The detective grinned in boyish approval of his own acumen. “’Tain’t gonna be such an easy job, Arthur, but it ain’t gonna be so hard neither—me not carin’ particularly about time in this case. Of course I know the box is in a Manhattan bank, because you got back too quick to have gone to Brooklyn or even Jersey City. Jerry Naschbaum, chief of the headquarters identification force, will let me have a few good men to help. In one week, two weeks mebbe three, we’ll check up on everybody who entered a bank box between 3:45 and 4:30 today. An’ when we’ve done that, Arthur, we’ll have you. See?”
Arthur saw. “I wish some one else was on this case, Jim. You’re too blamed painstaking.”
“Better ’fess up now.”
“No; I’ll take my chances.”
“Ain’t gonna get you nowhere. You can’t sell them jools; there ain’t a soul in the world would buy ’em offen you.”
“Maybe not.” Sherwood opened the door invitingly. “Sorry you have to be going, Jim.”
“I’m sorry myself, Arthur.” He turned at the doorway. “I’m kinder cute yet, ain’t I?”
“I hope not, Jim,” was the answer.
It did not take Sherwood long to realize that he was nearing the end of his rope. He might have known that Jim Hanvey was going to trap him. That had been a clever trick of Jim’s, and it promised definite and fairly immediate results. Hanvey was right; the task of checking up would be a slow and difficult undertaking, but Sherwood knew the police system sufficiently well to understand—and fear—its tirelessness. Eventually they’d complete their check-up, and when they did——
Sherwood admitted to himself that he must dispose of the jewels. Thought of transferring them to another box was out of the question. They’d discover that eventually. The thing to do was to rid himself of the gems. But Jim Hanvey had insisted that he could not sell them because there was no market. Jim had spoken truly. No market. “Oh, confound Mrs. Haley and her jewelry!”
Sherwood caught his breath suddenly. Mrs. Haley! Puffy, ponderous Mrs. Haley! The poor, bewildered, self-sufficient Mrs. Haley, who had lost one hundred and fifty thousand dollars’ worth of jewelry and been partially reimbursed with one hundred thousand dollars of the insurance company’s money. Sherwood smashed his right fist into the palm of his left hand.
“There’s my market! I’ll sell the jewels back to Mrs. Haley!”
He paced the room, his brain running riot with the sardonic daring of his scheme. He knew Jim Hanvey was not infallible. Jim had been so confident that no one would buy the jewels—so confident that he had completely overlooked Mrs. Haley.
And Mrs. Haley would buy. He’d make her buy. No one would think of looking to her for the gems. She could have them set in new mountings and no one would ever be the wiser. He’d sell them to her for fifty thousand dollars, and she’d be fifty thousand dollars winner on the transaction. Then Jim Hanvey could search all he pleased.
He telephoned Mrs. Haley. She was decidedly disinclined to meet him. He assumed a threatening tone. She consented fearfully. They met at Port Chester, he going there by train and she by automobile. She refused frankly to have anything further to do with him.
“Very well, Mrs. Haley. When they arrest me I’ll tell the whole story. What happened in New Orleans for one thing; then about your refusal to identify me—I know they’ve shown you my picture. It will be a choice morsel for the newspapers, and a wonderful story for the society weeklies. You’ll be laughed out of the country.”
“But if they find out that I’ve bought them back from you——” The woman was on the verge of hysteria. She was horribly frightened.
“They won’t. You’re the last person on earth they’d think of in connection with those jewels. You buy them. They can search all they please and they can’t get the goods on me. They won’t even arrest me because there’ll be no evidence to convict. And you will be fifty thousand dollars to the good.”
“I can’t.”
“You can.”
“Well, I won’t.”
A steely light crept into his eyes. “You will! You must!” Eventually she consented. There was nothing else she could do. Petrified with terror, fearful of losing the tiny bit of social recognition for which she had so valiantly struggled, inordinately afraid of arrest in connection with the New Orleans escapade which had assumed Brobdingnagian proportions in her eyes—she agreed to meet him in the private dining room of a quiet hotel, bringing with her fifty thousand dollars in cash, which was to be exchanged for the jewels. And then, apprehensive and nervous, she left him.
Sherwood returned to the city, exultant. His plan had worked. It was safe, supremely safe. For, even should she be eventually discovered in possession of the jewels, she would never dare tell the true story.
But Jim Hanvey had not been idle. He made careful investigation and then spent the entire afternoon chatting with the presidents of the four New York banks where Mrs. Haley maintained personal checking accounts. “She’ll cash a big check here in the next few days,” explained the detective to each of them. “A thunderin’ big check; an’ she’ll take the money in legal tender. Minute she does, telephone my apartment. Ask for a feller named Henry Jones. He’ll take the message an’ get in touch with me.”
And then Jim Hanvey personally took unto himself the task of watching Mrs. Haley.
It was not difficult. Suspecting no surveillance Mrs. Haley conducted herself so that a blind man could have shadowed her. Mrs. Haley’s single major sorrow in life was the stubborn refusal of her husband to take up his residence in New York. Her apartment was a sop, and during her occasional sojourns in the metropolis she expended a vast amount of effort in the task of letting people know that she was somebody. Purple limousine, uniformed chauffeur and footman, shrieking clothes and diamond-studded lorgnette25 combined to make Hanvey’s self-appointed task absurdly simple. And on the morning of the third day following, the man called Jones notified his superior that only a few hours previously Mrs. Haley had personally cashed her check for fifty thousand dollars.
Jim received the report with a nod. He was lolling comfortably in a taxicab owned by the police department and driven by one of his own operatives. “Yeh! I knew somethin’ was about to break. I follered her down to the bank an’ seen her when she went in. She’s in yonder now”—he nodded in the general direction of the gingerbready apartment house—“an’ she’ll be comin’ out directly. Beat it, Henry.”
Henry beat it. The purple limousine appeared. So, too, did Mrs. Haley. Twenty minutes later she entered a modest downtown hotel. Hanvey waited until she had crossed the lobby in the wake of a bellhop and disappeared into an elevator. Then he followed and exhibited his credentials to the manager, receiving from that startled dignitary a bit of helpful information.
“There’s a man in that private dining room already, isn’t there?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good. I’ll trot along up.”
He allowed them ample time for conversation. And when he opened the door with a master key furnished by the hotel management it was to interrupt an interesting tableau.
By the table stood Mrs. Haley, clutching in her two hands the sack of jewels. Sherwood was busily engaged in counting the money she had paid over to him. Neither moved.
Hanvey closed the door gently. His wide-open, fishlike eyes blinked with amazing slowness. Mrs. Haley choked, spluttered and collapsed into a chair. Sherwood’s eyes met Hanvey’s levelly. The criminal was apparently emotionless, a game loser. Very quietly he took the sack of jewels from the nerveless hands of Mrs. Haley, returned her money and extended the jewels to Hanvey.
“There has been no transaction here of the kind you think, Jim. I am handing over the jewels of my own accord, and confessing to the robbery. There is no need to drag this lady’s name in the mud.”
Hanvey bowed with ungainly grace. “Always a gent, eh, Arthur? I’m pr
oud of you.” He turned to Mrs. Haley. “I reckon it wasn’t ever your fault, ma’am. An’ me an’ my friend Mr. Sherwood here will see that you don’t get no rotten publicity out of it.”
She was dazed, but volubly and tearfully grateful. Sherwood, calm and dignified, questioned the detective.
“You’ve got me, Jim. I had a hunch that I wouldn’t get away with it. But I have a professional and academic interest in the matter. There are one or two things I don’t quite understand.”
“Always at your service, Arthur.”
“First and most important”—Sherwood’s voice was quietly conversational—“what made you think I planned to sell the jewels back to Mrs. Haley?”
Hanvey shook his head reprovingly; “I’m s’prised at you for not knowin’ such a simple thing as that, Arthur. The reason I knew you was gonna sell them jools back to Mrs. Haley was because I suggested it to you.”
“You suggested——” Then Sherwood smiled in frank admiration. “You mean you suggested it when you said——”
“Sure,” interrupted Hanvey pleasantly, “when I kept repeatin’ that there wasn’t nobody in the world you could sell ’em to—I meant nobody except Mrs. Haley.”
* * *
16 Reddened.
17 A “hawser” is a heavy rope or cable of the kind used to moor a ship.
18 A fictitious railroad; one can only speculate what states or cities the letters stood for. In 1923, Chicago was—and remains—the rail capital of the United States, with more railroad lines serving more cities than any other location. At one point, Chicago had six city-to-city stations.
19 Ambition.
20 “Piking” in this context means cautious, mean, or cheap.
21 Effacing, vanishing.
22 The Joliet prison (officially, the Joliet Correctional Center) operated from 1858 to 2002 and housed murderers such as Leopold and Loeb and John Wayne Gacy (as well as “Joliet” Jake Blues of The Blues Brothers).
23 Short for “yegg-man,” this slang term originally referred to tramp-thieves, but its usage broadened out to include criminals generically. Etymologists are in disagreement about whether the name stemmed from a criminal named Yegg or another named Yeager, but it was adopted by William Pinkerton, son of the founder of the Pinkerton Detective Agency, who used it regularly in a popular series of speeches between 1900 and 1907 discussing the rise of American crime.
24 Cheap, counterfeit.
25 A pair of glasses with a handle.
Common Stock
Gerald Corwin emerged from the elevator, glanced apprehensively about the ornate lobby of the hotel and walked swiftly toward the dining room. But as he handed hat and cane to the checker a huge, ungainly figure bulked before him and a mild, pleasant voice brought misery where a moment before there had been contentment.
“Gonna eat now, Corwin?”
Gerald sighed resignedly. Too thoroughly a gentleman to display consciously his frank distaste, he was yet too poor a dissembler wholly to conceal it. He merely nodded and strode disgustedly in the wake of the obsequious head waiter, with Jim Hanvey waddling cumbersomely in the rear.
Corwin was disgusted with the whole affair, and particularly that phase of it which placed him under the chaperonage of the ponderous and uncouth detective. Not that Jim had been obtrusive, but the man was innately crude, and Corwin despised crudeness.
One could readily understand his antipathy. The two men were as dissimilar as an orchid and a turnip. Corwin, about thirty years of age, was tall and slender and immaculate, shrieking the word “aristocrat” in every cultured gesture. He was unmistakably a gentleman, a person to whom aesthetics was all-important, and he could not fail to consider Jim Hanvey thoroughly obnoxious.
Jim was all right in his way, perhaps, but never before had Corwin been forced into intimate association with a professional detective. He was resentful, not of the fact that Jim Hanvey was a detective, but because the man was hopelessly uncouth. Jim was an enormous individual and conspicuously unwieldy. He wore cheap, ready-made clothes that no more than approximately fitted his rotund figure. He smoked vile cigars and wore shoes which rose to little peaks at the toes. But Corwin felt he could have stood all that were it not for Jim’s gold toothpick.
That golden toothpick, suspended as a charm from a hawserlike chain extending across Jim’s vest, had fascinated Corwin from the commencement of their journey to Los Angeles. It was a fearsome, flagrant instrument, and Jim Hanvey loved it. It had been presented to him years before by a criminal of international fame as a token of sincere regard. Otherwise unemployed, Jim was in the habit of sitting by the hour with his fat fingers toying with the toothpick. Gerald had once hinted that the weapon might better be concealed. His insinuation resulted merely in debate.
“Stick it away? Why?”
“A toothpick——”
“Say, listen, Mr. Corwin; have you ever seen a handsomer toothpick?”
“No, but——”
“Well, I haven’t either. That’s why I’m proud to have folks see it. It’s absolutely the swellest toothpick in captivity.”
No arguing against that, but from the first hour of the acquaintanceship Corwin reviled the fates which decreed that for two weeks he should be under Hanvey’s eye.
The thing was absurd of course. Corwin, fearless and no mean athlete, was well able to take care of himself and fulfill the delicate mission with which he had been intrusted—a mere matter of securing a proxy from Col. Robert E. Warrington and returning with it to New York in time for the annual meeting of the stockholders. He was not a simpleton and there was no doubting his integrity. Why, then, this grotesque and goggle-eyed sleuth?
Matter of fact, Jim had appeared wholly disinterested since their departure from New York. All the way across country he had slouched in their drawing-room, staring through the window with his great, fishy eyes. Those eyes annoyed Corwin. They seemed incapable of vision. They were inhuman, stupid, glassy eyes which reflected no intelligence. Corwin fancied himself the victim of a stupendous hoax; it was unbelievable that this man could rightfully possess a reputation to justify the present assignment.
The meal was torture to the fastidious younger man. There was no denying that Jim enjoyed his dinner, but the enjoyment was too obvious. Jim caught the disapproving glance of his companion and interpreted it rightly.
“’Sall right, Mr. Corwin. Eatin’ ain’t no art with me. It’s a pleasure.”
Corwin flushed. Suddenly he discovered that Jim was not listening. Hanvey had turned slightly and was gazing into a mirror which reflected a section of the huge dining room. Corwin followed the direction of his gaze and saw that the object of his scrutiny was a man of medium size but muscular figure who was searching for a table.
Hanvey was interested, and as an indication of that interest he blinked in his interminably deliberate manner, lids closing heavily over the fishy eyes, remaining shut for a second, then uncurtaining even more slowly. And finally, when the newcomer had seated himself, Jim nodded toward him and addressed Corwin.
“Yonder’s the answer,” he said.
Corwin shook his head in puzzlement.
“To what?”
“Me.”
“I don’t quite understand.”
“See that feller who just come in?”
“Yes.”
“It’s him.”
Corwin inspected the newcomer with fresh interest. The man was of a type, one of those optimistic individuals who futilely struggle to acquire gentility and who fondly believe they have succeeded. In every studied move of the man one could discern mental effort. Even the hypercorrect raiment was subtly suggestive of a disguise. There was nothing flagrantly wrong with the man, just as there was nothing quite as it should be. Corwin, himself not an overly keen student of human nature, cou
ld yet fancy the stranger’s manner of speech—careful, precise, stilted, rather malapropian,26 with here and there a moment of forgetfulness, with its reversion to downright bad grammar. He turned back to Hanvey.
“Who?”
“Billy Scanlan, alias Gentleman William, alias Flash Billy, alias Roger van Dorn, alias, a half dozen other things. He’s done time in Joliet and Sing Sing. He’s a good friend of mine.” The faintest suggestion of a smile played about the corners of Jim’s mouth. “An’ he’s why your crowd hired me to trail you out here.”
It was quite plain to Hanvey, but Corwin was puzzled.
“I don’t yet understand.”
“You don’t? Gosh, son, there couldn’t anything be any plainer! We ain’t never discussed what brought you out here, but I know all about it just the same; an’ since you prob’ly won’t answer no questions, I’ll tell you what I know. The Quincy-Scott gang started a drive recently to grab off the control of the K. R. & P. Railroad from McIntosh and his crowd. Before McIntosh woke up the Quincy bunch had coralled every loose vote, enough to give them a control in the forthcomin’ stockholders’ meetin’. When McIntosh got wise he knew that his only hope was Colonel Warrington out here in Los Angeles, the colonel ownin’ about ninety thousand shares of common stock. So he telephoned the old bird and found out that he wasn’t interested in the fight one way or the other; that he’d already been approached by the Quincy-Scott combination an’ had turned ’em down cold an’ final, which seemed to indicate that with a little proper persuasion he’d be willin’ to deliver a proxy to McIntosh. It bein’ ’most time for the meeting an’ things bein’ pretty desperate, they sent you out to get the proxy from the ol’ gent, his proxy gettin’ there meanin’ victory for McIntosh, an its failure leavin’ the vote control with Quincy an’ Scott. Ain’t it so?”
Jim Hanvey, Detective Page 7