Stolman laughed shortly.
"I guess you're all right," he said briskly. "Well, let's get down to business. Flash your wad!"
Stranway reached promptly into his inside vest pocket, took out the bundle of banknotes and laid them on the table.
"How much?" inquired Stolman, deftly running his fingers through them.
"Twenty thousand," said Stranway.
"That's a hundred thousand of the queer," said Stolman, getting up from his chair. "That's more than I've got left. Chuck knew about this lot in time enough—why didn't he send before?"
"I don't know," said Stranway, with a shrug of his shoulders. "That's his hunt. If you're low, he'll have to take what's left."
"It's mostly English," said Stolman. "All his special lot of that—no one else uses 'em."
"All right!" Stranway flicked the ash from his cigar toward the fireplace. "It's all the same! Give me what you've got—it's easy enough to salt a Canadian port with English stuff. What with the tourists and shipping, even the banks fall for it—when the counterfeiting's good enough."
Stolman left the room; but was back almost in an instant, carrying a package in his hands.
"Good enough!" he ejaculated, echoing Stranway's words. He passed to the same side of the table that he had occupied before, opened the package, and held up to the light a sample twenty-dollar American gold certificate and a five-pound English note. "Good enough! Look at 'em!" he cried—and laughed. "This is counterfeit stuff that is counterfeit stuff! There hasn't been one in ten ever spotted. Chuck's getting them too cheap! You tell him that after this the price is going up."
Stranway's left hand was drumming a tattoo mechanically on the pile of hundred-dollar genuine notes that he had brought with him. He looked admiringly at the notes Stolman held up.
"Beauts!" said he eloquently.
Stolman nodded, put back the two notes, and opened the package wider, displaying neat piles of new counterfeit money similar to the specimens he had exhibited.
"I'll count what's here," he said. "They're the last of the lot, and——"
In a flash Stranway was on his feet, and, as his left hand whipped the genuine hundred-dollar bills into his pocket, the muzzle of his automatic peeped through the fingers of his right hand and held a line on Stolman's eyes.
"I wouldn't bother to count them!" he said in a low, grim voice. "Just hand them over!"
Stolman's face went white. He leaned heavily on the table, both hands on the package of counterfeit notes—and stared into Stranway's face. He swayed a little from one foot to the other.
"What's—what's the meaning of this?" he stammered hoarsely.
"Hand them over!" repeated Stranway curtly. "Your game's up—we've got you red-handed. I've half a dozen men outside the house."
For an instant more Stolman stood there staring wildly, jaw dropped, seeming to shuffle uneasily upon his feet—then there was a faint click, the lights went out, and there came a harsh, jeering laugh.
"Got me, have you—you fool!" sneered Stolman's voice out of the darkness. "Know now what those lights are for? A floor switch is a handy thing, ain't it—for the feet!"
For a second, it might have been two, in the transition from intense light Stranway could not see a thing; then the fireplace seemed to leap with sudden vigour into high, curling flames—and, as suddenly, the table was hurled against him, throwing him back toward the centre of the room.
One shot Stranway fired at the ceiling as he regained his balance—the signal—and sprang on the instant for the fireplace. It was lighting up the room. He could see again—only too well now! And with a sickening shock he understood. Stolman had thrown the counterfeit notes on the fire! It was the evidence that was blazing there on the logs! But if he could still get even one of the counterfeit notes it would be enough!
With a snarl and an oath, Stolman met his rush. They clenched, grappled. Stranway tried to throw the other from him and reach the fireplace, but he could not loosen Stolman's hold. They swayed, toppled, went to the floor, and rolled over and over.
A minute, two, three passed. The light in the fireplace died down to the flames from the logs alone. Both men were still struggling on the floor. And then, as there came the sound of racing footsteps from the hallway, Stolman wrenched himself suddenly free from Stranway, and, dashing to the fireplace, kicked quickly and frantically at the charred paper. A little flame sprang up again—and died down. And then, an instant later, as the door swung inward, the lights in the room blazed out—and Stolman was leaning calmly against the back of a chair, a sneer upon his face.
A moment the man stood there, evidently not quite able to see distinctly in the sudden glare of the lights he himself had switched on, then the sneer faded slowly from his lips, and his face became pasty white as he stared at Charlebois, who, with two men behind him, stood now in the open doorway.
"You!" Stolman mumbled. "It's a trick of some kind—you're——" He stopped with a little gasp, swept his hand across his eyes and seemed to pull himself together. "You!" he said again.
"Yes; I—Henri Raoul Charlebois!" The little old gentleman's voice, cold, contained, was deadly in its menace, as he came forward into the room. "And this"—he laid his hand on Stranway's arm—"is Stranway—not Larson. But perhaps you have already discovered that fact. I found the real Larson, and got his story and his papers from him. And to-night I have got you—at last."
He took a step nearer Stolman, his face stern, set, implacable. Stolman gazed at him with a strange fascination, but without movement, save to wet his lips with his tongue.
"It is a long time ago, is it not?" Charlebois' voice dropped to a low monotone. "Many, many years ago! Do I need to recall that night to you? A cold, bitter night—a poor devil of a perishing, starving wretch brought into the bar-room of a little western town by a big-hearted cowboy. They took up a collection for him—three dollars and seventy-five cents—do you remember? Every one contributed except one young fellow—you! When this poor devil went out into the night again, lighter hearted than he had been for many days, you followed him. Do you remember? You told him you were not well off yourself, not well enough off to give him the whole of the five-dollar bill that was all the money you had—that you wanted to help him, but had not liked to ask to have the bill changed before all the men in the room. You told him to give you the silver and he could keep the bill."
Charlebois paused. There was something in the rigid attitude of the little old gentleman, a quivering, passionate something that made Stranway lean suddenly, tensely forward.
"He thanked you, did he not?" Charlebois' low voice went on. "He thanked you, and with tears in his eyes asked God to bless you for your kindly, generous act—and then—and then for two long years with prison stripes upon his back he paid bitterly for your 'generosity.' The bill was counterfeit. He was arrested in another town the next day and convicted for having attempted to pass that bill. He was friendless, a vagrant, a hard-looking character—he had no chance. Even his story helped to convict him—in the other town you were not known, not to be found. It was long ago, long, long ago. It was your night then—it is my night now. It is strange, is it not, that we should be dealing in counterfeits again?"
The sneer had gradually crept back to Stolman's face, and with it a brazen self-composure.
"If it is your night," he said mockingly, "you're welcome to it! I hope you like it! And talking about counterfeits, if you find any here you're welcome to them, too."
Charlebois turned quickly and looked at Stranway.
"What is it, my boy?" he asked sharply.
"He put out the lights with his foot—a floor switch," explained Stranway savagely. "I couldn't see for a moment. He flung the counterfeit notes into the fire, and——"
"Quite right—perhaps—if there were any counterfeit notes," jeered Stolman. "You are an imaginative and somewhat amusing pair of fools—one in his second childhood, the other not yet out of his first. Oh, well, don't cry over spilt milk! Yo
u may have better luck if you try again. Maybe you'll catch me then with the goods."
Slowly Charlebois turned once more toward Stolman, and his eyes played now with a curiously merciless composure over the other's face.
"There will never be an occasion to 'try' again," he said, with a grim smile. "An hour ago I should have been sorry that the notes were gone; now it is of little consequence. What you will answer for to-night is not for counterfeiting—it is murder."
Stolman laughed unpleasantly.
"Oh, no, I guess not; not with you standing there," he said meaningly. "But then, of course, you didn't know about that, did you? If I were to be held for any murder to-night it would be for yours."
"No," said Charlebois softly; "I am speaking of the murder of Sam Larson, the real Sam Larson!"
For the second time the sneer left Stolman's lips, and the white crept into his face.
"I—I don't know what you mean," he faltered.
"You tried to murder me to-night in Talimini's Café," said Charlebois sternly. "You see, I do know. But, instead of murdering me, the man you hired to do your cowardly, miserable work mistook Larson for me, and——"
"That's not true!" screamed Stolman suddenly. "You've no proof! You can't prove it!"
"It is God's justice," Charlebois went on, paying no heed to the interruption. "It has fallen heavily, strangely, has it not? That your tool should kill the very man who, before he died, placed in my hands at the hospital the information that enabled us to act to-night, is——"
"You've no proof!" The muscles of Stolman's lips were working in spasmodic twitches. "You've no proof! It's a frame-up—a dirty frame-up!"
With a slight movement of his head Charlebois motioned to the two men in the doorway—and a revolver gleamed in the light as he raised his hand quickly from the elbow.
"Don't put your hand in your pocket!" he commanded sharply. "Proof? Yes; you are entitled to that before you go. Your tool is known in gangland as Magpie Low—ah, I see you recognise the name! He was captured by one of my men, and confessed within an hour of committing the crime. That is all." He turned to the two men, Rainier and Sewell. "Take him to Flint," he directed tersely, "and hand him over to the law with Low."
There was no fight, no resistance, no scuffle—it was a weak, flabby, nerveless thing that Rainier and Sewell half carried through the door.
For a moment after they had gone Charlebois stood motionless, then he laid his hand on Stranway's arm.
"An utter scoundrel," he said soberly. "A curse upon society—a man, I think, who for the first time has aroused no single appeal to my sympathy or pity."
Stranway was staring at the fireplace, his brows knitted.
"He might have been lying about that being all the counterfeit notes," he said suddenly. "At any rate, it would be worth while to look through the house."
A whimsical smile crept to the little old gentleman's lips, and he shook his head as he walked slowly toward the door.
"That, my boy," he said quietly, "is for the police to do—my debt is paid."
Chapter XI.
The Last Day of Grace
Table of Contents
CONVICTED MURDERER OF CRIME THAT
STIRRED COUNTRY BEGINS HIS LAST
TWENTY-FOUR HOURS ON EARTH
It was flung across the front page of the morning edition in two-inch caps. It was yellow, of course, morbidly, vulgarly yellow—but it was there. Columns of details, both authentic and spurious, garnished with a jungle of lurid adjectives followed; there was a diagrammatic sketch showing the relative position of the condemned man's cell in "murderers' row" and the death chamber with the fatal chair; then a sensational résumé of the crime and trial—the whole ending with the ensuing paragraph:
"At the time of the trial it will be remembered that public opinion was violently divided as to the guilt or innocence of the accused; the majority perhaps inclining favourably toward the prisoner. Since then the tide of public opinion has set strongly, and apparently with ample justification, against him. It will be recalled that the condemned was a relatively poor man, a bricklayer; and, also, that only a small part—some $5,000—of the stolen $200,000 was found in his possession. Yet in the two years that have elapsed since his trial at which the most brilliant criminal lawyers in the country defended him, it has been estimated that his legal expenses, including the original trial and the numerous appeals he has taken and finally carried to the highest court of the country, have cost him not less than $125,000. Where did he get this money? That question, a damning one, has remained unanswered, though on everybody's lips. It is believed to have played a large part in Governor Henderson's final refusal to interfere in the last act of the tragedy when, to-morrow morning, the law will take its course."
Stranway, summoned peremptorily from the West by wire, had reached New York but barely half an hour before; he had bought the paper in the Pennsylvania station on leaving the train, and now, as the taxi drew up at the curb at the corner of Ninth Street and Sixth Avenue, he frowned as he folded the sheets, tucked them in his pocket, descended from the cab and dismissed the chauffeur—modest, unobtrusive little Dominic Court was never unduly to be invaded by so ostentatious a vehicle as a taxi-cab.
Carrying his bag, Stranway started briskly along Sixth Avenue. His mind was full of the account he had just read; not from a morbid appetite for the ultra-sensational, but because the name of the condemned man was, he knew, upon the pages of the Red Ledger. But he knew no more than that; nothing as to the history or the details of the case. There were too many entries on the pages of the Red Ledger, too many cases actually in process of settlement almost everywhere throughout the civilised world for him to know them all in detail—as witness the last month during which, though he had been travelling constantly on what Charlebois had termed a tour of inspection he, Stranway, had been able to come into direct personal contact with but a very small proportion of the work being done, even in the United States alone, by those "outside" members of the organisation who, acting upon the little old gentleman's orders and instructions, were engaged in balancing the Red Ledger's strange accounts.
But he remembered the name in the present instance—Marlin; Wilfred Marlin—and he could not help wondering, as he turned into the passageway that led from Sixth Avenue to the secluded little courtyard, if this was the cause of his hurried summons from the West.
Traversing the passageway, Stranway emerged on quaint old Dominic Court with its row of four small wooden houses, and was instantly admitted at the door of No. 1.
A moment later, passing through the interior connecting doors of the four houses, Stranway reached the glass-panelled door that opened on the Red Room in No. 2½, and on the other side of which hung the red-silken portière—and here instinctively he paused. It was here, on that afternoon when he had first come to Dominic Court, that he had first seen the Orchid. And now almost eagerly he looked around him, as though with some vague hope, swiftly formed, that she might somehow, miraculously, impossibly, appear suddenly before him. Still another month had gone now since he had seen her; a month during which she had been more than ever—if that were possible!—in his thoughts. She wasn't here, of course! There would be no one but Henri Raoul Charlebois on the other side of the portière in the Red Room. He knew that quite well. But suddenly he was intensely glad that he was back, glad that the trip was over, for here in New York was always the expectancy—no; more than that!—the certainty of seeing her again, if only at odd moments and under infernally tantalising circumstances. Perhaps, in view of the fact that he had been away for so long, Charlebois might be a little more communicative about her this time. No! He shook his head. No use in that! The little old gentleman would merely smile, half teasingly, half tolerantly—and that would be the end of it.
Stranway shrugged his shoulders, thereby inadequately expressing his feelings—and knocked on the glass-panelled door. Charlebois' voice answered him. Stranway opened the door, pushed aside the red-silken por
tière and stepped forward into the room.
The little old gentleman, red skull-cap surmounting his fringe of silvery hair, the tassel bobbing from the cap, rose from the old mahogany desk, and held out both hands to Stranway.
"Ah, my boy," he said affectionately, "you are back." He patted Stranway's shoulders caressingly. "You have lost no time."
"I received the wire last night—I judged it was urgent," Stranway answered simply, as he smiled a response to the other's greeting.
Charlebois' fine old face set instantly in more serious lines, and a grave, sober note crept into his voice.
"Yes, my boy," he said, "it is urgent—very urgent. A man's life hangs on what we may be able to accomplish to-day."
"Ah!" said Stranway quickly. "It is Marlin then?"
"It is Marlin," Charlebois answered, nodding his head slowly. "Marlin—and another. But you, my boy"—he seated himself again at the desk—"you have had a long journey, are you——"
Stranway laughed easily, as he, too, sat down.
"I'm ready for anything," he said.
"That is good!" exclaimed Charlebois heartily. "Excellent—for my plans very largely depend upon you this morning! And as we have very little time, and as there is a great deal that you must first know in order to work intelligently, we will do well to postpone the report of your trip until to-night, and devote ourselves without preliminaries to the matter in hand."
He opened the Red Ledger, which lay on the desk before him.
"It is a strange case," he said abruptly. "It has baffled me for two years. I have watched it anxiously, striven to solve it—and watched the sand in the hourglass running out. And to-day with the sand almost gone, when to-morrow's dawn will see it all exhausted and Marlin will pay the forfeit with his life, there is but a single ray of hope left; a hope pregnant with grave doubt and grave anxiety, the anxiety with which the chemist at the end of his long research watches the final experiment that means success or failure—that means to us to-day the life or death of a fellow creature."
The Red Ledger Page 8