”

  Zoom made no comment but assisted her down the companionway to the dining salon.

  Samson turned to Zoom. “I wonder,” he said, “if …”

  “Well,” said Zoom, “go ahead. What is it?”

  “If,” said Samson in a voice that quavered, “I could have some of that coffee? I haven’t eaten for three days.”

  He moved toward a chair, stumbled, and pitched forward on his face. Zoom bent over him, but it was the young woman who reached him first. “You poor boy,” she said.

  Zoom raised Samson from the floor and into a chair. His eyelids fluttered as Vera Thurmond brought him a steaming cup of coffee. Samson drank the coffee, turned on them savagely.

  “Keep your damned sympathy,” he said, “I don’t want it.”

  There had been a few drops of brandy in the coffee and after it had taken effect, Zoom fixed an eggnog.

  “Take this,” he said, “and then we’ll try something solid and substantial.” He turned to the girl.

  “What,” he asked, “is your name?”

  “Say,” she said staring around curiously. “What kind of a place is this?”

  “A yacht,” said Zoom.

  “Who owns it?”

  “I do.”

  “What do you do with it?”

  “Sail it occasionally.”

  “What’s the idea of getting this fellow and me aboard?”

  “I thought,” said Zoom, “I could help you, and at the same time help myself.”

  “You could have left me alone and helped me a lot more,” she said.

  Zoom stared at her steadily.

  “When I have heard your story,” he said, “I can give employment to this man.”

  “How?” she inquired, curiosity getting the better of her.

  “I don’t know,” he said, “but there will be a way. Things are never hopeless. People who brood over their problems, lose sight of obvious solutions. People who kill themselves because they can’t find a way out are like the persons who get lost every year and lie down to die within a few hundred yards of a habitation; like the wanderer in the desert who perishes of thirst within a mile of water.”

  She looked at Burt Samson.

  “Where does he come in?” she asked.

  “I am going,” said Sidney Zoom, “to give him a job helping to untangle your affairs.”

  “Who’s going to pay him?”

  “I’m not,” Zoom said. “We’re going to collect from some other person.” The young woman stared at him incredulously.

  Vera Thurmond nodded her head. “He always does,” she said.

  The young woman took a deep breath.

  “Okay,” she said, “I can stand it if you can. My name’s Nell Benton. Did you ever hear of Finley Carter?”

  “Rather an eccentric millionaire,” asked Zoom, “whose hobby is the collection of paintings and the playing of chess?”

  “That’s the one,” she said.

  “I’ve heard of him,” Zoom said. “Do you know him personally?”

  “No. I’ve never met him.”

  “I acted as his secretary,” she said. “I was discharged.”

  “Why?” asked Zoom.

  “Because of dishonesty,” she said.

  She stared at Sidney Zoom as though seeking to probe his thoughts.

  “You don’t seem particularly shocked,” she said after a moment, her voice showing the bitterness of her feelings. “Why don’t you get a smirking look of self-righteousness on your face?”

  Sidney Zoom’s voice was patient. “I don’t get shocked,” he said, “and I am not self-righteous. As far as the law is concerned, it is an excellent system for the majority of cases; it falls far short in certain individual cases. Under those circumstances, I have no hesitancy about stepping outside the law myself.”

  The blue eyes widened.

  “Go on,” Sidney Zoom said, “give me the details.”

  “It was so simple,” she said bitterly, “that it sounds absurd. Someone made very fair copies of a couple of rare paintings, and substituted them for the originals.”

  Sidney Zoom’s face showed quick interest.

  “One of the originals,” she said, “was found in my room, another one was found in a pawn shop. The pawnbroker said that a young woman had left it with him. He had no conception of the value of it, and had given her but five dollars on it. The description he gave of the woman fitted me exactly.

  “Mr. Carter,” she said bitterly, “was most generous! He simply discharged me and kept the money that was due me. He said that he wouldn’t send me to jail, inasmuch as he had recovered the paintings. I tried to get other employment; there was no use. I had been with Finley Carter for five years. It’s hard enough to get a job anyway, there aren’t many vacancies. Once or twice I got people interested in me. They rang up Carter. He told them that he had discharged me for dishonesty.”

  Sidney Zoom jack-knifed his lean length into a swivel chair at the head of the dining table. His eyes glowed with a fierce interest.

  “This,” he said, “is one of the most interesting situations I have ever encountered in my life.”

  She stared at him, her eyes flashing.

  “Are you,” she asked, “trying to make fun of me?”

  “On the contrary,” said Sidney Zoom, “the obvious, outstanding facts not only show your innocence, but convince me that there is some remarkably sinister plot afoot.”

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “In the first place,” said Zoom, “the fact that the paintings were copied indicates that there is an artist who is in on the conspiracy.”

  “Naturally,” she said scornfully.

  “The artist,” went on Sidney Zoom, “is a friend of someone in the house. He must have had unlimited opportunity to make copies of the pictures that were stolen. That means that he must have access to the house.”

  “Yes,” she said sarcastically, “even the master mind of Mr. Finley Carter reasoned that far. The fact that the artist had his opportunity to work undisturbed, showed that I was his accomplice.”

  Zoom shook his head from side to side in silent negation.

  “If,” he said, “you had been with Finley Carter for five years you would have known the value of the paintings. If you had gone to the trouble and risk of having them copied, you wouldn’t have disposed of one of them for five dollars. Moreover, if you had an artist as your accomplice, the artist would have known of channels through which the pictures could have been disposed of to advantage. Therefore, it is perfectly obvious that the object of the scheme was to discredit you.”

  “But why?” she asked, her face showing interest.

  “That,” said Sidney Zoom, “is one of the things we will find out. What were your duties?”

  “I handled his correspondence.”

  “Did you have access to any funds?”

  “None … That is, there was an account of five hundred dollars that I handled.”

  “What account was that?”

  “Housekeeping money.”

  “It was fixed at five hundred dollars?”

  “Yes. I made out checks on it. Mr. Carter signed the checks. Usually he signed them in advance. He figured that he could trust me to the extent of five hundred dollars.”

  “Was it a separate account?” asked Zoom. “Yes.”

  “How did he keep it separate from his other accounts?”

  “By keeping it in an entirely different bank. It was a branch bank located in the neighborhood—the Second National Affiliate. His regular account was in the Mechanics National.”

  “How many servants?” asked Sidney Zoom.

  “There was James Stearne, chauffeur; Harry Exter, butler and valet; and Mrs. Ethel Clint, housekeeper. There was no one else other than myself. Finley Carter is a crusty old bachelor.”

  Sidney Zoom glanced at the portholes; they showed the grayish light of coming day. He looked at the haggard, drawn features of Burt Samson, then nodded to Vera Thurmond.

  “Get the cook up, Vera,” he said. “We’ll have breakfast. Put Samson to bed. Send his clothes up to the best ready-to-wear store you can find, and get a new suit of blue serge. Duplicate the other as nearly as you can.”

  He nodded his head to the pair.

  “Vera Thurmond,” he said, “will show you your staterooms. You’ll get some sleep.”

  “Say,” said Samson getting to his feet, “what kind of a nut factory is this?”

  “Shut up,” Sidney Zoom said without raising his voice. “You wanted work—you’re going to get it, and it’s going to be hard work. You’re going to get some grub on your stomach; you’re going to get some sleep, and then you’re going to have a job.”

  “A job,” said Samson sneeringly, “who’s going to pay me?” Sidney Zoom’s voice was as final as the tolling of a bell. “Finley Carter,” he said, “is going to pay.”

  Sidney Zoom turned to Nell Benton.

  “During the time,” he said, “that you worked for Carter, I take it you became rather familiar with his signature?”

  She nodded.

  “And can you tell me,” asked Sidney Zoom, “where I can find a specimen of his signature?”

  “In my purse,” she said bitterly. “I asked him for a reference. He gave me a letter stating that it was impossible for him to give me a reference. That I had been discharged because of dishonesty.”

  Zoom nodded thoughtfully.

  “I should like that letter,” he said.

  “What,” she inquired, “do you want to use it for?”

  “As a sample,” Sidney Zoom said.

  “A sample?”

  “Yes,” he said. “I desire to forge the signature of Finley Carter.”

  CHAPTER III

  Zoom’s Plan

  SIDNEY ZOOM had considerable aptitude with a pen, and he practiced the signature of Finley Carter until he was able to dash it off with that smooth speed which makes for artistic forgeries.