The Steel Box

by Max Brand

  He called on the editor one day. People fled before him. Doors slammed and crashed. Many footfalls scurried up and down. But when he came to the editor’s office, he found a little squint-eyed man who wore dark-cloth guards over the sleeves of his shirt, like a grocery clerk, and who peered up to him from beneath a green eye shade.

  “What do you want of me, Sherry?” he asked.

  “I want you to stop this nonsense,” said Sherry.

  “Do you?” said the editor. “And can you tell me any reason why I ought to stop it?”

  “For the sake of common sense and decency, for one thing,” said Sherry.

  “Common sense and decency are all very well,” said the editor, “but I wish you would point out a time when they were worth balancing against a growing circulation. I’ve trebled this paper’s circulation inside of the last week. I’ve made it the biggest sheet in the county. And I’m going to keep it there . . . as long as Lew Sherry will furnish me with good copy, as he’s doing today.”

  And suddenly a pair of cameras clicked in the corner of the room, and Sherry, with wild words, turned and fled more swiftly than from the mouth of a cannon.

  He went to the sheriff, even, and dourly demanded that these libels should be stopped.

  “I’m a peaceful man,” said Sherry. “They’re making me out a crook and a general all-around bad actor.”

  “Steady, steady,” said the sheriff. “After a few more days of this, you’ll know what it means to run for office, for instance.”

  XXIII

  Let crime increase and follies spread, the press must still be free. And when Sherry had mastered that slogan and understood it might not be altered, he gritted his teeth and made no further protest. But, when a cameraman one day pointed a machine too closely at him, he picked up the heavy and expensive offender and heaved it after the artist. Man and machine rolled in the dust, and Sherry stood over them.

  “The next time I’ll use a quirt on you,” said Sherry. “And the time after that . . . I’ll use my hands.”

  It almost frightened the cameraman to death, but it did not prevent others from clicking pictures of him as busily as ever. It furnished much grist to the papers, moreover. I’LL USE MY HANDS! said a caption beneath an actual photograph of the big paws of Lew Sherry.

  A weight of care descended upon Sherry as he saw this tide of publicity flowing in his direction, day after day.

  “Trouble is going to come out of it,” he assured his friend Lang. “Some young fools are going to come up here to make a reputation out of me. A short cut to headlines is what I offer to anybody who can drop me. And a bullet from behind wouldn’t be wasted, either.”

  “Sure,” agreed Lang. “When you go out, I’ll go along with you every time. I’ll watch your back for you. But I figure the same as you. The more that’s said about a man, the nearer he is to his last picture. But hang the newspapers, say I. Did you see the last lingo that they printed about me? About me having a busted heart because of a long-lost sweetheart, and a lot of stuff that would’ve made you creep only to read it, old-timer.” The giant grinned broadly. “I half believe that you sent ’em up that trail,” growled Pete Lang. “Come on with me. We’re going to finish the house today.”

  They had searched it from the top downward. To the room of Oliver Wilton, of course, they devoted their utmost care.

  “He made it like a safe, because he had it lined with stuff that was worth getting,” said Sherry. Therefore, they spent two days going over every crevice of the place and tapping every inch of the walls. But they discovered nothing.

  Then they worked down through the other chambers of the house. No one disturbed them. The servants had been discharged, according to Layman’s plan, and Layman himself, coming out to the place now and again for books or papers for Beatrice Wilton, was the only one they encountered. He was curious, at first, as to the reason of their stay in the house. But when they evaded his questions rather pointedly, he did not press them. Only he said to Sherry, one day: “Do you think, my friend, that you are doing any good for Beatrice Wilton by tying her name to all your old adventures?”

  “Am I dragging her through the dust?” asked Sherry with some sharpness.

  “Come, come,” said the doctor with perfect good humor. “You understand what I mean, of course. I know that you boys want to do nothing that isn’t for her good, but the fact is that you are making a whale of a lot of talk, and the more talk the worse for Beatrice. It’s openly said that you’re hired by me to be on hand in case we want to beat the law at the last moment. Of course, that is going to be a weight on the minds of the lawyers who will fight for her.”

  “You want me to hit the trail?” asked Sherry.

  “Exactly,” said the doctor, who was the most frank of men.

  “If I could,” said Sherry, “I’d do it. But the fact is that I have to stay. I can’t break away. I’ve tried to before, and it’s against my nature.”

  So the doctor no longer pressed upon that point. To Pete Lang he was rather an offensive personality. But Sherry liked him for the very coldness of mind that troubled Lang. Whatever else the doctor might be, he was a man.

  On this day, they had no interruption from anyone. They had worked from the top of the house down, leaving the cellar to the last. It had been their major hope from the moment they gave up the room of Wilton as a possibility, and now they attacked it with the greatest care. There was a large wood room under the house, two big storage chambers for the stowage of supplies, and in the front of the house, where the slope of the land allowed windows to be placed, there were two empty rooms—for servants, no doubt—which never had been used. The windows were stuck shut by the strength of the first and last coat of paint that had been applied to them.

  Through these chambers, and through the corridors connecting them, they went with methodical attention, searching, rummaging, tapping.

  “You don’t have to have a barrel to hide half a million dollars’ worth of pearls,” Pete Lang was never tired of cautioning his friend.

  But when darkness came in the cellar and they had finished the wood room by dint of moving at least a cord of piled firewood, Pete Lang himself confessed that they were wrong. The pearls were not in the house.

  It was a great blow to them. As Lang said, the logic all pointed to one conclusion. If the pearls were not in the house, then where were they? Certainly Wilton had not left his room to secure the supply that was in his pocket when he met Fennel.

  “You remember,” suggested Sherry, “the talk that Beatrice Wilton said she overheard in the woods between her uncle and a man whose voice sounded like Layman’s? Wilton said that he hadn’t them. He was excited and angry about it. What did he mean by them unless he meant the pearls?”

  “You talk, kid, like a book,” admitted the other. “Wilton lost ’em, then? All except a few that he had handy about him, sort of like keepsakes. Is that it?”

  “That’s the sense of it.”

  “And what would Layman know about them?”

  “He’s an old friend of the family.”

  “How old?”

  “Some years at least. He was doctor for both the Wiltons.”

  “It may not have been Layman’s voice at all,” said Sherry at last. “If it had been, she wouldn’t have merely guessed. She would have known. The things that we think we recognize are a long way from the reality. We never have any real doubt about the truth.”

  To this Lang agreed, and it was not hard to furnish another character to the man who had conversed with Wilton in the forest behind the house.

  It seemed apparent, of course, that Wilton had in his possession—or had had until he lost them—a quantity of pearls or other things of price to which someone besides himself could lay claim. At least, he had not more than a partial interest in the treasure. The strange demeanor of Harry Capper, for instance, could be explained in this manner, as also the odd demands of Fennel, the drunkard and sham.

  “If ever we could know t
he true story of what happened aboard the Princess Marie,” said Lang, “then we’d be a lot nearer home. But the next thing for us to think about is how we’re going to get funds. We can’t very well beg them from Beatrice Wilton.”

  Sherry flushed at the mere thought. “We have the pearls that were meant for Fennel,” he suggested.

  “That’s state property, by rights,” objected Lang.

  “We can take one of them. How many are there altogether?”

  “Five good-size ones, eleven smaller ones, and eighteen little pearls,” said Lang.

  “You’ve counted them pretty well, Pete.”

  “I’ve spent some time looking at them, son. They’re worth it.”

  “I’ll take one of the bigger ones,” said Sherry, “and hock it at one of the pawnshops. D’you know what one of these things is worth?”

  They selected a pearl together.

  “I dunno,” said Lang. “I sort of remember Sam Hulman having a pearl that looked about that size in a scarf pin. Sam, he paid down a hundred and fifty dollars for it. I suppose that you ought to get about a hundred, for this one.”

  “A hundred it is,” answered Sherry. “It’s stealing from something or someone . . . but not altogether from Wilton. So here goes.”

  With that, he went straight down to Clayrock and entered beneath the sign of the Three Moons that showed over the entrance of a shop on the main street. It was littered with the usual assortment of cheap watches and good ones, flashy, huge jewelry of paste, and smaller stones of price. Lumbermen and miners had left some of the gilt of their flooding boom days here in the dark shop. There were even jeweled revolvers, pawned at last by some hungry dandy of the frontier.

  The place was run by a brisk, young man with an open, frank eye, and a fearless cheerful demeanor. He greeted Sherry with a broad smile.

  “’Evening, Mister Sherry. Haven’t been expecting you, but I never know when the big men of town may pay me a call. Are you buying or selling, Mister Sherry?”

  Sherry looked at him in some hesitation. He was much inclined to find a pawnshop where his name was not so well known, but after a moment of thought he realized that his picture and his name had been spread so thoroughly through Clayrock that it would be impossible for him to remain in the dark.

  “I’ve come to sell,” he said, and laid the pearl on the counter.

  “And the price?”

  “Suppose I leave that to you?”

  The pawnbroker took the jewel, passed it under a magnifying glass, and turned it quickly. Then he replaced the pearl gently on the counter. “Not a bad one,” he said. “Suppose I say a hundred dollars?”

  The price was exactly what Sherry had been led to expect he might get, and now the closeness of Lang’s guess made him exclaim with a broad smile: “Well, I’m dashed!”

  But the pawnbroker started. “Hold on,” he said, growing a little red and hurried, “maybe there isn’t such a flaw as I thought, and . . .” He examined the pearl again. This time he carefully weighed it on a slender scale. “Matter of fact,” he said candidly, “I’ve made a mistake. I can pay you two fifty, for that.”

  Sherry scowled. “I’ll take not a cent under five hundred,” he said.

  The youth sighed, opened a cash drawer, and laid a bundle of bills before him. “Well,” he said, “I can’t drive sharp bargains with you, Mister Sherry.”

  XXIV

  The largeness of this price still half stunned Sherry; the value of all the pearls in his pocket suddenly was enhanced; he was carrying about with him what would be a tidy little fortune to many a man. Moreover, the broker did not seem at all displeased with the bargain he had struck, but spread his hands upon the counter and beamed on Sherry as the latter stuffed the bills into his wallet.

  “If I’d asked a thousand,” said Sherry, “you’d have paid it just as willingly.”

  “There’s pearls and pearls,” answered the other. “Most of ’em that size wouldn’t be worth five hundred, even. But this is a beauty. I’ll send it East. And maybe the selling price of it even in the trade will scare a thousand dollars to death.”

  His frankness made Sherry smile, and the broker smiled back. He was an extraordinary young man, who seemed to make no attempt to cover his pride in his own shrewdness.

  “You and Oliver Wilton keep the same sort of pearls in your pockets, I see,” he said.

  “Wilton?” exclaimed Sherry.

  The pawnbroker narrowed his eyes ever so little. “Does that surprise you a lot?” he asked.

  “Why,” said Sherry, “I don’t see why Wilton should want to be selling pearls down here.”

  “Pawning, not selling. There’s a pair of ’em.” He took out a small tray, lined with blue velvet, and upon it were scattered pearls of several sizes. Two big ones lay in the middle. “That’s the couple.” He added: “Wilton knew their value, too.”

  “Wilton’s not apt to redeem the tickets,” said Sherry dryly.

  And he went out into the blast of the sun’s light and heat, still blinking and wondering. Why should Wilton have needed money? A good deal of money, at that. For the pair of pearls were both much larger, and fully as fine, it appeared, as the one that he had just sold.

  With that in his mind, he hurried back to find Lang, and to him he confided the truth about the price of the pearl. It staggered the man of the range. Together, they laid out the pearls and examined them afresh. If one of them had been sold for $500 and was worth closer to $1,000, the whole of the little collection was now worth a greatly enhanced price.

  “If there are many more of these, somewhere,” said Lang, “it’s a treasure, Tiny. Trouble has popped on account of them. Trouble is going to pop again. But where could Wilton have put the things . . . or lost ’em?”

  They were wandering through the garden of the Wilton house as they talked, for the house was hot, and in the garden a breeze stirred beneath the trees.

  “This stuff is worth too much to be carted around in a pocket,” said Sherry. “I’ll take it back to our room and stow it away. Be somewhere around here, and I’ll come back.”

  Going back to their room, he chose a simple hiding place. A handkerchief made a pouch; he secured the loose edges with a bit of string, thrown over in a pair of half hitches, and he simply dropped the handkerchief into the pocket of an old raincoat that he used on cold, windy days, riding herd. If a search was made for any object of value, it would be a clever man indeed who thought of dipping his hand into the pocket of a dusty old coat. And even if a hand reached into that pocket, the handkerchief might not be examined.

  Contented with his own cleverness, Sherry went out into the garden and hurried to find Lang again; he would make that keen fellow guess at the hiding place he had chosen and then enjoy some sort of a small triumph, for Lang was apt to smile with superior wisdom at the simplicity of his big friend. So, in his haste, Sherry cut straight for the point at which he had left Lang, and, leaving the path and its crunching gravel, he headed across a stretch of lawn and came in under the shadow of the trees in time to hear a voice growl: “Back him up against that tree, Jerry. Watch him. He’s got his weather eye peeled on you. That’s better.”

  Sherry slipped like a great cat among the big trunks of the pines, and so he came on a view of Pete Lang, backed against a large tree, his hands above his head, while one man covered him with a short-nosed revolver, and a second was in the act of reaching for Lang’s gun.

  “Drop your guns,” said Sherry in his deep, booming voice. “And shove up your hands.”

  The two started violently. Half sheltered behind a tree, Sherry waited, ready with bullets if they were needed, but neither of the pair attempted to turn upon him.

  “He’s got the wind of us, Bud,” said Jerry.

  “He has,” said Jerry. “It’s the big boy, at that. We gotta strike our sails, Bud, to this squall.” And, with that, he dropped his gun and raised his powerful arms unwillingly above his head.

  Bud followed that good example, and
Lang, relieved of pressure, instantly covered them with his own pair of weapons. Steadied and helpless beneath the noses of those big Colts, the strangers remained calmly enough while Sherry searched them. He took from each a dangerous-looking sheath knife, and from Bud another short-nosed gun, which was in a hip pocket.

  “These are town guns, boys,” said Sherry. “You shouldn’t carry them out into the big open spaces. Back up there against that bank,” he added. “You can put your hands down, if you want to. But mind you, we mean business. If you try to make a break, I’d have as little hesitation in dropping you as in shooting at a pair of tree stumps.”

  “Aw,” said Bud, “we know you. Everybody knows you. I’m gonna make no break.”

  He was a little square-made man, with a bright, cheerful face and small eyes that were filled with life. His friend was in exact contrast—a chinless, lean fellow, with a kink in his neck, and an Adam’s apple that worked prominently up and down. He allowed Bud to do the talking; indeed, his eyes were constantly seeking the face of his stubbier companion as though to win inspiration.

  “We’ll get on, then,” agreed Sherry. “You two fellows were sent here by who?”

  “By no one,” said Bud.

  “Bud,” said Sherry, “are you going to try to pull the wool over our eyes?”

  Lang broke in: “There’s a mighty tight little jail here in Clayrock, and a sheriff that ain’t partial to hold-up men. You may’ve heard of Sheriff Bert Moon? Try to pull one on us, and you hit the trail for jail and the pen afterward. Come clean, and we turn you off.”

  “Hold on,” protested Sherry. “We have them now. We may wish like anything that we had them later.”

  “What do they matter?” asked Lang sternly. “They’ll never bother either of us again, I have an idea. And we want to get at what sent them here. Bud, who sent you along?”

  “We sent ourselves,” declared Bud.

  “That,” said Lang bluntly, “is a lie. I never saw either of you before. You can’t have anything against me.”

  “We got nothing against you,” agreed Bud, “but you got something of ours on you.”