The Million Dollar Suitcase E-Book

Alice MacGowan

• Herausgeber: Ktoczyta.pl
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

Present-day San Francisco in a good detective story „The Million Dollar Suitcase” (1922). Jeremiah „Jerry” Boyne, head of the Bankers’ Security Agency is hired to investigate the mysterious theft – from inside a bank – of a suitcase filled with nearly a million dollars in cash. Turns out to be a high spirited man with extraordinary powers of observation and logical deduction from observed facts. The case involves not one, but two locked room mysteries and a murder disguised as a suicide. Rapid action; tense excitement; nicely plotted; satisfying romance – „one of the best of this season’s crop of puzzle yarns”. American writers Alice L. MacGowan and Perry Newberry takes you on a chase around familiar and fictional areas of California and keeps you wondering all the way to the end.

Leseprobe

Contents

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER VII

CHAPTER VIII

CHAPTER IX

CHAPTER X

CHAPTER XI

CHAPTER XII

CHAPTER XIII

CHAPTER XIV

CHAPTER XV

CHAPTER XVI

CHAPTER XVII

CHAPTER XVIII

CHAPTER XIX

CHAPTER XX

CHAPTER XXI

CHAPTER XXII

CHAPTER XXIII

CHAPTER XXIV

CHAPTER XXV

CHAPTER XXVI

CHAPTER XXVII

CHAPTER XXVIII

CHAPTER XXIX

CHAPTER XXX

CHAPTER XXXI

CHAPTER I

WORTH GILBERT

On the blank silence that followed my last words, there in the big, dignified room with its Circassian walnut and sound-softening rugs, Dykeman, the oldest director, squalled out as though he had been bitten,

“All there is to tell! But it can’t be! It isn’t possib–” His voice cracked, split on the word, and the rest came in an agonized squeak, “A man can’t just vanish into thin air!”

“A man!” Knapp, the cashier, echoed. “A suitcase full of money–our money–can’t vanish into thin air in the course of a few hours.”

Feverishly they passed the timeworn phrase back and forth; it would have been ludicrous if it hadn’t been so deadly serious. Well, money when you come to think of it, is its very existence to such an institution; it was not to be wondered at that the twelve men around the long table in the directors’ room of the Van Ness Avenue Savings Bank found this a life or death matter.

“How much–?” began heavy-set, heavy-voiced old Anson, down at the lower end, but stuck and got no further. There was a smitten look on every face at the contemplation–a suitcase could hold so unguessably great a sum expressed in terms of cash and securities.

“We’ll have the exact amount in a few moments–I’ve just set them to verifying,” President Whipple indicated with a slight backward nod the second and smaller table in the room, where two clerks delved mole-like among piles of securities, among greenbacks and yellowbacks bound round with paper collars, and stacks of coin.

The blinds were down, only the table lamps on, and a gooseneck over where the men counted. It put the place all in shadow, and threw out into bolder relief the faces around that board, gray-white, denatured, all with the financier’s curiously unhuman look. The one fairly cheerful countenance in sight was that of A. G. Cummings, the bank’s attorney.

For myself, I was only waiting to hear what results those clerks would bring us. So far, Whipple had been quite noncommittal: the extraordinary state of the market–everything so upset that a bank couldn’t afford even the suspicion of a loss or irregularity–hinting at something in his mind not evident to the rest of us. I was just rising to go round and ask him quietly if, having reported, I might not be excused to get on the actual work, when the door opened.

I can’t say why the young fellow who stood in it should have seemed so foreign to the business in hand; perhaps the carriage of his tall figure, the military abruptness of his movements, the way he swung the door far back against the wall and halted there, looking us over. But I do know that no sooner had Worth Gilbert, lately home from France, crossed the threshold, meeting Whipple’s outstretched hand, nodding carelessly to the others, than suddenly every man in the room seemed older, less a man. We were dead ones; he the only live wire in the place.

“Boyne,” the president turned quickly to me, “would you mind going over for Captain Gilbert’s benefit what you’ve just said?”

The newcomer had, so far, not made any movement to join the circle at the table. He stood there, chin up, looking straight at us all, but quite through us. At the back of the gaze was a something between weary and fierce that I have noticed in the eyes of so many of our boys home from what they’d witnessed and gone through over there, when forced to bring their attention to the stale, bloodless affairs of civil life. Used to the instant, conclusive fortunes of war, they can hardly handle themselves when matters hitch and halt upon customs and legalities; the only thing that appeals to them is the big chance, win or lose, and have it over. Such a man doesn’t speak the language of the group that was there gathered. Just looking at him, old Dykeman rasped, without further provocation,

“What’s Captain Gilbert got to do with the private concerns of this bank?”

As though the words–and their tone–had been a cordial invitation, rather than an offensive challenge, the young man, who had still shown no sign of an intention to come into the meeting at all, walked to the table, drew out a chair and sat down.

“Pardon me, Mr. Dykeman,” Cummings’ voice had a wire edge on it, “the Hanford block of stock in this bank has, as I think you very well know, passed fully into Gilbert hands to-day.”

"Thomas A. Gilbert,” Dykeman was sparing of words.

“Captain Worth Gilbert’s father,” Whipple attempted pacification. “Mr. Gilbert senior was with me till nearly noon, closing up the transfer. He had hardly left when we discovered the shortage. After consultation, Knapp and I got hold of Cummings. We wanted to get you gentlemen here–have the capital of the bank represented, as nearly as we could–and found that Mr. Gilbert had taken the twelve-forty-five train for Santa Ysobel; so, as Captain Gilbert was to be found, we felt that if we got him it would be practically–er–quite the same thing–”

Worth Gilbert had sat in the chair he selected, absolutely indifferent. It was only when Dykeman, hanging to his point, spoke again, that I saw a quick gleam of blue fire come into those hawk eyes under the slant brow. He gave a sort of detached attention as Dykeman sputtered indecently.

“Not the same thing at all! Sons can’t always speak for fathers, any more than fathers can always speak for sons. In this case–”

He broke off with his ugly old mouth open. Worth Gilbert, the son of divorced parents, with a childhood that had divided time between a mother in the East and a California father, surveyed the parchment-like countenance leisurely after the crackling old voice was hushed. Finally he grunted inarticulately (I’m sorry I can’t find a more imposing word for a returned hero); and answered all objections with,

“I’m here now–and here I stay. What’s the excitement?”

"I was just asking Mr. Boyne to tell you,” Whipple came in smoothly.

No one else offered any objections. What I repeated, briefly, amounted to this:

Directly after closing time to-day–which was noon, as this was Saturday–Knapp, the cashier of the bank, had discovered a heavy shortage, and it was decided on a quick investigation that Edward Clayte, one of the paying tellers, had walked out with the money in a suitcase. I was immediately called in on what appeared a wide-open trail, with me so close behind Clayte that you’d have said there was nothing to it. I followed him–and the suitcase–to his apartment at the St. Dunstan, found he’d got there at twenty-five minutes to one, and I barely three quarters of an hour after.

“How do you get the exact minute Clayte arrived?” Anson stopped me at this point, “and the positive knowledge that he had the suitcase with him?”

“Clayte asked the time–from the clerk at the desk–as he came in. He put the suitcase down while he set his watch. The clerk saw him pick it up and go into the elevator; Mrs. Griggsby, a woman at work mending carpet on the seventh floor–which is his–saw him come out of the elevator carrying it, and let himself into his room. There the trail ends.”

“Ends?” As my voice halted young Gilbert’s word came like a bullet. “The trail can’t end unless the man was there.”

“Or the suitcase,” little old Sillsbee quavered, and Worth Gilbert gave him a swift, half-humorous glance.

“Bath and bedroom,” I said, “that suite has three windows, seven stories above the ground. I found them all locked–not mere latches–the St. Dunstan has burglar-proof locks. No disturbance in the room; all neat, in place, the door closed with the usual spring lock; and I had to get Mrs. Griggsby to move, since she was tacking the carpet right at the threshold. Everything was in that room that should have been there–except Clayte and the suitcase.”

The babel of complaint and suggestion broke out as I finished, exactly as it had done when I got to this point before: “The Griggsby woman ought to be kept under surveillance”; “The clerk, the house servants ought to be watched,”–and so on, and so on. I curtly reiterated my assurance that such routine matters had been promptly and thoroughly attended to. My nerves were getting raw. I’m not so young as I was. This promised to be one of those grinding cases where the detective agency is run through the rollers so many times that it comes out pretty slim in the end, whether that end is failure or success.

The only thing in sight that it didn’t make me sick to look at was that silent young fellow sitting there, never opening his trap, giving things a chance to develop, not rushing in on them with the forceps. It was a crazy thing for Whipple to call this meeting–have all these old, scared men on my back before I could take the measure of what I was up against. What, exactly, had the Van Ness Avenue Bank lost? That, and not anything else, was the key for my first moves. And at last a clerk crossed to our table, touched Whipple’s arm and presented a sheet of paper.

“I’ll read the total, gentlemen.” The president stared at the sheet he held, moistened his lips, gulped, gasped, “I–I’d no idea it was so much!” and finished in a changed voice, “nine hundred and eighty seven thousand, two hundred and thirty four dollars.”

A deathlike hush. Dykeman’s mere look was a call for the ambulance; Anson slumped in his chair; little old Sillsbee sat twisted away so that his face was in shadow, but the knuckles showed bone white where his hand gripped the table top. None of them seemed able to speak; the young voice that broke startlingly on the stillness had the effect of scaring the others, with its tone of nonchalance, rather than reassuring them. Worth Gilbert leaned forward and looked round in my direction with,

“This is beginning to be interesting. What do the police say of it?”

“We’ve not thought well to notify them yet.” Whipple’s eye consulted that of his cashier and he broke off. Quietly the clerks got out with the last load of securities; Knapp closed the door carefully behind them, and as he returned to us, Whipple repeated, “I had no idea it was so big,” his tone almost pleading as he looked from one to the other. “But I felt from the first that we’d better keep this thing to ourselves. We don’t want a run on the bank, and under present financial conditions, almost anything might start one. But–almost a million dollars!”

He seemed unable to go on; none of the other men at the table had anything to offer. It was the silent youngster, the outsider, who spoke again.

“I suppose Clayte was bonded–for what that’s worth?”

“Fifteen thousand dollars,” Knapp, the cashier, gave the information dully. The sum sounded pitiful beside that which, we were to understand, had traveled out of the bank as currency and unregistered securities in Clayte’s suitcase.

“Bonding company will hound him, won’t they?” young Gilbert put it bluntly. “Will the Clearing House help you out?” in the tone of one discussing a lost umbrella.

“Not much chance–now.” Whipple’s face was sickly. “You know as well as I do that we are going to get little help from outside. I want you to all stand by me now–keep this quiet–among ourselves–”

“Among ourselves!” rapped out Kirkpatrick. “Then it leaks–we have a run–and where are you?”

“No, no. Just long enough to give Boyne here a chance to recover our money without publicity–try it out, anyhow.”

“Well,” said Anson sullenly, “that’s what he’s paid for. How long is it going to take him?”

I made no attempt to answer that fool question; Cummings spoke for me, lawyer fashion, straddling the question, bringing up the arguments pro and con.

“Your detective asks for publicity to assist his search. You refuse it. Then you’ve got to be indulgent with him in the matter of time. Understand me, you may be right; I’m not questioning the wisdom of secrecy, though as a lawyer I generally think the sooner you get to the police with a crime the better. You all can see how publicity and a sizable reward offered would give Mr. Boyne a hundred thousand assistants–conscious and unconscious–to help nab Clayte.”

“And we’d be a busted bank before you found him," groaned Knapp. “We’ve got to keep this thing to ourselves. I agree with Whipple.”

“It’s all we can do,” the president repeated.

“Suppose a State bank examiner walks in on you Monday?” demanded the attorney.

“We take that chance–that serious chance,” replied Whipple solemnly.

Silence after that again till Cummings spoke.

“Gentlemen, there are here present twelve of the principal stockholders of the bank.” He paused a moment to estimate. “The capital is practically represented. Speaking as your legal advisor, I am obliged to say that you should not let the bank take such a risk as Mr. Whipple suggests. You are threatened with a staggering loss, but, after all, a high percent of money lost by defalcations is recovered–made good–wholly or in part.”

“Nearly a million dollars!” croaked old Sillsbee.

“Yes, yes, of course,” Cummings agreed hastily; “the larger amount’s against you. The men who can engineer such a theft are almost as strong as you are. You’ve got to make every edge cut–use every weapon that’s at hand. And most of all, gentlemen, you’ve got to stand together. No dissensions. As a temporary expedient–to keep the bank sufficiently under cover and still allow Boyne the publicity he needs–replace this money pro rata among yourselves. That wouldn’t clean any of you. Announce a small defalcation, such as Clayte’s bond would cover, so you could collect there; use all the machinery of the police. Then when Clayte’s found, the money recovered, you reimburse yourselves.”

"But if he’s never found! If it’s never recovered?” Knapp asked huskily; he was least able of any man in the room to stand the loss.

“What do you say, Gilbert?” The attorney looked toward the young man, who, all through the discussion, had been staring straight ahead of him. He came round to the lawyer’s question like one roused from other thoughts, and agreed shortly.

“Not a bad bet.”

“Well–Boyne–” Whipple was giving way an inch at a time.

“It’s a peculiar case,” I began, then caught myself up with, “All cases are peculiar. The big point here is to get our man before he can get rid of the money. We were close after Clayte; even that locked room in the St. Dunstan needn’t have stopped us. If he wasn’t in it, he was somewhere not far outside it. He’d had no time to make a real getaway. All I needed to lay hands on him was a good description.”

“Description?” echoed Whipple. “Your agency’s got descriptions on file–thumb prints–photographs–of every employee of this bank.”

“Every one of ’em but Clayte,” I said. “When I came to look up the files, there wasn’t a thing on him. Don’t think I ever laid eyes on the man myself.”

A description of Edward Clayte? Every man at the table–even old Sillsbee–sat up and opened his mouth to give one; but Knapp beat them to it, with,

“Clayte’s worked in this bank eight years. We all know him. You can get just as many good descriptions as there are people on our payroll or directors in this room–and plenty more at the St. Dunstan, I’ll be bound.”

"You think so?” I said wearily. “I have not been idle, gentlemen; I have interviewed his associates. Listen to this; it is a composite of the best I’ve been able to get.” I read: “Edward Clayte; height about five feet seven or eight; weight between one hundred and forty and one hundred and fifty pounds; age somewhere around forty; smooth face; medium complexion, fairish; brown hair; light eyes; apparently commonplace features; dressed neatly in blue business suit, black shoes, black derby hat–”

“Wait a minute,” interposed Knapp. “Is that what they gave you at the St. Dunstan–what he was wearing when he came in?”

I nodded.

“Well, I’d have said he had on tan shoes and a fedora. He did–or was that yesterday? But aside from that, it’s a perfect description; brings the man right up before me.”

I heard a chuckle from Worth Gilbert.

“That description,” I said, “is gibberish; mere words. Would it bring Clayte up before any one who had never seen him? Ask Captain Gilbert, who doesn’t know the man. I say that’s a list of the points at which he resembles every third office man you meet on the street. What I want is the points at which he’d differ. You have all known Clayte for years; forget his regularities, and tell me his peculiarities–looks, manners, dress or habits.”

There was a long pause, broken finally by Whipple.

“He never smoked,” said the bank president.

“Occasionally he did,” contradicted Knapp, and the pause continued till I asked,

“Any peculiarities of clothing?”

"Oh, yes,” said Whipple. “Very neat. Usually blue serge.”

“But sometimes gray,” added Knapp, heavily, and old Sillsbee piped in,

“I’ve seen that feller wear pin-check; I know I have.”

I was fed up on clothes.

“How did he brush his hair?” I questioned.

“Smoothed down from a part high on the left,” Knapp came back promptly.

“On the right,” boomed old Anson from the foot of the table.

“Sometimes–yes–I guess he did,” Knapp conceded hesitantly.

“Oh, well then, what color was it? Maybe you can agree better on that.”

“Sort of mousy color,” Knapp thought.

“O Lord! Mousy colored!” groaned Dykeman under his breath. “Listen to ’em!”

“Well, isn’t it?” Knapp was a bit stung.

“House mousy, or field mousy?” Cummings wanted to know.

“Knapp’s right enough,” Whipple said with dignity. “The man’s hair is a medium brown–indeterminate brown.” He glanced around the table at the heads of hair under the electric lights. “Something the color of Merrill’s,” and a director began stroking his hair nervously.

“No, no; darker than Merrill’s,” broke in Kirkpatrick. “Isn’t it, Knapp?”

“Why, I was going to say lighter,” admitted the cashier, discouragedly.

"Never mind,” I sighed. “Forget the hair. Come on–what color are his eyes?”

“Blue,” said Whipple.

“Gray,” said Knapp.

“Brown,” said Kirkpatrick.

They all spoke in one breath. And as I despairingly laid down my pencil, the last man repeated firmly,

“Brown. But–they might be light brown–or hazel, y’know.”

“But, after all, Boyne,” Whipple appealed to me, “you’ve got a fairly accurate description of the man, one that fits him all right.”

“Does it? Then he’s description proof. No moles, scars or visible marks?” I suggested desperately.

“None.” There was a negative shaking of heads.

“No mannerisms? No little tricks, such as a twist of the mouth, a mincing step, or a head carried on one side?”

More shakes of negation from the men who knew Clayte.

“Well, at least you can tell me who are his friends–his intimates?”

Nobody answered.

“He must have friends?” I urged.

“He hasn’t,” maintained Whipple. “Knapp is as close to him as any man in San Francisco.”

The cashier squirmed, but said nothing.

“But outside the bank. Who were his associates?”

“Don’t think he had any,” from Knapp.

“Relatives?”

“None–I know he hadn’t.”

"Girls? Lord! Didn’t he have a girl?”

“Not a girl.”

“No associates–no girl? For the love of Mike, what could such a man intend to do with all that money?” I gasped. “Where did he spend his time when he wasn’t in the bank?”

Whipple looked at his cashier for an answer. But Knapp was sitting, head down, in a painful brown study, and the president himself began haltingly.

“Why, he was perhaps the one man in the bank that I knew least about. The truth is he was so unobjectionable in every way, personally unobtrusive, quite unimportant and uninteresting; really–er–un-everything, such a–a–”

“Shadow,” Cummings suggested.

“That’s the word–shadow–I never thought to inquire where he went till he walked out of here this noon with the bank’s money crammed in that suitcase.”

“Was the Saturday suitcase a regular thing?” I asked, and Whipple looked bewildered. But Knapp woke up with,

“Oh, yes. For years. Studious fellow. Books to be exchanged at the public library, I think. No–” Knapp spoke heavily. “Come to think of it, guess that was special work. He told me once he was taking some sort of correspondence course.”

“Special work!” chuckled Worth Gilbert. “I’ll tell the world!”

“Oh, well, give me a description of the suitcase,” I hurried.

“Brown. Sole-leather. That’s all I ever noticed,” from Whipple, a bit stiffly.

"Brass rings and lock, I suppose?”

“Brass or nickel; I don’t remember. What’d you say, Knapp?”

“I wouldn’t know now, if it was canvas and tin,” replied the harried cashier.

“Gentlemen,” I said, looking across at the clock, “since half-past two my men have been watching docks, ferries, railroad stations, every garage near the St. Dunstan, the main highways out of town. Seven of them on the job, and in the first hour they made ten arrests, on that description; and every time, sure they had their man. They thought, just as you seem to think, that the bunch of words described something. We’re getting nowhere, gentlemen, and time means money here.”

CHAPTER II

SIGHT UNSEEN

In the squabble and snatch of argument, given dignity only because it concerned the recovery of near a million dollars, we seemed to have lost Worth Gilbert entirely. He kept his seat, that chair he had taken instantly when old Dykeman seemed to wish to have it denied him; but he sat on it as though it were a lone rock by the sea. I didn’t suppose he was hearing what we said any more than he would have heard the mewing of a lot of gulls, when, on a sudden silence, he burst out,

“For heaven’s sake, if you men can’t decide on anything, sell me the suitcase! I’ll buy it, as it is, and clean up the job.”

“Sell you–the suitcase–Clayte’s suitcase?” They sat up on the edge of their chairs; bewildered, incredulous, hostile. Such a bunch is very like a herd of cattle; anything they don’t understand scares them. Even the attorney studied young Gilbert with curious interest. I was mortal glad I hadn’t said what was the fact, that with the naming of the enormous sum lost I was certain this was a sizable conspiracy with long-laid plans. They were mistrustful enough as Whipple finally questioned,

“Is this a bona-fide offer, Captain Gilbert?” and Dykeman came in after him.

"A gambler’s chance at stolen money–is that what you figure on buying, sir? Is that it?” And heavy-faced Anson asked bluntly,

“Who’s to set the price on it? You or us? There’s practically a million dollars in that suitcase. It belongs to the bank. If you’ve got an idea that you can buy up the chance of it for about fifty percent–you’re mistaken. We have too much faith in Mr. Boyne and his agency for that. Why, at this moment, one of his men may have laid hands on Clayte, or found the man who planned–”

He stopped with his mouth open. I saw the same suspicion that had taken his breath away grip momentarily every man at the table. A hint of it was in Whipple’s voice as he asked, gravely:

“Do you bind yourself to pursue Clayte and bring him, if possible, to justice?”

“Bind myself to nothing. I’ll give eight hundred thousand dollars for that suitcase.”

He fumbled in his pocket with an interrogative look at Whipple, and, “May I smoke in here?” and lit a cigarette without waiting a reply.

Banking institutions take some pains to keep in their employ no young men who are known to play poker; but a poker face at that board would have acquired more than its share of dignity. As it was, you could see, almost as though written there, the agonizing doubt running riot in their faces as to whether Worth Gilbert was a young hero coming to the bank’s rescue, or a con man playing them for suckers. It was Knapp who said at last, huskily,

“I think we should close with Captain Gilbert’s offer.” The cashier had a considerable family, and I knew his recently bought Pacific Avenue home was not all paid for.

“We might consider it,” Whipple glanced doubtfully at his associates. “If everything else fails, this might be a way out of the difficulty for us.”

If everything else failed! President Whipple was certainly no poker player. Worth Gilbert gave one swift look about the ring of faces, pushed a brown, muscular left hand out on the table top, glancing at the wrist watch there, and suggested brusquely,

“Think it over. My offer holds for fifteen minutes. Time to get at all the angles of the case. Huh! Gentlemen! I seem to have started something!”

For the directors and stockholders of the Van Ness Avenue Savings Bank were at that moment almost as yappy and snappy as a wolf pack. Dykeman wanted to know about the one hundred and eighty seven thousand odd dollars not covered by Worth’s offer–did they lose that? Knapp was urging that Clayte’s bond, when they’d collected, would shade the loss; Whipple reminding them that they’d have to spend a good deal–maybe a great deal–on the recovery of the suitcase; money that Worth Gilbert would have to spend instead if they sold to him; and finally an ugly mutter from somewhere that maybe young Gilbert wouldn’t have to spend so very much to recover that suitcase–maybe he wouldn’t!

The tall young fellow looked thoughtfully at his watch now and again. Cummings and I chipped into the thickest of the row and convinced them that he meant what he said, not only by his offer, but by its time limit.

“How about publicity, if this goes?” Whipple suddenly interrogated, raising his voice to top the pack-yell. “Even with eight hundred thousand dollars in our vaults, a run’s not a thing that does a bank any good. I suppose,” stretching up his head to see across his noisy associates, “I suppose, Captain Gilbert, you’ll be retaining Boyne’s agency? In that case, do you give him the publicity he wants?”

“Course he does!” Dykeman hissed. “Can’t you see? Damn fool wants his name in the papers! Rotten story like this–about some lunatic buying a suitcase with a million in it–would ruin any bank if it got into print.” Dykeman’s breath gave out. “And–it’s–it’s–just the kind of story the accursed yellow press would eat up. Let it alone, Whipple. Let his damned offer alone. There’s a joker in it somewhere.”

“There won’t be any offer in about three minutes,” Cummings quietly reminded them. “If you’d asked my opinion–and giving you opinions is what you pay me a salary for–I’d have said close with him while you can.”

Whipple gave me an agonized glance. I nodded affirmatively. He put the question to vote in a breath; the ayes had it, old Dykeman shouting after them in an angry squeak.

“No! No!” and adding as he glared about him, “I’d like to be able to look a newspaper in the face; but never again! Never again!”

I made my way over to Gilbert and stood in front of him.

“You’ve bought something, boy,” I said. “If you mean to keep me on as your detective, you can assure these people that I’ll do my darndest to give information to the police and keep it out of the papers. What’s happened here won’t get any further than this room–through me.”

“You’re hired, Jerry Boyne.” Gilbert slapped me on the back affectionately. After all, he hadn’t changed so much in his four years over there; I began to see more than traces of the enthusiastic youngster to whom I used to spin detective yarns in the grill at the St. Francis or on the rocks by the Cliff House. “Sure, we’ll keep it out of the papers. Suits me. I’d rather not pose as the fool soon parted from his money.”

The remark was apropos; Knapp had feverishly beckoned the lawyer over to a little side desk; they were down at it, the light snapped on, writing, trying to frame up an agreement that would hold water. One by one the others went and looked on nervously as they worked; by the time they’d finished something, everybody’d seen it but Worth; and when it was finally put in his hands, all he seemed to notice was the one point of the time they’d set for payment.

“It’ll be quite some stunt to get the amount together by ten o’clock Monday,” he said slowly. “There are securities to be converted–”

He paused, and looked up on a queer hush.

“Securities?” croaked Dykeman. “To be converted–? Oh!”

“Yes,” in some surprise. “Or would the bank prefer to have them turned over in their present form?”

Again a strained moment, broken by Whipple’s nervous,

"Maybe that would be better,” and a quickly suppressed chuckle from Cummings.

The agreement was in duplicate. It gave Worth Gilbert complete ownership of a described sole-leather suitcase and its listed contents, and, as he had demanded, it bound him to nothing save the payment. Cummings said frankly that the transaction was illegal from end to end, and that any assurance as to the bank’s ceasing to pursue Clayte would amount to compounding a felony. Yet we all signed solemnly, the lawyer and I as witnesses. A financier’s idea of indecency is something about money which hasn’t formerly been done. The directors got sorer and sorer as Worth Gilbert’s cheerfulness increased.

“Acts as though it were a damn’ crap game,” I heard Dykeman muttering to Sillsbee, who came back vacuously.

“Craps?–they say our boys did shoot craps a good deal over there. Well–uh–they were risking their lives.”

And that’s as near as any of them came, I suppose, to understanding how a weariness of the little interweaving plans of tamed men had pushed Worth Gilbert into carelessly staking his birthright on a chance that might lend interest to life, a hazard big enough to breeze the staleness out of things for him.

We were leaving the bank, Gilbert and I ahead, Cummings right at my boy’s shoulder, the others holding back to speak together, (bitterly enough, if I am any guesser) when Worth said suddenly,

“You mentioned in there it’s being illegal for the bank to give up the pursuit of Clayte. Seems funny to me, but I suppose you know what you’re talking about. Anyhow”–he was lighting another cigarette and he glanced sharply at Cummings across it–”anyhow, they won’t waste their money hunting Clayte now, should you say? That’s my job. That’s where I get my cash back.”

“Oh, that’s where, is it?” The lawyer’s dry tone might have been regarded as humorous. We stood in the deep doorway, hunching coat collars, looking into the foggy street. Worth’s interest in life seemed to be freshening moment by moment.

“Yes,” he agreed briskly. “I’m going to keep you and Boyne busy for a while. You’ll have to show me how to hustle the payment for those Shylocks, and Jerry’s got to find the suitcase, so I can eat. But I’ll help him.”

Cummings stared at the boy.

“Gilbert,” he said, “where are you going?–right now, I mean.”

“To Boyne’s office.”

We stepped out to the street where the line of limousines waited for the old fellows inside, my own battleship-gray roadster, pretty well hammered but still a mighty capable machine, far down at the end. As Worth moved with me toward it, the lawyer walked at his elbow.

“Seat for me?” he glanced at the car. “I’ve a few words of one syllable to say to this young man–council that I ought to get in as early as possible.”

I looked at little Pete dozing behind the wheel, and answered,

“Take you all right, if I could drive. But I sprained my thumb on a window lock looking over that room at the St. Dunstan.”

“I’ll drive.” Worth had circled the car with surprising quickness for so large a man. I saw him on the other side, waiting for Pete to get out so he could get in. Curious the intimate, understanding look he gave the monkey as he flipped a coin at him with, “Buy something to burn, kid.” Pete’s idea of Worth Gilbert would be quite different from that of the directors in there. After all, human beings are only what we see them from our varying angles. Pete slid down, looking back to the last at the tall young fellow who was taking his place at the wheel. Cummings and I got in and we were off.

There in the machine, my new boss driving, Cummings sitting next him, I at the further side, began the keen, cool probe after a truth which to me lay very evidently on the surface. Any one, I would have said, might see with half an eye that Worth Gilbert had bought Clayte’s suitcase so that he could get a thrill out of hunting for it. Cummings I knew had in charge all the boy’s Pacific Coast holdings; and since his mother’s death during the first year of the war, these were large. Worth manifested toward them and the man who spoke to him of them the indifference, almost contempt, of an impatient young soul who in the years just behind him, had often wagered his chance of his morning’s coffee against some other fellow’s month’s pay feeling that he was putting up double.

It seemed the sense of ownership was dulled in one who had seen magnificent properties masterless, or apparently belonging to some limp, bloodstained bundle of flesh that lay in one of the rooms. In vain Cummings urged the state of the market, repeating with more particularity and force what Whipple had said. The mines were tied up by strike; their stock, while perfectly good, was down to twenty cents on the dollar; to sell now would be madness. Worth only repeated doggedly.

“I’ve got to have the money–Monday morning–ten o’clock. I don’t care what you sell–or hock. Get it.”

“See here,” the lawyer was puzzled, and therefore unprofessionally out of temper. “Even sacrificing your stuff in the most outrageous manner, I couldn’t realize enough–not by ten o’clock Monday. You’ll have to go to your father. You can catch the five-five for Santa Ysobel.”

I could see Worth choke back a hot-tempered refusal of the suggestion. The funds he’d got to have, even if he went through some humiliation to get them.

“At that,” he said slowly, “father wouldn’t have any great amount of cash on hand. Say I went to him with the story–and took the cat-hauling he’ll give me–should I be much better off?”

“Sure you would.” Cummings leaned back. I saw he considered his point made. “Whipple would rather take their own bank stock than anything else. Your father has just acquired a big block of it. Act while there’s time. Better go out there and see him now–at once.”

“I’ll think about it,” Worth nodded. “You dig for me what you can and never quit.” And he applied himself to the demands of the down-town traffic.

"Well,” Cummings said, “drop me at the next corner, please. I’ve got an engagement with a man here.”

Worth swung in and stopped. Cummings left us. As we began to worm a slow way toward my office, I suggested,

“You’ll come upstairs with me, and–er–sort of outline a policy? I ought to have any possible information you can give me, so’s not to make any more wrong moves than we have to.”

“Information?” he echoed, and I hastened to amend,

“I mean whatever notion you’ve got. Your theory, you know–”

“Not a notion. Not a theory.” He shook his head, eyes on the traffic cop. “That’s your part.”

I sat there somewhat flabbergasted. After all, I hadn’t fully believed that the boy had absolutely nothing to go on, that he had bought purely at a whim, put up eight hundred thousand dollars on my skill at running down a criminal. It sort of crumpled me up. I said so. He laughed a little, ran up to the curb at the Phelan building, cut out the engine, set the brake and turned to me with,

“Don’t worry. I’m getting what I paid for–or what I’m going to pay for. And I’ve got to go right after the money. Suppose I meet you, say, at ten o’clock to-night?”

“Suits me.”

“At Tait’s. Reserve a table, will you, and we’ll have supper.”

“You’re on,” I said. “And plenty to do myself meantime.” I hopped out on my side.

Worth sat in the roadster, not hurrying himself to follow up Cummings’ suggestion–the big boy, non-communicative, incurious, the question of fortune lost or won seeming not to trouble him at all. I skirted the machine and came round to him, demanding,

“With whom do you suppose Cummings’ engagement was?”

“Don’t know, Jerry, and don’t care,” looking down at me serenely. “Why should I?” He swung one long leg free and stopped idly, half in the car, half out.

“What if I told you Cummings’ engagement was with our friend Dykeman–only Dykeman doesn’t know it yet?”

Slowly he brought that dangling foot down to the pavement, followed it with the other, and faced me. Across the blankness of his features shot a joyous gleam; it spread, brightening till he was radiant.

“I get you!” he chortled. “Collusion! They think I’m standing in with Clayte–Oh, boy!”

He threw back his head and roared.

CHAPTER III

A WEDDING PARTY

I looked at my watch; quarter of ten; a little ahead of my appointment. I ordered a telephone extension brought to this corner table I had reserved at Tait’s and got in touch with my office; then with the knowledge that any new kink in the case would be reported immediately to me, I relaxed to watch the early supper crowd arrive: Women in picture hats and bare or half-bare shoulders with rich wraps slipping off them; hum of voices; the clatter of silver and china; waiters beginning to wake up and dart about settling new arrivals. And I wondered idly what sort of party would come to sit around one long table across from me specially decorated with pale tinted flowers.

There was a sense of warmth and comfort at my heart. I am a lonely man; the people I take to seem to have a way of passing on in the stream of life–or death–leaving me with a few well-thumbed volumes on a shelf in my rooms for consolation. Walt Whitman, Montaigne, The Bard, two or three other lesser poets, and you’ve the friends that have stayed by me for thirty years. And so, having met up with Worth Gilbert when he was a youngster, at the time his mother was living in San Francisco to get a residence for her divorce proceedings, having loved the boy and got I am sure some measure of affection in return, it seemed almost too much to ask of fate that he should come back into my days, plunge into such a proposition as this bank robbery, right at my elbow as it were, and make himself my employer–my boss.

I was a subordinate in the agency in those old times when he and I used to chin about the business, and his idea (I always discussed it gravely and respectfully with him) was to grow up and go into partnership with me. Well, we were partners now.

Past ten, nearly five minutes. Where was he? What up to? Would he miss his appointment? No, I caught a glimpse of him at the door getting rid of hat and overcoat, pausing a moment with tall bent head to banter Rose, the little Chinese girl who usually drifted from table to table with cigars and cigarettes. Then he was coming down the room.

A man who takes his own path in life, and will walk it though hell bar the way, never explaining, never extenuating, never excusing his course–something seems to emanate from such a chap that draws all eyes after him in a public place in a look between fear and desire. Sitting there in Tait’s, my view of Worth cut off now by a waiter with a high-carried tray, again by people passing to tables for whom he halted, I had a good chance to see the turning of eyeballs that followed him, the furtive glances that snatched at him, or fondled him, or would have probed him; the admiration of the women, the envy of the men, curiously alike in that it was sometimes veiled and half wistful, sometimes very open. Drifters–you see so many of the sort in a restaurant–why wouldn’t they hanker after the strength and ruthlessness of a man like Worth? And the poor prunes, how little they knew him! As my friend Walt would say, he wasn’t out after any of the old, smooth prizes they cared for. And win or lose he would still be a victor, for all he and his sort demand is freedom, and the joy of the game. So he came on to me.

I noticed, a little startled, as he slumped into his chair with a grunt of greeting, that his cheek was somehow gaunt and pale under the tan; the blue fire of his eyes only smoldered, and I pulled back his chair with,

“You look as if you hadn’t had any dinner.”

“I haven’t.” He gave a man-size order for food and turned back from it to listen to me. “I’ll be nearer human when I get some grub under my belt.”

My report of what had been done on the case since we separated was interrupted by the arrival of our orders, and Worth sailed into a thick, juicy steak while I was still explaining details. The orchestra whanged and blared and jazzed away; the people at the other tables noticed us or busied themselves noisily with affairs of their own; Worth sat and enjoyed his meal with the air of a man feeding at a solitary country tavern. When he had finished–and he took his time about it–the worn, punished look was gone from his face; his eye was bright, his tone nonchalant, as he lighted a cigarette, remarking,

“I’ve had one more good dinner. Food’s a thing you can depend on; it doesn’t rake up your entire past record from the time you squirmed into this world, and tell you what a fool you’ve always been.”

I turned that over in my mind. Did it mean that he’d seen his father and got a calling down? I wanted to know–and was afraid to ask. The fact is I was beginning to wake up to a good many things about my young boss. I was intensely interested in his reactions on people. So far, I’d seen him with strangers. I wished that I might have a chance to observe him among intimates. Old Richardson who founded our agency (and would never knowingly have left me at the head of it, though he did take me in as partner, finally) used to say that the main trouble with me was I studied people instead of cases. Richardson held that all men are equal before the detective, and must be regarded only as queer shaped pieces to be fitted together so as to make out a case. Richardson would have gone as coolly about easing the salt of the earth into the chink labeled “murder” or “embezzlement,” as though neither had been human. With me the personal equation always looms big, and of course he was quite right in saying that it’s likely to get you all gummed up.