… for its return, either dead or alive, to Professor Angus Desmond, former professor of zoology, 5720 St. Giles Lane, Chicago, between the hours of 3 P. M. and 6 P. M. only. For appointment phone Kildare 0777 between 3 P. M. and 6 P. M. only.
With this very necessary emendation made, he called up the classified advertising departments of each of the six papers in town and arranged to have the copy inserted in each for three consecutive days, the first appearance to be made in the later editions of that night’s papers. He was none too early in achieving this, but managed, nevertheless, to come in under the tape known as the “classified ad deadline.” In the case of the paper controlling WXOY, he found his order more than welcome, for it appeared that only seven orders had been received thus far today for the evening’s work for Messrs. Ham and Abner, Inc. In each case he had the advertisement charged to the telephone from which he spoke, and by dint of getting hold of somebody whom he knew on the largest paper, succeeded in getting the broadcasting fee charged to his phone in the 333 Building downtown. And in each case he was careful to get the exact amount of the charge. As he finished with the last paper and added up the respective amounts he found that the total bill which he must submit that night to Mr. Jake Jennings would come to $103.35.
Then, with Marcia who had been standing in the doorway an absorbed onlooker to this rapid transaction of somewhat unusual business, he returned to the parlor. Together they sat and talked for a few minutes, soon drifting around to that one enjoyable subject — the happiness that was to be theirs before many weeks. But of a sudden Carson, studying the girl’s tired eyes, and then glancing at his watch, asked a significant question:
“Little girl,” was his pointed query, “have you had your sleep yet?”
She smiled and shook her head. “No — not yet, Cliff. There’ve been too many Mr. Jennings’ and cablegrams today I guess.”
“Then you go post-haste,” he declared sternly, taking up his hat. “Working all night — and staying up all day on account of pesky callers like Mr. Jennings and myself! That will never do. As it is, you’ll have to sleep from now until ten o’clock tonight to get anywhere near your quota of sleep.” And with a good-bye kiss and a stern injunction to get her sleep at once, he left the house without any more delay.
His long ride back to the city from the St. Giles Lane house was filled with reflections that were far from uncurious about Mr. Jennings and the Zuri snake upon which Mr. Jennings was so anxious to get his pudgy hands. And his reflections still continued even as he turned the handle of his office door. But they were destined to be quickly shoved aside in the face of more grave things which were to come upon his mental stage within a few more minutes. His stenographer to whom he had given permission to come down for the afternoon only this day and to leave an hour earlier as well, had duly arrived and even now was drawing on her hat to take advantage of that promised early departure. And pacing up and down in the little office was no other than Cary Desmond, Marcia’s brother.
Cary Desmond was a blond youth, clad in a rather flashy brown suit, with a neatly tied silk four-in-hand tie, neatly polished shoes, white cuffs peeping generously forth from his tight-fitting fashionably cut coat-sleeves, and a face that was not at all disagreeable to look upon. While it was a pleasure-loving face, it was at the same time an ingenious one — an inventor’s face, as a physiognomist friend of Carson’s had once confidentially told the latter. While in it there were signs that to the uninitiated might have suggested a weakness of character, to the more experienced reader of faces there was but one weak characteristic to be found in it: Its owner was one who did not, and possibly could not, measure the cost of anything.
Now, however, that usually too-optimistic face was covered with gloom, even terror. Its owner stopped short in his pacing as the door closed behind Carson’s stenographer who hurried off with a brief nod to her employer, and as Carson himself advanced across the room and hung up his hat on the hatstand Marcia’s reckless brother surveyed him in blank dejection, not even vouchsafing a reply to the other’s cheery, “Hello there, Cary.”
Instead, his reply consisted only of drawing from his pocket a silk handkerchief with which he mopped from his forehead a collection of what Carson saw for the first time were fine beads of perspiration. He sank down, handkerchief clutched in his hand, into the capacious chair which stood adjacent to Carson’s desk.
“What in heaven’s name is the matter, Cary?” asked the older man of the two, pausing uncertainly in the act of dropping into his own swivel chair.
“Trouble enough,” groaned Cary Desmond, at last finding his tongue and once more mopping off his forehead. “Trouble — trouble enough,” he repeated dazedly, looking upward. “Oh, Cliff, I’ve gone and done it this time. I’ve done it this time. I’ve — I’ve got to go to the penitentiary, and unlike Papa, I’m — I’m guilty. I’ve embezzled nearly ten thousand dollars, Cliff, from the Mid-West Trust and Savings Bank, and I’ve lost every cent of it. And that ten thousand dollar preferred Texas Helium Gas stock certificate you put with me to take care of for you — to keep in my personal teller’s vault — the certificate that Sicilian woman left here — oh, Cliff — it’s gone too. Swallowed — swallowed up — together with the bank’s money. To you and the bank — well — I’m just about twenty thousand dollars in the hole. And I haven’t got a red cent in the world to pay either of you with. Oh — I’ve ruined you, all right, I guess. And I’m ruined myself, too. For the bank — the bank’s chucked a vacation on me, beginning with tonight, and the bank examiner is coming tomorrow. God, I — I wish I was dead!”
CHAPTER V
THE HAND FROM OUT THE DARK
FOR the barest fraction of a minute Carson stared down uncomprehendingly at Marcia’s brother. At last he managed to speak.
“Lost — lost — my — that ten thousand dollar certificate? And — and ten thousand dollars of the bank’s money? In God’s name, man, are you trying to spring some sort of a weird joke on me? If you are, Cary, it’s a poor sort of a one to spring. What the — ”
But Cary Desmond shook his head dismally. “No, it’s no joke, Cliff. It’s no joke. I only wish to God it was.” He gave vent to a long-drawn-out sigh, almost a groan. “No, I’m done for, Cliff. Quite regardless of what you yourself may do to me, I’m due to go over the road. Oh, what a fool I’ve been — what a fool. But I never meant to use your stock certificate. Remember that. That — that was a crazy accident, a horrible piece of misfortune. But I have been a fool. And I’ve come to tell you, so that you — ”
“Just a minute,” commanded Carson sternly. And even as he endeavored to muster in his tones sufficient calmness to counteract Cary’s complete perturbation, he felt suddenly cold, as for the first time the realization began to seep into him that he had heard not a joke, but something that was most decidedly serious; something that affected two people in that room, and badly. But whatever it was, it must be straightened out somehow. He pulled his own scattered wits together with an effort. The unnerved Cary now sat slumped in his chair. Carson went to the door of the office and, opening it, peered out. The corridor of the building was empty. Whereupon he snapped the button in the door, locking it fast against any possible intruders. Then he came back. He dropped heavily into his swivel chair. “Now out with it, Cary. What in heaven’s name have you done? How have you gotten away with this money? Where is it? What have you done with it? And what do you mean by an accident to that Texas Helium Gas certificate you were taking care of for me?”
Cary Desmond’s eyes roved dejectedly around the tiny office with its brand new spick-and-span furniture. Then he stared straight into the eyes of his foster-brother — the fiancé of his sister. “Oh, Cliff, it was a horrible accident, I tell you — and because of that accident is why I’m sunk — at the bank.” He paused, gropingly. “You — you see, Cliff, it all began some weeks ago. I’d never in my life given any thought to money — it had never meant anything to me — that is up to that time — when it b
egan to look as though that old money-hungry Matthias Smock was going to clean up strong on Father’s and his old Rocky Ridge tract because of the L-Road extension, and freeze Sis and me out of Father’s share which you know morally belongs to us. It was then I got to thinking for the first time what a wonderful thing it was to — to have money. I sort of — sort of got obsessed with the idea. And — and I thought of the stock market — a quick way. A — ”
“A quick way to hell for bank tellers,” said Carson grimly. “Gad, but I wish you hadn’t been quite so young in the famous crash two years back, and had had a little nipping like the rest of the world got. You’d have had your lesson then for all ti — ” He made a helpless gesture. “But go on — the facts — all of ‘em.”
“Well, I borrowed a hundred bucks on my salary. I started off by — by playing a little on the silver market. Silver, you know, was — ”
“So silver got you?” groaned Carson. “Yes, I know all about silver. Ever since, apparently, there have been seven or eight new commercial uses for silver discovered, including a process for plating chinaware with it — yes, you know this crazy new fad that’s sweeping the world — complete sets of silver-plated chinaware — even silver-plated flowers and plants, too — every source has been active on the stock market. I might tell you that the seven or eight points don’t amount to a row of beans in the face of the total amount of silver in the world — they’re just seven or eight more talking points to make people speculate.”
“Then — then why was it zooming up?” asked Cary desperately.
“Why? I’ll tell you why. Because for reasons the ordinary man in the street can’t grasp. For one thing, the world silver slump of 1928, ’29 and ’30 was caused solely by the demonetization by Great Britain of silver in India, which was going on at an average rate of twenty-nine million ounces per year. That was about eighteen percent of the total world production, averaging one hundred and twenty-eight million ounces. When Gopal Mahatma Younghi induced Premier Nethercleft of Great Britain to spread the demonetization over a fifty-year scale, in exchange for certain allegiances on the part of India to England, and Senator Burbo of Arizona got through the United States Congress in the same month a bill to reduce the four hundred million dollars worth of silver dollars in the Treasury to eighty percent of that amount as security for the same amount of Treasury notes, loaning the surplus twenty percent to China on a forty-year loan, the whole world silver slump stopped and silver came back into its own. But what does the man in the street know about two such widely diverse international finance moves as that? He can’t interpret them together any more than he can understand how the great world financial depression of 1930 was caused in actuality by the United States and France, out of forty-four countries, holding together fifty-five percent of the world’s gold supplies, or five billion dollars. As for silver, the man in the street sees silver come back into its own — and attributes it to fool processes for plating chinaware with it, and other equally fantastic causes. And he — ” Carson stopped. “But go ahead. After all, I want to know what this has got to do with me. You played with silver on some sort of margin. And then?”
“And I was lucky, and cleaned up,” put in Cary hastily. “I made nearly three hundred dollars, Cliff, and I put my winnings into a single share of Commonwealth Edison, the best stock on earth. And I was done with the market. For good, I thought. I came so near losing my money, that — that I was cured. But then — then I got interested in Black Dragon Copper. Its shares have been jumping up and down on the market like wildfire. I thought I could clean up a little. I borrowed two hundred bucks this time on my salary — and — well, I took a flock of copper shares — a huge flock on margin. I — ” He stopped, swallowing.
“And so — so it was copper?” put in the older man. “Copper, that’s been between the two most tremendous market forces it’s ever known. On the one hand, the invention of the Vesey process for salvaging old copper which seems to indicate that as high as seven hundred thousand tons can be regained every year at eighteen cents per pound for secondary metal — beating the market down; and the significant reports that the great Mother Machree lode in Montana, the greatest depositary in the world, is flickering out — forcing the market upward. And so you — but go on. I’m orating here when my own interests are somehow involved. For God’s sake go on. My certificate — that woman’s certificate — where does that come in?”
“Yes, that’s — that it,” said Cary eagerly. “The certificate, Cliff. You see, Cliff, I put it in a big sealed envelope in my private vault in the tellers’ section of the main vaults — the bank gives us each one, as you know. But I had another envelope there — one containing that share of Commonwealth Edison that I put my last winnings into. When Licky — that’s the bucket-shop man I’ve been dealing with — Licky and Greenburg on La Salle Street — called me up at the bank last Friday morning and told me I’d have to put up more margin, I decided to throw in my three hundred dollars winnings. I could talk freely to him — I had closed my cage temporarily — and had called him back in one of the phone booths for customers which has a straight ‘out’ wire — doesn’t run through the bank switchboard — and so I told him I would rush over to him a stock certificate that I owned: I asked him to sell it for me right on the morning market, credit it to my account, and apply it to my margin till he heard from me in person.
“Well, when I left the booth, I went to my vault, got my envelope out — and sent it over to Licky by a messenger. Then I went back into my cage. I called up a few minutes later to make sure, and found from Licky and Greenburg’s switchboard girl that my messenger had gotten there O.K. And I worked the rest of the day, Cliff, knowing that a couple of points down on Black Dragon would wipe out my three hundred dollars, and a half-dozen points or so up would make me over a thousand. Well, when the bank closed in the afternoon, I managed to get hold of an early evening paper. And Black Dragon, Cliff, had fallen so far that I was cleaned out. It had fallen so far and so fast that Licky evidently hadn’t even had time to call on me for more margins. It — it just tumbled, Cliff, right downstairs, a whole series of steps at a time.
“I felt pretty peeved, but I was philosophical about it to myself. I’d made a handful of change on silver, and dropped it on copper. And so I decided to forget it. And next day, Saturday, I’d just about gotten it out of my mind, when — when Licky called me up just about noontime, before the close of the market and the close of the bank. Black Dragon had been falling all Saturday morning too — never had there been known to be such a tumble in its shares. And Licky knocked me for a row of ashcans, Cliff, by telling me he’d have to have more margin if we were to stay with it Monday morning. I was dumbfounded, Cliff. I was stupefied. For the life of me I couldn’t see how my little three hundred dollar share of Commonwealth Edison stock had carried me clear down to that point. I should have been cleaned out before eleven o’clock the day before. And then, suddenly, Cliff, my blood ran cold. I hung up. I went to my teller’s vault. I rummaged through some miscellaneous papers there, and came on my envelope — an envelope, Cliff. I tore it open. And good God, there was my Commonwealth Edison share. And it was your client’s Texas Helium certificate I had sent over — endorsed in blank, too, like all stock. And I had stayed with the bear movement on Black Dragon Copper to the tune of ten thousand dollars.
“I — I got Licky on the phone again. I could hardly talk, Cliff. Asked him if he’d had any trouble in marketing that certificate. He said none. Sold it on the curb. To some mysterious unknown buyer, his own trader reported, some fellow with a short yellow beard who nobody around there had ever seen or heard of, a fellow who looked like a German army officer, for he wore a monocle and spoke with a decided German accent. The fellow, Licky said, was buying in certain utilities only, including Tex Helium. And either he was exceptionally well-heeled, or else intended to avoid any clues to his identity through the use of checks, for he paid cash in five hundred dollar bills. But of course, Cliff, the
stock certificate could have been sold to anybody for that matter. It was gilt edge. And endorsed in blank by some Polish person that it had originally been issued to. You remember?” Carson nodded wearily. Cary went on, hurriedly, like a man who has with great difficulty accomplished a formidable and trying explanation. “I — I talked to Licky about Black Dragon Copper. He said that the downward movement was nothing but a big copper warfare, that Black Dragon must eventually go back — that it would be the leading stock that it always had been. He looked for the big skyrocketing any minute now. He said that I had simply gotten squeezed between two copper magnates who were struggling for control. And so telling him I’d get him some more margin over promptly Monday morning, I hung up and went back to my cage for the Saturday noon bank balancing. God, Cliff, I tell you I was stunned.”
Cary paused now. It was plain that his explanation had divested him of a tremendous amount of nervous energy. Carson, even though he was seeing this contretemps in his own affairs, developed step by step, uttered no word now that might serve to stop the flow of the story. And Cary managed to pick up the thread again.
“All Saturday afternoon,” he said, “ — and Sunday — I went through hell. I knew I had gotten you into a fine mess — because you’d told me how that certificate had only been left with you through a misunderstanding as to the duties of your office. I went to the newspaper offices Sunday and studied, in the back files, the stock-market reports on Black Dragon all day. Quotations that ran back for an entire year. And when Sunday night came, I was literally armed with figures that proved Black Dragon positively couldn’t drop further — that if I would stay with it only a few hours more — say the early hours of Monday — it’d turn for the upward swing and go skyrocketing and I’d literally clean up. And I commenced to think, Cliff, how wonderful it would be to clean up a little fortune through a bit of gameness and nerve; of course I know I’ve been a rotter — ” Cary made a helpless gesture with his hands, “ — leaving Sis to support Granddad and to run that house and work nights in the bargain. But as I say, I was sore — sore all over that Smock should clean up so strong on Father’s share of the Rocky Ridge tract — and — and I thought how wonderful it would be to lay a fat wad on Sis’s lap and say — ’Never mind, Sis, we don’t need or care what Smock cleans up on Daddy’s property. We’ — ”
The Riddle of the Yellow Zuri Page 6