Last night it was Mr. Barron's watch from 10:30 to 11:30. At the former hour he took up his station behind the willow trunk. At his back was the six-foot brick wall, and over the wall the sluggish waters of the canal. Between him and the vault ran the old driveway into the cemetery, now much broken and washed. Fremont Street was a hundred yards away at his left. It passes in front of the cemetery, and crosses the canal. All the gates into the cemetery were locked, but as the old wall has crumbled down in several places, it is a simple matter to get in and out. Out in Fremont Street, there were lights and people passing, an occasional trolley car; where Barron watched, it was as dark and silent as the grave itself.
After the boisterous wind of yesterday it had fallen still and cold. Barron had just heard a church clock strike the quarter hour when he saw his man. Distant lights drew a faint reflection on the high ground of the cemetery, but down behind the wall it was as black as your hat. The bandit did not come along the road from the direction of the gates, but crept cautiously down the bank from behind the vault, keeping the structure itself between him and the lighted street.
His movements were perfectly assured, as if he had been there many times before. He carried something white dangling from his hand. He let himself into the vault, and pulled the door to after him, but had no means of locking it from the inside. He dropped a sort of curtain that he had inside. Barron couldn't see this, but guessed it from the sounds that reached his ears. He had seen the curtain hooked up out of sight in the vault.
Barron stole across the road; unhooked the open padlock; and, throwing the staple over the hasp, snapped the padlock on. The man inside uttered no sound, but flung his body wildly against the gate. But Barron had him fast. Instantly there was the sound of a shot from within the vault; whether aimed at him or not, Barron could not tell. He had stepped quickly out of range. He fired his own pistol twice in the air. Not another sound came from within.
Within three minutes Brannan and Ling, Barron's two lieutenants, had joined him. A number of passers-by in Fremont Street heard the shots, but none of them cared to venture into that spook-infested place. The three men yanked the curtain down by putting their hands between the bars, and threw their flashlights into the vault. The fellow was stretched out on the stone floor with a gun in his hand, and the blood running from a hole in his temple.
Barron was provided with a duplicate key to the padlock. When they got the door open they discovered that the man was dead. It was the same gaunt, sallow fellow who has been so often described in the press. But he proves to be much younger than had been supposed. Barron, stern man that he is, was much affected. Only he knew the tragic story that lay behind it all. That story has now been revealed, and no one can feel aught but pity. The man was quite mad.
The white object he carried in with him was a stout paper bag with cord handles. On the side of it was pasted a chromo of two lovers in old-fashioned dress, taking leave of each other. It is the sort of bag that women carry home the day's shopping in. In contained sixteen thousand dollars in bills.
An ambulance was called, to make sure that life was extinct. People swarmed into the cemetery on the heels of the surgeon. Barron locked up the vault, and, leaving a guard there, had the body carried to Griffith's mortuary.
Barron afterwards told the fascinating story of the process of reasoning which finally eventuated in the successful capture. "It was nothing but logic and plain horse sense," he insisted in his bluff style. "I am not one of these story-book detectives who can solve a crime for you from a pinch of ashes or a single hair out of the dead man's head. In the beginning, as you may remember, I was furnished with several conflicting descriptions of the bandit, and I have no hesitation in saying that I made no real progress until I saw him that day in the Textile National, as I have already told.
"It was clear to me from the beginning that the man was, if not completely mad, at least unhinged. No sane thief after making a rich haul ever repeats so quick. That was a sort of insane bravado. He didn't even spend what he stole; we knew that all along, because none of the stolen notes ever appeared in circulation. Every bank in the country was on the lookout for those notes, you may be sure.
"Well, if he was mad, it stood to reason that he was working alone. An insane man never has any accomplices, because two insane men couldn't turn a trick together. And no sane man would trust an insane man out of his sight. It was further clear that he must live alone, since anybody he lived with would certainly get on to the smoke bombs, etc., not to speak of the quantities of loot he had to dispose of. He had a house, a flat, an unfurnished room, I told myself; some sort of place that nobody else had any right to go into.
"Nothing came of that. All the landlords in town were circularized without avail. I was driven back on the hotels. It is easy enough to trace anybody through the first-class hotels, because they keep a pretty close watch on their guests. Nothing doing there. I was forced to believe that my man was a habitué of cheap lodging-houses. There you're up against it, for men drift in and out of such places, and nobody pays any attention to them, so they have their two bits or half a dollar or whatever it may be for a bed. I still think that Vallon slept in cheap lodging-houses from the night of December 11 until last night, but I cannot tell you which ones.
"I had to proceed without that. Now the frequenters of such places never have any baggage to speak of; I knew it would be impossible for the bandit to conceal his smoke bombs and his big bunches of money in a flop house. So I proceeded on the assumption that he had some kind of cache or storehouse away from the place where he slept. Where would a homeless man be able to find a place to hide anything in the city? That was the grand problem which confronted me.
"I had other lines out, of course. One of them was to investigate the escapes during the past year from all the mental institutions, public and private. There are a lot of these in and around New York, and progress was slow. Over in West Orange I finally turned up rich ore. I learned that Ralph M. Vallon had escaped from the Patching Sanatorium on December 11. From the description furnished me, I knew this was my man. It was a long step forward.
"I say 'escaped' from the sanatorium, but in reality he just walked out, as he had every right to do. A very tragic story came to light. Vallon, who was only twenty-four, though he looked so much older, was, until two years ago one of the most promising young men in Brick Church. He was the only child of George Vallon, a railway official of some prominence. He had been to the best schools and to Columbia University, where he was taking a post-graduate course when his father died. Newspaper readers may remember the first Vallon tragedy. Two years ago last November, George Vallon, in a fit of temporary insanity, shot his wife dead and committed suicide.
"This terrible occurrence unhinged the boy's mind—though not all at once. He had been left well provided for, but he had not a relative in the world. He gradually lost his grip. The doctors told me that in the beginning there was nothing the matter with his mind, but only the ever present fear that he might have inherited his father's madness. He brooded on that until he was indeed no longer responsible. Melancholia.
"Finally, of his own free will, he went to the sanatorium and asked to be taken care of. Whenever he fell into that moody state the impulse of self-destruction came upon him, and he begged to be saved from that. A good part of the time, the doctors told me, he was as sane as you or I. But then these fits would come upon him, and he lost hold entirely. Never violent, you understand; at no time was he considered dangerous to anybody but himself. They watched him carefully to see that no weapon came his way. When he was normal, he was allowed a good deal of liberty, but was always accompanied by an attendant when he left the institution. The worst of these cases, they tell me, is that they are progressive. The patient is always losing ground.
"Finally, as I have said, on the night of December 11, he disappeared. The local police were notified, but no determined steps were taken to apprehend him, because he had never been regularly committed, you s
ee. In the eyes of the law he was still sane. The doctors believed he would return.
"When I learned all this, my first task was to undertake a study of Vallon's boyhood and early youth. I turned up three highly significant facts: firstly, as a boy, his favourite game had always been robbers or highwaymen; he was a leader in that sport. Secondly, as a high school youth, chemistry had been his hobby, and he spent many spare hours in the laboratory. Thirdly, after the catastrophe which wrecked his life, his mind seemed to dwell exclusively with the thoughts of death and burial. His favourite haunt was the old cemetery attached to St. Christopher's church in Newark. At all hours he was seen mooning about there, and it was that which first gave rise to the suspicion that his mind was affected. Even after he had committed himself to the sanatorium, he would ask to be taken there, and they sometimes humoured him.
"After his escape, he was no longer seen around St. Christopher's, but it suggested itself to me that I would do well to look for him in similar places. Not the great modern cemeteries, which are more like parks, and have almost a cheerful air; but the disused burial-grounds, often neglected and overgrown. There are more of such places in and around New York than most people are aware of.
"I had a list made and visited them one after another. St. Aloysius', which looks nowadays like a bit of the war zone in France, struck me as a likely place, the moment I laid eyes on it. And the old receiving-vault; what a hiding-place! It had a rusty old padlock on the barred gate, but it struck me it was not quite rusty enough. Still, the original padlock might have rusted off entirely, and another been put on. I examined the hinges particularly, and discovered that they had been oiled. It had been cunningly done; the surplus oil carefully wiped off, and the hinges rubbed with powdered rust. But you know what oil is; there was a thin, dark line along the cracks of the hinges.
"If it was his cache, I didn't want to warn him that it had been visited, so I got a locksmith to open the padlock, and to furnish me with a key to it. I have already described how I entered it with my operative, J. G. Brannan. It is not a large place; say about 8x15; the walls and the arched roof were of brick, and it was floored with flagstones. There was a cold damp chill in the place that struck to the marrow, and an ancient mouldering smell.
"On either side there were niches in the brick wall for coffins to rest on; six on a side in three tiers. These were empty, of course, and the bandit had utilized them for shelves. At the back of the vault on one side we found a number of the finished bombs and materials for making others. In the niche on the other side were the suitcases full of bank-notes. Of all the thousands he had stolen, he had spent but a few hundreds. Certainly he was mad.
"There were several boxes of the glass balls which had not been touched yet. Also a supply of chemicals, etc. I am not going to give out the formula, but I may say that it was a simple one. Two well-known ingredients that could be purchased almost anywhere, and a supply of fuller's earth. The fuller's earth was used to make a sort of cushion between the two active ingredients in the glass ball. The whole contents were tamped down with a bit of absorbent cotton, and the neck of the ball closed with sealing-wax. When the ball was smashed, the two active elements were bound to mingle. Simple and ingenious, you see.
"Removing the money, we left everything else just as we had found it. Thereafter, the place was watched as I have described. More than two weeks passed. During this time there was no robbery. Then came the Showalter affair, and I took a hand in the watching, personally, because I was sure, then, that the bandit would visit his cache to put away his latest takings. I figured he would come in the late evening after the city had quieted clown a bit, but before the streets were empty enough to make him an object of suspicion to the police. As it proved, I was right."
Such was Barron's story. To read it, did not lessen my bitterness any. The mock-modest tone of it! How could my clever mistress have allowed herself to be overreached by this braggart? I asked myself.
At eight o'clock I ventured to call her up. She was accustomed to wake then, and have her early coffee. The telephone was at her bedside.
"Have you read the papers?" I asked.
"No," she said. Her tone conveyed nothing.
"Didn't you get the extra last night?"
"Didn't know there was one."
"Barron has caught the bandit!" I cried, full of my bitterness.
"Really!" she said, in the tone she uses when she is thinking of something else.
It was too exasperating. "In an old cemetery in South Brooklyn. Apparently the same young fellow we saw yesterday afternoon. When he found himself trapped, he killed himself."
"I will be at the office in an hour," she said coldly. "We will get busy at once."
When Mme. Storey uses that tone I know she is strongly moved. By the first law of her nature she is obliged to hide her deeper feelings. I knew it, but, loving her as I did, I never could help resenting it. It makes her seem so inhuman.
Get busy! I said to myself, as I hung up. It seems to me that everything is over, but the shouting.
I did not learn, until I saw Crider, that Mme. Storey had in fact received a report of the whole affair from him before twelve o'clock the night before.
X
Things were busy at the office that morning. Nobody had time to explain the situation to me, but I quickly gathered that the smoke bandit case was not closed, and my spirits began to rise.
Mme. Storey went down to Police Headquarters to interview the Commissioner. I understood that her purpose was to obtain the arrest of the man known as Abram Colter at his work in town. At the same time Crider was dispatched to New Jersey, armed with the authority to order the arrest of Mrs. Colter, and to have her house sealed. I heard Mme. Storey say:
"I do not want the woman particularly, but I must make sure that the evidence in that house is not tampered with."
Crider returned shortly before noon, having accomplished his purpose. Mrs. Colter was greatly astonished, he said, but accompanied the officers quietly. That was a woman nothing could put out of countenance.
Mme. Storey then instructed me to call up Mr. Fulton of the Manhattan National, and ask him if she could see him at once "for the purpose of laying before him some additional evidence in the smoke-bandit case."
Mr. Fulton said, in a rather excited voice: "We're all here at my office now. We're waiting for Mr. Barron. Let her come right down if she wants."
His casual tone towards my mistress angered me. People—even bank presidents, are not accustomed to treat her so cavalierly. However, Mme. Storey appeared not to mind it. She said Crider and I must accompany her, and the three of us set off in a taxi-cab. She carried a book.
To our astonishment we found Wall Street below William choked with an immense crowd. It was with the greatest difficulty that the police were keeping a lane open through the middle. The windows up and down the street were lined with hundreds of additional heads. We had fairly to fight our way under the imposing portico of the Manhattan National. The broad-shouldered Crider opened a way for us. Once, when we were brought to a stand, I asked a boy beside me:
"What's it all about?"
He looked at me pityingly. "Ah-h! Walter A. Barron's going to be here at twelve o'clock."
"Such is fame!" murmured Mme. Storey, with a curious smile.
The board-room of the Manhattan National is on the second floor, overlooking Wall Street. The destinies of a hemisphere are directed here. It is a magnificent chamber; big as the throne-room of a palace. There is a long row of tall windows down one side. There were about fifteen men present; the executive committee of the Banking Association, I understood, including some of the most prominent men in town. A festive air prevailed; all pretence of business had been given up; they were crowding to the windows, commenting on the crowd below.
The large, rosy-gilled Mr. Fulton came to meet us. In repose he was quite impressive, but excitement gave him rather a fatuous air. He tittered. "Did you ever see anything like it? We're expecting B
arron at any moment. What a reception he'll get! Well, he's earned it...he's earned it!"
"I have important evidence to lay before you," said Mme. Storey firmly.
Mr. Fulton spread out his hands and hoisted his shoulders. "He's caught; he's dead," he said. "What could be important now?...Can't it wait? we're hardly in the mood for business."
"It cannot wait," said Mme. Storey.
"Well, Barron is the proper one to pass on it," said Mr. Fulton, with his head over his shoulder. "He'll be here directly."
"I'll wait for him," said Mme. Storey composedly.
Mr. Fulton was already trotting back towards the window. The three of us sat down in chairs near the door. Beyond a curious glance or two, very little attention was paid to Mme. Storey. They were cutting up like schoolboys; cracking jokes, and clapping each other on the back. Ridiculous in fat bankers. I sat there simmering with indignation.
Presently we heard, a good way off at first, a great roar sweeping along. "He's coming! He's coming!" they cried at the windows.
The roll of cheering voices swelled up in an overpowering crescendo. It culminated immediately below the windows in earth-shaking roars; wave upon wave of sound, breaking only to re-form again. It was thrilling, as any great natural phenomenon is thrilling. What a tribute to any man not of the blood royal. Whether it were deserved or not—that was another matter.
MRS2 Madame Storey Page 20