Getting Frieda evicted was like extracting a tick or a chigger. Belton tried everything. There was a vast amount of coal in the cellar and he ordered his servants to bum it all in a week. When he failed to sweat out Frieda, he gave orders that the furnaces were to be shut down, though the weather was now bitter cold. He also took away all the servants.
It was a midwinter before Frieda was frozen out. Then she made a flea-like hop into the Fifth Avenue home.
Meanwhile, the trial was quietly held in obscurity. The Dane, the Leipziger and the butler from Paris testified, and the court “took the case under advisement”—a legal expression for “put it in cold storage.”
And now Fate intervened with two swift strokes that no one could have foreseen and no author would be unscrupulous enough to ask a reader to believe.
The long series of shocks and the blows to his pride and his affections had not only broken Belton’s heart but worn it out. Suddenly and quietly he died.
The indomitable Frieda claimed to be his widow and put up such a bluff and made such threats of publicity that Belton’s children by his first marriage gave her half a million dollars to withdraw her claim to Belton’s name and wealth.
She consented. But Frieda, too, had lived under a strain that would have crushed or paralyzed a normal being. She enjoyed her ill-got gains for just two weeks. Then pneumonia got her and this time, when her obituary appeared in the advertisements, it was for keeps. The judge probably still has the case “under advisement.”
And now, by what Thomas Hardy would have called one of “life’s little ironies”—though this was a pretty big irony— Frieda’s two neglected brothers and her forgotten sister suddenly had half a million dollars to divide among them. What evil or good that unearned fortune did to them was none of Ray’s business—or ours.
If this story had been imagined and written by a good writer of mystery stories, he would never have dared do to his characters what real life did to them. But since this is a chronicle of fact, it seems a pity not to tell Frieda’s real name and give her credit for the resourcefulness and the courage that carried her so far from the shabby butcher shop where her father carved meat while she carved golden destinies for herself.
The famous—or infamous—Betty Jumel—of Jumel’s Mansion—started a little lower, went a little farther, and lived a good deal longer and will five forever in the history of America’s wily women. But to give Frieda’s real name to posterity would not only undo all the benefits of Ray Schindler’s skill and toil, but would cause unnecessary harm to the good name of an honorable family. Frieda did enough to them while she lived. Let them—and her—rest in peace.
7.
CINEMA SHAKEDOWN
Successful criminals keep one jump ahead of crime-detection; and unsuccessful ones try to. The motion picture had hardly begun its world-shaking career when swindlers swarmed to it as a new weapon.
This story dates back to the time when New York and New Jersey were the scene of the growing pains of what was to become one of the major industries and recreations of mankind. At that time Hollywood did not envelop the whole motion picture spirit. Hollywood was still a rural suburb of little Los Angeles. The studios, such as they were, were established in upper New York City on Long Island and across the Hudson on the New Jersey Palisades.
Since the beginning of the world, mad moralists have been laying the blame for the eternal wickednesses of the world on the latest novelty in costume, amusement, mechanism or entertainment. At one time it was the sofa; at another the horse and buggy; then the bicycle, the automobile, corsets, short skirts, makeup, cigarettes, newspapers, novels, the theater, the motion picture. Of late television has been attracting the attention of the frenzied blamers. But the most modern sins are the same old primeval sins with a slight change of costume and dialect.
So, in this instance, the then very modern motion picture just happened to be a handy instrument for the extortion of hush-money. And extortion under threat of exposure is as old as man and woman.
There was certainly nothing novel in the fact that a certain wealthy man had an affair with a young woman who was not his wife. He was not the first, nor the millionth, man to squander money and jewelry on his fair companion, and to travel with her. And, rash as he was, he did not invent the silly risk of trying to keep secret from his family what was no secret to innumerable other people.
Well, this man—call him Adamson to indicate the antiquity of his folly—and this young woman—called her Lilith, to indicate the antiquity of her most ancient profession— used to travel about together. Adamson lived in the midwest, but he had occasion to make an annual business trip to Europe. His wife stayed at home to keep house for the family, and Lilith went abroad to keep the husband company.
Some men buy their wives jewelry as an atonement for their outside affairs, and some men buy jewelry as an inducement for those outsiders. This Adamson bought his Lilith gleaming souvenirs of every one of those trips abroad. She smuggled them in without paying any duty. She had a rather fight notion of duties.
This went on for years and years till finally even the U. S. Customs Department took notice. When one of its detectives, Bill Nye, by name, was assigned to the case, he unearthed a startling total of loot. So Adamson was arrested and compelled to pay one of the largest fines ever imposed on a smuggler. This exploded in the headlines.
Adamson promptly lost his taste both for headlines and for Lilith, and he was willing to call it quits. His wife and family forgave him on condition that the affair ended there.
But Lilith was not one of those whom cruel men discard and toss overboard into oblivion. She was a capitalist as well as he was, and she was eager to capitalize on the splendor of her jewels twice-paid-for. She had ambitions for a stage career and there were managers who would have been glad to take advantage of all the glowing publicity at her command. She thought also that her life-story would make a very interesting serial and a best seller.
But Adamson was sick enough of having to lick his wounds; he had no desire to advertise them. So he paid a big firm of lawyers to buy her off. They drew up a really binding agreement by which she agreed to keep his relations with her absolutely quiet in return for an annual fortune. He took a 99-year lease on her silence and paid a high rental for it.
She kept her part of the bargain for several years. But love will find a way. She cast her lot with an enterprising young man who had entered the new field of writing suddenly opened by the infant industry whose father was the kinetoscope and whose nursery was the nickelodeon.
But this young scriptwright who had fallen in with Lilith had dreams of his own. She told him her story, of course, and he saw in it possibilities for fortune far beyond the shabby wages of the scenarists of that day. He said that the big money would come not from expression but suppression.
If that man Adamson would pay Lilith a handsome yearly income for just keeping her lovely mouth shut and her face out of the newspapers, what wouldn’t Adamson pay to keep her story—and his—off the screen, which was just dazzling the world by the vast and vaster multitudes being drawn to the vast and vaster movie palaces?
This script-writer was as wise as he was wicked. Call him by the name of an ancient highwayman, Claude Duval. He realized that it would be stupid just to go to Adamson and say:
“I am going to write the story of Lilith and you as a scenario, unless you pay me a lot of money.”
Adamson would either beg him off at prevailing literary rates, or have him jugged as a blackmailer. So Duval built a structure worthy of the later Hollywood word “colossal.”
He wrote a scenario so closely illustrating the romance of Adamson and Lilith and the Customs House and the annual retainer that everybody would have recognized Adamson as the leading character, no matter what name was given him on the screen.
Duval did not stop there. He pretended to have unlimited backing for the production, and he signed contracts with several of the most prominent actors of the day.
No less personages than William S. Hart and Bert Lytell were engaged for the leads, and equally prominent women stars were engaged. The natural stipulation was, of course, that salaries would begin as soon as the shooting began. Duval hoped that the first day of shooting would be never.
But he did not stop there. He went to one of the most glitteringly high-priced directors, Herbert Brenon, and signed him up at his own price.
Motion picture trade-magazines were already springing up, so Duval wrote out a sketch of his plot and had it printed in one of them, along with the names and pictures of the galaxy of stars he had engaged. Since the Adamsons were not likely to read the trade-magazine, Duval placed clippings of the article in a number of envelopes carrying no hint of his name or address or purpose.
He sent these clippings to all the members of the Adamson family and to the firm of lawyers that had drawn up the contract pledging Lilith to silence. A hasty glance at the outlines of the plot was enough to remind them all of those horrible headlines. They realized that Lilith had found a way to increase her income without breaking her vow of silence. Wasn’t the story to appear only in the silent pictures? Adamson and his lawyers could see that the whole affair smelled of blackmail to high heaven—or low hell.
So they called in Schindler.
And Ray began to construct a little scenario of his own. Talk of “Hamlet” containing a play within a play! Before Duval got through with the scenario he had written around Adamson, he learned that a cleverer hand had written a scenario around the man who had written a scenario around a man.
First Ray did a bit of reconnaissance. He soon learned that Duval was living with Lilith, and doubtless on the money she extorted from Adamson. For Duval had neither money of his own nor backing enough to finance anything.
Next Ray approached him as an agent of Adamson and flatly offered to buy Duval off if terms could be agreed on.
Duval was almost prophetic, for he named a sum that was appalling in those days, and would but yesterday have kept a mediocre screenwriter comfortable for half a year.
Ray said he would talk it over with his clients. He had already proved that Duval was only a blackmailer.
Next, Ray called on Herbert Brenon, whom he had never met and whom he found directing a Russian picture, “The Fall of the Romanoffs.” It was as hot and humid as only New York can be in mid-July, but the poor actors were toiling in an imitation Russian street piled high with imitation snow. The furs they wore were not imitation and their problem was to keep their sweat from cascading over the pelts in which they were buried.
Ray stood mopping his brow and marvelling at the actors martyrized for art’s sake. When the shot was ended and the company dismissed for a change to even heavier costumes, Ray asked Herbert Brenon for a few words.
That most amiable and honest of men granted the request with a smile. It did not take Ray long to explain what Duval was up to and what Brenon was signed up to. As soon as he realized his part in Duval’s scheme of extortion, Herbert put on a scene that would have made Czar Boris Godunov envious. When he had calmed down a little he cheerfully consented to play a leading role in Ray’s scenario based on a scenario.
When Ray had fitted Herbert’s office up neatly and completely with dictographs, and arranged for overhearing and recording the ensuing parleys, Herbert invited Duval in for a conference. Then he did his stuff as an actor and read lines to this general effect:
“I was reading over your scenario and I’ve just discovered that it bears a striking resemblance to the—the—oh, the Adamson case that made so much noise some years ago. Had you noticed it?”
Duval smiled and winked and murmured:
“We planned it that way.”
“But,” Herbert protested, “they might object to having that old family scandal revived. They might sue us for heavy damages.”
While Duval grinned on like a cat about to eat a canary, Herbert forced his innocent Irish features into as much of a crafty smile as he could manage and laughed:
“Perhaps they would pay us a handsome sum not to make the film at all. Had you thought of that? Oh, I see you have.”
He tried to substitute a look of greedy admiration, for the loathing he felt and Duval felt his ambitions soaring. Feeling sure that in Brenon he had found a zesty collaborator, he said:
“We planned it that way, me and the little woman, Lilith. But it occurs to me that the bigger investment we can show beside the expectation of profit, the bigger sum we can shake out of that old plutocrat. So I was just thinking—if I tear up your contract and sign a new one with you for double the present figure, it would make a better showing, especially when we add to it the salaries of all the actors and actresses engaged, and the art-directors, set-builders, lightmen, crewmen, costumers and what not. We’ll make up a grand total that will make that old capitalistic rake feel sorry he ever treated poor Lilith so mean. Of course, I’ll take good care of you for going along with us.”
Herbert promised to go along with him and suggested another conference that night to settle all the fine points. He suggested also that it might be well to bring Lilith along since she had really inspired the whole idea and it would be well to keep her satisfied that she was not being double-crossed by her new partners.
The purpose of this was, of course, to get Lilith involved and the whole plot recorded in its ugliest details.
That night Lilith and Duval and Herbert met in Brenon’s office. Duval and Lilith were so delighted with their conspiring that they never thought to wonder if they could be conspired against. It never occurred to them to look into the adjoining room, where Ray and a member of the Adamson family and the whole firm of lawyers sat in silence and listened to every word that was said.
Lilith, the pretty bloodsucker, was elated at the golden opportunity to threaten with bankruptcy and shame the fellow-sinner who had already heaped jewels and riches on her. Duval gloated over his skill in both plagiarizing his plot from Adamson and making his victim buy his own story. The vile mistress and the viler man whom she was keeping were so proud of their infamy that they needed little coaching from Herbert to tell the whole story over and over and repeat the foul purpose of their collaboration.
While they were waxing gleeful over the look in old Adamson’s eyes and his lawyers’ eyes when they saw the full amount of the bill they’d have to pay, the door opened and in walked a little procession. Ray Schindler, one of the Adamsons, and the lawyers.
The only reward Herbert got out of it was when Duval accused him of being a double-crosser. That gave the Hibernian Herbert a good excuse for vaulting over his desk and presenting Duval with a pair of lovely black eyes for imagining that Herbert could have really meant to take part in the business.
The first thing Ray had to do was to rescue Duval from the director and lift him off the floor. The baffled blackmailers were so crushed by the suddenness with which their castle in Spain had fallen over on them, that they waited in meek terror while the lawyers drew up a full confession for them to sign.
Poor Lilith even consented to give up her annual stipend for silence. Menaced now with a long prison term she was glad to be given her liberty at all.
She and Duval departed into the outer darkness. All they had now was each other. And with their knowledge of each other and all that crooked money vanished before it could be grasped, what a loving couple they must have been! There’s quite a story there, a romance of a Gorki sort, if anyone wanted to go underground to get it. That girl’s memories must have been quite a treasure of a sort.
As for the actors and actresses and all the others who had signed contracts with the great Duval, it is doubtful that they ever knew what was going on or had gone on. When they received word that the production was called off, they doubtless took it as just another of those things. The Adamson case was probably the most successful silent picture that was never done.
8.
BLACKMAIL AS AN INDUSTRY
Few human beings have lived long without c
ommitting some sin or folly that they would almost rather die than have known. There’s the story of the man who said: “There isn’t anybody on earth who hasn’t something in his past that would ruin him if it were published.”
“Oh, I can’t believe that,” said an optimistic friend. “There must be lots of people who have led faultless lives.”
“Maybe so, maybe so,” said the cynic. “But the best man I ever knew was old Bishop Coldwell of our town. And just for a test of my theory we sent him an anonymous telegram simply saying, ’All is discovered.’ ”
“Yes? And what did the good Bishop do about it?”
“Nobody knows. He’s never been seen since.”
On the other hand there is the famous story of the Duke of Wellington.
According to the legend, he wrote some indiscreet letters to a young woman and when he withdrew his financial support she thought she might turn a dishonest penny by giving them to the press. The Iron Duke made the best answer one can make to such a blackmail. He answered her threat with his usual succinctness. He said:
“Publish and be damned!”
But then not everybody is as unmarried as the old hero of Waterloo was. Not everybody is as used as he was to losing battles and winning unpopularity. He had been hooted in the street and forced to put iron shutters on his windows. It is not everybody who can face odium with a Wellingtonian indifference.
Blackmail is a terrible weapon to aim at people who have yielded to temptation or have been lured into ambushes where they have committed what are mildly called “indiscretions.”
Some people commit suicide to escape exposure. Some commit murder. Others bankrupt themselves. Once the first blackmail is paid, the road to ruin has been entered; for a blackmailer’s promises are worthless and there is no end to the extortion. If the exposure is for the public good or for the destruction of a good reputation that is undeserved, the person in possession of the knowledge should go to the police with it, or to the press. But the victim of blackmail rarely dares to visit the police with the news of the threat because it then becomes the duty of the police to act upon the information publicly.
The Complete Detective Page 14