CHAPTER X
Concerning the Man Who Sued His Tailor
DARRELL gazed at the girl, surprised. After having only a few hours before satisfied himself completely that he had in his possession just an ordinary alarm clock, to hear her declare with but a cursory glance at it that he had the very clock which was being sought for was news indeed. But it was too late now for him to make any further private investigations — and indeed, he reflected, further investigations along the only line which provided a rational explanation as to the desirability of a simple alarm clock would avail nothing after the professional scrutiny Hjalmer Lindholm had given it. He continued to regard her curiously through partly closed eyes, then he spoke.
“I am very glad indeed, Miss Thorne, if I have been of any assistance to you; and equally glad that my errand has been successful. May I ask now if you have reconsidered your decision to give me the underlying facts from which I may construct a readable news story? Surely — so long as it does not concern you vitally — you will do this?”
Her great dark eyes fastened troubledly on him.
“I — I would give you any story, Mr. Darrell, but there are — well — there are others concerned. There — there is such a thing as honor, surely, is there not?”
He nodded his head. “Yes, I suppose there is. Then there is nothing for me to write?”
She shook her black-curled head decisively. “I am afraid not.” She reached out her hand and put it impulsively on his arm. “Mr. Darrell, promise me that nothing whatever about the odd letter to this Napoleon Foy, nor about the mission which you undertook for me will appear in any paper to-night or to-morrow or the next day. Will — will you do that?”
He looked down at her. His face was a bit stern. The newspaper man in him was hurt.
“Miss Thorne, I think I can safely promise you that nothing for the present will be printed, for the simple reason that there is nothing to print. The public does not want its curiosity aroused — and left unsatisfied. So far as the other papers go, I am the only newspaper man in Chicago who knows about the message. Whether later something in the way of a news story may be written, I cannot foretell. This I will say, however: Before I publish a line, I will see and talk with you first.” He withdrew from his pocket the roll of money which she had intrusted him with that morning. Counting it quickly he handed it to her. “In exchange for my promise you will not forget yours about Napoleon Foy receiving his fifty dollars, Miss Thorne?”
“I will personally see that he receives it,” she said quietly. A note of relief was now in her voice. “As to your promise, it is enough. Thank you from the bottom of my heart, Mr. Darrell. Won’t you come soon again and talk pottery with me?”
He looked at his watch. Its hands pointed to five-thirty. “That I will and gladly,” he said. “To-day has been business. Next time we’ll make it pleasure. I hope your ankle will be better soon. It will if you remain off of it. I must get back to my paper now. My trick really begins at four o’clock in the afternoon.”
She held out her hand to him and called the Negro maid. The black girl ushered him out. And he found himself out on the street again, no more the wiser about the message itself than he had been that morning.
When, some time after six o’clock, he hung up his hat on the rack in the city room of the Call and stepped over to his desk, he found himself confronted a second or two later by Feldock, who from his beautiful mahogany glass-topped desk near the window had evidently spied his arrival. The latter, his sharp, inquisitorial, and prying nose looking even more ferretlike than ever to-night, his sneering, supercilious eyes fastened sourly upon him, spoke.
“What’s this I hear, Darrell, about your working all day on a warm lead for a big story? Crosby told me about the message he got from young Halverson. And a Chinese angle, too, eh? Come over to my desk and outline the details to me.”
Darrell regarded the other with an unpleasant look on his face.
“As I told Halverson, it is only a lead. In fact it hasn’t developed yet.”
“Doesn’t matter,” commanded the other curtly. “Give me what you have, and very likely I can suggest some way by which you can work it out to a successful conclusion.”
Darrell laughed disagreeably.
“I doubt if you can, Mr. Feldock. I know Chicago and Chicagoans in such a way as you may never get to know them. I think if anyone can develop the lead I can do it.”
Feldock’s face darkened.
“Still strutting about with a load of pomposity, eh, Darrell? Well, now, get wise to yourself and do it quick. Either come out with what you have on your alleged story, or I’ll make it my place to see that you’re thrown out of this office on your face.” His under lip curled viciously. “You’re too all-fired domineering for a plain, everyday leg man, Darrell.”
Darrell’s face reddened, then whitened.
“I have no more to say,” he proclaimed briefly. “I got the lead through my own friendship here in Chicago, and whatever time I’ve put on it thus far was my own time. Until it’s a full-fledged story ready to spring it remains mine. According to the conditions laid down very succinctly to me last week by both the Old Man and Crosby, the story is yours as soon as it comes out of my typewriter. So what are you complaining about?”
“I’m complaining chiefly about your damned insubordination and insolence,” snapped Feldock, his anger thoroughly aroused. “And I’m going to see for once and all how long you’re going to keep up that thing with me.” And without a word he spun on his heel and strode into Crosby’s office, where Darrell uneasily heard signs of a discussion taking place behind the glazed doors. A few moments later Benny Taylor was summoned to the sanctum, and still a few seconds after that the wizened boy emerged and came straight to Darrell’s desk.
“Old Bezinkus wants to see you,” he said in a slightly awed voice.
Darrell arose. Inside the office he found Feldock angry, pacing up and down, Crosby manifestly perturbed. The managing editor spoke to him at once, without even asking him to take a seat.
“What’s the trouble, Darrell? Mr. Feldock tells me you are unwilling to give him even the details of that warm exclusive lead whose existence you instructed young Halverson to describe to me. Don’t you care at all for the counsel of a man who has worked up some of the biggest stories on the Western coast — a man with whom you should feel it an honor to work?”
Darrell flushed.
“To be frank with you, Mr. Crosby, I wouldn’t care for the honor, considering a certain innuendo for which I’ve never yet received an apology. As for this lead, it came to me strictly through a friendship. I spent my own time working on it. I thought conditions were pretty definitely determined the other day when you and Mr. Brayton gave me the alternative of turning over my exclusive stories to be run under Mr. Feldock’s name. I’m quite ready to live up to that condition. But this story is not completed yet; there is nothing I can give Mr. Feldock — certainly nothing that with his lack of knowledge of Chicago he can help me on. I am working it up just as fast as I can. What more can anyone want?”
Crosby scratched his chin reflectively. It was plain he felt that Darrell was in the right, but that he likewise hesitated to offend the choleric and touchy Western newspaper star. “You haven’t gotton very far with the story then, Darrell? Just a lead so far? Is that it?”
“Precisely.”
Crosby turned to Feldock.
“Well, Mr. Feldock, Darrell is a very peculiar fellow. He isn’t one who ever takes any of us into his confidence. I think we can safely trust him to go ahead, and as soon as he gets the actual goods to turn over a readable story out of it. Suppose we just let him work things out by himself for the present and see how he comes out?”
Feldock shrugged his shoulders haughtily.
“As you say, Mr. Crosby. You’re the managing editor, you know.” He turned on his heel. “Hope you do better on this story, Darrell, than you did on the Blonde Beast case. That’s all I have to say.” An
d he was gone back to his mahogany desk.
Crosby spoke in low tones to Darrell.
“Darrell, why can’t you get along more amicably with Feldock? Haven’t you an iota of diplomacy in you? The name of Marvin Feldock is costing the Call a mighty stiff price per week. But that name means much to the paper. That man, Darrell, whether you wish to admit it or not, has proven himself a genius when it comes to a mystery which requires real detective instinct. He has done some things on the Frisco Despatch which eclipse any and all of your youthful triumph on this sheet. So why don’t you alter your point of view? I expect you to help — not to hinder us.”
“I’m helping — as much as I can,” said Darrell briefly. “I can do no more. Marvin Feldock has undoubtedly delivered the goods in his own province, but personally — in all frankness — he’s impossible. Somebody should puncture his self-sufficiency with a sharp needle. I have no hesitation in predicting that sooner or later some man on the staff is going to land one square on his nose and lay him flat.”
“Here, here,” admonished Crosby sharply, “none of that sort of talk, Darrell. The Call doesn’t hire roughnecks, and I don’t want to hear more of these predictions or sentiments.” He glanced down at a yellow telegram on his desk. “Got any more immediate work on this lead of yours?”
“Not till about ten o’clock to-night,” said Darrell. “I’m to see a certain party then. I’d like to be off from about nine-fifteen till eleven-thirty or so. Before nine-fifteen, therefore, I’m free.”
“H’m,” reflected Crosby. “That makes a bit of a complication in my own plans then.” He surveyed the telegram on his desk troubledly. “I have here, Darrell, a wire from a personal friend of mine, Phil Branson, editor of the New York News. It’s a private tip that ought to provide a short exclusive local story for us. Theresa Heinemann, the sister of Matilda Heinemann whom the Blonde Beast strangled in New York, and who likewise knew the man who murdered her sister, left New York late last night for the Hotel Borden, Denver. She’s on a through coach which is scheduled to pull into the Pennsylvania depot at eleven to-night, and go out again at eleven-fifteen westward. There’ll be fifteen minutes, you see, that the coach will stand in the yards while they’re changing engines and crews. Branson obviously foresaw that this would give us an opportunity of sending down a man and catching the Heinemann girl, and undoubtedly getting a snappy little exclusive interview on the escape of the man who murdered her sister and the failure of the Chicago police to apprehend him.” Crosby looked up. “It struck me you were the logical man to handle any echoes from this Blonde Beast case.”
“I admit that we can’t afford to pass up a tip like that,” said Darrell, “but” — he wrinkled up his brow — “I see no way that I can handle it at that hour without muffing my own story. I assure you this lead of mine is a more than promising one. And at the hour when this Theresa Heinemann and her train are due to lie over in the depot, I’m likewise due clear across the city north. I don’t see how I can switch my own plans now, Mr. Crosby.”
“I see,” asserted Crosby. “Well, go ahead as you planned, Darrell. I don’t want to interfere. I’ll send some one else.”
“Why not let brother Feldock handle the Heinemann girl interview?” suggested Darrell facetiously. “He seems to be so thoroughly wrought up about my fumbling of the case, perhaps in that fifteen minutes she might drop him a tip or two that will enable him to pick up the threads where I dropped ‘em.” He smiled grimly when he reflected how he himself, by his entrance into the clock affair, had picked up the loose ends of the Blonde Beast threads and now held them tightly.
“By George, I’ll do that,” said Crosby. “Feldock might get a brand-new lead on the Blonde Beast case from this girl who knew Carl von Tresseler. Go ahead with your own story, Darrell. If you have any spare time better fiddle on the old Brixby yarn. Drop over at Feldock’s desk on your way out and tell him to step in.”
Darrell left Crosby’s office, and returning to his desk stepped over to that belonging to the man with whom he had just had a heated passage at arms. He delivered the managing editor’s message in rather cool phraseology, then turned for the room and went upstairs to the morgue where he had spent several puzzling moments last night. Here he found old Bishop on solitary duty as usual. He leaned against the grated window.
“Bishop — about that Jarndyce stick you found for me last night, that obituary on Edward Thurston Jarndyce. You got that from memory, didn’t you?”
“Yes, Darrell.”
“Well, now I want you to dig back in the records — say — all the way up to five years and see if you’ve got anything whatever, with or without pictures, on the name Jarndyce — this time John Cooper Jarndyce instead of Edward Thurston Jarndyce. If you haven’t, it means I’ve got to touch my friends on the other papers and perhaps have to split up on what promises to be something in the way of a yarn. If neither our morgue nor any other produces the goods, it means that I’ve got to dig in channels that may be tedious and tiresome and drawn out.”
“Well, we’ll see what we can do,” said Bishop.
“There you are,” he said at last. “A short story on that name — year 1918 — with a half-column cut. And here’s the photograph itself.”
Darrell directed his gaze first to the headlines of the small story. They ran:
SUES TAILOR FOR $10,000
Alleges loss of big position due to sartorial deficiencies resulting from wrongfully cut suit
Omitting any further inspection of the story for the present, Darrell’s eyes went next to the photograph. It was a bust portrait taken by a first-class photographer of a young man somewhere in the twenties, of undoubted slightness in both build and physical strength, with eyes which stared inquiringly out of the picture, odd eyes that dipped a bare trifle at the outside corners, and quizzical little wrinkles at those points. The brown hair was brushed into a pompadour over a forehead which was high enough to be considered intellectual, but which in conjunction with the other facial characteristics struck Darrell as being instead the brow of inventiveness of some sort. The neck was a bit long, and failed to be sufficiently covered by the very odd collar the owner affected, tied by a silk polka-dotted four-in-hand, fixed with a freakish-appearing scarfpin. The lips of the sitter bore a half-ironical smile, and completed a face which was striking, characteristic, a face which seen in a crowd must arrest the attention, a face which one could not easily forget, for in it were to be seen bafflingly inconsistent traits of personality suggesting that their possessor was one who presented unexpected sides to his nature.
The inspection completed, Darrell turned back again to the newspaper article and read it quickly. It was but a stick, barely covering the half-column cut. It told simply that John Cooper Jarndyce — the address given at this date was a moderately priced hotel near Jackson Park — had sued a prominent tailor for ten thousand dollars, alleging that the latter’s mistake in cutting a suit had rendered the plaintiff ridiculous in appearance and had militated against his securing a high-salaried position which had been offered to him. It gave the name of the attorney who was handling the suit, a one-paragraph interview with the indignant defendant, and a quotation in legal verbiage from the bill of citations. Darrell made no attempt to take down any of the data found in this musty story, but satisfying himself that the photograph corresponded with the half-column cut, rolled up the former in a tight cylinder, snapped a rubber band over it and signed a blank receipt on the shelf near Bishop’s elbow.
Back downstairs at his desk, working on the old Brixby story until nine-fifteen should roll around, he found himself thinking and thinking — wondering whether his wild speculations concerning the identity of the body in the Jarndyce vault were to be realized. He could scarcely keep his mind upon the details on which he was working. And when at last he snapped off the bulb above his typewriter, took his hat from the rack and left the Call, he groaned inwardly at the long ride he must endure to reach McFee’s house out near the cemetery.
At ten o’clock McFee’s house was devoid of all light as Darrell crept in the side gate, went silently down a pebbled gangway to the rear and tapped lightly on the door of the woodshed. The door of the woodshed swung open, and McFee, his rotund face lighted by a glowing clay pipe, appeared in the opening. A second later Darrell stood inside, a coal-oil lantern threw a glow on the four walls, and McFee was taking down a hacksaw and several blades from supporting nails on the nearest wall.
“Well, me boy, I’m ready for ye,” he pronounced grimly. “I’ve sent the old lady over town for a visit. We’ll do our durnedest, Darrell, but ‘tis hatin’ I am to mix up with such a business.”
He took down a short iron crowbar from the wall, inspected an electric torch, which he had on a shelf, and then with the two tools wrapped in a newspaper and the heavy electric torch sagging down in his coat pocket, left the woodshed. Darrell trudged along at his heels but said nothing. Across the dark street they made their way silently and with a great bunch of keys McFee unlocked the huge, iron-barred doors which made up the main gate of the cemetery, locking the doors again behind them. Then the two proceeded down a graveled roadway into the dark cemetery, the monuments and gravestones looming up in the gloom at their sides like silent witnesses who heard all, saw all, yet said nothing.
Some twenty minutes later they stood in the dense blackness of the Jarndyce sarcophagus, while McFee drew the great door to behind them. Then the cheerful yellow beam of their electric torch cut the dark, and together they surveyed the interior. Broad polished shelves with silver trimmings fronted them on every side. The man who had built this vault had evidently anticipated a great family of nieces and nephews if not children and grandchildren, for there was room in there for a score — indeed for thirty bodies. But there were but three. On one shelf were two caskets side by side, and at one end of the shelf a tiny silver plate bearing the words: Edward Thurston Jarndyce, together with the significant letters “B” and “D” and two dates, all of which told succinctly that Edward Thurston Jarndyce had been born January 17th 1858, and had died on the 21st of April, this year yet uncompleted. On the other end of the same shelf was a similar plate reading: Amelia Mary Jarndyce, B. February 9, 1862. D. November 11, 1912. And on the shelf directly beneath this one was a single casket and a single silver plate which told simply and briefly that one John Cooper Jarndyce had been born on the 2nd day of July, just twenty-eight years before, and had died on the 7th of March, just gone.
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