The set was the office of the night club. The proprietor and the little old lady faced each other across a table. The man’s face was dark, sneering.
It was a moment of pure melodrama. Would the little old lady be able to conquer the fear of the thing in her hand and exact justice?
Dorothy Devine was superb.
The Saturday night audience froze in breathless expectancy.
* * *
—
In the third row on the center aisle, the Madame, that dynamic figure who was as much an enigma to the police as to the underworld where she was looked upon as nothing short of a criminal genius, sat forward in her seat. The slim, well-kept fingers that were equally at home with a tea cup, a jimmy, or a Tommy-gun, or could, when clenched, put a good lightweight to sleep, were twined in her lap.
The Madame seldom attended the theatre. The reason was simple. Inside her smartly cropped red-blonde head functioned the brain that had evolved all the super criminal coups that had mystified the New York police for the past thirteen months. With such a mind it was impossible not to solve instantly the course of even the most complicated dramatic plot, and the play ceased to interest her.
So when that enigmatic figure who was known to both the police and the underworld only as the Madame did select a show, it was always a light farce whose lines sparkled with wit and humor.
Tonight she had chosen “Love Runs Hot,” the screaming comedy hit featuring Dorothy Devine, sensation of the current dramatic season. Miss Devine’s talented interpretation of her first comic role had twice during the first two acts caused the Madame to smile. And that in itself was an accomplishment, for no one had ever seen her laugh.
Tonight was something of a celebration—it marked the end of the Madame’s meteoric gangland career. On the following Monday she would dismantle Le Parfum Shoppe, in whose back office had been cased the famous Granite Bank heist, Faire Long’s fantastic shake-down, the Hotel Kid’s gem haul at the Normandy, all of which had been but a prelude to the unaccountable suicide of the Big Shot, boss double-crosser of the underworld, which the Madame alone knew was not really a suicide at all. She knew because it was a perfectly planned and executed revenge—a revenge that had drawn her from nobody knew where to become the master of every criminal art from the technique of the dip, the cloaker, the cold-card artist, the stick-up guy to the pinnacle of gangland aristocracy—the peterman. And her revenge accomplished, she would leave as she had come—a mystery.
She could do this because the Madame had been smart. She had never participated in any of the jobs she planned, nor had she ever accepted a share of the loot. Her play was the head work and a build up of confidence that would enable her eventually to rub out the Big Shot. This had been done, and in so doing the Madame had allied herself to no faction, although her restless mind was equally facile at solving problems of the police or the underworld. And she had done both without losing caste or double-crossing either.
Both sides respected, feared, and trusted her implicitly, and agreed that the Madame was a wow.
* * *
—
“Love Runs Hot” amused her tremendously. She admired the polished technique of Dorothy Devine, for among her other accomplishments the Madame could be a consummate actress if the occasion demanded.
Dorothy Devine, as popular with society as she was with the members of her own profession, rose to the heights in her final scene. She was the little old lady with the blunt automatic in her fear-stricken hand. She feared the gun as she feared the rat she faced.
Would she use it?
The audience shivered with apprehension.
And in the end she did not. She bluffed the menacing underworld figure with a bit of shrewd bravado that would have done credit to the great Madame herself, saved her granddaughter, and was back in her comic character again as the curtain went down to a rolling roar of laughter and applause.
Again Dorothy Devine had triumphed. Society and Broadway rose to acclaim her.
But as the Madame left her seat with the lithe grace and sureness of action that characterized her every movement, the actress was playing out a real-life drama in her dressing-room.
Backed against her make-up shelf, Dorothy Devine stood at bay, her bosom rising and falling, her lips compressed into a thin crimson line. In the hand that had held the stage gun with such evident reluctance a business-like automatic nestled. The hand grasped the rod as though it were accustomed to it, and the hand did not tremble.
It pointed at two men who had forced their way, a moment before, into the star’s dressing quarters.
“Get out!” the actress snarled.
The men looked at each other knowingly and laughed.
They were faultlessly dressed, but about them both was a furtive look. The taller had a scar across his cheek that might have been made by a burst of shrapnel except that it was a furrow dug by the pointed fingernail of an enraged woman. The other was smaller, with eyes that never remained fixed on one thing for more than a split second.
“Get out, I tell you!”
Dorothy Devine’s voice was rising shrilly.
“Take it easy.” The man with the scar waved a well-manicured hand languidly. “Take it easy, kid.”
“Leave me alone!” Dorothy almost screamed. “Why can’t you leave me——”
As the man with the scar dropped his hand she sprang for the door, thrusting herself madly between them. But as her hand grasped the knob they closed in from either side, seized her wrists, and tore her away. In another instant she had been thrust into a chair.
* * *
—
The man with the scar bent over her, wrenched the gun away and tossed it on a chaise-longue across the room.
“Now, listen to what we have to say, kid.” His tone was menacing. “And you better make up your mind right now that you’re going to do what we want.”
There was something at once pleading and yet hopeless in the look the actress shot up at him, and past him to the man with the shifty eyes who had slouched to the door and stood leaning against it, gnawing at his lip.
“Oh, can’t you leave me alone?” she begged. “I’ve paid your dirty blackmail until you’ve practically bled me dry. Now, won’t you leave me alone?”
But even as she spoke she realized that with these two pleading would do no good. They were out for the last penny.
The man with the scar allayed her fears with words for an instant, however.
“It’s not money we want this time,” he said easily, glancing down at his polished nails. “And I resent your use of that word blackmail. It has an ugly sound.”
“But that’s exactly what it is,” she protested vehemently. “You—you——”
The man with the scar held up his hand.
“Please, please!” He bowed mockingly. “Do not over-excite yourself, Miss Devine—Molly Delaney Mulford Dorothy Devine.”
The actress shrank away at the string of names as though she had been smacked in the mouth.
The man drew a perfumed handkerchief from his sleeve and flicked it across his nails to renew the lustre.
“Let us realize that this is a purely business transaction,” he resumed. “We perform a service for you for which you have thus far paid us. You infer that your supply of ready funds is low.” He shrugged. “We do not wish to press you. Hence we will continue to perform the same service for you, but in return you must perform one for us.”
Dorothy Devine’s hands clenched in her lap.
“You blood-suckers—you parasites!” she cried. “Just because you know something about me——”
“Exactly!” The man with the scar cut her short. “Just because we happen to know that when you were appearing in a tent show on some dizzy merry-go-round circuit in the Middle West you spent six months in one of the local jugs—for—well, we are able
to perform a very valuable service for you. We prevent that information from reaching the ears of your swell and very elegant society friends, and we naturally expect a small payment for the service. If we allowed it to be known that the gorgeous Dorothy Devine was really Molly Delaney Mulford——”
He spread his hands.
The actress half rose from her chair.
“You beasts! You know perfectly well that I was framed. That my husband and I had not been paid in weeks—nor had any of the other members of the troupe. You know that the manager of the show had been trying to get his hands on me and was furious because I laughed at him. And you know that when Jack Mulford needed an emergency operation I took from the manager’s box only what was rightly ours. But in spite of it my husband died.”
Her face sank into her hands.
“That is what you say, kid.”
The actress sprang to her feet and faced him.
“Yes, that’s what I say—and it’s true. And it’s true that the manager testified that we had been paid and that I’d stolen the money from his box—and the rest of the troupe backed him up because they were afraid if they didn’t they’d never see their own pay—and it’s true that I spent six months in jail for it.” She shook her fist under his nose. “And how do you happen to know all this? Because you were in the same jail because you’re the cheapest and poorest pair of jewel thieves at present living off the lowest form of crookedness there is—blackmail!”
The man with the scar smiled, a thin-lipped cruel smile.
“That is what you say,” he murmured, “but would your Park Avenue friends who so eagerly seek you as a dinner guest, or would the Lacey-Smythes whose car is waiting outside the stage door to carry you out to their Long Island estate for the week-end—would they believe it?” He shook his head. “I think not. Hence we will continue to perform our little service and you will continue to pay our modest fee.”
Dorothy Devine dropped back into her chair with a beaten look.
“But I tell you I have no money. You know that as well as I do.”
“My dear Miss Devine”—the man’s tone was sardonic—“who said anything about money? All we ask is that you perform a small service for us in return.”
The man at the door nodded in agreement.
“Well?” the girl asked helplessly.
The man with the scar leaned closer.
“Merely this. Listen carefully. You are to be the week-end guest of the Lacey-Smythes. Mrs. Lacey-Smythe’s pearls are famous. We have read about them in the papers often.” He tapped a folded paper that protruded from his pocket. “In fact, an article on the party she is giving tonight and at which you are to be a guest, contains another description of her five-hundred-grand necklace.”
* * *
—
He tapped the tips of his fingers together and glanced down at the actress speculatively.
“We have had our eyes on those pearls for a long time,” he continued. “To tell you the truth, we have cased the job thoroughly and we expect within twenty-four hours to be in possession of them.”
The actress was on her feet again.
“No, no—not Mrs. Lacey-Smythe! You’re not going to rob her!”
“But that’s exactly what we are going to do—and you’re going to help us.”
He waved aside her stammered protests, and his voice grew hard.
“If you wish to keep them as your friends—if you wish them not to know that they are entertaining a jailbird—you will do as we say. After all it is really nothing. As I said before, we have cased the job thoroughly except that we have been unable to locate the wall safe where Mrs. Lacey-Smythe places her jewels when she retires.”
Dorothy Devine waited, knowing that she was trapped, yet searching her brain for a way out.
“Now all that you have to do,” the man with the scar continued, “is to ask your hostess’s permission to put some of your own jewels in her safe. On some pretext or other see her when she puts them in. After you have gone to your room to retire for the night a servant will rap at your door to inquire if you wish anything.” He bowed. “I will be the servant and you will tell me the location of the safe. Then you may sleep peacefully knowing that neither of us will trouble you again.”
He grinned with his lips alone.
“It will be worth it to be rid of us that easily, won’t it? For you may rest assured that with the proceeds of this job we will be on the downy for the rest of our lives. Remember——”
“No, no!” The actress covered her ears with her hands and tried to brush past him. “I will not do it.”
The man with the scar seized her arm.
“Let me go!” she pleaded. “Let me go! I am late as it is.”
“In just a moment, kid. I merely wish to remind you what will happen to society’s darling if it becomes known that she was once a jailbird—but I see that you know.”
He released her arm.
“When I rap at your door I shall expect you to give me the information we desire.”
With a mock show of politeness he escorted her into the corridor.
“Good-evening, Miss Devine, and have a nice time at the party.”
He turned to his companion when the stage door had banged behind the departing actress.
“She’s made up her mind to give us the air,” he said. “But she’ll change it. I know her better than she knows herself.”
And he was right.
* * *
—
On Monday morning the Madame sat at the fragile Louis Quatorze desk in the little office behind Le Parfume Shoppe. Her close-fitting grey frock, carefully calculated to blend harmoniously with the softly shaded hangings and old French furniture of the room, served to enhance her young blonde beauty. She looked exactly what she pretended to be—a smart perfumer offering a stock of imported wares for those to whom price was the only criterion of quality.
Her head was bent forward and supported by her hands. Her blue-grey eyes, luminous and a bit misty at the thought that today Le Parfume Shoppe would be closed for good, were desultorily scanning the headlines of the first edition of the Evening Gazette, one of the more lurid afternoon tabloids spread out on the desk before her.
Suddenly the eyes grew hard and metallic as they caught a headline sprawled across the third page:
GEM THIEVES CRACK SOCIETY SAFE
Lacey-Smythes’ Country House Looted of Famous Pearls
By Jane Bradley
Some time before dawn Sunday a thief, or thieves, slipped through the cordon of guards in and around the palatial Long Island country house of the wealthy and socially prominent Charles H. D. Lacey-Smythe, gagged the popular hostess and trussed her securely in her bed, broke into the concealed wall safe in her boudoir, and made away with her internationally-known necklace of matched pearls valued at half a million dollars.
The Lacey-Smythes’ week-end guests, who included the Reginalt Van Astorbilt, Jrs., the incomparable Dorothy Devine, and “Pony” Dibble, the high-goal polo star, were thrown into a fever of excitement when Mrs. Lacey-Smythe’s maid came screaming into the library as they were assembling for a late breakfast. She said that she had gone to her mistress’s room with her morning chocolate and found her tied to the bed with her jaws firmly bound with adhesive tape.
Guards supplied by a private detective agency to protect the jewels worn by the guests at a large party held in the house the night before were immediately summoned and the maid’s story proved to be true.
The only information Mrs. Lacey-Smythe could supply the police was that when she awakened she found herself unable to move. She exhibited all the symptoms of a person recovering from the effects of chloroform, however, and as the odor of that drug was still discernable in the bedroom the police believe that Mrs. Lacey-Smythe was chloroformed into unconsciousness, bound and g
agged, and then the robbery effected.
The antiquated wall safe had been cracked in fairly expert fashion, and the police believe it must have been the work of semi-professionals at least. They are carefully checking the movements of all known gem thieves.
Mrs. Lacey-Smythe is at a loss as to how whoever did the job learned the location of the safe, as it was concealed behind a secret panel whose whereabouts was known only to her husband and herself.
The pearls were the only articles of value the safe contained except for trinkets of sentimental value belonging to one of the guests, which had been entrusted to the hostess for safekeeping.
The guards supplied by the private agency are unable to explain how the thief, or thieves, were able to pass through their cordon and gain access to the bedroom. The window was opened, however, and it is supposed that a ladder was used, although no marks of any kind were discovered in the flower-beds beneath.
The only possible clue was a blood-stain on the end of one of the splinters protruding from the broken panel. Under microscopic examination this splinter revealed particles of rubber and it is thought that one of the robbers probably ran the splinter into his rubber-gloved thumb in the course of his operations.
“Find the man with a splinter hole in his thumb and the robbery is solved,” the inspector in charge of detectives said in a special interview granted newspapermen late last night.
The Madame thrust the paper aside impatiently.
“ ‘The guards supplied by the detective agency,’ indeed!” she snorted. “ ‘At a loss to explain how the thieves were able to pass through their cordon and gain access to the bedroom!’ ”
She twisted the paper and flung it into the waste-basket.
“It should be obvious to even the most ignorant policeman that the—ah—petermen—never even passed through the cordon. It was an inside job. While they’re waiting for someone to tell them to check up on the servants, and especially the extra ones hired for the party, the—ah—gentlemen who cleaned the pete—are getting farther and farther away, and so are the pearls, unless they’ve already gone through the—ah—fence.”
The Big Book of Female Detectives Page 211