_The following Account of a Series of Occurrences in the Jamaica Plain
District of Boston during the year 1920, and Certain Facts Relating
Thereto, was dictated by Mr. Andrew H. Barnes, who claims to be one
of the Only Two Persons now living who have a knowledge of the True
Solution of the Affair. The Recital of these things as set forth by
him is in the main Correctly Reported. The Language Used is as close
an approach to his own as could be managed with the rapid stenography
required._
H. McC.
People who didn’t know—and let me tell you at the start that few
did—could hardly avoid the supposition, on being shown into the
offices of the Messrs. Harker & Pentecost, that they were entering
the headquarters of a long-established, prosperous firm, evidently of
high standing and doing a conservative and wisely managed business.
Conclusions such as these are by no means beyond what furniture,
fittings, and employees are able to convey, and Mr. Pentecost had
seen to it that all these things had done a part toward so conveying
it. Everything of the best quality, and more important still, not
new—nothing to suggest the flashily fine furnishings so often
associated with flashily conducted business.
Three years and three months before this time at which I’m calling your
attention to the firm’s office, they didn’t have any, and Mr. Hugo
Pentecost had Mr. Stephen W. Harker in such a double-twisted strangle
grip that it was either hand over whatever price the former named or
the latter went to jail. There was only one answer to that, and when
Mr. Harker said, “Name the loot, you bastard,” expecting a response of,
“I’ll take the pot!” he was considerably surprised to get no answer at
all.
Pentecost—bullet-headed—regarded him with glassy, half-closed eyes.
Harker—slim, dapper, perfectly dressed, with a pleasant, attractive
face (which was a pearl without price in his business) finally broke
the silence.
“What’s masticating you?” he said. “You’ve got me cold, haven’t you? Go
on an’ give it a name!”
Pentecost spoke in a low, soft voice. “I’ll take the business,” he said.
“One minute, George. I’m on to you from the send-off—see? You’re the
guy that drops down on the boys when they’ve been working hard for
it an’ rakes ’em for ninety per cent! Quite a name you’ve made for
yourself! Know what they call you in the Mercer Street joints? ‘The
Vulture’—that’s what they’ve put on you!”
“Fitting, too,” was the quiet rejoinder. “Vultures prey on the dead
ones.”
“I can cough twenty grand. Do you want it?”
“You can cough forty-six, but I don’t want it. The business will do for
the present.”
“Get to hell with it. My business is _my_ business. Where do you cop
the idea I can pass it around?”
“No passing around—I declare myself in.”
Harker—a man seldom surprised and never showing it—stood looking at
Pentecost, amazement concealed behind his “dead” face.
“In on my game?” he finally asked.
Pentecost nodded slightly. “But not as you play it, my friend,” he said.
* * * * *
Harker was a successful fake promoter. Anything was grist for his mill
that was slick enough in operation to catch the public fancy or timely
enough to ride on the crest of a craze. Cheap novelties in medicine,
food, housekeeping utensils, electric refrigerating and washing
machines, oil-burning heaters,—anything attractive enough to sell
stock on—that was the sole requirement. The organization of promoting
companies—vast newspaper advertisements for a few days—window displays
when it was an operating device of some kind; and after the crop from
stock sales had been skillfully gathered in, came the little matter of
the company paying for the patent or a factory site or whatever it was,
and of course it took all the money realized on stock sales to do this;
and as Harker was the man who happened to own the patent or factory
site, he was naturally the person who sold it to the company, and there
he was.
But he wasn’t there for long. That was the chief inconvenience
connected with this simple method of relieving the
“one-born-every-minute” crowd of their superfluous capital. It
compelled the practitioner to travel for his health after every
operation. Often, too, he had to change his name as well as the
climate, and to make some drastic alteration in what might be referred
to as his identity.
The reward, though, was frequently of large proportions, which it
happened to be in the case I’m speaking of. And the vulture Pentecost,
soaring above the vast and darkened stretches of crookdom, got the odor
of tainted money and began circling nearer and nearer and eventually
sunk his talons into Mr. Harker and found that he was good. Also that
his game was well enough—indeed might be quite a big one if properly
run—the effective method of playing it flashing instantly through his
mind. He observed, too, that Harker was a skillful operator; also a
good looker as a figurehead for an important and high-class concern. He
had planned for some time to have an office to work from. So it came to
be a partnership. No papers of course—just understood. Harker was to
run his line of work in the office of the firm—after that work had been
put on Pentecost’s basis. Pentecost would have the partnership and the
office to give him solidity and standing in his own line of nefarious
and frequently hazardous undertakings. He could, without trouble, pick
up many things in Harker’s way and turn them over to him; and Harker
could give him assistance in his own affairs, should he require it.
They would divide at fifty-fifty.
Before he took to vulturizing again Pentecost gave his attention to
the rearrangement of the Harker game. An office that was “the thing”
was found in precisely the locality required, and in a modest but
high-class building. When it came to the matter of furnishings, not an
item escaped him. Being thoroughly aware that the various articles in a
room have voices and can cry out, he took good care to have only those
which would use the tones that he wanted.
Having now an office which would eloquently lie for them, the next
thing in Mr. Pentecost’s scheme of operation was to secure a business
reputation that would do the same. With this in view he and Harker went
after inventions or devices for the firm to take hold of and exploit,
that had some degree of solid merit. At the end of a year they had been
able to get only two, in each case having to purchase from a company
that was running it at a profit. Expensive deals, but both men were
plungers. They found another during the second year, and that made
three, which was enough. Companies were organized for each and the
business carried on with success and profit, large dividends going out
to the stockholders; the firm, however, on account of the expenses
involved in buying out going concerns, made nothing.
Harker was now in a position to engineer another class of enterprise
with entire safety. The firm was well-known, conservative, solid. Stock
of companies it organized was bought without question. Instead of
piking along he found he had in his hands swindles of great magnitude.
With the solid business they were doing an occasional failure cut no
figure.
The most important members of the office force—the heads of
departments as you might say—were all in the family. Harker’s family,
I mean—Pentecost had none. Alfred Harker—son of the senior partner,
twenty-two and a sharp one for his age—had charge of the office. Chief
clerk, I suppose you might call him. The head stenographer, Miss Mary
Finch Dugas, was a sister of Mrs. Harker, and the head accountant Mrs.
Harker’s nephew. As for the others, it didn’t matter. Nothing could
get by young Harker or Miss Dugas or the head accountant that there
was any reason for keeping in the shade. So the rest of the force had
been picked—like the furniture and decorations—to express innocence and
respectability—and they did it.
* * * * *
When you realize that about two and a half years before this Mr.
Pentecost (under another name) had been practising law in Chicago—and
would most likely have been there still if he hadn’t been disbarred—and
that during the seven years he’d been at it he’d got to be one of the
most successful and sought-after defense attorneys they’d ever had out
there, you’ll have a pretty good basis to figure on him, especially
when I tell you the sort of business he drifted into and his amazing
methods of handling it.
When he came to be notable in certain ways among the legal
practitioners of Chicago, and inquiries began to be made as to who he
was and where he came from, nobody could give the answer. A rumor went
the rounds during the proceedings of his disbarment, that he’d formerly
been a confidence operator of some kind and had gone listening in at
the trial of one of his pals. It was said that something about the
legal maneuvers and court proceedings so impressed him with the idea
that a lawyer was a pretty slick thing to be, that he started right in
studying and reading and got by in a couple of years. I don’t know what
there is to that story, but it’s as good as any.
He was a solid, thick-set man of average height, with dark eyes that
bulged a little and occasionally went glassy—an odd trick you seldom
see. Made you think he’d gone off and left them for a moment while he
was attending to other matters. His eyelids a good part of the time
were at half mast, giving him a sleepy sort of look. It had a great
effect when, in a court proceeding, he suddenly came out of it with one
of his lightning strokes.
His face, smooth-shaven, was heavy and hardly ever expressed anything,
but he had expressions he could use when it suited his purpose.
His forehead slanted back quite noticeably—not retreating in any
sense—rather gave you the idea of the possibility of sudden and
relentless advance, like some beast that springs or strikes. All these
things didn’t make him appear anything especially remarkable. You see
lots of bullet-headed men about, also men whose eyes are prominent and
may go glassy for all you know. And drooping eyelids aren’t uncommon.
* * * * *
I’ve been speaking of this man as Mr. Pentecost, but that wasn’t his
name at this time—in Chicago, I mean. On the door of his musty little
office in the North Western Building a bit of modest black lettering
announced the occupant as Max Spellman, Attorney at Law.
This Spellman (later Pentecost) had been plugging along in the law game
out there for something like two years before he attracted attention.
Then it began to be noticed in what is referred to as the underworld,
that a young attorney in the Ashland Block seemed to be having
extraordinary success in the cases of a number of small-caliber crooks
for whose defense he’d been engaged or appointed. The court named him
the first time, in a petty-larceny case where the accused was unable
to get counsel. It was the ingenuity of this fellow’s tactics that
first made him talked about, and a couple of instances of his lightning
quickness and audacity went the rounds of crookdom. This underworld
comment was hardly more than beginning when one of the high-up
operators—a super-crook you might say—who’d been rounded up after a six
months’ hunt—got Spellman to defend him, and from that time he was in
the middle of the map. The upper world now began to take notice, and
inquiries regarding the man flew about, but found nothing to light on.
More business than he could handle came in—and, with hardly an
exception, from below. Of course he didn’t get verdicts for his clients
every time, but his average was amazing. There was always a surprise in
some quick turn he’d make—some entirely unexpected stroke—the finding
of new and vital evidence and the throwing it at them just when it
would knock them silly. He’d get at them this way nearly every time,
and of course there was a rush to find a flaw, but there wasn’t a screw
or a bolt missing.
Don’t get the idea that he was in the least spectacular. Nothing of
the kind. No oratory nor impassioned pleading, nor any of those fancy
things you read about. He’d sit hunched up like a toad in court, solid
and motionless, never speaking unless necessary, and then in a voice
so low that spectators, if there were any, found it difficult to hear.
But—again like a toad—he struck with lightning quickness when the time
came.
To witnesses for the prosecution he was a scourge and a terror. His
gentle questioning, his weary manner and sleepily drooping eyelids,
nursed his victims into unguarded confidence, and then came the
lightning out of a clear sky, striking upon the least contradiction
or misstatement. His very appearance at such times—the backward slant
of his forehead, the sudden scorching fire of usually somnolent
eyes—confused and disconcerted.
When underworld business came in on him with a rush he began to be
careful about what cases he took—not as to the guilt or innocence of
the applicant, but in order to pick out what he had a sporting chance
to win. The possibilities of what extraordinary and ingenious defense
he could accomplish—sometimes not only approaching the danger line, but
frequently going a considerable distance on the other side of it—would
flash through his mind almost automatically as he made his first hasty
examination of the case; upon the character and attractiveness (for he
greatly enjoyed this phase of the game) of these possibilities would
depend his going into the defense.
* * * * *
After Spellman really got going there wasn’t much of anything in
his line he wouldn’t do. All the tricks and political pulls were as
lower-case a-b-c to him, not to speak of the intimate personal records
of lawyers, judges, and police officials who were likely to come
within his sphere of action. Sphere doesn’t sound precisely right,
but you know what I mean. He had an extensive collection of the weak
spots—vulnerable regions, you might say—everywhere, and saw in an
instant how to play them in any given case. Through some sharp move or
threat in the right direction, or by dropping a bit of money where he
knew it would be picked up, or by whatever else he could use as a club,
he’d be about ninety per cent sure to get his man out of the mess.
One day, to give you an instance, the assistant cashier of a Chicago
bank of fairly decent standing was shown into Spellman’s office, and
told him, after some beating about, that he was shy in his accounts by
some two hundred and fifty thousand. The man, whose name was Chatfield,
gave out the well-known tale about playing the stock market.
“All gone?” Spellman inquired, without bothering to pull up his
drooping eyelids.
“Why—I think—not quite.”
“Damn _think_! You know to a nickel what you’ve got!”
“Yes—yes, sixteen thousand odd. I was—you see I was keeping it to—to
get away on.”
“They’ll be on to you soon, of course, or you wouldn’t be here.”
“There’s—there’s barely two days! My God! Barely two!” Chatfield
glanced about in a kind of agony. “And the—” (he swallowed with
difficulty) “—the examiner might get here sooner. We can never be sure!”
“You’ve got the remnant with you I see.”
Chatfield nodded and his eyes moved painfully about in a way that made
you think they’d fill up with tears in a minute.
“You want me to handle this affair I take it.”
“Oh, I _hoped_ you would. That’s what I——”
“Pass me the sixteen.”
The terrified cashier handed Spellman a large fat envelope, which the
latter opened in a weary sort of way, and having pulled the bunch of
bills out a little way, flicked their ends as he might a pack of cards
before the shuffle. Then he looked glassily at the assistant cashier
for a full minute.
“Can you steal another hundred thousand?” he finally asked.
“Why—why—I—you don’t mean——”
“Can you steal another hundred thousand?” with no change in inflection.
“Why—why, yes—I _could_—but you——”
“Take you long?”
“Long?—Oh yes! Well—quite a while. I should say several hours.”
“Two o’clock is several hours. Come here with it then.”
“Mr. Spellman, I can _do_ it!—Yes—I _can_ you know—but they—they’re
bound to find it out inside of twenty-four hours the way I—the way I’ve
got to get it this time!”
“I don’t care how you get it—I want it at two.”
Of course it didn’t happen as quick as that. I’m only giving you the
high spots.
When Chatfield came back at two with the money, Spellman put it in his
safe where the sixteen was already reposing. Then he phoned the bank
and got an appointment. Inside of half an hour he was seated in the
private office of the president, and was conveying to him alone (having
satisfied himself that no witnesses were within hearing distance) the
information that he had a client, Henry Parsons Chatfield by name, who
claimed to be the bank’s assistant cashier, and that—unless the man
was lying—they’d find his accounts a matter of three hundred and fifty
thousand short. He had strongly urged Mr. Chatfield, instead of trying
to escape with the hundred thousand or thereabout that he still had in
his possession after dumping the rest into Wall Street, to return it to
the bank and make a confession. This he found Chatfield willing to do
provided he could be safeguarded against arrest or legal action of any
description. He (Spellman) wasn’t presuming to advise the acceptance
of such a proposition. It seemed to be only a question of whether the
bank wished the money or preferred to prosecute—the latter in case
Chatfield could be apprehended.
Every time the bank president broke out on him—which of course he did
with all the force at his command—the lawyer cut him short.
“I must say, sir—this is a most extraordinary—a most _outrageous_——”
“Do you want it?”
“Are you aware, Mr. Spellman, of your own risk in——”
“Do you want it?”
“We shall certainly take steps to——”
“Do you want it?”
But of course Spellman knew they did—knew they’d have to have it—or he
wouldn’t have been there. Moreover, he noticed that the president made
no move to ring the bell and call in other officials of the bank. The
document he had ready was duly signed and executed. It wasn’t until
after that was done and the thing securely in his possession that he
paid over the hundred thousand to the bank. He returned six of the
sixteen in his safe to Chatfield, and with it a biting comment on the
assistant cashier’s consummate asininity. The remaining ten continued
to remain.
* * * * *
For some time he played it this way, in and out of court, his adroit
defenses of various kinds attracting more and more attention; and those
who had begun to have symptoms of suspicion were very soon looking for
questionable work back of the records.
I’m going to tell you at once what I dare say you’ve suspected all
along, that Spellman was an amazingly successful manufacturer of
evidence. He couldn’t use it always, but when he did, the play was a
marvel. Everything came to that man in what is known as a flash. In the
matter of bogus evidence he not only saw instantly where it would come
in, but almost on the same ignition had the most elaborate defenses
figured out for it with every point protected.
No matter where those sharps and detectives who were after him dug in
and followed back the lines, they couldn’t find a thing to get hold of.
Witnesses had actually seen what they testified to—the circumstances
and surroundings and objects spoken of and dates and time of day given,
etc., stood every test.
Yet notwithstanding the outcome of these investigations, I have to tell
you that Mr. Spellman’s downfall resulted from a faulty piece of work
in one of his manufactured-evidence structures. He knew that it was
faulty and that they’d have it on him in the end, but the play did what
it was intended to do, which was to hold open a loophole for escape
just long enough so his client could dive through it. To save a comrade
who’d once saved him—that was what drove him to it. The outcome, which
he plainly saw, didn’t come within a thousand miles of making him
hesitate. What this man, whose name was Morrison, had done for him
or what he had saved him from, never came out; but it must have been
something worth while.
Morrison was in bad. If the case should come to trial he’d stand no
chance. Even Spellman couldn’t see any way out. His only hope lay in
quick action. I give you an idea of Spellman’s play in this case to
show you how it came about that he was eliminated from Chicago’s fetid
life, and, as Hugo J. Pentecost, turned loose upon a more or less
helpless world.
The quick action for the rescue of Bill Morrison from a more than
serious predicament involved the buying up of an obscure movie actor
named McArdle, doing small bits at the Essanay Studio on the North
Side, who looked enough like Morrison to be his twin. Pentecost had
used the movies in certain of his activities for a number of years,
having found that field of endeavor packed with evidence possibilities
that had never been worked; and in consequence he not only knew a
lot of people employed in it, but he had quite a few of his own men
scattered about in various studios. He remembered this McArdle on the
instant and must have paid him ten or twelve thousand to disappear
utterly for six weeks and turn over everything he owned, including his
name, clothing, diary, letters, photographs, accounts, contracts with
Essanay, and, in fact, everything there was, to him.
His game was possible because Morrison was a West Coast man and had
never operated in Chicago before, and McArdle had only recently come
over from London. If these things hadn’t happened to be the case,
Spellman would have taken some other track. But he instantly saw the
possibilities of this game if he rushed it and planted money lavishly
in a few necessary places.
The Essanay was an enormous concern in those days, frequently taking
fifteen or twenty pictures simultaneously, and naturally couldn’t keep
a close watch on their hundreds of small-part people—of whom McArdle
was one. Particularly was this so because these “artists” were hardly
ever seen at the studio except in make-up.
The crime for which Morrison was arrested—a murderous assault on one
of the clerks in a jewelry store—was committed in the early afternoon,
and he was picked up by the police that same evening. At the time of
the assault McArdle was engaged in his work in one of the Essanay
studios. Spellman got at him in his room in a cheap apartment building
between six and seven o’clock the next morning. It was, of course,
vital to the game that McArdle should not go to the studio again, and,
indeed, should be seen by no one who knew him. Those who had seen and
recognized him after the time of Morrison’s arrest must be taken care
of. If they couldn’t be, the game was off.
But the game wasn’t off on that account, for McArdle had been in his
rooms all the evening and no one had come there. He had dined at a
cheap restaurant near, but that was four hours before Morrison’s
arrest. Clear sailing so far. The money bargain was arranged after
Spellman had lifted the figure to the point where the temptation
wrestled successfully with McArdle’s fears.
As soon as Spellman had this nailed down he let Morrison know by a
prearranged signal—for he didn’t want to go near him just then—and
Morrison began to cut up in his cell and cry and beg to see some one,
as he wanted to confess. In the inspector’s office it transpired that
what he was so anxious to tell them was not that he was guilty, but
that when arrested the night before he’d been so terrified for fear his
employers in Chicago would hear of it that he’d given them a fictitious
name; but now he realized that he’d got to send word to the Essanay
studios that he couldn’t get there for his scene. You had to notify
them. If you didn’t they’d never give you another job. And would they
please send word for him to the Essanay? Couldn’t they say he’d been
in an automobile accident?—for if they knew up there that he was in
jail it would be the end of him.
He finally told them that his name was Walter McArdle, that he’d lately
come over from England, and that his occupation was acting for the
movies. He had no family and the only people he knew were the Essanay
managers who engaged him, and a few of the actors in the company—and
those not very well. Morrison was an artist and pushed it along the
line of one of his pet rôles. Everything tended to show that the man
was Walter McArdle. He later described without effort or hesitation
his lodgings on Rand Street and everything in them (I don’t need to
say that Spellman had been there first), where to find his accounts,
letters from home, how many shirts he had, and so forth and so on.
He told them, in answer to questions, all about the picture he’d been
working in; you see Spellman had got everything possible out of McArdle
before he left. But his crook artistry led to his instructing Morrison
to make a slip or two in places where a person with an ordinary memory
might not have been quite sure. Remembering too much is often more
dangerous than remembering too little.
McArdle, except in rare instances, was seen at the studio in North
Chicago only with his make-up on, and in these rare instances it would
be only for brief moments as he passed in or out of the building on his
way to and from his dressing room. As a consequence those associated
with him in the picture—directors, photographers, electricians,
property men, and his fellow actors in the cast—were misled by
Morrison’s close resemblance, and testified to his being McArdle, and
that he was at the studio occupied with his work in the picture on the
afternoon the robbery and assault was committed. His entire familiarity
with the piece they’d been filming and incidents that happened during
its progress—some, indeed, on the very afternoon of the arrest—had
great weight in the Essanay offices.
There were three persons whose evidence cost money, owing to the fact
that they knew McArdle too well for Morrison to get by: the manager
of the cheap restaurant where the movie actor got his meals; the girl
waitress at the same place; and the actor who dressed in the same
room with him at the Essanay studios. Particularly the last. He was
a bit “fly” and saw that he had them. Also he wanted his in advance.
This mass of evidence, with much more—such as that of the janitor of
the building where McArdle roomed and many minor things that had been
attended to—accomplished its purpose. No doubt existed that the police
had arrested the wrong man. The police themselves were convinced of it.
And the necessary formalities for his release having been gone through,
Bill Morrison made his getaway.
Not many days later Max Spellman did the same.
The collapse of the jerry-built structure that Spellman had hastily
thrown together for a rush showing, with its apparently overwhelming
evidence of mistaken identity, was deferred several days longer than
he expected. He waited on the one-in-a-thousand chance that it might,
after all, escape destruction. But on the third day after Morrison
had gone, a strange car with a disguised Spellman in it disappeared
north of the Lake Boulevard, and Chicago saw him (as Spellman) no
more. The first weak point to give way was the flapper waitress, who
found it impossible to keep her mouth shut about the money she’d been
paid to do that very thing. That started the crash. Proceedings for
Spellman’s disbarment swiftly followed. In addition it began to be said
about that he was “wanted.” But wanting was a matter of some distance
from getting. How could it be otherwise when Spellman had ceased to
exist? It was a plain case of transmigration of souls. The spirit that
had tenanted the body of Max Spellman now moved into that of Hugo
Pentecost—quite another proposition; and not differing alone because of
a dark and well-trimmed beard, giving him something the appearance of
a prosperous and experienced physician, but owing as well to a number
of other changes in form, shape, expression, and more or less minor
characteristics.
This metamorphosis, however, took time, and for months nothing was
known of the man undergoing it. Then something peculiar began to dawn
on the Crooks’ and Malefactors’ Guild. (You may as well call it that as
anything.) Two or three large operations engineered by some of the Big
Ones were mysteriously “tapped”—which is to say, the operators found
themselves caught in a situation where they had to give up a share or
quit—otherwise it was the cooler. It wasn’t a great while before word
passed along that a peg was playing them from the dark side. Whoever
this super crook might be, he continued to stay in the gloom. When he
got the hook in his victim, his agent called, and it was pay or get it
in the neck. And as this came to be played on them more and more they
began putting a name to him—“The Vulture.”
It’s hardly necessary to call your attention to the fact that the
recently arrived Mr. Pentecost had a most extraordinary equipment
for the prosecution of such undertakings. Fully acquainted, even
before he took up the practice of law in Chicago, with every phase of
criminality, and familiar with the methods and characteristics of those
engaged in it, his Spellman career brought to his hand all the weapons
of sharp practice and chicanery that the crafty and hazardous defense
of his underworld clients compelled him to use.
* * * * *
More than two years after Mr. Spellman’s disappearance, Mr. Stephen
Harker (not operating under that name at the time) became suddenly
aware that the talons of the offensive bird recently spoken of had sunk
themselves into him. But a remarkable thing occurred. “The Vulture”
wanted to see him. A meeting was arranged by an agent. Pentecost had a
few tried and tested assistants in his business whom he liked to refer
to as “trusties,” and this man was one of them. A year later he had
fifteen or twenty mostly planted in the large cities throughout the
country. These men were occupied solely in assisting him about his own
operations—he had no idea of getting control of others and becoming a
big boss of criminality like those you read about. Nobody ever did that
anyway.
At the time he saw Harker he was beginning to have schemes for some
of the most daring operations that had ever been conceived, and he’d
got the idea that it would be a great advantage to work from the sound
basis of a partnership and an office and a high-class rating.
The thing was brought about, resulting in the firm of Harker &
Pentecost, with a perfectly satisfactory standing in the business
world. Harker was the senior partner, but Pentecost was the power
plant, and as soon as Harker got a gleam of the extraordinary sort of
person it was who’d picked him up, he didn’t want it any other way. The
running of the promoting schemes was left in his hands, while Pentecost
conducted operations that were sufficiently dangerous and unusual to
interest him. These affairs took him to all parts of the country, and
he quite frequently spotted something in the way of a novelty that was
more or less in Harker’s department. He couldn’t so much as glance at
a thing without having a complete and, more often than not, amazingly
ingenious method of operating it flash automatically through his mind.
They pegged along with a sort of team work for some time, Pentecost
running to operations with a higher and higher percentage of danger
to them, and Harker running to a higher and higher degree of anxiety
on account of same, for owing to the partnership, he was in on them
too. Once in a while he’d try to hook Pentecost back from something,
but he never succeeded, and as one after another of these close-call
enterprises got by—always, it turned out, protected by the most
remarkable system of defensive lay-outs ever seen—he quit talking
about it. That big risk and protection game appeared to be Pentecost’s
delight. Often it would seem that he purposely played it as close as
he could just to see them come up against his extraordinarily laid-out
safety systems.
* * * * *
He was over in Boston one summer (it was the third year of the
partnership), and had been there some five or six weeks attending to a
little affair he had going in that town. Rather an ancient game it was,
but he’d taken advantage of conditions to rejuvenate it. “Fifty percent
in forty-five days and pull out whenever you like,” was the captivating
slogan set in circulation. All the boobs ask for is a new excuse. If
they can’t understand it, all the better—so long as it has the sound
of money. Pentecost had one for them right fresh off the bat of the
World War. “International Postal Reply Coupons” was his, and it did
the trick. After the prompt payment of the forty-five days’ interest
two or three times, there was a rush. People blocked the corridors
of the office building where the headquarters of this hoary but
brought-up-to-date swindle were situated, and fought for places in the
line so they could get the chance to pitch away their money. Over nine
million five hundred thousand was shaken out of socks and drawn out of
savings banks and pushed over to Pentecost—or rather to the dummy he’d
put in as manager, for of course he never appeared in it himself. This
dummy was an innocent, simple-minded Italian, or Italian-American, dug
up by one of Pentecost’s men and buzzed by two or three of them till
he really came to believe this “Postal Reply” business was a gorgeous
and legitimate undertaking. So enthusiastic about it did he become
that he set to work with something bordering on religious frenzy;
and so completely did his favorable opinion of the enterprise take
possession of him that when, some time later, the warning signal went
up and Pentecost notified him—through his trusties—to quit at once
and he’d find a high-powered car waiting for him at a certain place,
the fellow refused to budge. He was perfectly sure the Postal Reply
Coupons affair was a profitable and reputable undertaking, and if the
owners, whoever they were, were going to give it up, he’d go on with
it himself. He had clerks there who knew the way to run it. It was in
vain the two men who had charge of him—the same two who’d been making
a nightly clean-up of the day’s receipts, transferring the amounts to
various banks in the distant cities—argued with him.
When Pentecost heard of the Italian’s crazy ideas he made every
possible effort to get him away. The simplicity and innocence of the
poor devil hit him in the one spot where he was soft. But in this
affair the time was too short. The police pounced on the Italian before
Pentecost’s men could kidnap him, as they had orders to do.
The Sunday following, in his rooms at one of the hotels, Mr. Pentecost
had a stack of the morning papers and was lazily running through the
sensational accounts of the collapse of the Postal Reply Swindle, with
their graphic descriptions of the arrest of the Italian supposed to
have been at the head of it—of his wild insistence that everything was
all right—of the frantic mob of investors fighting and screaming for
their money—together with the statements and opinions of inspectors,
district attorneys, financiers, Post Office authorities and what not,
on the various aspects of the colossal fraud. It was a most amusing
mess—one he’d have enjoyed immensely if his crazy Italian hadn’t got
the hooks in him. He was sore as the devil about that.
As he carelessly turned the pages in other parts of one of the huge
Sunday editions, his eye was suddenly caught and held by the heading of
a full-page write-up in one of them, which read:
HERMIT INVENTOR OF WEST ROXBURY
MECHANICAL GENIUS SOLE OCCUPANT OF OLD CRIPPS MANSION
MARVELOUS MACHINES BUT NO SALES
Pentecost had been lolling about in bathrobe and slippers, but now he
sat erect and read on rapidly. The article strongly reinforced the
notion he’d got from the headlines that he might find something out
there that would come in nicely for Harker. His plan had been to leave
for New York on the “Merchants’ Limited” (that is, the Sunday train
running at that time on the “Merchants’” schedule), but he decided to
take one of the night expresses instead, so he could get out to Roxbury
and see what the fellow had.
The article spoke of the mansion as being on Torrington Road, but gave
no further indication of its locality, and even at so early a stage
of a barely possible chance, Pentecost would no more have thought of
making enquiries than of swallowing rat poison. There were two or
three pictures of the house, and several of the mechanical genius
himself, which might help some. He took a taxi, dismounting as soon
as they reached Torrington Road. After paying the fare and observing
that the vehicle had safely disappeared townward with no questionable
hesitation, he walked up the road. It was late in the afternoon and
warm—the date being precisely mid August.
Mr. Pentecost, as he thought he could, recognized the old Cripps
mansion from the newspaper illustrations. As he walked up the
weed-grown and rutted driveway there was nothing he failed to take in:
the ruinous gateway at the entrance with its great square posts—once
painted white, but now a streaked and dirty brown, and one of them
considerably off plumb; the neglected lawns with their tangles of
overgrown grass and weeds and ancient misguided shrubbery that had long
since heeded the call of the wild; the old elm trees clustered about
the house and densely shading it; and the mansion itself, much needing
paint and repair, particularly as to the huge wooden columns supporting
the roof of a front portico two stories in height.
He saw, too, that the walls of the house were covered with a heavy
growth of Virginia creeper and that this vigorous vine was massed
thickly about most of the windows. Another thing he noticed was that
several panes of glass were broken out of the second-story window on
the left under the portico roof, and that the opening had been boarded
up on the inside.
He noted all these things without pause while approaching the house,
which was set at some distance back from the road; and after mounting
the wide stone steps of the portico and crossing it, he pressed the
push button at the right of the door. After waiting a little he gave
it a more forceful shove. Still getting no response, he was in the act
of raising his hand to the large and rusty knocker when the door was
quietly opened and a rather tall and exceedingly slender young man
stood before him in the dimness of the hall.