The Oxford Book of American Det (36 page)

“You forget that the agency men saw her come out of the room empty-handed; they even searched her, and one put her on the trolley.” Colton smiled curiously. “This was wholly a man’s job, Sydney. The work of the rarest kind of criminal; a detailist. This crime, while perfectly simple, is, I think, unique in its attention to details. That’s why it interests me.”

“Simple!” ejaculated Thames. “Simple? You speak as though you knew the guilty man.”

“I do. Perfectly. I knew last night.”

“Last night? The—“

“The robbery was committed early today. Exactly.”

“Why—why—“ Helpless amazement was in Sydney Thames’s voice. “Why don’t you arrest him? Why all this—“

“Simply because I would be laughed at. I haven’t the proof—yet. The usual criminal stumbles on his opportunity, and seizes it in a haphazard fashion. The rare criminal, the detailist, attends to every detail; works his problem out with the shrewdness and forethought of a captain of finance, plans a coup months ahead. Then he creates the opportunity. You must understand, Sydney, that half a million is worth a few months’

work.”

“But suspicion points only to Miss Richmond, Norris, and this Mrs. Bowden.”

“Suspicion points to every one,” corrected the problemist. “Doesn’t it seem suspicious that President Montrose should call in the police when he would naturally take all steps in his power to avoid publicity? Doesn’t the very eagerness of the central-office men to arrest Norris and his wife seem queer? Isn’t there a bit of suspicion in Simpson’s confession that he delayed the Stillson estate until Norris was compelled to work after hours on them? Doesn’t Miss Richmond’s story that she was carrying her suit home to save work for a delivery boy seem highly improbable and unwoman-like? How about Norris telling his wife of the bonds? An unbusinesslike proceeding in the case of half a million’s worth of negotiable bonds, truly. Didn’t the two men who answered the early-morning alarm seem a bit too sure that nothing was wrong? Weren’t the two watchmen in the conspiracy to pretend that Mrs. Schneider was ill, so that a woman whom they had known but two weeks could gain access to the bank? Doesn’t the finding of an unlabelled pill-box, three featherless quills, and surgeon’s cotton in the otherwise empty room of a woman dying with tuberculosis strike you as strange? As a further detail in this crime of details, doesn’t my confession that I knew the criminal before the crime was committed seem a trifle like guilty knowledge?” He smiled broadly.

“Great Scott, Thorn!” Sydney Thames’s voice trailed off in a whistle of pure bewilderment. “You’ve involved every one.”

“Oh, no.” Colton snapped his cigarette into the street. “Not every one. An unfortunate vaudeville actor will appear on the scene as soon as I get the list on which I left Shrimp busily at work.”

III

In the absolute darkness of the shade-drawn library Thornley Colton softly whistled a syncopated version of Mendelssohn’s
Spring Song
as his deft fingers filled an empty goose-quill with a fine white powder from an improvised paper funnel. He plugged the open end with a small wad of cotton; then his wonderfully sharp ears caught the rustle of the double portieres.

“Oh, Sydney,” he called, “have you heard anything from the bank this morning?” Thames entered the darkness unhesitatingly, for his constant practice of judging distance and figuring steps for Colton had made him almost as much at home in the darkness as the blind man himself.

“No,” he answered shortly. Then, with the frank criticism of long friendship: “It’s a crime, Thorn, for you to be idle while that girl is being dogged, and harassed, and—“

“I thought she sang remarkably well last night for a person under such a strain,” interrupted Colton musingly.

“It was wonderful, wonderful!” Sydney Thames spoke with the breathless enthusiasm a beautiful girl always aroused in his woman-hungry heart.

“Here, here!” protested the problemist laughingly. “Remember that she is another man’s wife!”

“Great heavens, Thorn! How can you laugh?” cried Thames resentfully. “Think of those two dogs of detectives, questioning, bulldozing, shadowing! Why, they didn’t let Miss Richmond get away from the bank until late in the afternoon, then Jamison insisted on going with her. His partner hung around the bank till it closed—“

“Trying to discover the use of powdered sulphur,” smiled Colton. “I thought he would.

Any one but a central-office man would have gone to a drug store, as I suggested.”

“Two other headquarters men hauled that frail old Mrs. Schneider and the two watchmen to police head-quarters, and put them through the third degree.”

“And a half-dozen more were on the trail of Mrs. Bowden, while we were enjoying the opera and an alleged cabaret show afterward, for which this dark room is the penalty.

Too much light yesterday gave me a frightful headache.” The sudden ringing of the telephone in the darkness made Thames jump, and Colton’s cane, which was never away from him, felt the movement.

“Answer it, Sydney,” he requested.

The secretary’s hands had not the sureness of his feet, and he had to fumble a moment.

When he had given the customary salutation and had listened a moment he gasped:

“It’s Simpson, Thorn. His wife is missing! He wants you.” He extended the phone in the darkness, but Thornley Colton made no move to take it.

“Tell him I’ll be down to the bank in an hour or so. I’ll see him then.” Colton spoke idly.

Sydney repeated the message. Followed a silence. “He’s frantic, Thorn!” Thames’s voice shook with excitement. “When he got home last night she was gone. The doorman at his apartment house said that she had gone out in the morning, for a short walk, he supposed. Simpson was so excited about the robbery he did not telephone her during the day, as he had promised. He spent half the night searching, and tried a dozen times to get you. She is deaf and dumb, Thorn. Think of it! Deaf and dumb, and lost!” It only needed a woman in trouble to shatter Sydney Thames’s nerves.

“Tell him that I’m trying to figure out that robbery. Tell him also that I never let one case interfere with another. I’m not a detective. There’s nothing interesting about a missing woman. Hundreds of ‘em every day. I find my pleasure in interesting problems, not in police work.” Colton’s voice was sharp, curt, utterly devoid of sympathy.

Sydney knew that tone, as he knew the man who used it. He repeated part of the message, added gentle-voiced apologies, and hung up the receiver with a sigh.

“That was heartless, Thorn! Think of that woman, deaf and dumb, lost in this—“

“Sometimes, Sydney, that susceptible heart of yours becomes wearisome.” Colton spoke a bit sharply. “A moment ago you were protesting because I was here instead of running around after the man who stole the half-million in bonds from the Berkley Trust Company.”

“But Mrs. Norris is not helpless—“ And for fifteen minutes he argued, while Colton smiled imperturbably in the darkness, and filled two other quills with the white powder, and plugged the ends with tufts of cotton.

Suddenly Thames stopped, for Colton had picked up the telephone and was giving a number.

“Hello, Shrimp!” he called, when the connection had been made. “Everything all right?

Fine business. Three hours, eh? Good! Be on time, and obey orders. Good-bye!”

“Where’s The Fee?” demanded Sydney. “I haven’t seen him since yesterday.”

“Emulating the example of his worthy hero, Nick Carter. Shrimp is a real detective now.” Colton returned the crystalless watch to his pocket, picked up the three quills, and arose. “Come on, Sydney. We’ll walk over to the bank.”

“Walk?” ejaculated Thames, for he knew the blind man’s aversion to walking when he could ride. “Where’s the machine?”

“John and the machine are helping Shrimp in his detective work,” explained Colton.

And in the twenty minutes’ walk to the Berkley Trust Company he absolutely refused to answer questions, but kept up a continuous conversation on trivial topics, that was maddening to the nervous secretary.

The effect of the previous day’s badgering, questioning, and threats of the central-office men could be seen as one entered the bank. The aged cashier’s hands trembled as he tried to count a sheaf of new bills. Book-keepers in the rear wrote figures and erased them. Thompson, head of the trust and estate clerks, in his little ante-room cage, was in a pitiable state of nerves. The typewriter’s chair by President Montrose’s desk was vacant, because the lady stenographer was at home under the care of a doctor. The fifty years of staid, conservative calm that had characterised the Berkley Trust Company during its long and useful life had been hit by a five-hundred-thousand-dollar storm.

The group in the vault-like office of Third Secretary Norris was little better. President Montrose could hardly control his trembling hand to stroke his Vandyke; Norris’s eyes showed the sleeplessness of the night before; Miss Richmond was calm with the calmness that means coming nervous collapse; her mother was crying softly; Simpson seemed positively haggard, and Sydney Thames murmured words of sympathy for the man who had two troubles. Jamison and the other central-office man could not make their sneers wholly sceptical. The protective-agency men were plainly puzzled.

“I see you are all on hand.” There was no smile in Colton’s voice now, or on his lips; he was deadly calm, coldly earnest. “You didn’t think it necessary to send for the two watchmen?”

“We got men watchin’ them,” put in the surly Jamison.

“Thanks!” came curtly from Colton. “Sit down at this table, all of you. I want to tell you a story.”

“We didn’t come to hear—“

Simpson interrupted the detective: “For God’s sake, make it short, Mr. Colton! My wife—“

“I’ll look into that later.” Colton’s cane assured him that the chairs were around the long table, and his finger-tips felt the face of his watch in his pocket.

“Will you?” Simpson’s voice was almost sarcastically eager, his heavy-lidded eyes narrowed. Thames could not blame the man’s natural resentment for Colton’s offhandedness.

Silently they took seats. Colton sat facing the closed door; across the table was Simpson and Norris. Miss Richmond and her mother were at the end. The four detectives were on either side of the problemist.

“This is a story of a criminal who was born a criminal; who couldn’t be honest if he tried,” began Colton, in his quietly expressive voice.

One hand lay idly on the table before him, the other on his knees, fingers holding the slim, hollow cane. “He wasn’t just born crooked. He started petty thieving before he was out of short trousers. He was the rare criminal that works years as an honest man to pave the way for criminality. He had brains. He could have been a wonderful success as an honest man. But he couldn’t be straight. The criminal instinct was there.

He was waiting for the proper time. But the coarser side of his nature refused to be held in leash. He needed money. And with the inherent craft of his kind he began to plan the robbery of the Berkley Trust Company. It wasn’t so hard, because, being an old, conservative institution, in which men had grown gray, the personal side entered as it cannot in the modern, up-to-date institutions where men come and go. Instead of elaborate safeguards the simple protection of proven honesty entered largely into the protection of the bank’s valuables. And where there is simple honesty there is always vulnerability.

“This criminal had found the vulnerable spot years before the robbery was actually planned; when the time came for its consummation luck came to his aid, as it often does.” He paused. On the outside door came a knock, so faint that only his wonderfully sharp ears heard it. “There was no possibility of suspicion attaching itself to him, for he had planned an elaborate program to foist suspicion on others. And this robbery was but one of a series, for the method his shrewd brain had devised was capable of endless combinations. In a few years the Berkley Trust losses would have mounted to millions!”

His fist crashed down on the heavy table. The door opened. Between the sober-faced Shrimp and the expressionless Irish chauffeur was a sunken-eyed, tottering creature, unshaven—

“There’s your wife, Simpson!” In the silence Colton’s voice came like the crack of a pistol.

“My God, Thorn, it’s a man!” In Sydney Thames’s tone was agony that the sensitive blind man whom he loved could have made such a mistake.

“Yes, a man! Sit still, Simpson!” With a movement as quick as light itself Colton’s fingers had dropped the slim cane that had given its warning, and held a blue-steel automatic. “Or rather what was once a man.” His tone rang with deadly menace.

“Charlie De Roque, vaudeville actor, the youngest and best female impersonator on the stage; Mrs. Bowden, the consumptive who played so well on the sympathies of the three simple-minded souls at sixteen hundred Third Avenue; Mrs. Simpson, the deaf-and-dumb little girl who was going to make Simpson lead a better life.”

“You lie!” The shambling shadow of a man screamed it as he tried to jerk away from the chauffeur. “They told me they were going to take me to a sanatorium. I don’t know what you’re talking about. They’ve kept me—“ His whole body racked with sobs.

“Would you tell the truth for these?” The automatic did not waver a fraction of an inch as Colton’s unoccupied hand threw down on the table three cotton-plugged quills.

“Merciful God! Yes!” With insane strength he broke away from the big Irishman and darted to the table. His twitching fingers snatched a quill, pulled the cotton from the end, threw his head back—

“Enough of these damn’ theatrics!” Simpson snarled it viciously, but he did not move.

“By Heaven, Colton, you can’t railroad me to save Morris and his wife with the fool ravings of a cocaine snuffler!” His face was purple, the veins in his forehead seemed ready to burst. “Mrs. Bowden!” He scoffed. “How did she get the bonds? Where are they? Find ‘em!” he laughed triumphantly at Colton across the table, and the two central-office men who now stood over him.

“Here yuh are, Mr. Colton.” It was Shrimp, staggering under the weight of a big bucket of dirty water. He set it down beside the problemist’s chair.