In the absolute darkness of the shade-drawn library Thornley Colton
softly whistled a syncopated version of Mendelssohn’s “Spring Song” as
his deft fingers filled an empty goose-quill with a fine white powder
from an improvised paper funnel. He plugged the open end with a small
wad of cotton; then his wonderfully sharp ears caught the rustle of the
double portières.
“Oh, Sydney,” he called, “have you heard anything from the bank this
morning?”
Thames entered the darkness unhesitatingly, for his constant practice of
judging distance and figuring steps for Colton had made him almost as
much at home in the darkness as the blind man himself.
“No,” he answered shortly. Then, with the frank criticism of long
friendship: “It’s a crime, Thorn, for you to be idle while that girl is
being dogged, and harassed, and----”
“I thought she sang remarkably well last night for a person under such a
strain,” interrupted Colton musingly.
“It was wonderful, wonderful!” Sydney Thames spoke with the breathless
enthusiasm a beautiful girl always aroused in his woman-hungry heart.
“Here, here!” protested the problemist laughingly. “Remember that she is
another man’s wife!”
“Great heavens, Thorn! How can you laugh?” cried Thames resentfully.
“Think of those two dogs of detectives, questioning, bulldozing,
shadowing! Why, they didn’t let Miss Richmond get away from the bank
until late in the afternoon, then Jamison insisted on going with her.
His partner hung around the bank till it closed----”
“Trying to discover the use of powdered sulphur,” smiled Colton. “I
thought he would. Any one but a central-office man would have gone to a
drug store, as I suggested.”
“Two other head-quarters men hauled that frail old Mrs. Schneider and
the two watchmen to police head-quarters, and put them through the third
degree.”
“And a half-dozen more were on the trail of Mrs. Bowden, while we were
enjoying the opera and an alleged cabaret show afterward, for which this
dark room is the penalty. Too much light yesterday gave me a frightful
headache.”
The sudden ringing of the telephone in the darkness made Thames jump,
and Colton’s cane, which was never away from him, felt the movement.
“Answer it, Sydney,” he requested.
The secretary’s hands had not the sureness of his feet, and he had to
fumble a moment. When he had given the customary salutation and had
listened a moment he gasped:
“It’s Simpson, Thorn. His wife is missing! He wants you.” He extended
the phone in the darkness, but Thornley Colton made no move to take it.
“Tell him I’ll be down to the bank in an hour or so. I’ll see him then.”
Colton spoke idly.
Sydney repeated the message. Followed a silence. “He’s frantic, Thorn!”
Thames’s voice shook with excitement. “When he got home last night she
was gone. The doorman at his apartment house said that she had gone out
in the morning, for a short walk, he supposed. Simpson was so excited
about the robbery he did not telephone her during the day, as he had
promised. He spent half the night searching, and tried a dozen times to
get you. She is deaf and dumb, Thorn. Think of it! Deaf and dumb, and
lost!” It only needed a woman in trouble to shatter Sydney Thames’s
nerves.
“Tell him that I’m trying to figure out that robbery. Tell him also that
I never let one case interfere with another. I’m not a detective.
There’s nothing interesting about a missing woman. Hundreds of ’em every
day. I find my pleasure in interesting problems, not in police work.”
Colton’s voice was sharp, curt, utterly devoid of sympathy.
Sydney knew that tone, as he knew the man who used it. He repeated part
of the message, added gentle-voiced apologies, and hung up the receiver
with a sigh.
“That was heartless, Thorn! Think of that woman, deaf and dumb, lost in
this----”
“Sometimes, Sydney, that susceptible heart of yours becomes wearisome.”
Colton spoke a bit sharply. “A moment ago you were protesting because I
was here instead of running around after the man who stole the
half-million in bonds from the Berkley Trust Company.”
“But Mrs. Norris is not helpless----” And for fifteen minutes he argued,
while Colton smiled imperturbably in the darkness, and filled two other
quills with the white powder, and plugged the ends with tufts of cotton.
Suddenly Thames stopped, for Colton had picked up the telephone and was
giving a number.
“Hello, Shrimp!” he called, when the connection had been made.
“Everything all right? Fine business. Three hours, eh? Good! Be on time,
and obey orders. Good-bye!”
“Where’s The Fee?” demanded Sydney. “I haven’t seen him since
yesterday.”
“Emulating the example of his worthy hero, Nick Carter. Shrimp is a real
detective now.” Colton returned the crystalless watch to his pocket,
picked up the three quills, and arose. “Come on, Sydney. We’ll walk over
to the bank.”
“Walk?” ejaculated Thames, for he knew the blind man’s aversion to
walking when he could ride. “Where’s the machine?”
“John and the machine are helping Shrimp in his detective work,”
explained Colton. And in the twenty minutes’ walk to the Berkley Trust
Company he absolutely refused to answer questions, but kept up a
continuous conversation on trivial topics, that was maddening to the
nervous secretary.
The effect of the previous day’s badgering, questioning, and threats of
the central-office men could be seen as one entered the bank. The aged
cashier’s hands trembled as he tried to count a sheaf of new bills.
Book-keepers in the rear wrote figures and erased them. Thompson, head
of the trust and estate clerks, in his little ante-room cage, was in a
pitiable state of nerves. The typewriter’s chair by President Montrose’s
desk was vacant, because the lady stenographer was at home under the
care of a doctor. The fifty years of staid, conservative calm that had
characterized the Berkley Trust Company during its long and useful life
had been hit by a five-hundred-thousand-dollar storm.
The group in the vaultlike office of Second Secretary Norris was little
better. President Montrose could hardly control his trembling hand to
stroke his Vandyke; Norris’s eyes showed the sleeplessness of the night
before; Miss Richmond was calm with the calmness that means coming
nervous collapse; her mother was crying softly; Simpson seemed
positively haggard, and Sydney Thames murmured words of sympathy for the
man who had two troubles. Jamison and the other central-office man could
not make their sneers wholly sceptical. The protective-agency men were
plainly puzzled.
“I see you are all on hand.” There was no smile in Colton’s voice now,
or on his lips; he was deadly calm, coldly earnest. “You didn’t think it
necessary to send for the two watchmen?”
“We got men watchin’ them,” put in the surly Jamison.
“Thanks!” came curtly from Colton. “Sit down at this table, all of you.
I want to tell you a story.”
“We didn’t come to hear----”
Simpson interrupted the detective: “For God’s sake, make it short, Mr.
Colton! My wife----”
“I’ll look into that later.” Colton’s cane assured him that the chairs
were around the long table, and his finger-tips felt the face of his
watch in his pocket.
“Will you?” Simpson’s voice was almost sarcastically eager, his
heavy-lidded eyes narrowed. Thames could not blame the man’s natural
resentment for Colton’s offhandedness.
Silently they took seats. Colton sat facing the closed door; across the
table was Simpson and Norris. Miss Richmond and her mother were at the
end. The four detectives were on either side of the problemist.
“This is a story of a criminal who was born a criminal; who couldn’t be
honest if he tried,” began Colton, in his quietly expressive voice. One
hand lay idly on the table before him, the other on his knees, fingers
holding the slim, hollow cane. “He wasn’t just born crooked. He started
petty thieving before he was out of short trousers. He was the rare
criminal that works years as an honest man to pave the way for
criminality. He had brains. He could have been a wonderful success as an
honest man. But he couldn’t be straight. The criminal instinct was
there. He was waiting for the proper time. But the coarser side of his
nature refused to be held in leash. He needed money. And with the
inherent craft of his kind he began to plan the robbery of the Berkley
Trust Company. It wasn’t so hard, because, being an old, conservative
institution, in which men had grown gray, the personal side entered as
it cannot in the modern, up-to-date institutions where men come and go.
Instead of elaborate safeguards the simple protection of proven honesty
entered largely into the protection of the bank’s valuables. And where
there is simple honesty there is always vulnerability.
“This criminal had found the vulnerable spot years before the robbery
was actually planned; when the time came for its consummation luck came
to his aid, as it often does.” He paused. On the outside door came a
knock, so faint that only his wonderfully sharp ears heard it. “There
was no possibility of suspicion attaching itself to him, for he had
planned an elaborate programme to foist suspicion on others. And this
robbery was but one of a series, for the method his shrewd brain had
devised was capable of endless combinations. In a few years the Berkley
Trust losses would have mounted to millions!”
His fist crashed down on the heavy table. The door opened. Between the
sober-faced Shrimp and the expressionless Irish chauffeur was a
sunken-eyed, tottering creature, unshaven----
“_There’s your wife, Simpson!_” In the silence Colton’s voice came like
the crack of a pistol.
“My God, Thorn, it’s a _man_!” In Sydney Thames’s tone was agony that
the sensitive blind man whom he loved could have made such a mistake.
“Yes, a man! _Sit still, Simpson!_” With a movement as quick as light
itself Colton’s fingers had dropped the slim cane that had given its
warning, and held a blue-steel automatic. “Or rather what was once a
man.” His tone rang with deadly menace. “Charlie de Roque, vaudeville
actor, the youngest and best female impersonator on the stage; Mrs.
Bowden, the consumptive who played so well on the sympathies of the
three simple-minded souls at sixteen-hundred Third Avenue; Mrs. Simpson,
the deaf-and-dumb little girl who was going to make Simpson lead a
better life.”
“You lie!” The shambling shadow of a man screamed it as he tried to jerk
away from the chauffeur. “They told me they were going to take me to a
sanatorium. I don’t know what you’re talking about. They’ve kept me----”
His whole body racked with sobs.
“Would you tell the truth for these?” The automatic did not waver a
fraction of an inch as Colton’s unoccupied hand threw down on the table
three cotton-plugged quills.
“Merciful God! _Yes!_” With insane strength he broke away from the big
Irishman and darted to the table. His twitching fingers snatched a
quill, pulled the cotton from the end, threw his head back----
“Enough of these damn’ theatrics!” Simpson snarled it viciously, but he
did not move. “By Heaven, Colton, you can’t railroad me to save Norris
and his wife with the fool ravings of a cocaine snuffler!” His face was
purple, the veins in his forehead seemed ready to burst. “Mrs. Bowden!”
He scoffed. “How did she get the bonds? Where are they? Find ’em!” he
laughed triumphantly at Colton across the table, and the two
central-office men who now stood over him.
“Here yuh are, Mr. Colton.” It was Shrimp, staggering under the weight
of a big bucket of dirty water. He set it down beside the problemist’s
chair.
“The bonds are here, Simpson!” Colton’s hand plunged into the water, and
came up with a dripping, shiny black object. “There’s the first package,
in an all-rubber ice bag!”
“You devil!” Simpson’s rage made his voice a scream.
“Take your prisoner, policemen.” Colton could not refrain from adding
that last scornful word to the two detectives who had not seen until a
blind man had shown them.