The Mystery Megapack: 25 Modern and Classic Mystery Stories

by Talley, Marcia

  “Not a single hunch,” he murmured. “It seems to be the closed season for my pet list of suckers, and—”

  “An’ it don’t take no movin’ van to tote the bankroll,” interrupted The Early Bird quickly. “Ain’t that it?” His voice took on an apprehensive inflection, but Mr. Clackworthy smiled reassuringly.

  “We can hardly go into competition with the subtreasury,” he admitted, “but neither are we in the imminent danger of becoming public charges. The bank balance, to speak in the concrete terms of dollars and cents, is precisely”—he turned to a penciled memo at his elbow—“nineteen thousand two hundred and sixty-three dollars thirty-three cents. In some respects a reassuring sum, but it must be remembered that a confidence man can’t expect to win much confidence without a good and sufficient working capital. The sight of a neat little packet of thousand-dollar bills is more convincing than all the logic; the man who needs credit the worst has the hardest time getting it. Money is the magnate which—”

  “Nix on the essay,” interrupted The Early Bird ruefully; “work the chin a little less an’ the noodle a little harder, boss. If the sum total of our mutual assets ain’t more’n nineteen thousand two hundred an’ sixty-three berries—me bein’ flat, due to payin’ tuition in gettin’ educated to the fact that a full house ain’t always worth the limit—we gotta get busy an’ garner in some kale. Lately, things ain’t been breakin’ right for You, Us an’ Company, Unincorporated.”

  “Yes, we’ve had a rotten run of luck, James,” admitted Mr. Clackworthy. “If I were superstitious, perhaps I would say that an evil jinx has been clogging our footsteps.”

  “Huh!” snorted The Early Bird. “I hope you ain’t got the notion that we’ve been operatin’ under the guidance of a lucky star. Three flivvers out of five schemes, an’ on them two we did put over you can’t say that we took enough coin outta circulation to start the mint workin’ overtime. I’ll tell the money-worshipin’ world we didn’t!”

  “At least we stayed out of jail,” reminded Mr. Clackworthy. “That much was lucky.” The Early Bird shivered at the forced recollection of their narrow escape from durance vile; Mr. Clackworthy had played too far across the legal line and had almost come to grief.

  “There was a guy what once spieled ‘Money talks,’” said The Early Bird, hastily changing the subject. “I sure make the wish that it would murmur a sweet li’le lovesong into our eagerly strainin’ ears; somethin’ like ‘I’d leave my happy home for you.’ As it is, we ain’t even heard it whisper.”

  Mr. Clackworthy laughed, his coplotter’s idiomatic humor restoring his genial good nature. He reached across the table to his cigar humidor and selected one of his favorite brand of perfectos.

  “That suggestion of yours, James, about appealing to Bacchus’ for an idea to fertilize the sterility of our brains, and—”

  “What mob does this Bacchus guy train with?” demanded The Early Bird. “I ain’t strong for cuttin’ in no outsiders.”

  “My dear James!’’ remonstrated the master confidence man.” Your ignorance of mythology is appalling. Bacchus was the legendary god of wine, and the name—”

  “Aw!” grunted The Early Bird, entirely mollified. “I gotcha, boss; that was just a highbrow way, of sayin,’ ‘Let’s wet the tonsils.’ Sure, I’m on; but hereafter when you’re gonna slip me an invite to a drink, it ain’t necessary to be so dang fancy about it.” With alacrity he touched the gong which summoned Nogo, Mr. Clackworthy’s Japanese servant. James and Nogo had a sort of private code between them, and he struck four measured strokes, the signal that liquor, ice, and Seltzer were to be brought. Obedient to the summons, the smiling little Jap came in a few minutes later with a tray containing the requisite ingredients for high balls. Also he brought, tucked under his arm, the afternoon edition of the Chicago newspapers. There were four, for Mr. Clackworthy took them all and read them, from first pages to last; not even did he skip the want ads. It was not infrequently that he garnered from a chance item a bit of valuable information for his “prospect list,” or even the nucleus of an idea that, under the chemistry of his mental processes, could be turned to handsome profit.

  After sipping his high ball, the master confidence man picked up his newspapers and began a brief but nonetheless thorough survey of the printed columns. For almost an hour he was so occupied, when he reached page three of The News, the last of the daily publications to reach his attention. Without any comment to The Early Bird who, from the chair by the window was watching eagerly for any signs of a captured idea that might launch them upon a fresh adventure, Mr. Clackworthy put clown the paper and lighted a fresh cigar.

  Silently, absently, he smoked, meditatively and without haste; his eyelids slightly lowered; now and then he touched his long, shapely fingers to the close-cropped Vandyke beard. Presently, he stirred and reached for the decanter to mix himself another high ball.

  “Join me, James, and drink to the success of our latest pilgrimage in the quest of some yet unknown but carelessly tended surplus of this world’s goods,” he invited.

  “Whatcha mean, boss?” demanded The Early Bird. “Ain’tcha got the goof picked out and numbered yet?”

  “To speak in the metaphor of the shearer, my dear James,” answered Mr. Clackworthy with a laugh, “we have, I think, a sharp pair of shears, but there yet remains to be found—the lamb. However, since we have the assurance of that high authority, Mr. P. T. Barnum, now deceased, that one is born every minute, I think we need entertain no fears on that score.”

  “Spill it!”

  But the master confidence man kept his own counsel as he proceeded, between sips of his second drink, to work out various details of his yet rather embryonic scheme. After some minutes he again glanced at the third page of The News and then, stepping to a bookcase, he took down an atlas of the world. He turned to the map of Pennsylvania and, as The Early Bird watched him in a mounting fever of curiosity, gave studied attention to it.

  “Adventure!” remarked Mr. Clackworthy. “The pot of gold at the end of the rainbow! Captain Kidd’s treasure chest of pirated booty buried beneath ten feet of sand on the deserted isle! Capital!”

  “Them two high balls has skyrocketed to your head, ain’t they?” demanded The Early Bird with considerable asperity. “Hanged if that chin music don’t sound like you was goin’ in for this free verse stuff. Ain’t no sense to that lingo you’re spielin’. Cut out the verbal ring-around-the-rosy an’ get down to biz.”

  Mr. Clackworthy took a gold pencil from his vest-pocket and pressed the point of it against the dot which the Pennsylvania map makers had labeled “ALSCHOOLA” and which, from the capitals, it could be judged was a county seat. Reference to the population list, alphabetically arranged in the back of the atlas, told him that Alschoola had been censused at ten thousand souls.

  “If you want to make yourself useful, James,” he said, “you might start packing. We go to Alschoola, Pennsylvania, tonight; to be more exact, we start tonight. Seeing that it is some distance from the route of the through New York trains, I hazard the guess that we will arrive about day after tomorrow.”

  The Early Bird blinked.

  “Is that on the level, boss?” he demanded. “Are we grabbin’ a rattler for this burg that is pronounced with a sneeze?”

  “Never more serious in my life,” affirmed Mr. Clackworthy. It was to be seen that he was generating a high-voltaged enthusiasm for this new scheme, whatever it might be.

  “Play the record, boss; lemme in on the know.”

  Mr. Clackworthy shook his head teasingly; it always amused him to see The Early Bird tortured on the rack of curiosity.

  “Perhaps our liquid refreshment, James, sharpened my wits a bit; but on page three of yonder paper you will find our lead. Suppose you look it over and tell me what you think of it.”

  The other leaped from his chair and grabbed the copy of The News, but in vain did his eyes sweep up and down the columns from left to right and from right to left agai
n. He remained as puzzled as before. True enough, there were several Associated Press dispatches from Pennsylvania, but he found none of them mentioning the town with the queer-sounding name of Alschoola. In Philadelphia, a judge had suffered a nervous breakdown as a result of trying more than a thousand divorce cases; in Pittsburgh a kidnapped boy had been returned to his broken-hearted parents.

  With an impatient growl, The Early Bird threw down the paper and turned on his heel.

  “Watcha goin’ to this here Alschoola for?” he demanded flatly.

  “Money,” answered Mr. Clackworthy with unilluminating brevity.

  II.

  James Early did not find his first glimpse of Alschoola reassuring. As he and the master confidence man disembarked from a non-Pullman train, the only kind that operated over the twenty-five-mile branch, his first impression was that the railroad company did not care enough about Alschoola to bestow upon it a respectable passenger station. Away from the shabby depot there extended a bumpy cobblestone street, leading uphill toward the business section.

  The Early Bird wasn’t wildly enthusiastic about the business part of the town, either. Accusingly he swung upon the master confidence man and glared.

  “I hope you ain’t got no idear that we’re gonna take any dough outta this place?” he demanded with disgusted skepticism. “Huh! The whole burg wouldn’t auction off for fifty berries—of my jack.”

  “Appearances,” reminded Mr. Clackworthy, “are often deceiving. And permit me to say that a town is but the composite of its strongest personalities, now and then of but one dominating personality; towns, like the men who make them, have traits of individuality. What strikes you, on the surface, as being Alschoola’s outstanding trait?”

  “Freezin’ onto the jack,” snapped The Early Bird promptly; “squeezin’ down on the silver dollar until the eagle squawks an’ Lady Columbia sobs for mercy.”

  “Right!” and Mr. Clackworthy nodded. “Step to the head of the class.” He gestured toward the shabby buildings and the poorly paved, ill-lighted street ahead of them. “Here we see a miserly municipal spirit and a horror of high taxes. I think it would be a safe guess to say that Alschoola is dominated by a clique of dollar-worshiping gentlemen who find progress too expensive for their tastes. Such men, my dear James, are the sort we like to pluck.”

  The Early Bird grunted without enthusiasm; for himself, he preferred to have some visible evidence of the wealth that they proposed to gather in.

  “When I was liftin’ leathers,” he said, referring to those days previous to his association with the master confidence man, “I never picked out no panhandlers when the fins was itchin’ for a fat roll.”

  There was no station bus, the lack of a public conveyance being explained by the proximity of the hotel sign, “Alschoola House,” prominently displayed half a block up the dingy street. There being, likewise, no hotel porter to lighten their burden, the two plotters had no choice but to pick up their bags and make their way hotelward.

  On the corner, before reaching the hostelry, they had to pass a rusty-looking building with peelly lettering on the plate-glass window which announced: “Alschoola State Bank.” Crowded up against the window was a desk before which sat a man who at the moment was fondling a packet of currency.

  “See the money buzzard!” remarked The Early Bird.

  Mr. Clackworthy smiled; he had to admit that there was something about the man at the bank desk, onion-smooth of pate, narrow-eyed, and with a beaked nose curving down over the upper lips of his thin mouth, which did make one think of a bird of prey.

  “I wonder if that is the chief mogul of Alschoola,” he said. “What a joy it would be to separate him from some of the money which he strokes so fondly!”

  “Yeah,” snorted The Early Bird, “an’ what a joy it would be to breeze into the subtreasury some quiet P.M., an’ stroll leisurely forth with a coupla suit cases full of thousand-case notes. It would be easier to take two or three million outta the mint than to bilk that bozo outta two bits.”

  The Alschoola House extended no cordial hand of welcome. The lazy-eyed, slow-moving clerk was smoking a corncob pipe as he watched two bearded oldsters engrossed with a game of checkers. Almost reluctantly, he tore himself away to receive the two incoming guests from Chicago.

  Casting a further disapproving glance over the lobby, The Early Bird waited for Mr. Clackworthy to register. The lobby was shabbily and indifferently furnished with cane-bottomed chairs, numerous cuspidors, and a long, battered table for traveling salesmen to write their letters, at present given over to the checker game. The hotel desk itself was a counter, the top of which was covered with carpeting; at the end of it stood a fly-speckled cigar case of very doubtful-looking smokes.

  “Two rooms with baths,” murmured Mr. Clackworthy mechanically as he affixed his name and that of James Early to the untidy register. It was the order that he always gave for accommodations.

  “Huh?” A surprised ejaculation came from the shirt-sleeved clerk, and he stared sharply, suspecting that he was being made the butt of banter.

  “Two rooms and baths, if you don’t mind.”

  “How’ll a shower do?” and the clerk snickered. “Josh Duncan’s rheumatism says rain, an’ the roof of No. 18 is some leaky.”

  “Ain’tcha got no bathtubs in this joint?” demanded The Early Bird indignantly.

  The clerk, perceiving that the request for baths had been quite serious, ceased grinning. He suddenly realized that Alschoola House was entertaining two guests accustomed to luxury and willing to pay for it.

  “Sorry, gentlemen,” he said, “but we ain’t got but one bath to the floor.”

  Mr. Clackworthy smiled philosophically, and even offered the clerk a cigar. Past experience had shown him that considerable information of value is often to be obtained from friendly knights of the hotel desk.

  “Do the best you can for us,” he said cheerfully. “We shall probably be here for some time.” At this prospect The Early Bird gave voice to a mournful groan and sank miserably into a chair.

  The clerk was now looking the pair over in a critically appraising survey, noting the faultless tailoring of Mr. Clackworthy’s one hundred-and-fifty-dollar suit, the neat cut of his Vandyke beard, the expansive opulence which exuded from his tall, impressive figure.

  “You ain’t—hum—sellin’ stock?” he ventured suspiciously.

  “No.”

  “It wouldn’t’ be none of my put-in, nohow; only, if you was, I was goin’ to tell you that the same train you come in on goes back in fifty minutes. This ain’t no town for stock salesmen. Flint Whitecotton don’t like nobody comin’ in here an’ packin’ away Alschoola money—and what Flint Whitecotton says in this man’s town, goes.”

  “Ah!” murmured Mr. Clackworthy, his eyes lighting with interest. “Quite the local nabob, Mr. Whitecotton.”

  “Yep! Owns half the town, an he’s got a mortgage on the other half.”

  “Tell me,” requested Mr. Clackworthy, “is he somewhat bald of head, with a hook-nose, and—”

  “That’s him, mister.”

  “I saw him as I passed the bank.”

  “Uh-huh; president of the bank. Owns the big store, flour mill, lumber yard, and—”

  “An’ the hotel, of course,” chimed in The Early Bird from his slouched position in the chair.

  “No, but I guess he will,” and the clerk sighed. “He’s got a mortgage on it. Like as not I’ll lose my job then; we don’t get along very well, Flint Whitecotton an’ me. That’s why I tipped you off in case you was sellin’ stock. Old Flint got the city council to pass an ordinance taxin’ every stock salesman a hundred dollars.” He frowned, frankly puzzled; swiftly, he began checking over the list of possible businesses that might have brought the prosperous-looking gentlemen to Alschoola. Not groceries, farm implements, washing machines, patent churns—and certainly they were not book agents.

  “I am an emissary of—progress,” said the master confidence ma
n.

  The clerk blinked solemnly for a moment, then pounded his fist down on the carpeted top of the desk.

  “You’re a capitalist!” he exclaimed.

  “Yes, I have been so accused.”

  “I ought to have guessed that right off, Mr.—” He gave a quick glance toward the register. “Mr. Clackworthy. I wonder now if you mebbe come to have a look at Whitecotton’s twenty-acre tract east of town?” His tired, dreamy-looking eyes were alight now, and his voice trembled with eagerness.

  Mr. Clackworthy shook his head and stated that such was not the case, but adding that he might be interested if the Whitecotton tract showed any opportunity of profit.

  “It does!” the clerk cried. “There’s a gold mine out there in the Whitecotton tract. If you’re a capitalist, you’re the man I want to talk to. There’s a fortune in that deposit for them that puts it on the market. It won’t take much capital.”

  “What sort of a deposit?”

  “Statuary clay, that’s what. My name’s Lemuel Budkins, and you an’ me ought to get together, for”—his voice raised triumphantly—“I got an option on that twenty acres of land.”

  It cannot be truthfully said that a deposit of sculptor’s modeling clay appealed to Mr. Clackworthy as offering promise of much profit, but it did occur to him that this might, in some way or another, provide the wedge which would pry open the way into Flint Whitecotton’s hoard.