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(Harvard College Library)
The Saintsbury Affair
[Frontispiece: _As I came up, emptied a chatelaine purse upon
Barney's tray_. FRONTISPIECE. _See page 23_.]
THE SAINTSBURY AFFAIR
By
ROMAN DOUBLEDAY
Author of "The Hemlock Avenue Mystery,"
"The Red House on Rowan Street," etc.
With Illustrations by
J. V. McFall
BOSTON
LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY
1912
_Copyright, 1911, 1912_,
By Little, Brown, and Company.
------
_All rights reserved_
Published, February, 1912
_Electrotyped and Printed by
THE COLONIAL PRESS
C. B. Simonds & Co., Boston, U.S.A._
Contents
CHAPTER
I. The Beginning of the Tangle.
II. Two Lovely Ladies.
III. The Unexpected Happens.
IV. Crossed Wires.
V. Bertillon Methods and Some Others.
VI. The Frat Supper.
VII. Chiefly Gossip.
VIII. Some of Jean's Ways.
IX. A Gleam of Light.
X. Ways That Are Dark.
XI. The Simmering Samovar.
XII. On the Trail of Diavolo.
XIII. The Samovar Explodes.
XIV. Tangled Heart-Strings.
XV. The Outlaw.
XVI. The Gift-Bond.
XVII. A Voice from the Past.
XVIII. A Rescue.
XIX. Cards on the Table.
XX. The Ultimate Discovery.
Illustrations
AS I CAME UP, HIS LISTENER EMPTIED A
CHATELAINE PURSE UPON BARNEY'S TRAY _Frontispiece_
"HE WAS DIAVOLO'S PARTNER," HE SAID VEHEMENTLY _Page_ 137
"I BELIEVE IT," SAID A VOICE THAT STARTLED US ALL _Page_ 186
THERE LAY A PATHETIC LITTLE HEAP ON THE DAGHESTAN
RUG ON MY FLOOR _Page_ 290
The
Saintsbury Affair
CHAPTER I
THE BEGINNING OF THE TANGLE
Let me see where the story begins. Perhaps I can date it from the
telephone invitation to dinner which I received one Monday from my
dear and kind friend Mrs. Whyte.
"And see that you are just as clever and agreeable as your naturally
morose nature will permit," she said saucily. "I have a charming young
lady here as my guest, and I want you to make a good impression."
"Another?" I gasped. "So soon?"
"I don't wonder that your voice is choked with surprise and
gratitude," she retorted, and I could see with my mind's eye how her
eyebrows went up. "You _don't_ deserve it,--I'll admit that freely.
But I am of a forgiving nature."
"You are so near to being an angel," I interrupted, "that it gives me
genuine pleasure to suffer martyrdom at your behest. I welcome the
opportunity to show you how devotedly I am your slave. Who is the
young lady this time?"
"Miss Katherine Thurston. Now if you would only talk in that way to
_her_,--"
"I won't," I said hastily. "At least, not until her hair is as white
as yours is,--it can never be as lovely. But for your sake I will
undertake to be as witty and amiable and generally delightful as I
think it safe to be, having due regard for the young lady's peace of
mind,--." I rang off just in time to escape the "You conceited puppy!"
which I knew was panting to get on the wire. Mrs. Whyte's speech was
at times that of an older generation.
So that was how I came to go to Mrs. Whyte's dinner that memorable
Monday evening, and to meet Katherine Thurston.
But now that I come to look at it in this historical way, I see that I
shall have to begin a little farther back, or you won't understand the
significance of what took place that night.
I already had another engagement for that evening, but I thought I
could fit the two appointments in, by getting away from Mrs. Whyte's
by ten o'clock. Under the circumstances she would forgive an early
departure. My other engagement was of a peculiar and unescapable
nature. It had come about in this way.
There was a man in our town who had always interested me to an unusual
degree, though my personal acquaintance with him was of the slightest.
He was an architect, Kenneth Clyde by name, and he had done some of
the best public buildings in the State. He had a wide circle of
friends and acquaintances, and was related to half a dozen of the "Old
families" of the town. (I am comparatively new myself. But I soon saw
that Clyde belonged to the inner circle Of Saintsbury.) And yet, with
all his professional success and his social privileges, there was
something about the man that expressed an excessive humility. It was
not diffidence or shyness,--he had all the self-possession that goes
with good breeding. But he held himself back from claiming public
credit or accepting any public place, though I knew that more than
once it had been pressed upon him in a way that made it difficult for
him to evade it. He persistently kept himself in the background, until
his desire to remain inconspicuous almost became conspicuous in turn.
He was the man, for instance, who did all the work connected with the
organization of our Boat Club, but he refused to accept any Office. He
was always ready to lend a hand with any public enterprise that needed
pushing, but his name never figured on the committees that appeared in
the newspapers. And yet, if physiognomy counts for anything, he was
not born to take a back seat. He was approaching forty at this time,
and in spite of his consistent modesty, he was one of the best known
men in Saintsbury.
As I say, he had always interested me as a man out of the ordinary,
and when he walked into my law office a few days before that telephone
call from Mrs. Whyte, I was uncommonly pleased at the idea that he
should have come to me for legal advice when he might have had
anything he wanted from the older lawyers in town whom he had known
all his life. I guessed at a glance that it was professional advice he
wanted, from the curiously tense look that underlay his surface
coolness.
"I have come to you, Mr. Hilton," he said directly, "partly because
you are enough of a stranger here to regard me and my perplexities in
an impersonal manner, and so make it easier for me to discuss them."
"Yes," I said encouragingly. He had hesitated after his last words as
though he found it hard to really open up the subject matter.
"But that is only a part of my reason for asking you to consider my
case," he went on with a certain repressed intensity. "I believe, from
what I have seen of you, that you have both physical and moral
courage, and that you will look at the matter as a man, as well as a
lawyer."
I nodded, not caring to commit myself until I understood better what
he meant.
"First, read this letter," he said, and laid before me a crumpled
sheet which he had evidently been clutching in his hand inside of his
coat pocket.
It was a half sheet of ruled legal cap, and in the center was written,
in a bold, well-formed hand,----
"I need $500. You may bring it to my office Monday night at ten. No
fooling on either side, you understand."
"Blackmail!" I said.
Clyde nodded. "What is the best way of dealing with a blackmailer?" he
asked, looking at me steadily.
"That may depend on circumstances," I said evasively. I felt that, as
he had suggested, he was trying to appeal to my sympathies as a man
rather than to my judgment as a lawyer.
"I heard of one case," he said casually, "where a prominent man was
approached by a blackmailer who had discovered some compromising
secret, and he simply told the fellow that if he gave the story to the
papers, as he threatened to do, he would shoot him and take the
consequences, since life wouldn't be worth living in any event, if
that story came out. I confess that course appeals to my common-sense.
It is so conclusive."
"I infer, however, that you didn't take that tone with this fellow
when he first approached you," I said, touching the paper on my desk.
"This is not his first demand."
"No. The first time that it came, I was paralyzed, in a manner. I had
been dreading something of that sort,--discovery, I mean,--for years.
I had gone softly, to avoid notice, I had only half lived my life, I
had felt each day to be a reprieve. Then _he_ came,--and asked money
for keeping my secret. It seemed a very easy way of escape. In a way,
it made me feel safer than before. I knew now where the danger was,
and how to keep it down. It was only a matter of money. I paid, and
felt almost cheerful. But he came again, and again. He has grown
insolent." He drew his brows together sternly as he looked at the
written threat which lay before us. He did not look like a man afraid.
"Can you tell me the whole situation?" I asked. "If I know all the
facts, I can judge better,--and you know that you speak in
professional confidence."
"I want to tell you," he said. "I--he knew--the fact is, I was
sentenced to be hanged for a murder some fifteen years ago in Texas.
The sentence is still suspended over me. I escaped before it was
executed."
A lawyer learns not to be surprised at any confession, for the depths
of human nature which are opened to his professional eye are so
amazing that he becomes accustomed to strange things, but I admit that
I was staggered at my client's confidence. I picked up and folded and
refolded the paper before I could speak quite casually.
"And no one knows that fact? Your name--?"
"I was known by another name at the time,--an assumed name. I'll tell
you the whole story. But one word first,--I was and am innocent."
He looked at me squarely but appealingly as he spoke, and suddenly
I saw what the burden was which he had been carrying for fifteen
years,--nearly half his life.
"I believe you," I said, and unconsciously I held out my hand. He
gripped it as a drowning man clutches a spar, and a dull flush swept
over his face. His hand was trembling visibly as he finally drew it
away, but he tried to speak lightly.
"That's what I couldn't induce the judge or jury to do," he said. "Let
me tell you how it all came about. It was in August of 1895. I had
graduated in June,--I was twenty-three,--and before settling down to
my new profession I went off on a vacation trip with a fellow I had
come to know pretty well at the University during my last year there.
He was not the sort of a friend I cared to introduce to my family, but
there are worse fellows than poor Henley was. He was merely rather
wild and lawless, with an instinct for gambling which grew upon him.
We went off avowedly for a lark,--to see life, Henley put it. I knew
his tastes well enough to guess beforehand that the society to which
he would introduce me would not be creditable. The Clydes are as well
known in this State as Bunker Hill is in Boston, and I felt a
responsibility toward the name. So I insisted that on our travels I
should be Tom Johnson."
"I see. Then when the trouble came you were known by that name instead
of your own?"
"Yes. That's how I was able to come back here and to go on living my
natural life."
"That was fortunate. That situation was much easier to manage than if
it had been the other way around."
Clyde had picked up a paper knife and was examining it with absent
attention, and instead of answering my remark directly he looked up
with a frank smile.
"You can't imagine what it means to me to be able to talk this over
with you," he said. "All these years I have carried it--here. Why, it
is like breathing after being half suffocated."
"I understand."
"You want to know the details, though," he went on more gravely. "We
were together for several weeks, going from one city to another.
Henley had a special faculty for striking up acquaintance with
picturesque rascals, and for a time I found it very interesting as
well as novel. It was a side of life I had never before come close to.
But gradually I couldn't help seeing that Henley was helping out an
uncommon knack with the cards by the tricks of a sharper. We
quarrelled over it more than once, and things began to grow
uncomfortable. The old irresponsible comradeship was chilled, though I
didn't yet feel like cutting loose from him. One night we had been
playing cards in a saloon in Houston, Texas,--Henley and I and two men
we had picked up. They were rough and ready Westerners, and a sort to
stand no fooling. We had all been drinking a little, but not enough to
lose our heads. I saw Henley make a misdeal and I told him so. He was
furious, and we all but came to blows in the quarrel that followed. I
left him with the others and went off by myself. That evening had
finally sickened me with the swine's husks I had been eating, and I
suddenly determined to quit it then and there and get back to my own
life, my own name, and my own people. I walked down to the station,
found that a train for the north was just about to pull out, and
jumped aboard. I was an hour away from Houston before I remembered
something that made me change my hasty plan. I had left my bag in the
room at the hotel, and though I didn't care about the clothes or the
other things, there was-- Well, there is no reason why I should not
tell you. There was a girl's picture in an inside compartment, and
some letters, and I couldn't leave them to chance. I had simply
forgotten all about that matter in my angry passion, but the thought
now was like a dash of cold water, bringing me to my senses. I got out
of the train at the next stop,--a place called Lester. It was just
midnight. I found that the first train I could catch to take me back
to Houston would go through at five in the morning, and I walked up
and down that deserted platform,--for even the station agent went off
to sleep after the midnight train went through,--for five mortal
hours. I had time to think things over, and to realize that I had been
playing with pitch as no Clyde had a right to."
He paused for an instant, as though he were living the moment over,
but I did not speak. I wanted him to tell the story in his own way.
"I caught the five o'clock train back and was in Houston soon after
six. I went at once to the hotel and to my room. Henley's room
communicated with mine. The door between them was ajar, and I pushed
it open to speak to him. He was leaning over the table, on which cards
were scattered about, and he was quite dead, from a knife thrust
between the shoulders."
Clyde had been speaking in a composed manner, like one telling an
entirely impersonal tale, but at this point he paused and a look of
embarrassment clouded his face.
"I find it hard to explain to you or to myself why I did so foolish a
thing as I did next, but I was rather shaken up by weeks of
dissipation, and the racketing of the night before and my excited,
sleepless night had thrown me off my balance. When I saw Henley dead
over the cards, I realized in a flash how bad it would look for me
after my row with him in the saloon the night before. I jumped back
into my own room and began stuffing my things into my bag pell-mell to
make my escape."
"The worst thing you could have done."
"Of course. And it proved so. I had left my room-door ajar, a sweeper
in the halls saw my mad haste, and it made him suspicious. When I
stepped out of my room, the proprietor stopped me. Of course the whole
thing was uncovered. I was arrested, tried for murder, and, as I told
you, sentenced to be hanged." He finished grimly. His manner was
studiedly unemotional.
"And yet you had a perfect alibi, if you could prove it."
"But I couldn't. No one knew I took that train. The train conductors
were called, but neither of them remembered me. The station agent at
Lester, with whom I had had some conversation about the first train
back, was killed by an accident the next day. The fact that I was out
of Houston from eleven until six was something I could not prove. And
it was the one thing that would have saved me."
"But neither could they prove, I take it, that you were in the hotel
that night."
"They tried to. The clerk testified that four men came in shortly
after eleven and went up to Henley's room. One of them was Henley, two
were strangers, and the fourth he had taken for granted to be me. My
lawyer pressed him on that point, of course, and forced him to admit
that he had not noticed particularly, but had assumed that it was I
from the fact that he was with Henley, and because he was about my
size and figure. Drinks had been sent up, and an hour later two of the
men had quietly come down and gone out. Nothing further had been heard
from our room until the sweeper reported in the morning that he had
seen me acting like a man distracted, through the partly open door.
Everything seemed to turn against me. I was bent on saving my name at
any rate, so I could not be entirely open about my past history, and
that prejudiced my case."
"What is your own theory of the affair and of the missing third man?"
I asked.
"I suppose the men whom I had left with Henley in the saloon had
picked up a fourth man for the game and gone to Henley's room. He
probably tried to cheat again, and they were ready for him. One of
them stabbed him. Then the other two waited quietly in the room while
the actual slayer walked out, to make sure that he had a clear
passage, and then they followed after he had had time to disappear.
They were hard-bitted men, but not thugs."
"You were tried and sentenced. How did you get away?"
"After the sentence, and while I was on the way back to jail, I made
my escape. I have always believed that the deputy sheriff who had me
in charge gave me the opportunity intentionally. Certainly he fired
over my head, and made a poor show at guessing my direction. I think
he had doubts of the justice of the verdict and took that way of
reversing the decision of the court, but of course I can never know."
"Then you came back here? This had been your home before?"
"Yes. It was the way to avoid comment. Kenneth Clyde was well known
here, and nobody in Saintsbury even heard of the trial of one Tom
Johnson in Houston. I have thought it best to go on living my life
just as I should have done in any event. And I have done so, except
that I have never-- But that doesn't matter." From the expression that
swept over his face I guessed what the exception was. He had never
dared to marry.
"Then this man--?" I prompted.
A fleeting smile passed over Clyde's face. He spoke with light
cynicism.
"As you say, then this man. I had almost come to believe that the past
was dead and buried and that I would be justified in forgetting it
myself. Then this man came into my office one day, affected surprise
at seeing me, called me Tom Johnson, and laughed in my face when I
denied the name. I was panic-stricken. I bought his silence. Of course
he came again. As I said at the beginning, I am tired of the
situation." There was a tone in his voice that would have held a
warning for the blackmailer if he had heard it.
"How much does the man know? Do you know whether he has anything to
prove his charges?"
"It seems that he was in the court-house as a spectator during the
trial. He didn't know me at the time, though he might, for he seems to
have been in this neighborhood time and again,--at least in the State.
He is a trouble man himself,--some ten years ago he shot and killed a
State senator here in Saintsbury. He was acquitted, because he got
some friends to swear that Senator Benbow had made a motion as though
to draw a gun, though he was found afterwards to be unarmed. But
popular anger was so aroused against him, he had to leave the State,
and he has drifted down stream ever since,--pretty far down, I
imagine; fairly subterranean at times. All this I have found out since
he forced his acquaintance upon me. I knew nothing of him before."
"What is his name? Where is he to be found?"
"Alfred Barker. He has an office in the Ph[oe]nix Building at
present. Whether he has any legitimate business I do not know. He
hangs out under the shingle of the Western Land and Improvement Co.,
but I have a feeling that that is only a cover."
"A man who has lived that sort of a life is probably vulnerable," I
said cheerfully. "I'll see what I can find out about him. In the
meantime, I, as your attorney, will keep this appointment for you next
Monday evening."
"I thought that would probably be your plan. But now that I have put
it into your hands, I am more than half sorry I did not keep it to
myself and meet him with a revolver."
I shook my head. "For a burnt child, you have curiously little respect
for the fire of the law."
Clyde had risen, and he stood looking at me with an impersonal
sternness that made his eyes hard.
"My life, and, what I value far more, my reputation, my name, are in
that fellow's hands. And he is an unhung murderer,--his life is
already forfeit."
"His time will come," I said hastily. My new client looked altogether
too much as though he were disposed to hurry on the slow-paced law! I
could not encourage such reflections.
Clyde nodded, but with an absent air, as though he were following his
own thoughts rather than my words, and soon took his leave.
When I decided to take up the practice of the law, I had fancied, in
my youthful ignorance, that it was a sort of glorified compound of a
detective story and Gems of Oratory. I had now been at it for some
years, and so far my detective instincts had been chiefly required in
the search for missing authorities in the law books, and my oratorical
gifts had been exercised almost exclusively on delinquent debtors who
didn't want to pay their debts. You can therefore imagine that Clyde's
interview left me pleasantly excited. This was the real thing! This
was the case I long had sought and mourned because I found it not! Not
for worlds would I have missed the opportunity of meeting his
blackmailing correspondent. To face a rascal was no uncommon
experience, unfortunately; but to face so complete and melodramatic a
rascal, and to try to wrest from him some incriminating admission that
would give me a controlling hold on him in my turn,--that was
something that did not come often into the day's work.
Very much to my surprise, I found unexpected light upon the career of
Alfred Barker not farther away than my own office. My first step was
to set my clerk, Adam Fellows, to looking up the court and newspaper
records of Barker's connection with the killing of Senator Benbow.
When I mentioned his name to Fellows I saw by his sudden change of
expression that I had touched some sore chord,--and if Fellows had an
ambition it was to conceal his feelings, moreover.
"You know Barker, then?" I said abruptly.
"Yes," he said, in a very low voice,--and I guessed in what
connection.
I may say here that Fellows was a souvenir of my first trial case and
of an early enthusiasm for humanity. One day, not long after my
admission to the bar, (this was before I came to Saintsbury,) the
court assigned to me the defense of a young fellow who had no lawyer.
He was a clerk in a city office, and was charged with embezzlement by
his employers. The money had gone for race-track gambling, and he
could not deny his guilt; but by bringing out the facts of his youth
and his unfortunate associations, I was able to get a minimum sentence
for him,--the best that could be expected under the circumstances.
When his sentence expired, I was on the lookout for him, and took him
into my own office as a clerk. I had nothing he could embezzle, for
one thing, and the dogged stoicism with which he had met his fate
interested me. Besides, I knew it would be difficult for him to get
work, particularly as he did not have an engaging personality. I think
that in a manner he was grateful, but he never could forget that he
carried the stigma of a convict, and he imagined that everyone else
was remembering it also. This moodiness had grown upon him instead of
wearing off. It used to make me impatient,--but it is easy enough for
one whose withers are unwrung to be impatient with the galled jade's
tendency to wince.
"What do you know of him?" I asked.
"I know that where he is, there is deviltry, but no one ever catches
him," he said bitterly. "Someone else will pay all right, but the law
doesn't touch him."
"Did he get you into trouble?" I asked bluntly.
"He made me believe he could make a fortune for me. He kept me going
with hopes that the next time, the next time, I would win enough to
square things up. It was his doing, not mine, really. But he did
nothing that the law takes note of." He spoke with unusual excitement
and feeling, and I didn't think any good would come of a discussion of
moral responsibility at that time.
"Well, look up everything possible about that affair when Benbow was
killed," I said. "I want to see if there is anything in that which
would give a hold on him."
"Oh, there won't be," he said, scornfully. "He plays safe. But if
there is any justice in heaven, he will come a cropper some day. Only
it won't be by process of law. No convict stripes for _him_."
"Let me know as soon as you find the record," I said, turning away.
His bitterness only grew if you gave it opportunity.
I then took occasion to visit the Ph[oe]nix Building, in order to
locate the office which I expected to visit the Monday evening
following. I wanted to know my way without wasting time.
As I entered, I noticed a man standing before the building directory
which hung opposite the elevators. He was a tall, athletic fellow, in
clothes that suggested an engineer or fireman. His hat was pulled down
over the upper part of his face, but his powerful, smooth-shaven jaw
showed the peculiar blue tint of very dark men. All this I saw without
consciously looking, but in a moment I had reason to notice him more
closely. The elevator gate opened, and a man stepped out,--a rather
shabby, untidy man, with a keen eye. He glanced at me carelessly, then
his eye fell upon the tall young fellow before the bulletin board, and
he smiled. He stepped up near him.
"Hello! You here?" he said, softly. Then, deliberately, "Are you
married yet?"
The tall fellow turned and lunged toward him, but the other ducked and
slipped adroitly out of his way and ran down to the open doorway and
so into the street. The tall fellow made no attempt to follow. I think
that lurch toward the other had been partly the result of surprise.
But not wholly. He stood now, leaning against the wall, apparently
waiting for the elevator, but I saw that his two fists had not yet
unclenched themselves, and his blue-black jaw was squared in a way
that told of locked teeth. He jerked his hat down farther over his
face as he saw me looking at him, and turned away. He was breathing
hard.
"Can you direct me to Mr. Barker's office?" I asked the elevator man.
"His office is in No. 23, second floor, but he ain't in. That was he
that came down with me and went out."
"Oh, all right. I'll come again," I said, and turned away.
The tall young fellow had gone. Had he, too, come to look up Mr.
Barker? At any rate, I should know Barker when we met again.