by Jay Lake
My humble birthday, indeed, was made an occasion for strained nerves to relax and for worried men to forget their problems. To cap the climax, when I went to my cabin in the evening, there was a gorgeously wrapped and tied box of cigars and cigarettes, with the captain’s card attached to it, and a huge box of candies, with the purser’s compliments similarly presented. I felt excessively guilty about these latter gifts, feeling as I did that they were intended to show appreciation of Lavender’s services. Lavender, however, only laughed and was pleased that my birthday should have passed off so well.
“Any occasion is good for a celebration, at sea,” he observed.
Late in the afternoon, we had dropped anchor in the outer harbor of Cherbourg, while a tender took off our passengers for Paris. Then, with a fresh breeze, we had headed for England and the end of the voyage. I had noted that, during the transfer of passengers for France, Lavender stood at the gangplank stretched between the steamers, and carefully observed every person who went aboard the tender. For a time, I had looked for fireworks, but apparently there was no call for his interference.
We sat late that night, upon the deck, the three of us, and for a time the purser made a quartette. It was with reluctance that Crown took his departure.
“We dock in the morning,” he said, as he prepared to go. “I’ve a nasty report to make to the company, Mr. Lavender. You haven’t anything to tell me that will make it easier?”
“The report will be full and complete,” replied my friend. “The murderer will be apprehended at quarantine, by Scotland Yard officials, and the jewels will be turned over at that time.”
Crown was startled and amazed.
“You don’t mean to say that—that you’ve got your man!”
“Not yet,” said Lavender, “but I shall certainly get him. Crown, he is one of the officers of this ship.”
The purser’s jaw dropped; his fat cheeks sagged. His eyes searched the eyes of Lavender.
“My God!” he said. “I’m almost afraid to ask you—who he is!”
Suddenly he got to his feet. “Will you come to my cabin?” he asked. “This is no place to discuss what you have to tell me.”
Lavender nodded his head and stood up. They moved off together in the direction of the forward deck.
“Ready, Gilruth!” said the Major, sharply, and I saw that his face was hard and set, his limbs braced. “After them quickly.”
The sudden intelligence seared my brain like a hot iron, and then I went cold. But Rittenhouse was already on his way, and mechanically I followed him.
We were none too soon. Lavender and the purser had barely disappeared beyond the cheek of the wireless cabin, when the huge criminal fell upon his companion. There was a shout, and then a scuffling of feet and the sound of blows. The next instant, Rittenhouse and I were on the scene.
In the deep shadow of the piled lifeboats, a desperate struggle was in progress, with the rail and the water dangerously close. Even as we reached them, the wrestlers pitched toward the edge; the great bulk of the purser was forcing the slimmer figure of Lavender back over the rail. I heard the cold rush of the water, and the heaving breathing of the combatants. The wind snatched away my cap, and tingling spray beat upon my face.
Then Rittenhouse was upon the purser like a wolf, and with cleared wits I was beside him, aiding.
The powerful Crown fought like a maniac, but the odds were now against him, and slowly we wore him down. Haggard and disheveled, he struggled to the last. At length, Rittenhouse tripped him and brought him down with a thud that seemed to shake the deck. Kneeling on the great heaving chest of the beaten man, the Major forced the purser’s wrists together, while Lavender snapped on bracelets of steel. As the struggle ended, Captain Rogers and his first officer ran up out of the shadows.
“Mr. Crown, Mr. Crown,” panted the captain, “what is the meaning of this?”
But as the purser could only glare and foam, Lavender, slightly breathless, replied for him.
“It means, sir,” said he, “that Mr. Crown has just been frustrated in an attempt to throw me overboard. Major Rittenhouse and Mr. Gilruth prevented him. As I explained to you, our actual evidence was slight, and it became necessary to force Mr. Crown to incriminate himself. The attempted murder of James E. Lavender will do for the present charge. Later it will be changed to something more serious.”
The first officer was incredulous.
“Do you mean,” he began, “that Mr. Crown had anything to do with—?”
“I believe the murder of the Baroness Borsolini to have been accidental,” answered Lavender. “None the less, it was Mr. Crown who committed the crime.”
Suddenly the fat face of the prostrate man wrinkled like that of a child, and the great frame began to heave. Then sobs of anguish broke from the lips, and incredible tears rolled down the massive cheeks.
“I didn’t mean to kill her,” sobbed the purser. “I swear to God, Captain, it was an accident! I never meant to kill her. So help me God, it was an accident!”
Chapter V
With the purser safely locked in his room, under heavy guard, Lavender, in the captain’s cabin, repeated the tale as chronologically it should be told.
“The Baroness Borsolini,” said he, “was really Kitty Desmond, a well-known adventuress. Crown has made a full confession to me and to Rittenhouse. Miss Desmond was made the repository of the stolen Schuyler jewels, and sent to England with them, where they were to be sold, I imagine, and the money divided. She recognized me when I came on board, and wondered if I were on her trail. It worried her, and she made the bold play of coming to me with a cock-and-bull story of attempted theft, in order to find out what I knew and, if I knew nothing, to gain my sympathies. I am convinced that there was no attempt on her room, the first night.
“Crown, however, recognized her. She had been a frequent voyager on the Atlantic, and many men knew her. She had been pointed out to Crown, a year ago, on another ship. He knew only that she was a police character, and probably up to no good. When I sent her to him, to test her story, she was obliged to carry the thing through, and tell him the same story she had told me. She trusted Crown’s office, as she had every right to do, and actually deposited the jewels there, and received the usual receipt.
“But the temptation was too great for Crown. He was desperately hard up—deeply in debt—back home in England. It looked to him like a sure thing. He would keep the jewels himself, steal the receipt which had been issued to Kitty Desmond, and defy her to say anything. He was, of course, in a position to fix the records in his own office, and being a matter of routine no one else likely to remember the issuing of that particular receipt. There could be no appeal for the woman; her story would be laughed at, if she reported it, for her reputation was against her. Probably she would accept the inevitable and make no outcry.
“Crown’s slip occurred when, on the second night, he stole the receipt which had been given her. She woke up, and to keep her from screaming, he choked her. His reputation depended upon his silencing her, at least until he could talk to her. If he had not killed her, he would have offered her—when she caught him in the act of theft—a share of the profits. Unfortunately, she died under his hands; he is stronger than he suspects. He got the receipt, however, and fled. No one saw him; he had timed everything very well.
“As it happened, in giving young Russell a false address, the night before, the Baroness—so to call her—had torn off a fragment of the receipt, the only piece of paper that came to hand in the darkness. Whether she knew what it was, or not, we shall never know. Perhaps she did, for she tore off only a small piece; not enough to spoil the receipt. But there was enough of the print on the reverse of the written address, for me to guess what the entire paper must have been. If then, she had deposited something with the purser’s office, the purser had lied when he told me she had not. In the circumstances, the logical conc
lusion was that she had deposited the jewels.
“Crown is a bold man, and he played his part well, once he was forced to it. But in the end, I let him know, through Rittenhouse, the importance I attached to a certain fragment of paper. As he had the rest of the paper himself, he knew very well what it was that I had, and what I probably suspected. He tried to bluff it through, even tonight, for he wasn’t positive that I knew, and he had destroyed the rest of the receipt. Nevertheless, he was badly frightened, and he had already resolved to get rid of the jewels, and try to clear his skirts.
“As for me, my case was purely circumstantial, and would have been difficult to prove in law; I had to force Crown to incriminate himself. I told him point-blank, just before he sprang upon me, that he would be arrested, told him where the jewels were, and asked him what he intended to do about it. You know the rest.”
“And a wonderful beginning of your vacation it has been!” I said bitterly, looking at his lacerated hands.
“Don’t be silly,” said Lavender. “I never enjoyed myself more in my life. This has been just what I needed. And I’m sure the sea air, as a background, has been very beneficial to my nerves.”
“But where are the jewels?” asked the captain suddenly.
“I asked Gilruth to bring them with him,” replied Lavender with a smile. “As a last resort, Crown tried to get rid of them, as I said, and so he palmed them off on Gilly. The birthday gave him his chance. The jewels are at the bottom of the box of candy, which was the purser’s gift to my friend.”
Whereupon, I emptied the box onto the table; and the chorus of exclamations that followed were Lavender’s reward for his efforts, and the final proof of the truth of his deductions, even though later the suicide of Albert Crown made legal proof unnecessary, and made unnecessary the prosecution of that unfortunate man.
MUSTERED OUT, by H. Bedford-Jones
Chapter I
Sergeant Aloysius Larrigan inspected the houses ahead—and hesitated. Before he found name and wealth and fame in California film fields, Aloysius Larrigan had been born and raised in New York. Hence, he knew the metropolis. He knew that behind him on Fifth Avenue were the false jewels; and that here ahead of him was the real thing. Here, half a block off Fifth Avenue, was the house of Jim Bleeker, bunky of Sergeant Aloysius Larrigan.
But the sergeant hesitated, gripping the package a little harder in his hand. Then, mustering up courage, he approached the doorway and rang.
The outer door opened, and a stolid butler gazed at him.
“I—I’ve come to see Mrs. Bleeker,” said the sergeant nervously.
“It’s quite early, sir,” answered the butler, somehow stifling his first instinct of blank rejection. “I hardly think, sir, that Mrs. Bleeker is—”
“Look here!” snapped Larrigan, flushing. “I’ve just landed from France. My name is Larrigan. Jim Bleeker was my bunky—”
“If you’ll step inside, sir,” hastened the butler, changing countenance abruptly. “I’m sure that Mrs. Bleeker will wish to see you.”
Aloysius Larrigan sat himself down between a mounted piece of fifteenth-century armor and a dull-gleaming Rubens. All this, he knew, was the real thing. He had guessed that Jim Bleeker was an aristocrat; but—well, all this was a bit crushing. Before he quite realized it, Mrs. Bleeker, in her widow’s black, was upon him and holding his hand.
“Jim wrote me so much of you!” she was saying quietly. “I’m very, very glad to know you, Mr. Larrigan. I received your letter from Bordeaux, telling me of the final days—I cannot tell you how I appreciated the sweetness of that letter.”
Aloysius Larrigan blushed fearfully. He stammered something and fell silent.
“You must stay for luncheon—but how long shall you have in the city?”
“No time at all, ma’am,” returned Aloysius. He displayed his package. “We’re going through town to be mustered out, and then I have to hit for California. I’ve got important business there, you see—a lady I’ve not seen for a year, and also business. I just got permission to run up here with this.”
He thrust forward the package, all his carefully rehearsed speech and actions gone to the winds.
“You see, Mrs. Bleeker, Jim made me promise to bring these things here myself. They are just the little things; well, you’ll see. He thought maybe you would like to have them. I have to be back in half an hour.”
Mrs. Bleeker took the package, bit her lip very hard, and then threw back her shoulders and looked Aloysius Larrigan in the eye. He realized that hers was a peculiar bravery—the courage of deep things, of rare blood, of a sensitive, inner grief that was tearing her very soul before his eyes.
He felt tongue-tied and extremely uncomfortable, far different from the easy assurance habitual to him.
“Wait just a minute, please,” she said, and left him.
He waited, gazing at the velvet hangings, the deep softness of everything around him, feeling himself frightfully out of place. The knowledge that he was an American soldier, and as good as any man alive, did not help him.
Then he smiled grimly at the thought of how little the studio directors knew about the furnishings of an aristocratic home! All the studio men knew about was the flashy emptiness of the newly rich and the professional decorator.
Mrs. Bleeker was before him again.
“I’m more sorry than I can tell you, Mr. Larrigan, that you have to run away so quickly. When you get settled in California, will you please send me your address? One does not know what unforeseen emergencies may arise.”
Aloysius promised.
Mrs. Bleeker produced a little morocco case.
“I would like you to have this,” she said quietly, very steadily. “I brought it to Jim once; he always wore it. There’s no other man I could give it to, Mr. Larrigan—but if you would accept it, you would give me great pleasure.”
Larrigan gazed at the scarf-pin, an abalone blister mounted in gold.
It came to him that this was a very precious tribute, a tribute from the woman’s heart, meaning more than words could say.
Jim Bleeker had other friends, of course—wealthy friends, college friends, all that a man of his standing would have. But he, Larrigan, had been Bleeker’s bunky in France, had watched Jim Bleeker die, had been more to Jim Bleeker than any man alive.
And this was a tribute, the most precious heart-gift he would ever know.
“I—I’d be very glad,” he said, stumbling over the words, cursing himself because he could not express the thing that was in him, the feeling that gripped him in that moment of revelation. “I’ll be wearing cits in a couple of days. I—I sure appreciate this very deeply, Mrs. Bleeker.”
“There’s no other man I could give it to,” she said again very softly.
This was all. He was thankful that his face seemed quite unknown to her.
Chapter II
Reever Keene was home again—Reever Keene, the great; Reever Keene, the man who had snapped asunder his fabulous contract a year ago in order to enlist as a private; Reever Keene, whose pictures were the greatest drawing-card in every theater of the country!
He had sent no notice of his coming, but the studio knew of it and was ready. As the Overland drew in, sixteen automobiles were waiting, and these automobiles were the cream of motion-picture motordom. All Los Angeles knew that the aluminum car with purple trimmings was Reever Keene’s; that his director owned the pea-green Twin Duplex striped with canary; that his leading lady had paid eleven thousand dollars for the screaming blue-and-gold roadster, and so forth.
But a terrible thing happened at the station—a thing which, fortunately, was kept out of the papers by influence. As one of the lesser lights of filmdom grasped the hand of the great Keene he gave a raucous laugh.
“For Heaven’s sake, Reever! Where’d you get the abalone sparkler? Wow! Look at it, folks; pipe the—”
Reever Keene’s fist smashed him square in the mouth.
The press-agen
t wanted to use the story, of course; but Reever Keene took the press-agent by the nape of the neck and kicked him hard. Influence did the rest—advertising influence. The story was killed.
“I can’t understand what’s got into Keene,” said the director, riding back to the studios with the president of the company. “And look at the face of him! We’ll have to paint him an inch deep to disguise that brick-red tan and make him come out like the old screen idol! Fortunately his profile is all right still.”
The president grunted. He was a wise man, or he would not have been in his present position.
“Keene takes up his contract where he left off,” he returned. “That’s all I’m worrying about! Let Keene run the whole damned place if he wants. If you’d gone into the army, my son, instead of sitting on your draft-proof job, the Lord knows you’d be a damned sight better director!”
The director looked at his leather puttees and said no more.
“Where’s Lola?” asked Reever Keene, driving to the studios in his own car once more, his leading lady and chief supports gathered around him. “Thought she might be around?”
“She’ll turn up at the studios,” was the response. “Working on a location near Santa Monica to-day. They’ll be back for dinner. We’re having a real celebration, old boy!”
“Lola’s awful proud of that sparkler you gave her,” simpered the leading lady. “Heaven knows it was a beaut!”
Reever Keene shivered a little. He was not sure why he shivered; nor was he sure why the warmth and cordiality of his reception at the studio left him cold and hard.