Boston Blackie

by Jack Boyle

  Captain McNaughton, with President Clancy of the steamship company beside him, was in the Custom House shed. The stretcher was lowered to one of the long tables, and the passengers grouped themselves, silent and expectant about the locked shed as seamen carried in the Englishman’s baggage, to which the need of hurrying him to a hospital had given priority of inspection.

  “That’s Cumberland, who saved our gold,” the Captain said in a low voice to the steamship official. “He has an ugly wound and is still unconscious.”

  “Too bad, but the men who wounded him are enjoying their final moment of freedom,” Clancy growled. “The Chief has four men here who will know these crooks the moment they lay eyes on them. They must be bold fellows. The mythical detectives I invented for you by wireless didn’t appear even to make them nervous, did they?”

  “Scarcely, as they broke into the strong-room notwithstanding the fact that I made it my business to let the news that we had been warned become common forecastle and saloon gossip,” the Captain replied sourly.

  The inspector ran through the Cumberland trunks and grips rapidly as McDonald unlocked them. The chief inspector watched attentively. The detectives grouped themselves by the side of the litter. Inspection revealing nothing but the ordinary equipment of traveling gentlemen, McDonald was eager to be off to the hospital.

  “Come on, my men,” he said to the stretcher bearers. “Where’s the ambulance? I’ll send down later for our baggage.”

  “Wait,” said the chief inspector curtly.

  Selecting two of the Cumberland trunks, he emptied them. Then he drew a measuring stick from his pocket and took the outside dimensions of the trunks.

  As he comprehended what was being done, the secretary’s jaw sagged, and with a furtive glance over his shoulder he began to edge toward a window. At his first movement one of the detectives laid a hand on his arm.

  “Don’t be in a hurry, ’bo,” said the officer. “Anyway, that window’s locked.”

  The inspector jotted down the outside measurements of the trunks, then applied his rule to the inner surfaces.

  “Just as I thought,” he remarked. “These trunks have double bottoms with a secret compartment between. Give me that hand-ax.”

  McDonald’s face grew ghastly.

  A single blow shattered the false bottom, and the inspector dragged it from its place. In the compartment now revealed lay a tiny oxy-acetylene torch—nothing else.

  “Queer baggage for a titled English gentleman,” said the chief inspector with a glance toward the detective chief.

  “Titled English fiddlesticks,” cried that officer, stepping to the stretcher and raising the bandages that concealed the injured man’s face. Then he called to his comrades with a chuckle of satisfaction.

  “Look, boys,” he called. “This man calls himself Sir Arthur Cumberland, does he? Well, I’ve another name for him. I call him ‘English Bill’ Tatman, and here’s how he looks in the clothes he’s used to—stripes.”

  He drew out the photograph of a convict and displayed it to the Captain. Except that it lacked the mustache, it was a perfect likeness of Sir Arthur.

  “And you,” continued the detective with a grimace toward the secretary, “I’ve got your ‘mug’ here too, Mr. McTavish, alias Mac the Scot. A fine pair, you two, parading around the country wearing handles to your names in place of prison numbers.

  “It ain’t true,” shouted the unmasked McDonald. “We’ll sue—”

  “Stow it, Scotty. The blawsted bobbies ’ave us right as a bloomin’ whistle,” interrupted a voice from the stretcher as Sir Arthur Cumberland sat up and staggered weakly to his feet. “I’m fit for the ’ospital right enough, but I’d ’ave been missin’ with my buddy when the hambulance got there if you bobbies ’ad given me ’alf a chance,” he remarked ruefully but with perfect good humor.

  “Let’s go,” he said, holding out his wrists for the handcuffs with the easy nonchalance of a man well used to such situations.

  “My ’ead’s uncommon sore where that ship chappie sliced it with ’is gun. Cheer up, Scotty, we’ve less than nothin’ to worry over, my lad,” he added comfortingly to his companion, and dropping naturally into the broadest of cockney accents. “The bobbies cawn’t put us under for bein’ willin’ to turn a neat trick—and they cawn’t say their bloomin’ gold ain’t just where they put it in the little iron tubs. We didn’t lay ’ands near it.”

  “Cumberland and McDonald!” ejaculated Captain McNaughton. “I never would have guessed it.”

  Then as a new thought came to him:

  “But if they’re the crooks we have been looking for, where’s the man who stepped in and saved our treasure?”

  “It’s all a Chinese puzzle,” declared the manager. “Just one thing interests me now. I want to see those chests safely into the bank and I want to see the gold that should be in them. Accompany us to the bank, officers, and bring your prisoners.”

  While the customs men went through the baggage of the remaining passengers with unusual care, and the crowd in the shed gradually vanished in search of hotels and late suppers, bank messengers supported by armed guards loaded the treasure-chests into the waiting auto truck, and with Captain McNaughton, the steamship official, the detectives with their prisoners and a dozen newspaper men following in autos, the Humboldt’s gold was hauled to the bank vaults for which it was destined.

  “English Bill” Tatman—once Sir Arthur Cumberland—looked on with grim humor and a running fire of comment as the boxes were unpacked, one by one, in the sanctuary of the First National’s gold room.

  “Look at it, Scotty,” he said to his morose pal with a wave of his hand toward the steadily growing pile of gold bars. “There’s enough tin to make ’onest churchmen of us and the bobbies too. Deuced lucky, ’owever, that we didn’t ’ave any of the stuff in our luggage.”

  As the easy-tempered prisoner rambled on with his monologue the bank messengers threw back the lid of another chest. As it opened, they uttered a cry of dismay. Inside, replacing the gold that should have been there, was a neat pile of bars, half of them pig-iron, half of them lead.

  Before dawn flaring newspaper extras told the city of Seattle that sixty thousand dollars in gold bars had been stolen from the strong-room of the Humboldt and that though two known crooks had been taken at the dock and were safely locked in cells, the missing gold inexplicably had been spirited ashore and safely away, although every piece of baggage on the ship was searched inside and out.

  As the enthusiastic police reporters informed their city editors, the story was turning out to be “a whale of a mystery yarn.”

  While the gloomy conference at the bank was still in progress, Boston Blackie’s Mary admitted herself to a modest bungalow on the outskirts of the city. Within was the white-haired, motherly woman who with her four daughters had been passengers on the Humboldt from Victoria.

  “All here?” Mary inquired eagerly.

  “All but Blackie and Lewes,” answered the woman. “There was no ‘rumble’ at the dock, was there?”

  “None. Blackie was through the gate and safely away before I left. It was a wonderful job, wonderfully pulled,” asserted Mary, relaxing from the long strain. “Blackie should be here any minute now. Then we have only to put the gold in a safe place and drop out of sight for awhile. You have given up this house regularly, without risking suspicion?”

  “I arranged it all yesterday before we left for Victoria, and exactly as Blackie directed me,” the woman returned. “The rental agent knows I’m moving in the morning. The girls are gone already. They caught the night train for the south.”

  The doorbell rang.

  “That’s Blackie, now,” cried Mary, rushing to the door. She flung it open unhesitatingly, an eager, welcoming smile on her face; then as she glimpsed the form outside she stepped quickly forward and barred the entrance.

  On the doorstep stood Miss Nina Francisco.

  “Y
ou!” cried Mary, startled beyond further speech.

  “Miss Whitney!” ejaculated the woman, equally amazed. Then she began to laugh, but with a strained, false note in her merriment.

  “How stupid of me not to have guessed who you really are during all those days we spent together on shipboard!” she said with a shake of her dark head.

  “Why are you here? Where did you get this address?” demanded Mary.

  Nina drew a slip of paper from her pocket and handed it to her frankly suspicious friend.^ On it was written in Blackie’s well-known hand the street number, with these words added: “Immediately upon landing.”

  “Come in,” invited Mary reluctantly. “I don’t understand all this, but Blackie’s note seems to make it all right. Who are you, Miss Francisco? Have we ever met?”

  “Never,” said the visitor with an elusive half smile. “I never saw you before I boarded the Humboldt, though you must have seen a letter I once wrote, I believe—a letter written long ago, Mary Dawson, when your Blackie was risking his life to save a pal from death on the scaffold at Folsom Prison, California. Do you remember that letter? It was signed by a woman called Rita, and it told how she had done for Boston Blackie’s sake the one thing he couldn’t do himself for his pal because Fred the Count betrayed him. Do you remember now?”

  “Rita!” cried Mary. “The woman who saved the Cushions Kid—the woman who—”

  She stopped, a quick flush dyeing her face.

  “Yes,” continued Rita, taking up the interrupted sentence and meeting Mary’s eyes with a level, unflinching glance, “the woman who isn’t ashamed to admit she would give everything in this world for what she knows you have and will never lose—Boston Blackie’s love.”

  Another ring at the doorbell ended an awkward silence.

  Mary recognized Lewes and Blackie in the two forms on the step. As she opened the door, Blackie caught her in his arms and held her to his breast.

  “We’ve won, little sweetheart,” he cried joyously. “All here and everything O. K., little girl?”

  As Mary nodded, he caught sight of the visitor within.

  “Rita!” he exclaimed. “You lost no time in finding the house—which is well, for we’re leaving before dawn.”

  He dropped into a chair and began to laugh.

  “Share the joke,” demanded Mary.

  “I can’t help laughing,” he cried, “when I think of the paper you wasted warning me against Miss Nina Francisco, detective, while Miss Francisco was equally busy writing notes warning me against the dangerous machinations of Miss Marie Whitney, also a detective. It was better than a farce.”

  “I saw you the night I boarded the Humboldt at Nome, and when I saw parts of that note Mary wrote, with ‘Wireless—treasure-room—detectives’ so suggestively appearing in it, I suspected her, for the ship’s people had managed to let everyone know there were detectives aboard. I knew you wouldn’t travel to Alaska for your health; I knew we carried a fortune in gold in the strong-room; and putting two to two, I guessed it was you they planned to trap,” the girl explained. “But I was a fool not to know you could and would protect yourself.”

  “Never!” Blackie denied promptly. “You proved yourself true blue, particularly when you risked everything to knock that revolver from Cumberland’s hand. You did do it, didn’t you?”

  “Yes,” said Nina without enthusiasm. “And Mary was just behind, ready to knock my gun from my hand if I hadn’t attacked the right man.”

  “Rita,” said Blackie seriously, “we owe you something for that timely blow. It entitles you to a bit with the rest of us. You’ve earned a share of the gold.”

  The woman shook her head.

  “Not me, Blackie,” she said soberly. “I don’t want money from you.”

  Her mood changed with the words, and she smiled up at him.

  “There’s something I do want, Blackie,” she said. “I want to know how it all was done—if you’ll trust me.

  “Trust you! Of course I do,” Blackie assured her. “You’re one of us since that night in Sacramento when you saved my pal from the rope. How did we do it? Rita, it was as simple as taking eggs from a hen’s nest. Mary’s was the only difficult part—getting the wax impressions of the two keys.”

  “I led the purser on to show me the strong-room on the northbound trip while it was empty, and there was no reason why anyone mightn’t be admitted,” said Mary in response to Blackie’s nod to begin: “I pretended to be amazed that his two tiny keys could protect such a vast treasure as he said the Humboldt would carry back from Nome. I picked them up as they lay in his hand—and accidentally, of course—dropped one. As I fumbled about my feet for it, I took impressions of both keys on a circlet of locksmith’s wax which was ready on my wrist.”

  “Of course!” said Rita; then turning to Blackie, “But how did you get the gold out of the strong room? How did you get it ashore?”

  “All much simpler than getting the keys,” Blackie said. “On the night of the battle outside the strong-room, I had been inside with the treasure since the previous night. Lewes let me in and locked the door behind me. He had just removed the padlock to release me when the Englishman appeared to try his luck at the game. His idea evidently must have been to saw or burn off the original padlock and substitute the duplicate for which he had keys. He could then have entered the treasure room and removed the gold when he pleased. Lewes jumped him and with your help put him out. Meanwhile I slipped back to my stateroom.”

  “But the gold? Surely you couldn’t have carried it with you—and besides they searched all the cabins immediately and found nothing!”

  “They didn’t find any gold outside the strong-room because there wasn’t any outside. It was still in the strong-room, and there it stayed until the Humboldt was docking.”

  “I can’t guess the answer to that,” said Rita.

  “No. Well, perhaps you remember that my little pal Mary was on the steamer, and being a woman, naturally she had trunks with her. One of those trunks was turned over to the purser for safe-keeping; so, having been stored in the strong-room, it was inside with me and the gold during the twenty-four hours I spent there. Beastly dull twenty-four hours, too, for it didn’t take but one to empty a chest, transfer the gold bars to Mary’s trunk and substitute in the chest the iron and lead bars that had been in her trunk. Then I replaced the broken seal with the duplicate Lewes made in Nome as soon as he saw the kind used on the treasure-chests.”

  “So all the time they were hunting the ship for gold, it was still in the strong-room, but in Mary’s trunk!” cried Rita with rapt appreciation. “That’s worthy even of you, Blackie. But how did you get it ashore? They searched Mary’s trunk with all the rest.”

  “Certainly—but they found nothing, because the gold was no longer in Mary’s trunk when it reached the Custom House men,” Blackie said. “Tell her, Mary.”

  “Do you remember the girls I met on the ship after we left Victoria? My old school friends, you know, to whom I introduced you,” began Mary. “Well, those young ladies didn’t carry any baggage except ordinary one-night traveling bags; but when they came off the Humboldt, each of them—even including their nice white-haired old mother—had one of these contrivances strapped round her waist under her clothes.”

  Mary opened a closet and dragged from the floor a canvas belt in which, bent to fit snugly against a woman’s body, was one of the missing gold bars for which the Seattle police were combing the city.

  “I bent them to the proper shape while I was in the strong-room, reproaching myself that I could only allow myself one hundred and fifty pounds from the tons of old Clancy’s gold that lay there, mine for the taking,” said Blackie. “That’s the whole story, Rita, except that when I got Mary’s warning that a woman in Seattle had tipped off our game to the coppers, I knew that we hadn’t been tipped off, for no one, not even good old Mother Archer or the four girls with her, knew what was wanted of them or wha
t we planned to do until Mary told them to-day on the Humboldt. Therefore I naturally concluded there must be another ‘mob’ on board the Humboldt on the same errand as ourselves, and that when we reached the dock at Seattle, the detectives would be waiting for them, not us. And so it turned out. Now you know it all, Rita.” He rose and beckoned to Lewes.

  “We’ve work to do,” he said. “This stuff has to be taken to the safe place I prepared for it—immediately too, for it never pays to take unnecessary chances. You’d better do as I suggest and take a share of the stuff for yourself, Rita.”

  “No, Blackie—nothing for me.”

  “Good-by, then, and good luck,” he answered as he and Lewes staggered out, each laden with belts of gold.

  As the men disappeared, Mary and Rita eyed each other throughout a silence palpably heavy with thoughts neither cared to utter.

  “I’m going now,” said Rita finally, rising and moving quickly toward the door.

  Mary made no comment or protest.

  As she stood in the doorway, Rita turned and laid both hands on Mary’s shoulders.

  “Good-by dear,” she said gently. “If you were not Boston Blackie’s Mary and I were not Rita, a woman who would give her soul to have his love, we could be good pals. But as it is—I imagine the only word we may say to each other in friendship is—good-by.”

  “Good-by, Rita,” said Mary, and watched her guest pass swiftly into the street and vanish in the darkness.

  Mary locked the door and began to make coffee for Blackie.

  CHAPTER XVI

  THE FRAME-UP

  The robbery of the S. S. Humboldt grew to be a very nasty thorn in the tender side of the Seattle police.

  Larry Rentor, chief of detectives, slammed up his ’phone, chewed the end from the unlighted cigar between his clenched teeth and banged a heavy, hairy fist upon his desk in savage exasperation.