"WORTH 10,000"
You might have called Vincent C. Marr a self-made man and be making no
mistake about it. For he was self-made; not merely self-assembled, as so
many men are who attain distinction in this profession or that calling.
Entirely through his own efforts, with only his native wit to light the
way for him, he had pulled himself up, step by step, from the very
bottom of his trade to the very top of it. His trade was the applied
trade of crookedness; his pursuit the pursuit of other folks' cash
resources. He had the envy and admiration of his friends in allied
branches of the same general industry; he had the begrudged respect of
his official enemies, the police; while his accomplishments--the tricks
he pulled, the coups he scored, the purses he garnered--were discussed
and praised by the human nits and lice of the Seamy Side, just as the
achievements in a legitimate field of a Hill or a Schwab or a
Rockefeller might be talked of among petty shopkeepers and little
business men. He had, as the phrase goes, everything--imagination,
resource, ingenuity, audacity, utter ruthlessness.
Yet it would seem hard to conceive a more humble beginning than his had
been. His father was a cobbler in a little West Virginia coal town. At
sixteen he ran away from home to go with a small circus. This circus was
a traveling shield for all manner of rough extortioners. Card sharps,
shell workers, petermen, sneak thieves, pickpockets, even burglars rode
its train. They had a saying that the owner of this show sold the
safe-blowing privileges outright but retained a one-third interest in
the hold-up concession. That was a whimsical exaggeration of what
perhaps had a kern of truth in it. Certainly it was the fact of the case
that the owner depended more upon his lion's cut of the swag which the
trailing jackals amassed than upon the intake at the ticket windows. Bad
weather might kill his business for a week; a crop failure might lame it
for a month; but the graft was as sure as anything graftified can be.
When the runaway youth, Vince Marr, inserted himself beneath the
protecting wing of this patron he knew exactly whither his ultimate
ambitions tended. He had no vague boyish design to serve a 'prenticeship
as stake driver or roustabout in the hope some day of graduating into a
rider or a tumbler, a ringmaster or a clown. He joined out in order that
among these congenial influences he might the quicker become an
accomplished thief.
Starting as a novice he had to carve out his own little niche in
company where the competition already was fierce. His rise, though, was
rapid. So far as the records show he was the first of the Monday guys.
He developed the line himself and gave to it its name. A Monday guy was
a plunderer of clotheslines. He followed the route of the daily street
parade; rather he followed a route running roughly parallel to it. He
set out coincidentally with it and he aimed to have his pilfering stint
finished when the parade was over. He prowled in alleys and skinned over
back fences, progressing from house yard to house yard while the parade
passed through the streets upon which the houses faced. From kitchen
boilers and laundry heaps, from wash baskets and drying ropes, he
skimmed the pick of what was offered--silk shirts, fancy hose, women's
embroidered blouses, women's belaced under-things. His work was made
comparatively easy for him, since the dwellers of the houses would be
watching the parade.
His strippings he carried to the show lot and there he hid them away.
That night in the privilege car the collections of the day would be
disposed of by sale or trade to members of the troupe and the affiliated
rogues. Especially desirable pieces might be reserved to be shipped on
to a professional receiver of stolen goods in a certain city. Naturally,
pickings were at their best on a Monday, for since Mother Eve on the
first Monday hanged her fig leaf out to dry, Monday has been wash day
the world over. Hence the name for the practitioner of the business.
Vince Marr did not very long remain a Monday guy. The risks were not
very great, everything considered. Suppose detection did come; suppose
the cry of "Stop thief!" was raised. Who would quit watching a circus
parade to join in a hunt for a marauder already vanished in a maze of
outbuildings and alleyways? Still there were risks to be taken, and the
rewards on the whole were small and uncertain. Before he reached his
nineteenth year young Marr was the manager of a weighing pitch.
Apparently he had but one associate in the enterprise; as a matter of
fact he had four. In the place where holidaying crowds gathered--on a
circus lot, at a street carnival, outside the gates of a county fair--he
and his visible partner would set up his weighing device, and then
stationing himself near it he would beseech you to let him guess your
correct weight. If he guessed within three pounds of it, as recorded by
the machine, you owed him a nickel; if he failed to guess within three
pounds of it you owed him nothing. "Take a chance, brother!" he would
entreat you with friendly jovial banter. "Be a sport--take a chance!"
Let us say you accepted his proposition. Swiftly he would flip with his
hands along your sides, would slap your flanks, would pinch you gently
as though testing your flesh for solidity, then would call out loudly
so that all within earshot might hear: "I figure that the gentleman
weighs--let me see--exactly one hundred and forty-seven pounds." Or
perhaps he would predict: "This big fellow will pull her down at two
hundred and eight pounds, no more and no less." Then you placed yourself
in the swinging seat of the machine with your feet clear of the earth,
and his partner duly weighed you. Sometimes Marr guessed your weight;
quite as often, though, he failed to come within three pounds of it and
you paid him nothing for his pains. It was difficult to figure how so
precarious a means of income could be made to yield a proper return
unless the scales were dishonest.
The scales were honest enough. The real profits were derived from quite
a different source. Three master dips--pickpockets--were waiting for you
as you moved off; they attended to your case with neatness and dispatch.
Their work was expedited for them by reason that already they knew where
you carried your valuables. Once Marr ran his swift and practiced
fingers over your body he knew where your watch was, your wallet, your
purse for small change, your roll of bills.
A code word in his patter advertised to his confederates exactly
whereabouts upon your person the treasure was carried. Really the
business gave splendid returns. It was Marr, though, who had seized upon
it when it merely was a catchpenny carnival device and made of it a
real money earner. Moreover, the pickpockets took the real peril. Even
in the infrequent event of the detection of them there was no evidence
to justify the suspicion that the proprietors of the weighing machine
were accessories to the pocket looting. Vince Marr was like that--always
playing safe for himself, always thinking a jump ahead of his crowd and
a jump and a half ahead of the police.
He was never the one to get into a rut and stay there. Long before the
old-time grafting circuses grew scarce and scarcer, and before the
street-fairing concessions progressed out of their primitive beginnings
into orderly and recognized organizations, he had quitted both fields
for higher and more lucrative ramifications of his craft. Ask any
old-time con man who ostensibly has reformed. If he tells you the
truth--which is doubtful--he will tell you it was Chappy Marr who really
evolved the fake foot-racing game, who patched up the leaks in the
wireless wire-tapping game, who standardized at least two popular forms
of the send game, who improved marvelously upon three differing versions
of the pay-off game.
All the time he was perfecting himself in his profession, fitting
himself for the practice of it in its highermost departments. He learned
to tone down his wardrobe. He polished his manners until they had a
gloss on them. He labored assiduously to correct his grammar, and so
well succeeded at the task that except when he was among associates and
relapsed into the argot of the breed, he used language fit for a college
professor--fit for some college professors anyway. At thirty he was a
glib, spry person with a fancy for gay housings. At forty-five, when he
reached the top of his swing, he had the looks, the vocabulary and the
presence of an educated and a traveled person.
He had one technical defect, if defect it might be called. In the larger
affairs of his unhallowed business he displayed a mental adaptability, a
talent to think quickly and shift his tactics to meet the suddenly
arisen emergency, which was the envy of lesser underworld notables; but
in smaller details of life he was prone to follow the line of least
resistance, which is true of the most of us, honest and dishonest men
the same. For instance, though he had half a dozen or more common
aliases--names which he changed as he changed his collars--he pursued a
certain fixed rule in choosing them, just as a man in picking out
neckties might favor mixed weaves and varied patterns but stick always
to the same general color scheme. He might be Vincent C. Marr, which was
his proper name, or among intimates Chappy Marr. Then again he might be
Col. Van Camp Morgan, of Louisiana; or Mr. Vance C. Michaels, a Western
mine owner; or Victor C. Morehead; he might be a Markham or a Murrill or
a Marsh or a Murphy as the occasion and the role and his humor suited.
Always, though, the initials were the same. Partly this was for
convenience--the name was so much easier to remember then--but partly it
was due to that instinct for ordered routine which in a reputable sphere
of endeavor would have made this man rather conventional and methodical
in his personal habits, however audacious and resourceful he might have
been on his public side and his professional. He especially was lucky in
that he never acquired any of those mouth-filling nicknames such as
Paper Collar Joe wore, and Grand Central Pete and Appetite Willie and
the Mitt-and-a-Half Kid and the late Soapy Smith--picturesque enough,
all of them, but giving to the wearers thereof an undesirable prominence
in newspapers and to that added extent curtailing their usefulness in
their own special areas of operation.
Nor had he ever smelled the chloride-of-lime-and-circus-cage smell of
the inside of a state's prison; no Bertillon sharp had on file his
measurements and thumb prints, nor did any central office or detective
bureau contain his rogues-gallery photograph. Times almost past counting
he had been taken up on suspicion; more than once had been arrested on
direct charges, and at least twice had been indicted. But because of
connections with crooked lawyers and approachable politicians and venal
police officials and because also of his own individual canniness, he
always had escaped conviction and imprisonment. There was no stink of
the stone hoosgow on his correctly tailored garments, and no barber
other than one of his own choosing had ever shingled Chappy Marr's hair.
Within reason, therefore, he was free to come and go, to bide and to
tarry; and come and go at will he did until that unfortuitous hour when
the affair of the wealthy Mrs. Propbridge and her husband came to pass.
When the period of post-wartime inflation came upon this country
specialized thievery marched abreast with legitimate enterprise; with it
as with the other, rewards became tremendously larger; small turnovers
were regarded as puny and contemptible, and operators thought in terms
of pyramiding thousands of dollars where before they had been glad to
strive for speculative returns of hundreds. By now Chappy Marr had won
his way to the forefront of his kind. The same intelligence invoked, the
same energies exercised, and in almost any proper field he would before
this have been a rich man and an honored one. By his twisted code of
ethics and unmorals, though, the dubious preeminence he enjoyed was
ample reward. He stood forth from the ruck and run, a creator and a
leader who could afford to pass by the lesser, more precarious games,
with their prospect of uncertain takings, for the really big and
important things. He was like a specialist who having won a prominent
position may now say that he will accept only such patients as he
pleases and treat only such cases as appeal to him.
This being so, there were open to him two especially favored lines: he
might be a deep-sea fisherman, meaning by that a crooked card player
traveling on ocean steamers; or he might be the head of a swell mob of
blackmailers preying upon more or less polite society. For the first he
had not the digital facility which was necessary; his fingers lacked the
requisite deftness, however agile and flexible the brain which directed
the fingers might be. So Chappy Marr turned his talents to blackmailing.
Blackmailing plants had acquired a sudden vogue; nearly all the
wise-cracking kings and queens of Marr's world had gone or were going
into them. Moreover, blackmailing offered an opportunity for variety of
scope and ingenuity in the mechanics of its workings which appealed
mightily to a born originator. Finally there was a paramount
consideration. Of all the tricks and devices at the command of the
top-hole rogue it was the very safest to play. Ninety-nine times out of
a hundred the victim had his social position or his business reputation
to think of, else in the first place he would never have been picked on
as a fit subject for victimizing. Therefore he was all the more disposed
to pay and keep still, and pay again.
The bait in the trap of the average blackmailing plant is a woman--a
young woman, good-looking, well groomed and smart. It is with her that
the quarry is compromisingly entangled. But against women confederates
Chappy Marr had a strong prejudice. They were such uncertain quantities;
you never could depend upon them. They were emotional, temperamental;
they let their sentimental attachments run away with their judgment;
they fell in love, which was bad; they talked too much, which was worse;
they were fickle-minded and jealous; they were given to falling out with
male pals, and they had been known to carry a jealous grudge to the
point of turning informer. So he set his inventions to the task of
evolving a blackmailing snare which might be set and sprung, and
afterwards dismantled and hidden away without the intervention of the
female knave of the species in any of its stages. Trust him--smooth as
lubricating oil, a veritable human graphite--to turn the trick. He
turned it.
The upshot was a lovely thing, almost foolproof and practically
cop-proof. To be sure, a woman figured in it, but her part was that of
the chosen prey, not the part of an accessory and accomplice. The
greater simplicity of the device was attested by the fact that for its
mounting, from beginning to end, only three active performers were
needed. The chief role he would play. For his main supporting cast he
needed two men, and knew moreover exactly where to find them. Of these
two only one would show ever upon the stage. The other would bide out
of sight behind the scenes, doing his share of the work, unsuspected,
from under cover.
For the part which he intended her to take in his production--the part
of dupe--Mrs. Justus Propbridge was, as one might say, made to order.
Consider her qualifications: young, pretty, impressionable, vain and
inexperienced; the second wife of a man who even in these times of
suddenly inflated fortunes was reckoned to be rich; newly come out of
the boundless West, bringing a bounding social ambition with her;
spending money freely and having plenty more at command to spend when
the present supply was gone; her name appearing frequently in those
newspapers and those weekly and monthly magazines catering particularly
to the so-called smart set, which is so called, one gathers, because it
is not a set and is not particularly smart.
Young Mrs. Propbridge figured that her name was becoming tolerably well
known along the Gold Coast of the North Atlantic Seaboard. It was too.
For example, there was at least one person entirely unknown to her who
kept a close tally of her comings and her goings, of her social
activities, of her mode of daily life. This person was Vincent Marr.
Thanks to the freedom with which a certain type of journal discusses the
private and the public affairs of those men and women most commonly
mentioned in its columns, he presently had in his mind a very clear
picture of this lady, and he followed her movements, as reflected in
print, with care and fidelity; it was as though he had a deep personal
interest in her. For a matter of fact, he did; he had a very personal
interest in her. He had been doing this for months; in his trade, as in
many others, patience was not only a virtue but a necessity. For
example, he knew that her determined and persistent but somewhat crudely
engineered campaigning to establish herself in what New York calls--with
a big S--Society was the subject in some quarters of a somewhat thinly
veiled derision; he knew that her husband was rather an elemental, not
to say a primitive creature, but genuine and aboveboard and generous, as
elemental beings are likely to be. Marr figured him to be of the jealous
type. He hoped he was; it might simplify matters tremendously.
On a certain summer morning a paragraph appeared in at least three daily
papers to the effect that Mr. and Mrs. Justus Propbridge had gone down
to Gulf Stream City, on the Maryland coast; they would be at the
Churchill-Fontenay there for a week or ten days. It was at his breakfast
that Marr read this information. At noon, having in the meantime done a
considerable amount of telephoning, he was on his way to the seaside
too. Mentally he was shaking hands with himself in a warmly
congratulatory way. Gulf Stream City was a place seemingly designed,
both by Nature and by man, for the serving of his purposes.
Residing there were persons of his own kidney and persuasion, on whom
he might count for at least one detail of invaluable cooperation. For a
certain act of his piece, a short but highly important one, he also must
have a borrowed stage setting and a supernumerary actor or so.
Immediately upon his arrival he sought out certain dependable
individuals and put them through a rough rehearsal. This he did before
he claimed the room he had engaged by wire at the Hotel Crofter. The
Hotel Crofter snuggled its lesser bulk under an imposing flank of the
supposedly exclusive and admittedly expensive Churchill-Fontenay. From
its verandas one might command a view of the main entrance of the
greater hotel.
It was on a Tuesday that the Propbridges reached Gulf Stream City. It
was on Wednesday afternoon that the husband received a telegram, signed
with the name of a business associate, calling him to Toledo for a
conference--so the wire stated--upon an urgent complication newly
arisen. Mr. Propbridge, as all the world knew, was one of the heaviest
stockholders and a member of the board of the Sonnesbein-Propbridge Tire
Company, which, as the world likewise knew, had had tremendous dealings
in contracts with the Government and now was having trouble closing up
the loose ends of its wartime activities.
He packed a bag and caught a night train West. On the following morning,
which would be Thursday, Mrs. Propbridge took a stroll on Gulf Stream
City's famous boardwalk. It was rather a lonely stroll. She had no
particular objective. It was too early in the day for a full display of
vivid costumes among the bathers on the beach. She encountered no one
she knew.
Really, for a resort so extensively advertised, Gulf Stream City was not
a particularly exciting place. For lack of anything better to do she had
halted to view the contents of a shop window when an exclamation of
happy surprise from someone immediately behind her caused Mrs.
Propbridge to turn around.
Immediately it was her turn to register astonishment. A tall,
well-dressed, gray-haired man, a stranger to her, was taking possession
of her right hand and shaking it warmly.
"Why, my dear Mrs. Watrous," he was saying, "how do you do? Well, this
is an unexpected pleasure! When did you come down from Wilmington? And
who is with you? And how long are you going to stay? General Dunlap and
his daughter Claire--you know, the second daughter--and Mrs.
Gordon-Tracy and Freddy Urb will be here in a little while. They'll be
delighted to see you! Why, we'll have a reunion! Well, well, well!"
He had said all this with scarcely a pause for breath and without giving
her an opportunity to speak, as though surprise made him disregardful of
labial punctuation of his sentences. Indeed, Mrs. Propbridge did not
succeed in getting her hand free from his grasp until he had uttered
the final "well."
"You have the advantage of me," she said. "I do not know you. I am sure
I never saw you before."
At this his sudden shift from cordiality to a look half incredulous,
half embarrassed was almost comic.
"What?" he demanded, falling back a pace. "Surely this is Mrs. Beeman
Watrous of Wilmington? I can't be mistaken!"
"But you are mistaken," she insisted; "very much mistaken. My name is
not Watrous; my name is Propbridge."
"Madam," he cried, "I beg ten thousand pardons! Really, though, this is
one of the most remarkable things I ever saw in my life--one of the most
remarkable cases of resemblance, I mean. I am sure anyone would be
deceived by it; that is my apology. In my own behalf, madam, I must tell
you that you are an exact counterpart of someone I know--of Mrs. Beeman
Watrous, a very good friend of mine. Pardon me once more, but may I ask
if you are related to Mrs. Beeman Watrous? Her cousin perhaps? It isn't
humanly possible that two persons should look so much alike and not be
related?"
"I don't think I ever heard of the lady," stated Mrs. Propbridge
somewhat coldly.
"Again, madam, please excuse me," he said. "I am very, very sorry to
have annoyed you." He bowed his bared head and turned away. Then
quickly he swung on his heel and returned to her, his hat again in his
left hand.
"Madam," he said, "I am fearful that you are suspecting me of being one
of the objectionable breed of he-flirts who infest this place. At the
risk of being tiresome I must repeat once more that your wonderful
resemblance to another person led me into this awkward error. My name,
madam, is Murrill--Valentine C. Murrill--and I am sure that if you only
had the time and the patience to bear with me I could find someone
here--some acquaintance of yours perhaps--who would vouch for me and
make it plain to you that I am not addicted to the habit of forcing
myself upon strangers on the pretext that I have met them somewhere."
His manner was disarming. It was more than that; it was outright
engaging. He was carefully groomed, smartly turned out; he had the
manner and voice of a well-bred person. To Mrs. Propbridge he seemed a
candid, courteous soul unduly distressed over a small matter.
"Please don't concern yourself about it," she said. "I didn't suspect
you of being a professional masher; I was only rather startled, that's
all."
"Thank you for telling me so," he said. "You take a load off my mind, I
assure you. Pardon me again, please--but did I understand you to say a
moment ago that your name was Propbridge?"
"Yes."
"It isn't a very common name. Surely you are not the Mrs. Propbridge?"
Without being in the least presuming he somehow had managed to convey a
subtle tribute.
"I am Mrs. Justus Propbridge, if that is what you mean," she said.
"Well, then," he said in tones of relief, "that simplifies matters. Is
your husband about, madam? If he is I will do myself the honor of
introducing myself to him and repeating to him the explanation I have
just made to you. You see, I am by way of being one of the small fish
who circulate on the outer edge of the big sea where the large financial
whales swim, and it is possible that he may have heard my name and may
know who I am."
"My husband isn't here," she explained. "He was called away last night
on business."
"Again my misfortune," he said.
They were in motion now; he had fallen into step alongside her as she
moved on back up the boardwalk. Plainly her amazing resemblance to
someone else was once more the uppermost subject in his mind. He went
back to it.
"I've heard before now of dual personalities," he said, "but this is my
first actual experience with a case of it. When I first saw you standing
there with your back to me and even when you turned round facing me
after I spoke to you, I was ready to swear that you were Mrs. Beeman
Watrous. Look, manner, size, voice, hair, eyes--all identical. I know
her very well too. I've been a guest at one or two of her house parties.
It's curious that you never heard of her, Mrs. Propbridge; she's the
widow of one of the Wilmington Watrouses--the firearms people, you
know--guns, rifles, all that sort of thing--and he left her more
millions than she knows what to do with."
Now Mrs. Propbridge had never heard of any Wilmington Watrouses, but
plainly, here in the East they were persons of consequence--persons who
would be worth knowing.
She nodded as though to indicate that now she did faintly recall who it
was this kindly stranger had meant.
He went on. It was evident that he was inclined to be talkative. The
impression was conveyed to her that here was a well-meaning but rather
shallow-minded gentleman who was reasonably fond of the sound of his own
voice. Yet about him was nothing to suggest over-effusiveness or
familiarity.
"I've a sort of favor to ask of you," he said. "I've some friends who're
motoring over to-day from Philadelphia. I had to run on down ahead of
them to see a man on business. They're to join me in about an hour from
now"--he consulted his watch--"and we're all driving back together
to-night. General Dunlap and Mrs. Claire Denton, his daughter--she's the
amateur tennis champion, you know--and Mrs. Gordon-Tracy, of Newport,
and Freddy Urb, the writer--they're all in the party. And the favor I'm
asking is that I may have the pleasure of presenting them to you--that
is, of course, unless you already know them--so that I may enjoy the
looks on their faces when they find out that you are not Mrs. Beeman
Watrous. I know they'll behave as I did. They won't believe it at first.
May I?"
What could Mrs. Propbridge do except consent? Indeed, inwardly she
rejoiced at the prospect. She did not know personally the four named by
this Mr. Murrill, but she knew mighty well who they were. What person
familiar with the Social Register could fail to know who they were?
Another thing had impressed her: The stranger had mentioned these
notables with no especial emphasis on the names; but instead, quite
casually and in a manner which carried with it the impression that such
noted folk as Mrs. Denton and her distinguished father, and Freddy Urb
the court jester of the innermost holies of holies of Newport and Bar
Harbor and Palm Beach, and Mrs. Gordon-Tracy, the famous beauty, were of
the sort with whom customarily he associated. Plainly here was a
gentleman who not only belonged to the who's-who but had a very clear
perception of the what-was-what. So fluttered little Mrs. Propbridge
promptly said yes--said it with a gratified sensation in her heart.
"That's fine of you!" said Murrill, visibly elated. It would appear
that small favors were to him great pleasures. "That's splendid!
Up until now the joke of this thing has been on me. I want to
transfer it to them. I'm to meet them up here in the lounge of the
Churchill-Fontenay."
"That's where I am stopping," said Mrs. Propbridge.
"Is it? Better and better! We might stroll along that way if you don't
mind. By Jove, I've an idea! Suppose when they arrive they found us
chatting together like old friends--suppose as they came up they were to
overhear me calling you Mrs. Beeman Watrous. That would make the shock
all the greater for them when they found out you really weren't Mrs.
Watrous at all, but somebody they'd never seen before! Are you game for
it?... Capital! Only, if we mean to do that we'll have to kill the time,
some way, for forty or fifty minutes or so. Do you mind letting me bore
you for a little while? I know it's unconventional--but I like to do the
unconventional things when they don't make one conspicuous."
Mrs. Propbridge did not in the least mind. So they killed the time and
it died a very agreeable death, barring one small incident. On Mr.
Murrill's invitation they took a short turn in a double-seated roller
chair, Mr. Murrill chatting briskly all the while and savoring his
conversation with offhand reference to this well-known personage and
that. At his suggestion they quit the wheel chair at a point well down
the boardwalk to drink orangeades in a small glass-fronted cafe which
faced the sea. He had heard somewhere, he said, that they made famous
orangeades in this shop. They might try for themselves and find out.
The experiment was not entirely a success. To begin with, a waiter
person--Mr. Murrill referred to him as a waiter person--sat them down
near the front at a small, round table whose enamel top was decorated
with two slopped glasses and a bottle one-third filled with wine gone
stale. At least the stuff looked and smelled like wine--like a poor
quality of champagne.
"Ugh!" said Mr. Murrill, tasting the air. "Somebody evidently couldn't
wait until lunch time before he started his tippling. And I didn't
suspect either that this place might be a bootlegging place in disguise.
Well, since prohibition came in it's hard to find a resort shop anywhere
where you can't buy bad liquor--if only you go about it the right way."
When the waiter person brought their order he bade him remove the bottle
and the slopped glasses, and the waiter person obliged, but so sulkily
and with such slowness of movement that Mr. Murrill was moved to speak
to him rather sharply. Even so, the sullen functionary took his time
about the thing. Nor did the orangeade prove particularly appetizing.
Mr. Murrill barely tasted his.
"Shall we clear out?" he asked, making a fastidious little grimace.
At the door, on the way out, he made excuses.
"Sorry I suggested coming into this place," he said, sinking his voice.
"Either it is a shop which has gone off badly or its merits have been
overadvertised by its loving friends. To me the whole atmosphere of the
establishment seemed rather dubious, eh, what? Well, what shall we do
next? I see a few bathers down below. Shall we go down on the beach and
find a place to sit and watch them for a bit?"
They went; and he found a bench in a quiet place under the shorings of
the boardwalk close up alongside one of the lesser bathing pavilions,
and they sat there, and he talked and she listened. The man had an
endless fund of gossip about amusing and noted people; most of them, it
would seem, were his intimates. Telling one or two incidents in which
these distinguished friends had figured, he felt it expedient to sink
his voice to a discreet undertone. There was plainly apparent a delicacy
of feeling in this; one did not shout out the names of such persons for
any curious passer-by to hear. It developed that there was one specially
close bond between him and the members of General Dunlap's family, an
attachment partly based upon old acquaintance and partly upon the fact
that the Dunlaps thought he once upon a time had saved the life of the
general's youngest daughter, Millicent.
"Really, though, it was nothing," he said deprecatingly, as befitted a
modest and a mannerly man. "The thing came about like this: It was once
when we were all out West together. We were spending a week at the Grand
Canyon. One morning we took the Rim Drive over to Mohave Point. No doubt
you know the spot? I was standing with Millicent on the outer edge of
the cliff and we were looking down together into that tremendous void
when all of a sudden she fainted dead away. Her heart isn't very
strong--she isn't athletic as Claire, her older sister, and the other
Dunlap girls are--and I suppose the altitude got her. Luckily I was as
close to her as I am to you now, and I saw her totter and I threw out my
arms--pardon me--like this." He illustrated with movements of his arms.
"And luckily I managed to catch her about the waist as she fell forward.
I held on and dragged her back out of danger. Otherwise she would have
dropped for no telling how many hundreds of feet. Of course it was only
a chance that I happened to be touching elbows with the child, and
naturally I only did what anyone would have done in the same
circumstances, but the whole family were tremendously grateful and made
a great pother over it. By the way, speaking of rescues, have you heard
about the thing that happened to the two Van Norden girls at Bailey's
Beach last week? I must tell you about that."
Presently they both were surprised to find that forty-five minutes had
passed. Mr. Murrill said they had better be getting along; he made so
bold as to venture the suggestion that possibly Mrs. Propbridge might
want to go to her rooms before the automobile party arrived, to change
her frock or something. Not that he personally thought she should change
it. If he might be pardoned for saying so, he thought it a most becoming
frock; but women were curious about such things, now honestly weren't
they? And Mrs. Propbridge was constrained to confess that about such
things women were curious. She had a conviction that if all things moved
smoothly she presently would be urged to waive formality and join the
party at luncheon. Mr. Murrill had not exactly put the idea into words
yet, but she sensed that the thought of offering the invitation was in
his mind. In any event the impending meeting called for efforts on her
part to appear at her best.
"I believe I will run up to our rooms for a few minutes before your
friends arrive," she said as they arose from the bench. "I want to
freshen up a bit."
"Quite so," he assented.
He left her at the doors of the Churchill-Fontenay, saying he would idle
about and watch for the others in case they should arrive ahead of time.
Ten minutes later, while she was still trying to make a choice between
three frocks, her telephone rang. She answered the ring; it was Mr.
Murrill, who was at the other end of the line. He was distressed to have
to tell her that word had just reached him that on the way down from
Philadelphia General Dunlap had been taken suddenly ill--an attack of
acute indigestion, perhaps, or possibly a touch of the sun--and the
motor trip had been halted at a small town on the mainland fifteen miles
back of Gulf Stream City. He was starting immediately for the town in a
car with a physician. He trusted the general's indisposition was not
really serious but of course the party would be called off; and the
invalid would return to Philadelphia as soon as he felt well enough to
move. He was awfully sorry--Mr. Murrill was--terribly put out, and all
that sort of thing; hoped that another opportunity might be vouchsafed
him of meeting Mrs. Propbridge; he had enjoyed tremendously meeting her
under these unconventional circumstances; and now he must go.
It was not to be denied that young Mrs. Propbridge felt distinctly
disappointed. The start of the little adventure had had promise in it.
She had forecast all manner of agreeable contingencies as the probable
outcome.
For some reason, though, or perhaps for no definite reason at all, she
said nothing to her husband, on his return from Toledo, of her encounter
with the agreeable Mr. Murrill. Anyway, he arrived in no very affable
state of mind. As a matter of fact he was most terrifically out of
temper. Somebody or other--presumably some ass of a practical joker, he
figured, or possibly a person with a grudge against him who had curious
methods of taking vengeance--had lured him into taking a hot, dusty,
tiresome and entirely useless trip. There was no business conference on
out at Toledo; no need for his presence there. If he could lay hands on
the idiot who had sent him that forged telegram--well, the angered Mr.
Propbridge indicated with a gesture of a large and knobby fist what he
would do to the aforesaid idiot.
The next time Mr. Propbridge was haled to the broiling Corn Belt he made
very sure that the warrant was genuine. One of these wild-goose chases a
summer was quite enough for a man with a size-nineteen collar and a
forty-six-inch waistband.
The next time befell some ten days after the Propbridges returned from
the shore to their thirty-thousand-dollars-a-year apartment on Upper
Park Avenue. The very fact that they did live in an apartment and that
they did spend a good part of their time there would stamp them for what
they were--persons not yet to be included among the really fashionable
group. The really fashionable maintained large homes which they occupied
when they came to town to have dental work done or to launch a debutante
daughter into society; the rest of the year they usually were elsewhere.
It was the thing.
Business of importance sent Mr. Propbridge to Detroit, and then on to
Chicago and Des Moines. On a certain afternoon he caught the Wolverine
Limited. Almost before his train had passed One Hundred and Twenty-fifth
Street Mrs. Propbridge had a caller. She was informed that a member of
the staff of that live paper, People You Know, desired to see her for a
few minutes. Persons of social consequence or persons who craved to be
of social consequence did not often deny themselves to representatives
of People You Know. Mrs. Propbridge told the switchboard girl downstairs
to tell the hallman to invite the gentleman to come up.
He proved to be a somewhat older man than she had expected to see. He
was well dressed enough, but about him was something hard and
forbidding, almost formidable in fact. Yet there was a soothing,
conciliatory tone in his voice when he spoke.
"Mrs. Propbridge," he began, "my name is Townsend. I am one of the
editors of People You Know. I might have sent one of our reporters to
see you, but in a matter so important--and so delicate as this one is--I
felt it would be better if I came personally to have a little talk with
you and get your side of the affair for publication."
"My side of what affair?" she asked, puzzled.
He lifted one lip in a cornerwise smile.
"Let me give you a little advice, Mrs. Propbridge," he said. "I've had a
lot of experience in such matters as these. The interested parties will
be better off if they're perfectly frank in talking to the press. Then
all misunderstandings are avoided and everybody gets a fair deal in
print. Don't you agree with me that I am right?"
"You may be right," she said, "but I haven't the least idea what you are
talking about."
"I mean your trouble with your husband--if you force me to speak
plainly; I'd like to have your statement, that's all."
"But I haven't had any trouble with my husband!" she said. Her amazement
made her voice shrill. "My husband and I are living together in perfect
happiness. You've made a mistake."
"No chance," he said, and suddenly his manner changed from the
sympathetic to the accusing. "Mrs. Propbridge, we have exclusive advance
information from reliable sources--a straight tip--that the proof
against you is about to be turned over to your husband and we've every
reason to believe that when he gets it in his hands he's going to sue
you for divorce, naming as corespondent a certain middle-aged man. Do
you mean to tell me you don't know anything about that?"
"Of course I mean to! Why, you're crazy! You're--"
"Wait just one minute please," he interrupted the distressed lady. "Wait
until I get through telling you how much I know already; then you'll see
that denials won't help you any. As a matter of fact we're ready now to
go ahead and spring the story in next week's issue, but I thought it
was only fair to come to you and give you a chance to make your defense
in print--if you care to make one."
"I still tell you that you've made a terrible mistake," she declared.
Her anger began to stir within her, as indignation succeeded to
astonishment. "How dare you come here accusing me of doing anything
wrong!"
"I'm accusing you of nothing. I'm only going by the plain evidence. I
might be lying to you. Other people might lie to you. But, madam,
photographs don't lie. That's why they're the best possible evidence in
a divorce court. And I've seen the evidence. I've got it in my pocket
right now."
"Evidence against me? Photographs of me?"
"Sure. Photographs of you and the gray-haired party." He reached in a
breast pocket and brought out a thin sheaf of unmounted photographs and
handed them to her. "Mrs. Propbridge, just take a look at these and then
tell me if you blame me for assuming that there's bound to be trouble
when your husband sees them?"
She looked, and her twirling brain told her it was all a nightmare, but
her eyes told her it was not. Here were five photographs, enlarged
snapshots apparently: One, a profile view, showing her standing on a
boardwalk, her hand held in the hand of the man she had known as
Valentine C. Murrill; one, a quartering view, revealing them riding
together in a wheel chair, their heads close together, she smiling and
he apparently whispering something of a pleasing and confidential nature
to her, the posture of both almost intimate; one, a side view, showing
the pair of them emerging from an open-fronted cafe--she recognized the
facade of the place where they had found the orangeades so
disappointing--and in this picture Mr. Murrill had been caught by the
camera as he was saying something of seeming mutual interest, for she
was glancing up sidewise at him and he had lowered his head until his
lips almost touched her ear; one, showing them sitting at a small round
table with a wine bottle and glasses in front of them and behind them a
background suggesting the interior of a rather shabby drinking place, a
distinct impression of sordidness somehow conveyed; and one, a rear
view, showing them upon a bench alongside a seemingly deserted wooden
structure of some sort, and in this one the man had been snapped in the
very act of putting his arms about her and drawing her toward him.
That was all--merely five oblong slips of chemically printed paper, and
yet on the face of them they told a damning and a condemning story.
She stared at them, she who was absolutely innocent of thought or intent
of wrong-doing, and could feel the fabric of her domestic life trembling
before it came crashing down.
"Oh, but this is too horrible for words!" the distressed lady cried
out. "How could anybody have been so cruel, so malicious, as to follow
us and waylay us and catch us in these positions? It's monstrous!"
"Somebody did catch you, then, in compromising attitudes--you admit
that?"
"You twist my words to give them a false meaning!" she exclaimed. "You
are trying to trap me into saying something that would put me in a wrong
light. I can explain--why, the whole thing is so simple when you
understand."
"Suppose you do explain, then. Get me right, Mrs. Propbridge--I'm all
for you in this affair. I want to give you the best of it from every
standpoint."
So she explained, her words pouring forth in a torrent. She told him in
such details as she recalled the entire history of her meeting with the
vanished Mr. Murrill--how a doctored telegram sent her husband away and
left her alone, how Murrill had accosted her, and why and what
followed--all of it she told him, withholding nothing.
He waited until she was through. Then he sped a bolt, watching her
closely, for upon the way she took it much, from his viewpoint,
depended.
"Well," he said, "if that's the way this thing happened and if you've
told your husband about it"--he dragged his words just a trifle--"why
should you be so worried, even if these pictures should reach him?"
Her look told him the shot had struck home. Inwardly he rejoiced,
knowing, before she answered, what her answer would be.
"But I didn't tell him," she confessed, stricken with a new cause for
concern. "I--I forgot to tell him."
"Oh, you forgot to tell him?" he repeated. Now suddenly he became a
cross-examiner, snapping his questions at her, catching her up sharply
in her replies. "And you say you never saw this Mr. Murrill--as you call
him--before in all your life?"
"No."
"And you've never seen the mysterious stranger since?"
"There was nothing mysterious about him, I tell you. He was merely
interesting."
"Anyhow, you've never seen him since?"
"No."
"Nor had any word from him other than that telephone talk you say you
had with him?"
"No."
"Did you ever make any inquiries with a view to finding out whether
there was such a person as this Mrs. Beeman Watrous?"
"No; why should I?"
"That's a question for you to decide. Did you think to look in the
papers to see whether General Dunlap had really been taken ill on a
motor trip?"
"No."
"Yet he's a well-known person. Surely you expected the papers would
mention his illness?"
"It never occurred to me to look. I tell you there was nothing wrong
about it. Why do you try to trip me up so?"
"Excuse me, I'm only trying to help you out of what looks like a pretty
bad mess. But I've got to get the straight of it. Let me run over the
points in your story: No sooner do you land in Gulf Stream City than
your husband gets a faked-up telegram and goes away? And you are left
all alone? And you go for a walk all by yourself? And a man you never
laid eyes on before comes up to you and tells you that you look a lot
like a friend of his, a certain very rich widow, Mrs. Watrous--somebody,
though, that I for one never heard of, and I know the Social Register
from cover to cover, and know something about Wilmington too. And on the
strength of your imaginary resemblance to an imaginary somebody he
introduced himself to you? And then you let him walk with you? And you
let him whisper pleasant things in your ear? Two of those pictures that
you've got in your hand prove that. And you let him take you into one of
the most notorious blind tigers on the beach? And you sit there with him
in this dump--this place with a shady reputation--"
"I've explained to you how that happened. We didn't stay there. We came
right out."
"Let me go on, please. And you let him buy you wine there?"
"I've told you about that part, too--how the bottles and the glasses
were already on the table when we sat down."
"I'm merely going by what the photographs tell, Mrs. Propbridge. I'm
merely saying to you what a smart divorce lawyer would say to you if
ever he got you on the witness stand; only he'd be trying to convict you
by your own words and I'm trying to give you every chance to clear
yourself. And then after that you go and sit with him--this perfect
stranger--in a lonely place alongside a deserted bath house and nobody
else in sight?"
"There were people bathing right in front of us all the time."
"Were there? Well, take a look at Photograph Number Five and see if it
shows any bathers in sight. And he slips his arm around you and draws
you to him?"
"I explained to you how that happened," protested the badgered,
desperate woman. "No matter what the circumstances seem to be, I did
nothing wrong, I tell you."
"All right, just as you say. Remember, I'm taking your side of it; I'm
trying to be your friend. But here's the important thing for you to
consider: With those pictures laid before them would any jury on earth
believe your side of it? Would they believe you had no hand in sending
your husband that faked-up telegram? Would they believe it wasn't a
trick to get him away so you could keep an appointment with this man?
Would any judge believe you? Would your friends believe you? Or would
they all say that they never heard such a transparent cock-and-bull
story in their lives?"
"Oh, oh!" she cried chokingly, and put her face in her hands. Then she
threw up her head and stared at him out of her miserable eyes. "Where
did those pictures come from? You say you believe in me, that you are
willing to help me. Then tell me where they came from and who took them?
And how did you manage to get hold of them?"
His baitings had carried her exactly to the desired place--the turning
point, they call it in the vernacular of the confidence sharp. The rest
should be easy.
"Mrs. Propbridge," he said, "you've been pretty frank with me. I'll be
equally frank with you. Those pictures were brought to our office by the
man who took them. I have his name and address, but am not at liberty to
tell them to anyone. I don't know what his motives were in taking them;
we did not ask him that either. We can't afford to question the motives
of people who bring us these exclusive tips. We pay a fancy price for
them and that lets us out. Besides, these photographs seemed to speak
for themselves. So we paid him the price he asked for the use of them.
Destroying these copies wouldn't help you any. That man still has the
plates; he could print them over again. The only hope you've got is to
get hold of those plates. And I'm afraid he'll ask a big price for
them."
"How big a price?"
"That I couldn't say without seeing him. Knowing the sort of person he
is, my guess is that he'd expect you to hand him over a good-sized chunk
of money to begin with--as a proof of your intentions to do business
with him. You'd have to pay him in cash; he'd be too wise to take a
check. And then he might want so much apiece for each plate or he might
insist on your paying him a lump sum for the whole lot. You see, what he
evidently expects to do is to sell them to your husband, and he'd expect
you at least to meet the price your husband would have to pay. Any way
you look at it he's got you at his mercy--and, as I see it, you'll
probably have to come to his terms if you want to keep this thing a
secret."
"Where is this man? You keep saying you want to serve me--can't you
bring him to me?"
"I'm afraid he wouldn't come. If he's engaged in a shady business--if
he's cooked up a deliberate scheme to trap you--he won't come near you.
That's my guess. But if you are willing to trust me to act as your
representative maybe the whole thing might be arranged and no one except
us ever be the wiser for it."
Mrs. Propbridge being an average woman did what the average woman, thus
cruelly circumstanced and sorely frightened and half frantic and
lacking advice from honest folk, would do. She paid and she paid and she
kept on paying. First off, it appeared the paper had to be recompensed
for its initial outlay and for various vaguely explained incidental
expenses which it had incurred in connection with the affair. Then,
through Townsend, the unknown principal demanded that a larger sum
should be handed over as an evidence of good faith on her part before he
would consider further negotiations. This, though, turned out to be only
the beginning of the extortion processes.
When, on this pretext and that, she had been mulcted of nearly fourteen
thousand dollars, when her personal bank account had been exhausted,
when most of her jewelry was secretly in pawn, when still she had not
yet been given the telltale plates, but daily was being tortured by
threats of exposure unless she surrendered yet more money, poor badgered
beleaguered little Mrs. Propbridge, being an honest and a
straightforward woman, took the course she should have taken at the
outset. She went to her husband and she told him the truth. And he
believed her.
He did not stop with believing her; he bestirred himself. He had money;
he had the strength and the authority which money gives. He had
something else--he had that powerful, intangible thing which among
police officials and in the inner politics of city governments is
variously known as a pull and a drag. Straightway he invoked it.
Of a sudden Chappy Marr was aware that he had made a grievous mistake.
He had calculated to garner for himself a fat roll of the Propbridge
currency; had counted upon enjoying a continuing source of income for so
long as the wife continued to hand over hush money. Deduct the cuts
which went to Zach Traynor, alias Townsend, for playing the part of the
magazine editor, and to Cheesy Mike Zaugbaum, that camera wizard of
newspaper staff work turned crook's helper--Zaugbaum it was who had
worked the trick of the photographs--and still the major share of the
spoils due him ought, first and last, to run into five gratifying
figures. On this he confidently had figured. He had not reckoned into
the equation the possibility of invoking against him the Propbridge pull
backed by the full force of this double-fisted, vengeful millionaire's
rage. Indeed he never supposed that there might be any such pull. And
here, practically without warning, he found his influence arrayed
against an infinitely stronger influence, so that his counted for
considerably less than nothing at all.
Still, there was a warning. He got away to Toronto. Traynor made Chicago
and went into temporary seclusion there. Cheesy Zaugbaum lacked the luck
of these two. As soon as Mrs. Propbridge had described the ingratiating
Mr. Murrill and the obliging Mr. Townsend to M. J. Brock, head of the
Brock private-detective agency, that astute but commonplace-appearing
gentleman knew whom she meant. Knowing so much, it was not hard for him
to add one to one and get three. He deduced who the third member of the
triumvirate must be. Mr. Brock owed his preeminence in his trade to one
outstanding faculty--he was an honest man who could think like a thief.
Three hours after he concluded his first interview with the lady one of
his operatives walked up behind Cheesy and tapped him on the shoulder
and inquired of him whether he would go along nice and quiet for a talk
with the boss or was inclined to make a fuss about it. In either event,
so Cheesy was assured, he, could have his wish gratified. And Cheesy,
who had the heart of a rabbit--a rabbit feeding on other folks' cabbage,
but a timorous, nibbling bunny for all that--Cheesy, he went.
In Toronto Marr peaked and pined. He probably was safe enough for so
long as he bided there; there had been no newspaper publicity, and he
felt reasonably sure that openly, at least, the aid of regular police
departments would not be set in motion against him; so he put the
thoughts of arrest and extradition and such like unpleasant
contingencies out of his mind. But li'l' old N'York was his proper
abiding place. The smell of its streets had a lure for him which no
other city's streets had. His crowd was there--the folk who spoke his
tongue and played his game. And there the gudgeons on which his sort
fed schooled the thickest and carried the most savory fat on their bones
as they skittered over the asphaltum shoals of the Main Stem.
For a month, emulating Uncle Remus' Brer Fox, he lay low, resisting the
gnawing discontent that kept screening delectable visions of Broadway
and the Upper Forties and Seventh Avenue before his homesick eyes. It
was a real nostalgia from which he suffered. He endured it, though, with
what patience he might lest a worse thing befall. And at the end of that
month he went back to the big town; an overpowering temptation was the
reason for his going. There had arisen a chance for a large turnover and
a quick get-away again, with an attractively large sum to stay him and
comfort him after he resumed his enforced exile. An emissary from the
Gulwing mob ran up to Toronto and dangled the lure before his eyes.
Harbored in New York at the present moment was a beautiful prospect--a
supremely credulous cattleman from the Far West, who had been playing
the curb market. A crooks' tipster who was a clerk in a bucket shop
downtown had for a price passed the word to the Gulwings, and the
Gulwings--Sig and Alf--were intentful to strip the speculative Westerner
before the curb took from him the delectable core of his bank roll. But
the Gulwing organization, complete as it is in most essential details,
lacked in its personnel for the moment a person of address to undertake
the steering and the convincing--to worm a way into the good graces of
the prospective quarry; to find out approximately about how much in
dollars and cents he might reasonably be expected to yield, and then to
stand by in the pose of a pretended fellow investor and fellow loser,
while the cleaning up of the plunger was done by the competent but
crude-mannered Messrs. Sigmund and Alfred Gulwing and their associates.
For the important role of the convincer Marr was suited above all
others. It was represented to him that he could slip back to town and,
all the while keeping well under cover, rib up the customer to go, as
the trade term has it, and then withdraw again to the Dominion. A price
was fixed, based on a sliding scale, and Marr returned to New York.
Three days from the day he reached town the Westerner, whose name was
Hartridge, lunched with him as his guest at the Roychester, a small,
discreetly run hotel in Forty-sixth Street. After luncheon they sat down
in the lobby for a smoke. For good and sufficient reasons Marr preferred
as quiet a spot and as secluded a one as the lobby of the hotel might
offer. He found it where a small red-leather sofa built for two stood in
a sort of recess formed on one side by a jog in the wall and on the
other side by the switchboard and the two booths which constituted the
Roychester's public telephone equipment. To call the guest rooms one
made use of an instrument on the clerk's desk, farther over to the left.
To this retreat Marr guided the big Oregonian. From it he had a fairly
complete view of the lobby. This was essential since presently, if
things went well or if they did not go well, he must privily give a
designated signal for the benefit of a Gulwing underling, a lesser
member of the mob, who was already on hand, standing off and on in the
offing. Sitting there Marr was well protected from the view of persons
passing through, bound to or from the grill room, the desk or the
elevators. This also was as it should be. Better still, he was
practically out of sight of those who might approach the telephone
operator to enlist her services in securing outside calls. The
outjutting furniture of her desk and the flanks of the nearermost pay
booth hid him from them; only the top of the young woman's head was
visible as she sat ten feet away, facing her perforated board.
The voices of her patrons came to him, and her voice as she repeated the
numbers after them: "Greenwich 978, please."
"Larchmont 54 party J."
"Worth 9009, please, miss."
"Vanderbilt 100."
And so on and so forth, in a steady patter, like raindrops falling; but
though he could hear he could not be seen. Altogether, the spot was, for
his own purposes, admirably arranged.
So they sat and smoked, and pretty soon, the occasion and the conditions
and the time being ripe, Marr outlined to his new friend Hartridge, on
pledge of secrecy, a wonderfully safe and wonderfully simple plan for
taking its ill-gotten money away from a Tenderloin pool room. Swiftly he
sketched in the details; the opportunity, he divulged in strict
confidence, had just come to him. He confessed to having taken a great
liking to Hartridge during their short acquaintance; Hartridge had
impressed him as one who might be counted upon to know a good thing when
he saw it, and so, inspired by these convictions, he was going to give
Hartridge a chance to join him in the plunge and share with him the
juicy proceeds. Besides, the more money risked the greater the killing.
He himself had certain funds in hand, but more funds were needed if a
real fortune was to be realized.
There was need, though, for prompt decision on the part of all
concerned, because that very afternoon--in fact, within that same
hour--there in the Roychester he was to meet, by appointment, the
conniving manager of an uptown branch office of the telegraph company,
who would cooperate in the undertaking and upon whose good offices in
withholding flashed race results at Belmont Park until his fellow
conspirators, acting on the information, could get their bets down upon
the winners, depended the success of the venture. Only, strictly
speaking, it would not be a venture at all, but a moral certainty, a
cinch, the surest of all sure things. Guaranties against mischance
entailing loss would be provided; he could promise his friend Hartridge
that; and the telegraph manager, when he came shortly, would add further
proof.
The question then was: Would Hartridge join him as a partner? And if so,
about how much, in round figures, would Hartridge be willing to put up?
He must know this in advance because he was prepared to match
Hartridge's investment dollar for dollar.
And at that Hartridge, to Marr's most sincere discomfiture, shook his
head.
"I'll tell you how it is with me," said Hartridge. "These broker fellows
downtown have been touchin' me up purty hard. I guess this here New York
game ain't exactly my game. I'm aimin' to close up what little deals
I've still got on here and beat it back to God's country while I've
still got a shirt on my back. I'm much obliged to you, Markham, for
wantin' to take me into your scheme. It sounds good the way you tell it,
but it seems like ever'thing round this burg sounds good till you test
it out--and so I guess you better count me out and find yourself a
partner somewheres else."
There was definiteness in his refusal; the shake of his head emphasized
it too. Marr's role should have been the persuasive, the insistent, the
argumentative, the cajoling; but Marr was distinctly out of temper.
Here he had ventured into danger to play for a fat purse and all he
would get for his trouble and his pains and the risk he had run would
be just those things--pains and trouble and risk--these, and nothing
more nourishing.
"Oh, very well then, Hartridge," he said angrily, "if you haven't any
confidence in me--if you can't see that this is a play that naturally
can't go wrong--why, we'll let it drop."
"Oh, I've got confidence in you--" began Hartridge, but Marr, no
patience left in him, cut him short.
"Looks like it, doesn't it?" he snapped. "Forget it! Let's talk about
the weather."
He lifted his straw hat as though to ease its pressure upon his head and
then settled it well down over his eyes. This was the sign to the
Gulwings' messenger, watching him covertly from behind a newspaper over
on the far side of the lobby, that the plan had failed. The signal he
had so confidently expected to give--a trick of relighting his cigar and
flipping the match into the air--would have conveyed to the watcher the
information that all augured well. The latter's job then would have been
to get up from his chair and step outside and bear the word to Sig
Gulwing, who, letter-perfect in the part of the conspiring telegraph
manager, would promptly enter and present himself to Marr, and by Marr
be introduced to the Westerner. The hat-shifting device had been devised
in the remote contingency of failure on Marr's part to win over the
chosen victim. Plainly the collapse of the plot had been totally
unexpected by the messenger. Over his paper he stared at Marr until
Marr repeated the gesture. Then, fully convinced now that there had been
no mistake, the messenger arose and headed for the door, the whole
thing--signaling, duplicated signaling and all--having taken very much
less time for its action than has here been required to describe it.
The signal bearer had taken perhaps five steps when Hartridge spoke
words which instantly filled Marr with regret that he had been so
impetuously prompt to take a no for a no.
"Say, hold your hosses, Markham," said Hartridge contritely. "Don't be
in such a hurry! Come to think about it, I might go so far as to risk
altogether as much, say, as eight or ten thousand dollars in this scheme
of yours--I don't want to be a piker."
In the hundredth part of a second Marr's mind reacted; his brain was
galvanized into speedy action. Ten thousand wasn't very much--not nearly
so much as he had counted on--still, ten thousand dollars was ten
thousand dollars; besides, if the Gulwings did their work cannily the
ten thousand ought to be merely a starter, an initiation fee, really,
for the victim. Once he was enmeshed, trust Sig and Alf to trim him to
his underwear; the machinery of the wire-tapping game was geared for
just that.
He must stop the departing messenger then, must make him understand that
the wrong sign had been given and that the fish was nibbling the bait.
Yet the messenger's back was to them; ten steps, fifteen steps more, and
he would be out of the door.
For Marr suddenly to hail a man he was supposed not to know might be
fatal; almost surely at this critical moment it would stir up suspicion
in Hartridge's mind. Yet some way, somehow, at once, he must stop the
word bearer. But how? That was it--how?
Ah, he had it! In the fraction of a moment he had it. It came to him
now, fully formed, the shape of it conjured up out of that jumble of
words which had been flowing to him from the telephone desk all the
while he had been sitting there and which had registered subconsciously
in his quick brain. The pause, naturally spaced, which fell between
Hartridge's 'bout-faced concession and Marr's reply, was not unduly
lengthened, yet in that flash of time Marr had analyzed the puzzle of
the situation and had found the answer to it.
"Bully, Hartridge!" he exclaimed. "You'll never regret it. Our man ought
to be here any minute now.... By Jove! That reminds me--I meant to
telephone for some tickets for to-night's Follies--you're going with me
as my guest. Just a moment!"
He got on his feet and as he came out of the corner and still was eight
feet distant from the telephone girl, he called out loudly, as a man
might call whose hurried anxiety to get an important number made him
careless of the pitch of his voice: "Worth 10,000! Worth 10,000!"
He feared to look toward the door--yet. For the moment he must seem
concerned only with the hasty business of telephoning.
Annoyed by his shouting, the girl raised her head and stared at him as
he came toward her.
"What's the excitement?" she demanded.
With enhanced vehemence he answered, putting on the key words all the
emphasis he dared employ:
"I should think anybody in hearing could understand what I said and what
I meant--_Worth 10,000_!"
He was alongside her now; he could risk a glance toward the door. He
looked, and his heart rejoiced inside of him, for the messenger had
swung about, as had half a dozen others, all arrested by the harshness
of his words--and the messenger was staring at him. Marr gave the
correct signal--with quick well-simulated nervousness drew a loose match
from his waistcoat pocket, struck it, applied it to his cigar, then
flipped the still burning match halfway across the floor. No need for
him again to look--he knew the artifice had succeeded.
"Here's your number," said the affronted young woman. With a vicious
little slam she stuck a metal plug into its proper hole.
Marr had not the least idea what concern or what individual owned Worth
10,000 for a telephone number. Nor did it concern him now. Even so, he
must of course carry out the pretense which so well had served him in
the emergency. He entered the booth, leaving the door open for
Hartridge's benefit.
"Hello, hello!" he called into the transmitter. "This is V. C. Markham
speaking. I want to speak to"--he uttered the first name which popped
into his mind--"to George Spillane. Want to order some tickets for a
show to-night." He paused a moment for the sake of the verities; then,
paying no heed to the confused rejoinder coming to him from the other
end of the wire, and improvising to round out his play, went on: "What's
that?... Not there? Oh, very well! I'll call him later.... No, never
mind, Spillane's the man I want. I'll call again."
He hung up the receiver. Out of the tail of his eye as he hung it up he
saw Sig Gulwing just entering the hotel, in proper disguise for the
character of the district telegraph manager with a grudge against pool
rooms and a plan for making enough at one coup to enable him to quit his
present job; the job was mythical, and the grudge, too--bits merely of
the fraudulent drama now about to be played--but surely Gulwing was most
solid and dependable and plausible looking. His make-up was perfect. To
get here so soon after receiving the cue he must have been awaiting the
word just outside the entrance. Gulwing was smart but he was not so
smart as Marr--Marr exulted to himself. In high good humor, he dropped
a dollar bill at the girl's elbow.
"Pay for the call out of that, miss, and keep the change," he said
genially. "Sorry I was so boisterous just now."
Thirty minutes later, still radiating gratification, Marr stood at the
cigar stand making a discriminating choice of the best in the humidor of
imported goods. Gulwing and Hartridge were over there on the sofa, cheek
by jowl, and all was going well.
Half aloud, to himself, he said, smiling in prime content: "Well, I
guess I'm bad!"
"I guess you are!" said a voice right in his ear; "and you're due to be
worse, Chappy, old boy--much worse!"
The smile slipped. He turned his head and looked into the complacent,
chubby face and the pleased eyes of M. J. Brock, head of Brock's
Detective Agency--the man of all men in this world he wished least to
see. For once, anyhow, in his life Marr was shaken, and showed it.
"That's all right, Chappy," said Brock soothingly, rocking his short
plump figure on his heels; "there won't be any rough stuff. I've got a
cop off the corner who's waiting outside if I should need him--in case
of a jam--but I guess we won't need him, will we? You'll go along with
me nice and friendly in a taxicab, won't you?" He flirted his thumb over
his shoulder. "And you needn't bother about Gulwing either. I've seen
him--saw him as soon as I came in. I guess he'll be seeing me in a
minute, too, and then he'll suddenly remember where it was he left his
umbrella and take it on the hop."
Marr said not a word. Brock rattled on in high spirits, still
maintaining that cat-with-a-mouse attitude which was characteristic of
him.
"Never mind worrying about old pal Gulwing--I don't want him now. You're
the one you'd better be worrying about; because that's going to be a
mighty long taxi ride that you're going to take with me, Chappy--fifteen
minutes to get there, say, and anywhere from five to ten years to get
back--or I miss my guess.... Yes, Chappy, you're nailed with the goods
this time. Propbridge is going through; his wife too. They'll go to
court; they'll shove the case. And Cheesy Zaugbaum has come clean. Oh, I
guess it's curtains for you all right, all right."
"You don't exactly hate yourself, do you?" gibed Marr. "Sort of pleased
with yourself?"
"Not so much pleased with myself as disappointed in you, Chappy,"
countered the exultant Brock. "I figured you were different from the
rest of your crowd, maybe; but it turns out you're like all the
others--you will do your thinking in a groove." He shook his head in
mock sorrow. "Chappy, tell me--not that it makes any difference
particularly, but just to satisfy my curiosity--curiosity being my
business, as you might say--what number was it you called up from here
about thirty minutes back? Come on. The young lady over yonder will tell
me if you don't. Was it Worth 10,000?"
"Yes," said Marr, "it was."
"I thought so," said Brock. "I guessed as much. But say Chappy, that's
the trunk number of the Herald. Before this you never were the one to
try to break into the newspapers on your own hook. What did you want
with that number?"
"That's my business," said Marr.
"Have it your way," assented Brock with ironic mildness. "Now, Chappy,
follow me a minute and you'll see how you dished your own beans: You
call up Worth 10,000--that's a private matter, as you say. But Central
gets the call twisted and gives you another number--that's a mistake.
And the number she happens to give you is the number of my new branch
office down in the financial district--that's an accident. And the
fellow who answers the call at my shop happens to be Costigan, my chief
assistant, who's been working on the Propbridge case for five weeks
now--and that's a coincidence. He doesn't recognize your voice over the
wire--that would be luck. But when, like a saphead, you pull your new
moniker, but with the same old initials hitched to it, and when on top
of that you ask for George Spillane, which is Cheesy by his most popular
alias--when you do these things, why Chappy, it's your own fault.
"Because Costigan is on then, bigger than a house. You've tipped him
your hand, see? And with our connections it's easy--and quick--for
Costigan to trace the call to this hotel. And inside of two minutes
after that he has me on the wire at my uptown office over here in West
Fortieth. And here I am; as a matter of fact, I've been here all of
fifteen minutes.
"It all proves one thing to me, Chappy. You're wiser than the run of
'em, but you've got your weak spot, and now I know what it is: You think
in a groove, Chappy, and this time, by looking at the far end of the
groove, you can see little old Warble-Twice-on-the-Hudson looming up.
And you won't have to look very hard to see it, either.... Well, I see
Gulwing has taken a tumble to himself and has gone on a run to look for
his umbrella. Suppose we start on our little taxi ride, old groove
thinker?"