Gilded Needles (Valancourt 20th Century Classics) (12 page)

Chapter
15

Many citizens of New York were outraged by the
Tribune’
s having brought to their attention the existence of the Black Triangle, although they may for twenty years have lived within less than a mile of those ungoverned, ungovernable streets. Marian Phair’s Committee for the Suppression of Urban Vice was only the first of many such small, earnest, ineffectual organizations that knew more or less what they were against, but had no conception of how to scourge iniquity from the metropolis.

A couple of days after the
Tribune
had set up the reward for information leading to the arrest of those responsible for Cyrus Butterfield’s death, an anonymous correspondent sent to the paper a ten-dollar note, which he requested be added to the sum. The
Tribune
printed the short accompanying letter in a black-bordered square on the front page as a laudable example of public-spiritedness, and within three weeks the reward was swollen to over three thousand dollars and rose with the arrival of every mail.

On the morning of Tuesday, February
21
, when the reward was at $
3
,
340
, Simeon Lightner received a note directed to the “Blak Tryangele Genntleman” at his desk on the seventh floor of the Tribune Building. The letter inside the soiled envelope was scrawled in a thick-leaded pencil, composed without much regard to the usual proprieties of spelling and punctuation:

Dear Sire Ive envormashune fore yue abowwt Misster Butterfeld meete mee
2
day at hungree Charlys place in Washingetonn Streete at
2
Ime a ladye and yue can tele me bye mye yalowe kercheefe I wante the monye

It was not the first such note that Simeon had received, and although he had appeared at all the places named and precisely at the times mentioned, he had learned nothing of value. Mostly, he had found, it was petty criminals who had written the notes in hope that he would show up with the money in his pocket and that he might be robbed or diddled out of it. But Simeon made these expeditions always in the company of either Duncan Phair or Benjamin Stallworth, and made it clear that he was armed. Then the informant either slunk away or else proffered information that was pointless or patently fabricated.

This meeting did not promise to be any different, but Hungry Charley’s was a semi-respectable establishment on the river edge of the Black Triangle and not the sort of place in which he would be set upon. And since he was only going to meet “a lady with a yellow kerchief,” the reporter decided to dispense with escort.

Simeon Lightner was not entirely pleased with the manner in which the
Tribune’
s undertaking had proceeded. Although he couldn’t object to its sterling success, nor to the increase in prestige and salary he had gained by it, he had the uneasy unpleasant feeling that he was being led about by Duncan Phair. The articles appeared in what order and with what emphases Duncan thought best, and were of rather a different consistency and tone than what Simeon would have produced had he been on his own. But since everyone else seemed pleased and since the credit redounded on him and Duncan took none of it for himself, Simeon felt he had not the right of objection. Besides, Duncan Phair, who was at all events a pleasurable companion, never made suggestions that were not well considered or that did not tend toward the improvement of the articles. Simeon tugged at his wiry red whiskers in exasperation over the fact that he could find no real reason for the distrust he felt for the handsome young lawyer.

Simeon arrived at Hungry Charley’s half an hour before his appointed time. The restaurant was long and narrow, with walls and floor of red-veined marble. Twenty long narrow tables, sitting six on a side, were set with one end against the wall, leaving only a pinched walk space. The high ceiling was of white tile and a single lamp was suspended over every table. In the middle of Tuesday afternoon there were no more than fifteen persons dining, and Simeon had no trouble in getting a place that commanded a view of the entrance. He ordered a chop and lager and fell to his luncheon without any nervous hope that by the coming interview he would discover the murderer of Cyrus Butterfield.

He had finished his chop and beer, ordered coffee, finished that, and been served another beer, before the “lady” came in, some minutes late. She was short, thin, with a sallow mean-spirited face, and had—as promised—a yellow kerchief tied around her head, as if she were suffering from a toothache.

The woman looked around her uncertainly, and it was only when she appeared in imminent danger of being shown the sidewalk by a waiter, that Simeon stood and motioned her over. The woman with the yellow kerchief nervously pointed Simeon out to the waiter who, receiving a nod from the reporter, allowed her to pass.

Simeon directed her to a seat at the end of the table, against the marble wall. He moved himself, and they were then some distance removed from any other diners.

“What will you have?” Simeon asked.

“Lager,” replied the woman.

Simeon ordered two lagers from the waiter and in a few moments they were brought, with a plate of cheese and bread.

“Bring the money?” asked the woman.

“What’s your name?” demanded Simeon Lightner.

“Lady Weale,” the woman replied mistrustfully.

“
Lady Weale?
”

“That’s my name, that’s the name my ma give me, ’cause I was born a girl: Lady.”

“Well, M’Lady, tell me what you know and then we’ll speak of money.”

“You bring the money?” she demanded again.

“M’Lady, you are speaking to the personification of the New York
Tribune
. If you’re deserving of the money that is offered in reward, you will receive the money that is offered in reward.”

Lady Weale looked sourly away, and sipped at her lager.

“Now,” said Simeon Lightner, “what do you know of the murder of Cyrus Butterfield?” He spoke the question as if he had no idea of receiving any answer that might be of use or interest.

“I know who did it.”

“Who did it?”

“Maggie Kizer and her husband Alick.”

“Well,” said Simeon, “is Maggie Kizer a duchess that I’m supposed to know of her?”

“What?”

“Who is Maggie Kizer, I said?”

“Maggie Kizer is the lady who lodges in my house. I live on the ground floor, Maggie Kizer lives on the second story.”

“And one evening, I suppose, Maggie Kizer and her husband strolled out, passed Mr. Butterfield on the street, who perhaps asked them for directions, and so, taking the question as an insult, they forced him to strip to the skin and then stabbed him through the heart?”

“No,” said Lady Weale, who had not understood the ironic intent of Simeon’s imagination, “that’s not how it happened.”

“How did it happen then?”

“Maggie is a lady who receives gentlemen, you see what I mean?”

Simeon nodded and Lady Weale went on: “And her husband was in jail—up at Sing Sing—and Maggie was entertaining Mr. Butterfield one night. I let him in the house myself, and she was entertaining him in the bedroom—if you see what I mean—and her husband, who was being let out of Sing Sing, came in and found ’em. . . .”

“Yes?” prompted Simeon, who already found the tale more interesting than he had anticipated.

“Entertaining one another in the bedroom, if you see what I mean.”

“I do, M’Lady. Go on please. Madame Kizer then, I take it, didn’t know to expect her husband back from his extended visit in the northern provinces?”

“She didn’t know he was to get out, if that’s what you mean, and perhaps he wasn’t, perhaps he ’scaped, if you see what I mean, so he comes a-knocking at the door, and I open the door to tell him that Maggie’s not receiving, for that’s what I’m ’bliged to say when she’s entertaining, but he pushed right on past me and goes up the stairs taking ’em three at the time and goes right through the door and I’m using my lungs, if you see what I mean, and Maggie I suppose jumps up, but Mr. Butterfield’s not quick enough and Maggie’s husband comes in—”

“And stabs Mr. Butterfield to the heart in a fit of jealousy!”

“No,” said Lady Weale, “not at the first. First he’s just going in, sly-like, and talks about duties of a wife and rights of a husband—”

“You were by?” questioned Simeon, with a wry smile. “You were by for these edifying remarks?”

“I was in the next room, it was my duty as landlady to see nothing fractious come of it.”

“Commendable, M’Lady, go on.”

“So,” said Lady Weale, knocking on the marble wall of the restaurant with her red knuckles, “then Maggie’s husband Alick talks about outraged honor and recompensivities and the like—”

“Recompensivities?” repeated Simeon.

“If you see what I mean,” nodded Lady Weale and went on: “And then he goes over to the dressing table, where all Mr. Butterfield’s clothing is hanging over the back of the chair and all his jewelry is on top of the little bench there, and Maggie’s husband Alick picks it up—all the time he’s talking about recompensivities—and he puts it in his pocket, and then Mr. Butterfield gets up out of the bed, ranting how he won’t stand for such recompensivities and he can’t take my watch and so on, but Maggie’s husband just laughs, because Mr. Butterfield doesn’t have on a thread.”

“You saw all this?”

“Every word.”

By this time, though his voice when he questioned the lady in the yellow kerchief was one of bemusement, Simeon Lightner was taking quick notes in a small tablet he had pulled from his coat pocket.

“So Mr. Butterfield—I didn’t know his name then, you understand, but I learned it from the papers—comes forward, and reaches out for Maggie’s husband, and has him by the throat, and he’s red in the face, and he starts choking Maggie’s husband—”

“What’s Madame Kizer about all this time?”

“She’s making sure that the curtains are drawn tight.”

“No nonsense there,” remarked Simeon.

“Maggie’s ’cute,” said Mrs. Weale, “but Mr. Butterfield’s choking on Maggie’s husband and Maggie’s husband picks up this needle and stabs Mr. Butterfield in the chest, and he dies.”

“A
needle?
”

“A kind of needle,” shrugged Lady Weale. “A Chinaman’s needle, if you see what I mean. It was gold.”

“Opium?”

Lady Weale nodded.

Simeon Lightner whistled and begged the landlady to continue.

“Maggie calls me in—she’s seen me in the next room—and she pulls a sheet off the bed, lays it out on the floor, and we roll Mr. Butterfield onto it so he won’t bleed on the carpet, but there’s not enough blood to fill a teacup. Then she turns to her husband, who’s got all that jewelry in his pocket, and she says: ‘Take it out, sir!’ and he don’t, and she turns and pulls a hair-trigger pistol out from under the pillow and says, ‘Take it out, sir!’ and he takes it out and puts it back on the dresser.”

“A cool ’un,” remarked Simeon Lightner admiringly.

“Then she says—Maggie talks like a lady—she says, ‘We must take him out of here. Put his clothes back on.’ So Maggie’s husband and me gets down on the floor and we put Mr. Butterfield’s clothes back on him, then Maggie says to her husband, ‘You take him out of here and don’t you come back,’ and he says how he don’t have any money and he’ll starve, and she might as well shoot him and have done with it, and Maggie says she’ll sell the jewelry and then send the money to General Delivery in Washington and he can get it there—tells him what name it’ll be under—”

“You’re right,” said Simeon, “Madame Kizer is certainly ’cute.”

“So then Maggie tells her husband what to do. Mr. Butterfield is dressed as best we can, though it’s a bad job to put shoes on a dead man, and we take him downstairs, and Maggie’s husband, with ten dollars in his pocket that she give him, takes Mr. Butterfield outside, holding him up like he was falling-down drunk—nobody notices, so many people on the street, most of ’em drunk too, New Year’s Eve—and Maggie’s husband Alick walks Mr. Butterfield down the street a bit and is about to leave him in an alley right around the corner, but Maggie’s sent me out after him, and I tell him he has to take Mr. Butterfield farther away, all the way down to the docks, and he says it’s too dangerous, and I tell him if he don’t, Maggie won’t send the money to Washington. So he curses me, and he curses Maggie, and he curses the dead man he’s got his arm around, but then he goes on toward the docks, and I’m watching him cross West Street, trying to stick to the dark parts, and then I get back to the house.”

“But when he was found, Mr. Butterfield was naked.”

“Scavengers. Ragpickers. ’Round there, they won’t leave a dead rat with its fur on.”

“Maggie do as she promised? She sell the jewelry?”

“Black Lena on West Houston took it, paid her a good sum for it I would think, considering how Alick Kizer is her very own brother. Maggie took the money and posted it to Washington. He’s got it by now.”

“This all?” said Simeon Lightner, grinning for his good fortune. When Lady Weale signified yes, he went over the story once more, garnering more detail, demanding descriptions of the rooms in the history, wanting to know what Maggie’s husband looked like, asking whether Cyrus Butterfield had died with a rattle in his throat. After once ascertaining that she would almost certainly receive the reward money, Lady Weale answered all Simeon’s questions.

They were on their third pints of lager, and Simeon’s tablets were close to being used up, when he asked, “Tell me, M’Lady, why do you tell me all this? Wasn’t Madame Kizer your friend?”

Lady Weale shrugged uneasily: “I know she’s thinking of moving away. I heard her tell it one of her gentlemen, wanted to take a place up on Thirtieth Street. She was a good girl, and I didn’t know where I’d find the like to replace her. And if she was going away, then this reward was going to serve for my recompensivities, if you see what I mean.”

Simeon told Mrs. Weale that when she returned home there was no need to say anything yet to Maggie Kizer, that it would be much better in fact if she were not warned. The way that Lady Weale glanced at Simeon made him realize that the old sour-faced woman had probably eased her conscience over this betrayal by promising herself that she would give Maggie Kizer enough time to escape. “You see,” Simeon smiled, “you won’t get your reward unless there’s an arrest. Of course, we’d like the police to arrest the man who actually killed Mr. Butterfield, but who knows where he is now, there’s no way of tracing him any longer, since you can’t remember under what name he had received the money in Washington. Unless Maggie Kizer is arrested and convicted, you won’t receive a penny—” He smiled, for it pleased him to prick Lady Weale, who for money had betrayed a woman who had been—by the landlady’s own admission—kind to her.

“You—” Lady Weale tipped over the pint of lager she had just received in an effort to destroy the markings on Simeon’s tablets, but he snatched them out of the way, and hastily stood. The beer poured over his vacated chair.

“I’ll take care of the reckoning,” he smiled. “And remember,” he said, “just as soon as Madame Kizer permanently changes her address from Bleecker Street to the Tombs, you’ll have your money. And tomorrow morning, all the Black Triangle can read about your part in her arrest.”