The Oxford Book of American Det (33 page)

“Where is Mr. Simpson?” asked Colton. “We had not seen him.”

“In the east wing, sir, where the palms are.”

“We will go to him immediately.”

“I’ll tell him, sir.” His beckoning finger brought the waiter who had served them with the check.

Sydney Thames spoke. “Some one of his cheap actress friends has roped him at last,” he said scornfully. “He’s a pretty specimen of man to be first vice-president of the conservative Berkley Trust Company.”

“I’ll wager you’re wrong,” declared Colton quietly, as he handed the waiter a two-dollar bill from his fold. “If it were one of the women for whom he has been buying wine suppers for the past two years, she wouldn’t be ‘where the palms are’ nor would the waiter be so positive of the marriage relation.”

“I’m not going,” protested Thames quickly.

“Surely, Sydney, you are not afraid a married woman will kidnap you?” smiled Colton, as he took the stick between his fingers and prepared to rise. “How many?” Sydney, who had turned half around in his chair to gaze toward the entrance to the east wing, faced him. “I’ll go,” he said shortly; another hasty glance, and he rose with Colton. “Thirty-seven straight, eighteen left, nine right. We will stop at the door of the east wing. I can’t see it.”

“There are no pretty women to disturb the distance judgment you have been so many years acquiring?” queried Colton mildly.

Without answering, Thames turned on his heel, and made his way rapidly between the tables toward the east wing. Colton laughed silently, picked up his change, and hurried after, his perfectly trained brain counting the steps automatically, his thoughts busy elsewhere. He was thinking of Simpson, who had gained such an unenviable reputation as a spender along the gay White Way during the past two years.

Simpson had always interested him, student of human nature that he was, as the one man who had never lived up to the impression Colton’s unerring instinct had told him was the right one the first time they had met. The problemist had expected things of Simpson, and Simpson had done nothing but idle as much time as possible in the position as first vice-president of one of the most conservative banks in the city, and spend money on women.

Colton stopped for an instant beside Thames in the archway, apparently gazing idly at the crowd of men and women at the palm-shaded tables.

“Two left, nineteen straight, half in,” directed Thames, stepping aside to follow.

The heavy-lidded, thickset man, with the faint lines of blue vein traceries in his cheeks, rose to meet them.

“This is a pleasure, Mr. Colton,” he exclaimed, in heavy-voiced heartiness. “You are the one man I wanted to see; though I hardly believed it would be my luck to catch you this night of all nights. You knew the pace I was going, and I want you to meet the little girl I went back to the old town to marry. We’ve been friends since we were tots. Thank God, I waked up in time to know what a good woman means! When next you see us it will be in our own home. One moment, please”—his voice sank to an almost reverent whisper—“my wife is deaf and dumb, Mr. Colton.” Thames had heard; had seen, with curiously mixed feelings, the little woman with the small, boyish face around which the tendrils of brown hair curled from under the close-fitting toque, and had appraised the slim, quietly dressed figure, the half smile as she stared inquiringly at them. The girl seemed but a child, but he saw that her face was heavily daubed with powder and rouge, as though its application had neither been taught nor practised. Until those last explaining words he had stood back with a half-pitying light in his eyes, for he knew Simpson’s reputation with women. But at the quietly spoken sentence he had undergone an instant change of feeling, such as only highly-strung, hypersensitive men like him are capable of, toward the man who had gone away from his women of wine to marry a simple country girl who could neither speak nor hear.

Simpson’s fingers had been moving rapidly; he bowed toward Thornley Colton. The girl smiled, and put out her small hand, the movement throwing back from her wrist the filmy lace of the long sleeve. For a moment they clasped hands; then the girl’s fingers worked again.

Simpson laughed. “She does not believe you are blind, Mr. Colton; she says you have eyes like every one else.”

Thornley Colton smiled. “If you tell her that I’ve got to wear these large-lensed, smoked glasses to prevent the light giving me a headache you will probably never convince her,” he observed, as he refused the chair the waiter had drawn up.

Sydney Thames acknowledged his introduction with a bow and the usual meaningless words, but his eyes were soft and tender as a woman’s as they met those of the girl in the instant’s glance she gave him before the lashes were lowered. A woman’s face never failed to stir him.

“Won’t you sit down?” pleaded Simpson. “It will probably be the last time you will ever find me in one of these glided palaces. A man who has been my kind of a fool can appreciate his own fireside, and Gertie, who was all aflutter to visit one of the famous Broadway restaurants, recognised in ten minutes the crass artificiality it took me years to discover.” He was holding her hand openly and unashamed as he said it.

Thornley Colton shook his head. “It is past my time for going home, and you know my habits. A glass of Celestin’s at one-fifteen, the beauties of the Moonlight Sonata on my piano for fifteen minutes, and then to bed. If I may visit you at your home, Mrs.

Simpson?” his outstretched hand met that of the girl. “Ah, you read the lips? A wonderful accomplishment to us who have never had eyes.” His lips framed a smile of pleasure; he turned to Thames. “The same, Sydney?” he asked.

The secretary’s eyes travelled up the aisle. “The man nine steps up is gesticulating quite freely.”

“Lots of room.” Colton’s slim stick touched a chair-leg, he bowed, and hurried away, the hearty good-night of Simpson following. Thornley Colton never needed any direction for going back over the same route, for his mind, trained to the figures of steps, neither hesitated nor made mistakes in following them backward. He stepped aside to avoid the swinging arm of the loud-voiced man who was punctuating his liquor-born blatancy with violent gestures, and paused at the archway of the main dining-room for Thames.

“Is Morris still at his table?” he asked.

“It is empty.”

“Urn!” Colton’s high forehead wrinkled a frown, his slim stick tapped his leg. “Time enough tomorrow,” he announced finally, and started through the maze of tables towards the entrance.

They received their hats and overcoats and left the big hotel to enter the long, black car that awaited them at the north entrance at one o’clock each morning. They were well on their way to the big, old-fashioned brownstone house where Thornley Colton had been born, before the silence was broken. Then Sydney Thames spoke:

“There must be a lot of latent goodness in a man who could take a woman like that to love, and cherish, and protect,” he said slowly.

“You mean Miss Richmond?” The darkness concealed the whimsical smile on Colton’s lips.

“No!” The negative was short. “Morris will marry Miss Richmond just because she is beautiful and accomplished; because his man’s vanity will be tickled to exhibit her before men as his possession. I mean Simpson, who took a simple country girl whom God had handicapped, just because he loved her. That means something.”

“But, Sydney”—Colton’s thin fingers rested lightly on the other’s sleeve; there was just the faintest trace of laughter in the words—“don’t you think she was a bit too heavily rouged?”

He felt the highly-strung man jump under his hand.

“Good heavens, Thorn!” Sydney burst out. “Sometimes I wonder if you are blind!”

“God gives fingers to the sightless, Sydney,” Colton’s voice was quietly serious. “In the darkness the keyboard of my piano gives me the soul secrets of dead men gone to dust. In the lights of a Broadway restaurant the keyboard of silence gives me the secrets of living hearts. And they cannot lie.”

“What do you mean? What have I missed?” Thames asked the questions eagerly, tensely, for he knew the moods of this man who had been the only father he had ever known; he understood that something of grave portent had given its significance to the man who could not see, while he with five perfect senses, had seen nothing, suspected nothing.

Colton pulled his crystalless watch from his pocket, and touched it with a finger-tip.

“One-thirty; we are fifteen minutes late.” He put his hand on the door catch as the big machine slowed up before his home. And it was not until they were ascending the broad brownstone steps that he answered the question.

“You have missed the first act of what promises to be a very remarkable crime, Sydney,” he said quietly.

II

Colton scowled when the red jack failed to turn up, but the mouth corners smiled when the ace of diamonds slid between the sensitive fingers to take its place in the top row of Mr. Canfield’s famous game. The deuce followed, the red jack immediately after; then the problemist looked up toward the doorway of the library.

“Well, Shrimp?” he smiled.

“They’s the theatrical papers yuh wanted.” The red-headed, freckle-faced boy with the slightly-twisted nose came forward with an armful of big magazines and newspapers, the front pages of which were adorned with full-length portraits of stage celebrities.

Before he quite reached the table he stopped short, eyes crackling their excitement.

“Snakes! You’re gettin’ it, Mr. Colton! They’s the four of hearts and the five of spades. Don’t stop now.”

Colton laughed. “All right, Shrimp. Do you want to do a little detective work for me?”

“Do I?” The eyes danced with eagerness. “Ain’t I been studyin’? Nineteen steps from the kitchen t’ the first chair in the dinin’-room. Six—“

“I know,” assured Colton hastily. “But you take those papers to your room and write down the names of all the vaudeville actors—men, you know—who have quit the stage within the last two months; where they have gone, and why, if possible.”

“Snakes!” The boy’s face showed his disappointment. “Nick Carter never had t’ do that.”

“He never had to count steps for a blind man, either,” smiled Thornley Colton. “You do that and there’ll probably be some real detective work—shadowing, disguises, and the rest of it.”

There was no answer. The boy had taken a firmer grip on the papers, and was already out of the room.

The four of hearts and the five of spades had been placed when Sydney, face broad in a smile, entered.

“What’s the matter with The Fee’?” he demanded. “He ran past me as though he were on his way to a fire.” Thames always referred to Shrimp as The Fee, because the redheaded, freckle-faced boy had become part of the Colton household after a particularly baffling case, at the conclusion of which the joy of capturing the murderer had been overshadowed by the blind man’s sorrow for the broken-nosed boy who had jumped between him and a vicious blackjack. And Shrimp had been his fee for the case. As the boy’s mother was the murdered one, and his father the murderer, there had been no one to object.

Before Colton had a chance to voice his laughing explanation, the tinkling telephone-bell on the desk demanded attention. At the first words the thin lips tautened to a straight line, the voice became pistol-like in its crispness, the muscles under the pale skin of the face became tense.

The problemist had a problem.

“When? Last night. All right. Still that two-wire burglar connection on the safe? Never mind further details. We’ll be right down.”

As his hand dropped the receiver on the hook a finger pressed the garage bell button that would bring his machine instantly at any hour of the day or night.

“Get your hat and coat, Sydney,” he ordered curtly. “We’re going to the Berkley Trust Company. Somebody’s gotten away with half a million in negotiable bonds!”

“Half a million?” gasped Thames.

“So they said. Didn’t wait for details.” Colton grabbed his private phone-book of often-needed numbers, and ran his fingers down the backs of the thin pages on which the names and numbers had been heavily written with a hard pencil. As Sydney hurried out he heard the curt voice give a number over the phone. And it was fully five minutes before Colton took his place in the car.

In the smooth-running machine, with the wooden-faced Irish chauffeur at the wheel, Sydney Thames voiced the question:

“Last night, you said?”

“Yes, the second act came sooner than I expected,” broke in Thornley Colton. “I underrated the man.” And the expression on the pale face augured ill for some one.

The funereal atmosphere of the Berkley Trust Company could be felt as they entered.

In the office of the third secretary, the white-haired president of the institution stopped his nervous pacing to mumble a greeting in tremulous accents. First Vice-President Simpson’s grave face broke into a smile of welcome. Norris raised his bowed head from his hands, and came forward joyfully, pleadingly. The red-faced man who had been standing over him kept a step away, but always near enough to touch him with an outstretched hand.

“My God, Mr. Colton! They think I’m guilty!” There was agony unutterable in Morris’s voice.

“Ridiculous!” snapped Simpson, his heavy-lidded eyes half closed. “Mr. Colton will soon put this detective right.”

The problemist nodded a grim acquiescence, and took the outstretched hand of Norris.

“I know better,” he said kindly. The red-faced man gave voice to a grunt, and Colton instantly swung around to face him. “So you’ve cleaned it up already, Jamison?” he asked mildly.

“Nobody said he was guilty,” growled the red-faced central-office man significantly. “I just been questionin’ him, that’s all.”

“And accusing him with every question!” snapped Colton. “Like the rest of your kind, you haven’t the intelligence to suit your methods to the crime. Every crime must be worked according to the old Mulberry Street formula. That didn’t change with the modern Centre Street building.”

“But we know enough not to make any cracks till we get all the information,” sneered Jamison. “We don’t hand out that know-it-all stuff till we know something!”