THE TANGO THIEF
"My husband has such a jealous disposition. He will never believe the
truth--never!"
Agatha Seabury moved nervously in the deep easy chair beside Kennedy's
desk, leaning forward, uncomfortably, the tense lines marring the beauty
of her fine features.
Kennedy tilted his desk chair back in order to study her face.
"You say you have never written a line to the fellow nor he to you?" he
asked.
"Not a line, not a scrap,--until I received that typewritten letter
about which I just told you," she repeated vehemently, meeting his
penetrating gaze without flinching. "Why, Professor Kennedy, as heaven
is my witness, I have never done a wrong thing--except to meet him now
and then at afternoon dances."
I felt that the nerve-racked society woman before us must be either
telling the truth or else that she was one of the cleverest actresses I
had ever seen.
"Have you the letter here?" asked Craig quickly.
Mrs. Seabury reached into her neat leather party case and pulled out a
carefully folded sheet of note paper.
It was all typewritten, down to the very signature itself. Evidently the
blackmailer had taken every precaution to protect himself, for even if
the typewriting could be studied and identified, it would be next to
impossible to get at the writer through it and locate the machine on
which it was written among the thousands in the city.
Kennedy studied the letter carefully, then, with a low exclamation,
handed it over to me, nodding to Mrs. Seabury that it was all right for
me to see it.
"No ordinary fellow, I'm afraid," he commented musingly, adding, "this
thief of reputations."
I read, beginning with the insolent familiarity of "Dear Agatha."
"I hope you will pardon me for writing to you," the letter
continued, "but I find that I am in a rather difficult position
financially. As you know, in the present disorganized state of
the stock market, investments which in normal times are good
are now almost valueless. Still, I must protect those I already
have without sacrificing them.
"It is therefore necessary that I raise fifty thousand dollars
before the end of the week, and I know of no one to appeal to
but you--who have shared so many pleasant stolen hours with me.
"Of course, I understand all that you have told me about Mr.
Seabury and his violent nature. Still, I feel sure that one of
your wealth and standing in the community can find a way to
avoid all trouble from that quarter. Naturally, I should prefer
to take every precaution to prevent the fact of our intimacy
from coming to Mr. Seabury's knowledge. But I am really
desperate and feel that you alone can help me.
"Hoping to hear from you soon, I am,
"Your old tango friend,
"H. MORGAN SHERBURNE."
I fairly gasped at the thinly veiled threat of exposure at the end of
the note from this artistic blackmailer.
She was watching our faces anxiously as we read.
"Oh," she cried wildly, glancing from one to the other of us, strangers
to whom in her despair she had been forced to bare the secrets of her
proud heart, "he's so clever about it, too. I--I didn't know what to do.
I had only my jewels. I thought of all the schemes I had ever read, of
pawning them, of having paste replicas made, of trying to collect the
burglary insurance, of--"
"But you didn't do anything like that, did you?" interrupted Craig
hastily.
"No, no," she cried. "I thought if I did, then it wouldn't be long
before this Sherburne would be back again for more. Oh," she almost
wailed, dabbing at the genuine tears with her dainty lace handkerchief
while her shoulders trembled with a repressed convulsive sob, "I--I am
utterly wretched--crushed."
"The scoundrel!" I muttered.
Kennedy shook his head at me slowly. "Calling names won't help matters
now," he remarked tersely. Then in an encouraging tone he added, "You
have done just the right thing, Mrs. Seabury, in not starting to pay the
blackmail. The secret of the success of these fellows is that their
victims prefer losing jewelry and money to going to the police and
having a lot of unpleasant notoriety."
"Yes, I know that," she agreed hastily, "but--my husband! If he hears,
he will believe the worst, and--I--I really love and respect
Judson--though," she added, "he might have seen that I liked dancing
and--innocent amusements of the sort still. I am not an old woman."
I could not help wondering if the whole truth were told in her rather
plaintive remark, or whether she was overplaying what was really a minor
complaint. Judson Seabury, I knew from hearsay, was a man of middle age
to whom, as to so many, business and the making of money had loomed as
large as life itself. Competitors had even accused him of being ruthless
when he was convinced that he was right, and I could well imagine that
Mrs. Seabury was right in her judgment of the nature of the man if he
became convinced for any reason that someone had crossed his path in his
relations with his wife.
"Where did you usually--er--meet Sherburne?" asked Craig, casually
guiding the conversation.
"Why--at the Vanderveer--always," she replied.
"Would you mind meeting him there again this afternoon so that I could
see him?" asked Kennedy. "Perhaps it would be best, anyhow, to let him
think that you are going to do as he demands, so that we can gain a
little time."
She looked up, startled. "Yes--I can do that--but don't you think it is
risky? Do you think there is any way I can get free from him? Suppose he
makes a new demand. What shall I do? Oh, Professor Kennedy, you do not,
you cannot know what I am going through--how I hate and fear him."
"Mrs. Seabury," reassured Craig earnestly, "I'll take up your case.
Clever as the man is, there must be some way to get at him."
Sherburne must have exercised a sort of fascination over her, for the
look of relief that crossed her face as Kennedy promised to aid her was
almost painful. As often before, I could scarcely envy Kennedy in his
ready assumption of another's problems that seemed so baffling. It
meant little, perhaps, to us whether we succeeded. But to her it meant
happiness, perhaps honor itself.
It was as though she were catching at a life line in the swirling
current of events that had engulfed her. She hesitated no longer.
"I'll be there--I'll meet him--at four," she murmured, as she rose and
made a hurried departure.
For some time after she had gone, Kennedy sat considering what she had
told us. As for myself, I cannot say that I was thoroughly satisfied
that she had told all. It was not to be expected.
"How do you figure that woman out?" I queried at length.
Kennedy looked at me keenly from under knitted brows. "You mean, do I
believe her story--of her relations with this fellow, Sherbourne?" he
returned, thoughtfully.
"Exactly," I assented, "and what she said about her regard for her
husband, too."
Kennedy did not reply for a few minutes. Evidently the same question had
been in his own mind and he had not reasoned out the answer. Before he
could reply the door buzzer sounded and the colored boy from the lower
hall handed a card to Craig, with an apology about the house telephone
switchboard being out of order.
As Kennedy laid the card on the table before us, with a curt "Show the
gentleman in," to the boy, I looked at it in blank amazement.
It read, "Judson Seabury."
Before I could utter a word of comment on the strange coincidence, the
husband was sitting in the same chair in which his wife had sat less
than half an hour before.
Judson Seabury was a rather distinguished looking man of the solid,
business type. Merely to meet his steel gray eye was enough to tell one
that this man would brook no rivalry in anything he undertook. I foresaw
trouble, even though I could not define its nature.
Craig twirled the card in his fingers, as if to refresh his mind on a
name otherwise unfamiliar. I was wondering whether Seabury might not
have trailed his wife to our office and have come to demand an
explanation. It was with some relief that I found he had not.
"Professor Kennedy," he began nervously, hitching his chair closer,
without further introduction, in the manner of a man who was accustomed
to having his own way in any matter he undertook, "I am in a most
peculiar situation."
Seabury paused a moment, Kennedy nodded acquiescence, and the man
suddenly blurted out, "I--I don't know whether I'm being slowly poisoned
or not!"
The revelation was startling enough in itself, but doubly so after the
interview that had just preceded.
I covered my own surprise by a quick glance at Craig. His face was
impassive as he narrowly searched Seabury's. I knew, though, that back
of his assumed calm, Craig was doing some rapid thinking about the
ethics of listening to both parties in the case. However, he said
nothing. Indeed, Seabury, once started, hurried on, scarcely giving him
a chance to interrupt.
"I may as well tell you," he proceeded, with the air of a man who for
the first time is relieving his mind of something that has been weighing
heavily on him, "that for some time I have not been exactly--er--easy in
my mind about the actions of my wife."
Evidently he had arrived at the conclusion to tell what worried him, and
must say it, for he continued immediately: "It's not that I actually
know anything about any indiscretions on Agatha's part, but,--well,
there have been little things--hints that she was going frequently to
_thes dansants_, and that sort of thing, you know. Lately, too, I have
seen a change in her manner toward me, I fancy. Sometimes I think she
seems to avoid me, especially during the last few days. Then again, as
this morning, she seems to be--er--too solicitous."
He passed his hand over his forehead, as if to clear it. For once he did
not seem to be the self-confident man who had at first entered our
apartment. I noticed that he had a peculiar look, a feeble state of the
body which he was at times at pains to conceal, a look which the doctors
call, I believe, cachectic.
"I mean," he added hastily, as if it might as well be said first as
last, "that she seems to be much concerned about my health, my food--"
"Just what is it that you actually know, not what you fear?" interrupted
Kennedy, perhaps a little brusquely, at last having seen a chance to
insert a word edgewise into the flow of Seabury's troubles, real or
imaginary.
Seabury paused a moment, then resumed with a description of his health,
which, to tell the truth, was by no means reassuring.
"Well," he answered slowly, "I suffer a good deal from such terrible
dyspepsia, Professor Kennedy. My stomach and digestion are all
upset--bad health and growing weakness--pain, discomfort--vomiting after
meals, even bleeding. I've tried all sorts of cures, but still I can
feel that I am still losing health and strength, and, so far, at least,
the doctors don't seem to be doing me much good. I have begun to wonder
whether it is a case for the doctors, after all. Why, the whole thing is
getting on my nerves so that I'm almost afraid to eat," he concluded.
"You have eaten nothing today, then, I am to understand?" asked Craig
when Seabury had finished with his minute and puzzling account of his
troubles.
"Not even breakfast this morning," he replied. "Mrs. Seabury urged me to
eat, but--I--I couldn't."
"Good!" exclaimed Kennedy, much to our surprise. "That will make it just
so much easier to use a test I have in mind to determine whether there
is anything in your suspicions."
He had risen and gone over to a cabinet.
"Would you mind baring your arm a moment?" he asked Seabury.
With a sharp little instrument, carefully sterilized, Craig pricked a
vein in the man's arm. Slowly a few drops of darkened venous blood
welled out. A moment later Kennedy caught them in a sterile test tube
and sealed the tube.
Before our second visitor could start again in retailing his suspicions
which now seemed definitely, in his own mind at least, directed in some
way against Mrs. Seabury, Kennedy skillfully closed the interview.
"I feel sure that the test I shall make will tell me positively, soon,
whether your fears are well grounded or not, Mr. Seabury," he concluded
briefly, as he accompanied the man out into the hall to shake hands
farewell with him at the elevator door. "I'll let you know as soon as
anything develops, but until we have something tangible there is no use
wasting our energies."