The Big Book of Rogues and Villains

by Otto Penzler

  Lingo Dan looked slightly hurt. “True—most true. How close to the mark you do shoot, Billy—never a divergence, never a stroll into the abstract—ah, sometimes I believe I envy you, Billy.”

  But Billy only grunted. It was the grunt of unbelief.

  In a few moments they had reached the vestry door. Billy hitched a rope from the bridle to the fence. Then he opened the vestry door, and the two of them stepped in. Billy noted with dull astonishment that his partner slipped into the surplice with apparent knowledge of its technique. Then the organ began the services of the day.

  When the music ceased, a tall, pale figure arose beside the desk that faced the altar railings.

  “Dearly beloved brethren,” said the strange clergyman, “my portion in these services was merely to have been the sermon, but sudden indisposition coming to your good pastor, Mr. Dawson, I am here to make what shift I can as substitute.”

  There was a pause. The speaker’s eyes swept about the church. Every seat was taken. But in every face he saw nothing save kind encouragement. Far in the last row, deep in shadows, loomed the face of him that was called Billy. All this the clergyman saw in a flash. Then he began, in the conventional voice of the preacher:

  “Dearly beloved brethren, the Scripture moveth us in sundry places—” and thereafter the services continued drowsily and perfunctorially. There was nothing to show that the official of the occasion was not versed and practiced in these devotional functions. At times the congregation caught a note of fervor, of loving emphasis placed on some phrase that was more than usually freighted with the poetry that informs the Prayer book; in the mere elocution of the man they scented a sermon that would make them forget even the stifling heat.

  From outside came the occasional whinnying of a horse, and the pawing of impatient feet. Beyond that, only the heat, quivering against the fences in visible form.

  On the back bench Billy was exerting the last vestiges of his self-control to keep from snoring.

  When the general “Amen” had closed the rehearsal of the Creed, the preacher moved to the pulpit. With bowed head he stood silent for some seconds. Then he folded his sermon to his liking. As he read the text he flushed for a space, but his voice never faltered. It was from the gospel of St. Matthew, and it read:

  “Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing.”

  It was a pity that the Rev. Dawson could not have heard the eloquent delivery his sermon was given by his locum tenens. Use blunts the faculties somewhat, and it is certain that had its actual author preached this sermon it had not seemed half so powerful. As it was, each word, each phrase had behind it all the nervous vigor of a musical voice, a mind at high tension.

  As he turned to the final page of the sermon an agonizing suspicion crossed the ear and the mind of the preacher. Was that a snore from the back bench?

  If even the faintest chance of such a thing existed, it was necessary to grasp measures of force. Into the mere reading of another man’s words it was possible to infuse but a limited amount of enthusiasm, after all.

  Ostentatiously he closed the pamphlet from which he had been delivering his sermon. With eyes roving soulfully about the faces before him, he brought his voice to its most musical, gripping pitch.

  “And so, my brethren,” he exhorted, “sixthly and lastly, we approach the lesson to be learned. What is so rampant in the world today, as this hypocrisy, this wearing of the mask, the borrowed plume that Matthew warned against in the words of the text. The face is given man oft-times but to hide the soul. New doctrines come and go; men prate of new religion and new science; the traders on the world’s trend-to-believe make bargains in the market place. And who, of us here, dare say that some time in his life he has not played the hypocrite? Have all of us worn naught save these same garments, material and spiritual, that we stand in now? It is the one besetting sin; the cancer that is eating wholesome candor from the world. Here, in the open air, under the clear sky, you think the wearing of the mask can be but rarely. You err; the mask is worn, in city or in country. Look to your hearts and find the answer there. Look—” His voice roared up against the rafters, so that there was a quick shuffling heard from the rear bench, and the preacher’s straining eyes caught the shine of Billy’s amazement, and to himself he actually thanked God! “Look—deep in to your hearts!”

  With something like a sob in his breath, the preacher turned his face to the East. “And now to the Father” muttered his voice. With the suspense over, the ring of eloquence was no longer necessary.

  Then he turned to the table, looking apparently heavenwards, actually at Billy. As the latter lumbered up the aisle, the preacher droned in his monotone, standing with his hands folded in front of him.

  “Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works.”

  With these well-known texts, he proceeded the while Billy passed the wooden plate nervously up and down the pews. The envelopes containing the contributions fell with a shuffling sound of paper upon paper. There were no casuals in this congregation; the actual sight of coin was hardly ever obtruded.

  At last the collection was over. The plate, heaped up with white riches, stood beside the railing of the chancel. The preacher raced to the benediction.

  After that, with a change in his voice, he came forward a step, and said:

  “If the congregation will wait a few moments, I shall be glad to meet the individual members of it personally.”

  Those who watched him closely always declared that he had the most winning smile they had ever seen.

  Then, with a quick snatch of the collection plate he hurried into the vestry. Into a corner went the surplice.

  “Thank the Lord,” he whispered to himself, “that this stuff’s all folded in paper. Makes less noise.” He slipped the money into a handkerchief and opened the outer door cautiously.

  Another second or two and the Travis buggy was whirling over the highway to the mountains, a cloud of dust concealing it.

  In the church the congregation awaited their meeting with one of the most eloquent preachers they had heard in many a day.

  —

  Several hours later, after a forced march through cedar brush that hid all tracks impenetrably, Lingo Dan and Billy stopped beside a mountain spring.

  Spreading the contribution envelopes out on the cool rocks in the shadow of the hill that held the spring, Lingo Dan proceeded to open them, to count the gains from their adventure.

  Billy got up with an oath.

  Lingo Dan lay back on his back and roared with laughter. When he had breath enough, he said: “But Billy, do you count the sensation as nothing?”

  Every contribution was a check.

  Rogue: Napoleon Prince

  The Eyes of the Countess Gerda

  MAY EDGINTON

  A NAME THAT RARELY RESONATES for readers of mystery fiction is May Edginton, the nom de plume of May Helen Marion Edginton Bailey (1883–1957), though she was a prolific writer of romances and has a connection to the American musical theater of perhaps greater import.

  As H. M. Edginton, she wrote a novel, Oh! James! (1914), which inspired the 1919 stage play My Lady Friends, which lives in infamy in Boston because the owner of the Boston Red Sox sold Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees to finance it. The play in turn was the basis for the musical No, No, Nanette (1924), which, continuing to recycle the story, was adapted for film in 1930 and 1940 before again becoming a hit when it was revived on Broadway in 1971.

  Among the many films based on her stories, novels, and plays were The Prude’s Fall (1924), a silent film written by Alfred Hitchcock, who also was the assistant director; Secrets (1933), starring Mary Pickford, based on Edginton’s play of the same title; and Adventure in Manhattan (1936), starring Jean Arthur, based on her story “Purple and Fine Linen.”

  The central character in The Adventures of Napoleon Prince (1912) has help, in the best tradition of Raffles, with his sidekick, Bunny, and, on the other side of
the legal fence, Sherlock Holmes with his Watson. Aiding Prince in his nefarious schemes are his beautiful and devoted Gerda, described as his sister, and Dapper, his discreet and faithful servant.

  “The Eyes of the Countess Gerda” was originally published in The Adventures of Napoleon Prince (New York, Cassell, 1912).

  THE EYES OF THE COUNTESS GERDA

  May Edginton

  AMONG THE NEW TENANTS in the new block of very desirable flats not far from Victoria were a lady, young, charming and alone; a semi-paralytic man of any age from thirty to forty, accompanied by a pretty sister; and a tall, bronzed young man, who had apparently nothing more serious to do than to organise beautifully his bachelor housekeeping. The first named lady had been installed in Flat 24 for a month when the invalid and his sister moved into No. 20 of the flats below; the bronzed young man entered into possession of No. 23 a few days after the occupation of No. 20.

  The young man, whose name, as testified by the indicator in the vestibule, was Mr. John Luck, had not been there many days before he made the acquaintance of the invalid and his sister. It was begun in quite an accidental fashion, as the hall porters saw—the trio most obviously never having met before—and it progressed casually and as politeness demanded, beneath the eyes of the same porters and a lift attendant of inquiring mind—just a “Good-morning, again!” or “Fine weather!” or “Beastly day!” and the like. A few days of these vestibule meetings resulted in the discussion of a camera which the invalid man was taking into the Green Park for the purpose of snapshotting winter scenes. It appeared Mr. John Luck knew a good deal of that make of camera; the invalid—Mr. Napoleon Prince, as testified by the indicator—had not used it before.

  “You were just going out?” said the little paralytic pleasantly. “Only for a walk? Walk our way, won’t you, for a few minutes, and go on telling me about this machine?”

  So that Mr. John Luck walked out by the chair of Mr. Napoleon Prince, which he wheeled himself, and by the side of the very pretty girl, his sister. All of which was seen and observed by the porters and the lift-man.

  “If people of our profession only realised, Johnnie,” the little man in the chair observed as they passed out of the quadrangle, “what a deal depends on these seeming trivialities, there would be more genius rewarded, and fewer police triumphs.”

  “We have nothing definite in view, Nap?” the young man hazarded.

  “No, no!” Napoleon replied. “Why should we? We are gourmets, not gourmands. We have enough for the present, n’est-ce pas, mes enfants?”

  “Let’s be good for a while, Nap,” said the girl.

  “You hear that, Luck,” said Napoleon, smiling. “Mary tells us to be good. We will settle down for a few months, and be beneficent citizens, then. We’ll do the theatres, and you shall take Mary to the races, and we will make the acquaintance of our neighbours, and entertain them innocently.”

  “Hurrah!” cried Mary. She wore a high-waisted coat of clinging lines, furs, and a wide hat, and she looked exquisite.

  Johnnie Luck walked with freer step.

  “Good!” he agreed. “Very good!”

  “I believe,” said Napoleon, glancing at them, one on either side of him, as he wheeled along past Buckingham Palace, “that you are both wretchedly respectable at bottom.” They turned into the Green Park. “Leave me to run about and take my photographs, and philosophise on the profits of respectability, while you two take the brisk exercise that is good for you, and philosophise on—anything you like.”

  There was the faintest trace of a smile—a little grim or wistful—on his large pale face as he steered away from them. They walked about the Park for an hour, seeing nobody but each other, hearing nothing but their own low-toned talk, and forgetting entirely the size of the world—theirs being populated by two—until running wheels beside them brought them back to realisation of Napoleon.

  “I am sorry,” said he, “but I have used all my plates, and want my lunch. Johnnie, our acquaintance has ripened sufficiently, I imagine, for me to ask you to share the lunch.”

  The trio went home, and lunched together in the Princes’ dining-room. After the meal:

  “Mary is going to shop,” said Napoleon. “She is going to the Stores, because it is so respectable. But you, Johnnie—”

  Johnnie Luck looked hopefully at Mary, who, in the sweetest of frocks à la Joséphine, was standing to warm one small slippered foot at the fire.

  “Don’t take him with you, Mary,” said Napoleon whimsically. “I want someone to talk to.” Adding: “And you don’t know him well enough, either.”

  She laughed, told Luck to stay, and left them.

  “Get cigars, Johnnie,” said the little man, “draw up that chair, put your feet on the mantelpiece—because it must be such a fine thing to be able to do—and make yourself generally comfortable.”

  They smoked at ease, each looking into the fire silently. Presently:

  “Like your place, Johnnie? I’ve never asked.”

  “All right, thanks.”

  “I mentioned you should take number twenty-three or twenty-four. Better not to be on the same floor, you see.”

  “I see. Oh! yes, these little cautions are worth observing, of course. Number twenty-four was taken before we came, you know.”

  “So I suppose,” said Napoleon, looking into the fire. A quarter of an hour ticked by before he roused himself to say anything further. Then it was, gently:

  “Johnnie, you’re seeing something in the fire, ain’t you, old man? Don’t be ashamed to be sentimental; be proud of it. I was seeing much the same sort of thing, I guess.”

  John Luck had seen the Joséphine girl’s little face, of course, gleaming up at him, but—

  “You!” he said, confounded, to Napoleon. “You, Nap!”

  “Yes, I,” said Napoleon, with a snap, looking up. “I’ve got a man’s heart, I suppose, if I’ve only got half his body. And at that time, you see, I was whole. It was seven years ago, nearly.”

  Luck nodded, and looked at him in a man’s silence of sympathy.

  “It was the only time I’ve ever been done, Johnnie,” said the little man. “Done, and not got my own back. You see, it was a woman. Like to hear? I’d like to tell you. I was travelling in Italy for the Cosmopolitans’ gang I’ve told you about, and we’d got a great scoop on. I was their smartest man, and they gave the chief part to me. Well, I was in the Opera House in Florence one night, when I saw one woman among all the others. It was a crowded house—Royalty there—but after I’d looked at her I didn’t see much else—you know. She was young and dark, with marvellous eyes; dressed in white with a scarlet cloak. She was with a man, and they sat close to the orchestra. I managed to follow them out, and to see her close. My word, Johnnie, magnificent! But, I thought, not happy. She had no gloves on, and there was no wedding ring—so she was, that far, free. I went home and dressed. Next morning— Ever been in Italy, Johnnie?”

  Luck shook his head.

  “Such mornings as you get!” said Napoleon. “It was spring, I remember, about March— Ever read poetry, Johnnie?

  ‘….white and wide,

  Washed by the morning’s water-gold,

  Florence lay out on the mountain side.’ ”

  The little man’s voice caressed the words melodiously. He went on:

  “I met her in the square, riding down to the river. I kept her in sight all the morning, and followed her when she rode at a foot pace back to an hotel. So I learned her address. I forgot all about the Cosmopolitans, and all that sort of truck. There seemed only one thing that mattered….She was evidently staying at the hotel. I learned her name: the Countess Gerda di Veletto. I wrote to her, signing myself: ‘A very mad Englishman,’ and giving an address. Johnnie, boy, that same evening a page from the hotel brought me an answer. I have it here in my letter case. I’ve always carried it. Like to see it? Because I’d like to show it to you.”

  The folded sheet that he pulled out was worn almost to tatte
rs at the creases. Johnnie Luck, feeling rather foolish and rather intrusive, read:

  My Dear Stranger,

  Your tribute pleased me. Did you suppose it would not? Don’t you know that a woman can never receive too many kind words? Where did you sit in the Opera House? And I wonder if I saw you as you saw me? I do not think it, because, if so—— But I do not think I had better write what I was going to write. It would not be wise. I only want to thank you for the pleasure of your assurances, which come to me in a time of deep trouble and anxiety. And although I have never met—and never shall meet—my very mad Englishman, I am pleased to sign myself,

  His friend,

  Gerda di Veletto.

  Luck passed this back in silence, and Napoleon returned it to the letter case, and thence to his inside breast pocket. He went on evenly.

  “Johnnie, by that time I was loving her as I never loved a woman before, and never shall again. Her ‘deep trouble and anxiety’ gave me thought. I wrote her, crazed. Could I do something? Might her mad Englishman meet her at any hour and any place? Any way, would she command him? She wrote back that she could not see me that evening, as a friend would be dining with her. A friend? Who was this ‘friend’? I got half mad with jealousy, and watched the hotel, as if I could pick out her visitor from the crowds. But when I saw the man who had been with her at the Opera go in, I knew that I had picked him out.

  “I went home and wrote to her again. I begged her to make an appointment with me, let me do something for her if I could. She answered at once, as before, saying that I could call the next day, but she could see nobody till then. She was at her wits’ end to escape from some trouble. I read a good deal between the lines of that letter, as she meant me to do. She knew how to leave room between the lines—which is an art, my dear Johnnie, of the highest order. I saw despair and fear in it. She said recklessly at the end that it was only monetary, her trouble. Five hundred pounds, after all, would clear her, and she was going to ask her friend for it that night. I remember phrases such as: ‘I’m not that kind of woman, either, you very mad Englishman….It goes cruelly hard…but there! he will be only too eager to give, as it will be only too bitter for me to take.’ And then, with a sort of sudden return to formality, she added that she would be pleased to give me a few minutes’ interview the next day.