“Lord, bud,” he exclaimed, “but you shore got a wettin’,’ didn’t you? What happened?”
“Fell into thè river down near the railroad bridge,” said Middleton desperately. He looked longingly at the cheap car which was headed in a direction quite opposite to that from which he had respectively fled, dropped and swum.
“I wonder if — if I could ride with you?”
“Sure thing.” The farmer moved over. “Jump in. Which way you goin’? Collinsville — next town?”
“Yes — Collinsville,” agreed Middleton with extreme haste.
“All right. Hop in. ‘Tain’t on no railroad, though. But I reckon you know where you want to go.”
The machine was off with a jerk and a spurt, and within five minutes was speeding along the road at a lively clip, taking him farther and farther away from the town of Riverdale and those two men on the bridge who by now had possibly concluded he had met his death in the wide river. And lost in these extremely comforting reflection he awoke only when the machine came to a whining stop at a point where the roadway turned abruptly at right angles to itself, and became a narrower and obviously less frequented lane in which grass grew here and there in patches. The farmer in the seat next him spoke, pointing with his finger.
“There’s Collinsville up there, my lad. I turn off here.”
Now Middleton wished he had not consecrated himself to Collinsville as a destination, for the thought of Illinois towns in general had become a conception full of uneasy qualms. But he decided to kindle no suspicions in the mind of his present benefactor by suffering a questionably sudden change of mind at sight of his own terminal point. So out he climbed. He thanked the farmer, who chugged off up the grassy lane. And Middleton was left alone, surveying the tiny inland village devoid of any railroad. He was perhaps an eighth of a mile from the nearest shop on that line of store fronts and with hand shading his eyes he read the huge bell-shaped sign which hung out in front of it. Its white letters on its blue background read: “Bell Telephone — Local and Long Distance.” And a sudden idea smote him.
Could he accomplish it? If he could, he would have achieved a tremendous coup. As for the cost of the proposed manoeuvre which he turned rapidly about in his mind, he could either brazen the transaction out defiantly if the victim were one who could be duped by a show of bravado, or, all else failing, he could run as fast as the next man. The ethics of the thing were something to be overlooked for the present. The ends justified the means.
He walked rapidly down the narrow road that developed into the town street. He strode boldly into the store out in front of which hung the Bell Telephone symbol. It was a one-girl board, and above it was a gilt and black sign reading: “Collinsville Exchange.” He stepped up to the wooden railing that surrounded it, and spoke to the very youthful blonde girl who sat chewing gum on a high stool.
“Can I get a long distance connection here?” he asked hurriedly.
“Can if you pay for it,” said the girl saucily, surveying him curiously from head to foot, and shifting her gum.
“Oh, that’s all right,” he assured her with a smile and a wave of his hand. “Kenburyport, Indiana, is the town I want to talk to.”
She looked it up in a ponderous cloth-bound book hanging at the side of the board. “Cost you one dollar for the first three minutes — an’ twenty-five cents a minute after that.”
“Fair enough,” he said grandiloquently. He wondered if he had successfully impersonated one whose pockets were replete with money for such luxuries as long distance conversations. “I don’t just know how long I want to talk, however.”
“Whose party you wanna talk with?” the girl asked.
“Mrs. Red Apple — no — Mrs. Rothappel,” he corrected himself. “And please hurry my connection, if you will.”
She tapped in, made some connections, pulled some cords, and he waited, pacing up and down. At length the girl motioned him to the glassed-in booth at the rear of the store. “All right mister. There’s your connection an’ your party.”
He stepped inside and closed the door well on himself. “Am I talking to Mrs. Rothappel?”
“Mrs. Rothappel talking,” came a far-away, thin, threadlike voice. “Who wants me?”
“Have — have you a Mrs. Winters living with you?”
“She’s here. I’ll get her.”
“Thank you. Thank you very much.”
It seemed hours to him that he stood glued to the mouthpiece. Several times he looked behind him out of the double-glassed door toward the switchboard, but only at his initial survey was the girl to be seen; thereafter she had disappeared; she was no longer at her post. And after what seemed an age, a voice, this time soft and low and sweet in its timbre, but threadlike and far-away like that other, came to the ‘phone. He almost shouted.
“Anne! Anne! Anne!”
“Yes,” came the thread of voice. “Who — who is speaking?”
“Middleton, Anne. Jerry Middleton. No — I mean Jonathan! Jonathan Doe.”
He thought he heard a gasp on the ‘phone. Then came the thread of voice. “The connection — the connection is not good. Is it Jonathan Doe — you say?”
“Yes, Jonathan, Anne, Jonathan Doe. You know me?”
He waited only long enough to hear her murmur of surprised assent, and then he forged wildly on with what he had to say.
“Anne, I’m at a town called Collinsville. And I’ve had a strange message from my father. Yes — from my father. Anne, go at once to the Mid-West Trust Company in Chicago. See if my father left a lot on Lake Park Avenue. Yes — a lot. A lot. A building lot.” He almost screamed his words into the transmitter. “And if he did, Anne, dig — dig in the middle of it. Yes, dig. In the middle. I’m not crazy. I’m sane as I ever was. But I received a message from my father. Yes, a message. Please believe me, Anne. And dig — on Lake Park Avenue — dig in the middle of the lot. I — ”
But he never finished his sentence, for glancing over his shoulder apprehensively at the sounds of a loud commotion in the shop behind him, he beheld about forty townspeople, men with freckled, sunburned faces and hickory shirts, a brawny bare-armed blacksmith, with leathern apron at their lead, the others pressing on behind the leader with clubs, brooms, sticks, hay rakes, some with only clenched fists. And with a sinking heart he knew he was trapped — trapped in a cage of mahogany and glass.
If only the full import of his message had got through to Anne Holliston.
And if it had, would it be believed?
CHAPTER XXVIII
THE BLACKMAIL LADY
IT was a rather shaky young man who was returning to his place of abode after a Turkish bath, following a wild night at Chicago’s west-side cabarets with various blonde and red-haired ladies of the demi-monde.
When he let himself in with the latchkey, the clock in the hallway struck eight.
A man in serving-man’s trim costume stood in the hallway.
“Ah, good morning, Mr. Middleton,” he said. “Just coming in from a constitutional?”
“Constitutional — yes, Hobbs. Well, I guess I’ll just lie down on my blooming bed for a few hours and rest up. Any calls — or visitors — anything?”
“Well, sir — yes, sir — a party called you around midnight. But you weren’t in yet, sir, and they didn’t leave their name. Will you have a little breakfast, sir? Something — well something a little salty, perhaps? Some bacon and eggs.”
“Gad, Hobbs, I’ve seen the day when a little bacon the morning after was the only morsel that tempted the gullet — but over here in this land of moonshine and bottled poison — well — just a rest for my stomach, Hobbs, is all I want. Just a rest, that’s all.” And a groan escaped him.
He went in the adjoining room, and, removing from his face with a sigh of relief a pair of ponderous leaden spectacles, lay down on the bed. And there he was, fast asleep, when just two hours later the bell of the apartment rang faintly through his consciousness, and a moment afterward he heard
Hobbs talking in the doorway to someone with a feminine voice. A moment later he opened drowsy eyes to see Hobbs standing by his bedside. “There’s a lady to see you, sir. A young lady. She gives the name of Holliston, sir. Will you see her?”
He combed his hair, straightened his tie, buttoned his coat and replaced on his face the blue-lensed, leaden-framed spectacles he had removed a while before. “Damn Hobbs,” he muttered, “I can’t seem to train him to knock before coming into my room. He gives me the creeps. But maybe it’s the moonshine got under my nerves. Gad, for a genuine drink of Johnny Walker.”
With which comfortless remark he opened the door leading into the tiny library which adjoined his sleeping-room, and strode forth gracefully into it. A slender girl, her velvet handbag swung upon her gloved wrist, sat there in one of the chairs, her big brown eyes crowned by jet black hair peeping demurely from under a captivating picture hat. His hand was outstretched.
“Well — if it isn’t Anne — the fairest little lady this side of Melbourne.” He bowed. “To what am I indebted for the pleasure of this little visit?”
“It is rather difficult to tell you the cause of my visit, because — well — ” She paused. “Mr. Middleton,” she put in suddenly, “you wrote me at my Prairie Avenue address a few days ago a letter in which you asked me to come and see you again — about something very important. I have left there since, by the way, but the letter was forwarded to a post-office box here in Chicago which I rented just before leaving.” She surveyed him curiously. “Just what was it you wanted to see me about?”
There was a peculiar smirk on his face. “Well, little lady, I just thought you might get a bit lonesome about this big city. I, too, am lonesome — a lone Australian in a country strange to him. You see, my dear little girl, there are white, bright lights here, as well as in other cities, taxicabs, theatres, cabarets — and many other places of amusement where one can forget one’s troubles and cares.”
“And have you cares and troubles you want to forget?” the girl asked curiously.
“Heavens — no!” he hastened to assure her. “But I have money — and all I need is a delightful little companion with brown eyes like yours to spend it on. Likewise, why not have a little fun together as well? Or am I too atrocious-looking with these horrible spectacles which I am forced to wear?”
She regarded him reflectively. “They are — well — atrocious spectacles all right, but if a man is paying a debt of honour to his father, one can surely not criticise his personal appearance.” She paused. “But I couldn’t for the world, Mr. Middleton, think of spending that poor little seventy-five dollars a month which your father left you.”
“Oh — pah!” he said, with an impatient gesture of his hand. “My entrance here into Chicago and acquaintanceship all over has put me in the way of numerous lucrative investments. I have plenty of money.”
“As much as a thousand dollars?” she inquired naïvely.
“As much and more,” he said vain-gloriously.
She tapped her foot a moment. Then she spoke. “Mr. Middleton, there is one little incident back in Australia which we never discussed. Do you remember that time when with my help you wrote to your father while you lay blinded in old Doctor Harrow’s hospital? That is to say, you dictated the letter while I wrote it, and then I guided your hand so that you could append your signature?”
His reply was inordinately quick. “Indeed, yes, I can’t ay that I recall now what I wrote, but the incident is clear.”
“I thought it would be,” she said simply. “And you recall that you requested me to mail the letter?”
“Yes. But I believe that would have been but a natural request, would it not?”
“By all means,” she agreed. She paused. “But, Mr. Middleton, I left Australia without mailing that last letter. I forgot it, to be frank, and then, when I had to leave suddenly and found that I had carried it off with me, I — well — I confess I treasured it. It seemed to be a memento of the acquaintance with a very rich young man who had told me he loved me, and and — ”
“And I did love you, little Anne,” he broke in. “And I love you to-day.”
“No, you don’t love me,” she said calmly. “You want me — but not in the way that I desire. However, let that pass. To cut a long story short I have always kept that letter with your signature on it which was dear to me as a memento that I was attractive to somebody for something other than my eyes and face and hair, even if he was just a convalescent ready to fall in love with anybody and anything. Anyway, Mr. Middleton, when your recent letter was forwarded to my post box, and I got it, I compared the signature on it with that other one I had of yours. And, do you know — the signatures are not the same!”
The man was silent for a long time. At last he spoke. “Well, Anne, to tell you the truth, Fortescue wrote that letter to you for me. I simply wouldn’t write — I’m a proud sort of beggar, you know — and so he wrote to you for me. That’s all.”
“I see,” she said. “Then that explains it. But — if the matter ever came up in — say — a court of law, could these two points be clearly established: First, that your signature on my letter is really in Mr. Fortescue’s handwriting, and second, could you yourself duplicate the signature on that letter to your father which I brought from Australia?”
He rose suddenly to his feet. “Damn it, what is this? Is this some sort of a hold-up game? Speak out, you little devil. By God — I’ll — I’ll — ”
“It is merely the propoundment of two hypothetical questions,” she said calmly. “And you haven’t answered them. In fact — you’re — you’re quite rude.”
“Say — what are you getting at?” He stood glowering at her, and suddenly he seized her two slender wrists in his. “Damn you, you little hoyden — what — what are you looking for anyway?” He caught sight of the velvet handbag on her forearm. And grasping her two slender wrists in one powerful hand he brutally jerked the velvet bag off with the other, snapping the cord that held it. She cried aloud with the pain.
“Oh — oh — Mr. Middleton! Oh — stop! You — you hurt me — and without reason.”
With which he released her, but he jerked open the velvet bag. “You’ll not be carrying around any letters of ours — mine, that is — trying to make trouble for us — for me,” he snarled. “By God, you’ll — ” He gazed down at the few pitiful little things in the velvet bag: a powder puff, a few pennies, a few hairpins — and a street-car transfer. “Where — where is that letter?”
She laughed a gay lilting little triumphant laugh, rubbing her slender wrists where his savage grasp had bruised them. “Oh, Mr. Middleton — and do you suppose that I would have brought that precious memento here? No — no — under no conditions. I prize it too much. It is locked fast away in a safety deposit box.”
There was a pause while he glowered at her. Then she spoke again.
“Mr. Middleton, please understand that there isn’t a doubt in the world that you are Jerome Herbert Middleton, but the point under discussion is this: You don’t like notoriety, and this letter and any doubts that might be raised in the public prints, linking you up once more with an insane man whose case has been disposed of by the proper experts and specialists, would be obnoxious, I am sure. Now I am in a little bit of a financial strait. I need money. And I want to go back to Denver where I came from. How I am going to get some money?”
“How — how much do you need?” he asked hurriedly.
“I need — oh — a thousand dollars?”
He thought for a moment. “This looks to me perilously like blackmail. I want to help you, little Anne, for the sake of those days when we were together far across the sea. But I — I won’t be blackmailed. And I haven’t a thousand by me, either.”
“How much have you?” she inquired innocently.
He withdrew a plethoric roll from his pocket. He counted it quickly. “Nine hundred and forty-nine dollars.”
“Well, we can waive the fifty-one. You can send m
e a cheque for it when I get back to Denver. Well, Mr. Middleton, if I have to part with two little mementoes that are all that I have to remember you by, their price will be nine hundred and forty-nine dollars cash.”
He stood in thought for a long minute. Then he spoke to her.
“All right, then. It’s a go. Where and when shall we get the letters?” He paused. “Will you let me call up Fortescue, my friend?”
“Gladly,” she said courteously.
He went to the telephone in the outer hall and rang up Juniper 2242. The familiar voice of Fortescue’s man came in the receiver. “Mr. Fortescue is away on business, sir. He is not here nor in his office.”
“I see.” He hung up. He came back into the library nervously. “Well, what was that other thing you wanted?”
“It was this, Mr. Middleton. Your father left, I believe, considerable property over and around Chicago — houses, both occupied and vacant, bungalows, two-fiat buildings, business buildings, tenements, office structures, and even vacant lots, some of them fenced in with high board walls. Is this not true?”
He nodded.
“Where are the keys for all the vacant places kept?”
“Well,” he said sullenly, “the real estate department of the company handles all that division of father’s estate. Fortescue as general manager merely supervises their work in a superficial way, negotiating only the larger deals that are made. He does, however, keep in his possession in case of emergency a key to every piece of property that father left, and these are all tagged and distributed on a big keyboard which stands in one of the rooms in his flat. Now does that answer your question? What’s the idea, anyway?”
“Well, the idea is this,” she said slowly and with extreme reluctance. “The remaining favour that I would ask of you is that you would allow me to have access to that board by myself for a minute or so, and allow me to borrow for one day one of the keys — say — to some vacant fiat in one of the various pieces. A place, for instance, which — which one might use to hold a private meeting in with — with a friend.”
The Spectacles of Mr. Cagliostro Page 29