"John Wood, messenger for Kilmer and Brook, bankers,—this was the man who was robbed in the corridor of the Cosmopolitan Trust building; Wood describes him as a real old man; clean-shaven; white-haired; walked with a limp."
"What size man?"
"Average size. Real old."
"Still, when he was chased he got away with remarkable spryness."
"That's right...There are a dozen or more of those who chased him down Broadway who corroborate Wood."
"What's the third description?" asked Mme. Storey.
"W. J. Banks of the Creagan Packing Co., Milwaukee, says the thief was a young man of twenty-five or thereabouts; athletic figure and fresh-coloured complexion; very smartly dressed. Pulled a black handkerchief over the lower part of his face as he sprang up the stairs...You see the different accounts jibe."
"Oh, I don't know," said Mme. Storey. "It may be assumed that the bandit is a master of disguise. One gets something from the composite of all three: a man of average size, extremely well-built, muscular and active."
Barron shrugged. "As for me, I've discarded all three descriptions," he said. "My experience is that when men are excited they imagine anything."
"Quite true," remarked Mme. Storey.
"Now the fourth is a bona-fide description," said Barron, "and I go by that."
"How can you be sure this one is bona fide?"
"Because I saw the man myself."
"Ha!" exclaimed Mme. Storey. "Here is something new! Go on."
"It is not generally known," said Barron, "but I was in the Textile National the morning of the robbery there. I kept it to myself because I thought it would injure my prestige if the public knew how close I had been to the smoke bandit without getting my hands on him.
"How I happened to be in that particular bank instead of another," he went on, "I can't tell you. A sort of hunch, I suppose. Unluckily I didn't profit by it...Well, I was in the bank, looking over the customers, when my attention was attracted by a man waiting in line who had a sort of queer look. A man about thirty-three years old..."
"Take this down, Bella," put in Mme. Storey.
"...With a sallow face and a shock of dead-black hair that needed cutting. Hung over the edge of his collar. He had a thin face: long nose, hollow cheeks; and he was thin in the body too; real thin. His overcoat was hanging open, and his pants-legs flopped when he walked, as if there wasn't anything inside them. Wouldn't weigh more than 115. Wore an old soft hat of black velure, and a dingy grey overcoat. Other times he may have disguised himself, but that was the natural man. It was his eyes that struck me hardest. Brown eyes with pupils that expanded and contracted while you looked at him. When he caught me looking at him, they turned crafty and secret."
"How was it you didn't get him?" Mme. Storey asked.
"Just a bit of ill-luck. I only had a general suspicion of him, you understand, and I was watching him close. But a messenger came to me from Hoadley of the Manufacturers Trust saying that he'd had a message his bank was going to get it that day. I hurried over there, and three minutes after I left the Textile National a bomb was dropped there, and the bandit got away with five thousand."
"Was the message you got, genuine?" asked Mme. Storey.
"From Hoadley, yes. But there was nothing in it, of course. If I'd listened to my hunch I'd have stayed where I was."
"But how do you know the bomb was actually dropped by the black-haired man?"
"Oh, I have confirmation of that. From the fellow who stood next to him in the line. Name, Joseph Keating; address, 33 Pineapple Street, Brooklyn. Keating marked the man in front of him because he kept turning his head over his shoulders; without any prompting from me he described him just as I gave it to you. A black velure hat is a little uncommon. Keating swears that the smoke first issued from a spot at this man's feet. Keating says he grabbed at him, but he slipped through his fingers like grease."
Mme. Storey nodded. "Anything more?" she asked.
"Little bits pieced together. The satchel snatched from H. Tannenbaum and Co. was afterwards found on a bench in Crotona Park, as you may remember. That's in the Bronx."
"I remember."
"Whereas the satchel belonging to Kilmer and Brook was found in East River Park."
"Strange he should have left them lying about so openly," remarked Mme. Storey.
"Well, I don't know. A satchel is dangerously incriminating. I suppose he had to drop it where he could. Wouldn't dare carry it home with him. It was the satchel that gave him away to Kilmer and Brook's messenger on Broadway. After that, you notice, he always dropped the satchel at the scene of the robbery, and made away with the contents. How did he carry it? Either in special pockets or in a paper bag. Certainly, the day I saw him in the Textile National he had nothing in his hands. He couldn't have, you see, because he needed both hands to snatch with."
"But what's the significance of the two Parks?" asked Mme. Storey.
"I'm coming to that. That time he was jostled in the subway, remember; it was the East side subway, Brooklyn Bridge station."
"What does that prove?"
"It doesn't prove anything. But it suggested to me that the East side subway was his beat. Each of the places I have mentioned is adjacent to that line. Working on that, I finally found the girl who sold him the glass balls he made his bombs out of. She works in the five and ten cent store on East 125th. Name, Bessie Rogers. She described him to the life; even the black velure hat. She had marked him particularly because, though he looked out of luck, he bought a whole gross of the glass balls. She couldn't remember the exact date. A few days before the biggest holiday rush began. The first robbery took place December 17."
"Anything more?"
"One other link. The same man has been seen to take trains at the 125th Street station. All the through trains to the West stop there, as you may know."
"Well," said Mme. Storey, "the evidence so far suggests that the man is mad..."
"Well, cracked, anyway," said Barron; "a crank."
"...And since there are five and ten cent stores all over the town, and since he would naturally drop into the one nearest him, the inference is he lives somewhere in the vicinity of East 125th Street."
Barron nodded.
"The probability is, that he lives alone, eh? In a furnished room or cheap hotel. Because if he had a family, they, knowing he was queer, would keep a close watch on him. And he couldn't have any confederates, because no sane man would dare use a crazy man as a tool. It would be too dangerous."
"That was what I figured," said Barron.
Mme. Storey rose. "Well, we start square," she said. "And may the best man win!"
VI
During the days that followed I sometimes blamed Mme. Storey in my mind for the apparent lukewarmness of her interest in the smoke-bandit case. To be sure she sent out several operatives to follow up the lines Barron had laid out (I may say here that none of them turned up anything of first-rate importance) but she herself did nothing so far as I could see. She had other cases on hand at the time, but it seemed to me that this one was of such supreme importance everything else ought to have given way to it.
Well, she was not as inactive as she appeared to be. It was simply that she did not choose to confide in me as yet. I have often noticed that she keeps her speculations absolutely to herself until they begin to resolve themselves into facts. So far she was only groping. Three visits that she paid one afternoon had an important bearing on the outcome of the case. The first was to the Public Library; the second to Police Headquarters; and the third to the head office of the telephone company.
One day, nobody else being available at the moment, I was sent up to East 125th Street to investigate a report that a man answering to the description of the one we wanted, was a regular frequenter of the Harlem Y.M.C.A. It took me half a day to run him down, and then it was only to find that he was a perfectly respectable clerk in the Harlem River freight yards. Moreover, he differed in several particulars from the
description furnished by Barron.
Thus I had my trouble for my pains. However, in the course of my peregrinations about Harlem, I made the somewhat thrilling discovery that I myself was being followed and watched. My tracker was a blond young man in a belted overcoat buttoned close under his chin, who would have been perfectly inconspicuous had it not been for his steady, watchful gaze. I considered that my discovery was important. It suggested that instead of having a more or less insane individual to deal with as we supposed, we were up against a complete organization. I so reported to Mme. Storey.
She only smiled. "Crider reported that when he was on this case he was trailed," she said. "Sanders and Canby the same."
I said: "Doesn't that prove what I say?"
She blew a cloud of smoke. "I supposed they were just Barron's men. He has a free hand from the Banking Association, remember. He can hire a thousand operatives if he wants."
"But why should he follow us?"
"To make sure that we don't steal a march on him, my Bella!"
I felt somewhat flattened.
"The obvious retort," Mme. Storey went on, musing over her cigarette, "would be to trail Barron...But whom could we put on it? If we do it at all, we must do it better than he. And of course he'll be looking for it."
"Crider?" I suggested, naming our best man.
"Barron is too well acquainted with him."
I was unable to think of any one else.
"I have it!" said Mme. Storey. "We'll take a chance on Sampson, that young Englishman who applied for a job the other day. He's a keen and experienced man, and he has cultivated an innocent, wondering air that would deceive the great Lecoq!"
Sampson was duly assigned to the task.
Subsequently I read his reports. They were rather amusing. From them it appeared that Barron, notwithstanding the unpredictable nature of his business, was a model of regularity in his habits. He was a physical culture enthusiast, and he lived at the Amsterdam Athletic Club on Central Park, where he could indulge his tastes to the full. Every day he swam; he boxed; he performed in the gymnasium; he played handball—all presumably in the interests of keeping his growing weight within bounds.
After a variety of exercises he arrived at his office at ten every morning, where he presumably gave interviews and received the reports of his operatives (Sampson could not follow him into his office, of course). Promptly at twelve-thirty every day he went to the Shoe and Leather Club to lunch, always alone. Sampson could not watch him inside the club either, but he never remained there more than forty-five minutes; no more than time to get a meal. Thereafter he always walked up to Canal Street and back, presumably for his precious health's sake, returning to his office at two. At four he returned up-town. But short as his office hours were, he found time twice a day to receive the newspaper reporters in a body. It seemed that he held a regular levee like a Secretary of State.
Back at the Amsterdam Athletic Club, he played handball on the roof, and had a swim before dressing for dinner. He was a sociable soul, and fancied himself as an after-dinner speaker. Being so largely in the public eye he was in great demand at banquets and club affairs. These affairs frequently lasted until all hours. If he got out early, he would go to a cabaret with friends of the evening. He was keen about dancing.
During the whole time that Sampson watched him the routine scarcely ever varied.
"The man is a mere idler!" I said to Mme. Storey. "He's laying back on his case. He's enjoying the notoriety it has brought him, and he means to string it out as long as possible."
Mme. Storey laughed. She said: "It's his leisureliness that impresses me, Bella. The bustling men are negligible. It requires real strength of character to achieve leisure nowaday. Leisure is only the outward seeming. Inside his head I dare say he's as busy as a weaving spider."
"Handball; swimming; punching the bag!" I said. "He thinks about nothing but his gross body!"
"He wants to keep young," said Mme. Storey. "I rather like him for that."
To go back a little in my story; notwithstanding Mme. Storey's wish to keep her part in the case a secret, somebody blabbed, and the newspapers had soon got hold of it. They played it up for all it was worth. The bandit having been quiescent for some days, they needed something to inject fresh interest into the story, and they found it in Mme. Storey's name. It was represented that Mme. Storey and Barron, "the two foremost criminologists of the day," were engaged in a desperate struggle for supremacy. The idea of suggesting that Barron was in the same class with my mistress! The gullible public, of course, bit, and got itself all worked up over the outcome of the "race." For the moment the bandit himself became a quite secondary figure, the grand question being whether Mme. Storey or Barron would win out.
Now Mme. Storey never will consent to "perform in the newspapers" as Barron had put it. When she has nothing to give out she refuses to string the reporters along. Consequently day after day they were turned away from our door, whereas they were sure of a welcome at Barron's. The inevitable result was that Barron loomed larger and larger in the day's news, while we were nowhere. He had now cast aside his former unwillingness to talk. His after-dinner experience had trained him in the art of talking without saying anything. He always had an interesting-sounding story to give out, though it might not possess the slightest significance. He revealed an abounding confidence. He promised "results" very soon now. There came a day when he gave out the description of the man we were all looking for. So exact a description of a being so peculiar, with the various details of his habits, etc., created an immense sensation. Now that everybody knew him, it was felt that he could not much longer keep out of the hands of the authorities. A dozen individuals came forward to testify that they had seen the man in such and such a bank at such a time. Barron's stock went up a hundred per cent. Mme. Storey's name was scarcely ever mentioned in the papers, and the newspaper boys seldom troubled to come to our office.
Mme. Storey smiled at all this, and continued on her serene way. But it made me rage. After all, we lived by publicity and our reputation, and Barron was stealing the one and destroying the other. Furthermore, one could see that what he gave out in the papers was not mere hot air. Every word was deliberately calculated. His confidence was real. He had something up his sleeve. I believed that it was Barron who had given it out that Mme. Storey was in the case, so that he could publicly triumph over her. This showed how sure he was of his hand.
Finally I could stand it no longer, and one morning I exploded in Mme. Storey's presence. "It seems to me you have never realised how important this case is to you!" I cried. "If Barron wins it, it will be a fatal blow to your prestige!"
"Prestige! Prestige! What follies are committed in thy name!" she murmured teasingly.
"Don't laugh!" I implored her. "It makes me positively ill to see the way he puts it over you in the newspapers."
"Promises to put it over me," she amended.
"But there's something in it," I insisted. "You can read that between the lines. He's preparing to spring something. He's acting out of revenge, because you have always laughed at him. He thinks he sees a chance to ruin you. Yet you appear scarcely interested. The days pass. Why don't you do something?"
"What would you suggest?" she asked.
Ah! there she had me. I was silenced. Because for me the case was enveloped in a complete fog.
She leaned over and gave me a pat. "Cheer up, my Bella! I am not so idle as you think. Let Barron have his day in print. In the end I hope not to disappoint you."
"Do you mean to say there is actually a chance of our catching the bandit?" I asked eagerly.
"I think there is an excellent chance," said Mme. Storey coolly.
VII
Mme. Storey's confidence infected me. I had never known her to assume more confidence than she really felt. As you have seen from the other cases that I have written up, whenever she was at a stand she frankly owned it. I therefore now had reason to believe that she had a trick up her
sleeve, whereas I only guessed that Barron had. After all, I told myself, it was ridiculous to think that Barron could put anything over on a woman like Mme. Storey.
It was about this time that the smoke bandit made his boldest and what proved to be his last coup. I have described some of the precautions taken by the banks; there were others, of course; each bank had its own plan for meeting the danger. The only place where vigilance might be said to have at all relaxed, was in the banks where robberies had already taken place. There was a psychological reaction in this. With so many banks to choose from, it was felt that the bandit (like lightning) would never strike in the same place twice. In that his extraordinary cunning was not sufficiently taken into account.
The Manhattan National, the richest bank of them all, was the victim of a second outrage on its premises. It occupies, as everybody knows, a magnificent building on lower Wall Street. The customer who suffered this time was the great firm of G. Showalter and Co., manufacturers of printing presses, who have an immense plant on Grand Street with a weekly payroll of sixteen thousand dollars.
For many years Showalter's had sent to the Manhattan National every Friday morning for their payroll, and the old, proud firm disdained to change its habits for the sake of any mere bandit. During all the excitement they had come for their money just the same. They had collected six of the hardest boiled specimens obtainable: a couple of ex-noncoms from the regular army, a pugilist, an ex-bartender and so on. This formidable squad was sent in an automobile openly through the streets to the bank every Friday morning, displaying a perfect arsenal of weapons. They presented their satchel at the paying teller's window; had it filled; and marched out, surrounding it. Showalter's got any amount of fine publicity out of it. It constituted a challenge to the smoke bandit that no one ever believed for a moment he would accept.
But he did.
On the Friday three weeks after the sensational Industrial Trust affair, the formidable six presented their satchel as usual and had it filled. The vast banking-room was never crowded now. Most firms paid by check, and those who had to have cash obtained it through one devious means or another. There were ten or twelve men waiting to draw money, and these were roped off in single file, and held back by the bank's guards, the nearest in line some thirty feet from the paying teller's window. Only one of the line of windows was being used.
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