The Amazing Web

by Harry Stephen Keeler

  Chalmers, standing in the doorway, stared out at them. The larger of the two plain-clothes men was the first to speak.

  “Mr. Archibald Chalmers I’m talkin’ to, am I?”

  “The same,” said Chalmers.

  “I’ll have to ask you to step down to detective headquarters with us.”

  The man in the dressing-gown, with his hand still on the door-knob, said nothing for a few seconds. At length he spoke, biting off his words with clear-cut enunciations: “Just what is wanted of me down there, please?”

  “Get your clothes on,” growled the plain-clothes man who had been the first to speak, “and don’t bother us with any questions. Taxi’s waiting downstairs.”

  Archibald Chalmers swung open the door of his bachelor apartment and snapping on the lights in a small parlour, beckoned the four men to take seats.

  “If you gentlemen will excuse me till I dress,” the young clubman announced politely, “I’ll be with you in about ten minutes.”

  The spokesman of the delegation from the Chicago detective bureau arose with a short hard laugh. “Hope you won’t mind, but I’ll just sit with you while you dress. Inspector Krenway’s orders.”

  A shade of extreme annoyance swept over Chalmers’ clean-cut, aristocratic face. Then he nodded his red thatched head.

  “Very well,” was all he said, and he marched into his bedroom, followed by the tall plain-clothes man.

  On a neat, black-painted iron cot close to a cheerful fireplace built in one of the walls of the bedroom, and still filled with the glowing embers of a coal fire, lay a young fellow of about Chalmers’ own age — twenty-five or perhaps twenty-six — with yellow hair and the high cheek-bones that mark the Swede or Norwegian. At one end of the cot, not far from his elbow, stood a tiny mahogany taborette carrying a glass of water, a tea-spoon and a bottle of medicine.

  “Sorry to wake you up, Oscar,” said Chalmers quietly, “but I’ve got to go down to police headquarters at once.” He turned to the man who had accompanied him. “Have a chair, my man. This is my valet. Just recovering from a serious illness.” And with no further explanation of the odd circumstance of the presence of a man in master’s private-room he fell to dressing.

  The tiny gold clock on the chiffonier showed that not ten minutes had elapsed before the young clubman had dressed complete. Then, leading the way down the hall off the bedroom, followed by the plain-clothes man who had evidently been instructed not to let Chalmers out of his sight for a minute, he tapped on the door of a bedroom quite to the rear of the bachelor flat.

  An old lady with white hair, clad in a grey woolen nightgown, came to the open door. Her mouth, seamed with the lines of many years, fell as she saw Chalmers, dressed from head to feet, his overcoat thrown over his arm, accompanied by the bull-necked man.

  “Mrs. Morley, I’ve been summoned to police headquarters at once. Please take charge of things, and if Oscar wants anything while I’m gone, I’ll count on you to take care of him. The fire has gone down in the room. Better replenish it. Oscar’s awake, by the way. Now don’t be alarmed. I ought to be back here in a couple of hours, I think.”

  “What’s the trouble, Mr. Chalmers?” quavered the white-haired old housekeeper.

  “I haven’t been informed,” said her employer dryly. But he did not smile, and in his eyes was a troubled look. He turned to the man near him. “Well — let’s go.”

  Stopping at the parlour, they beckoned to the other three waiting police officers, and closing the door behind them on a bachelor apartment containing a wide-awake valet and a much disturbed old lady housekeeper, every one of its six rooms ablaze with light, they tramped down the stairs of that exclusive building and out to a taxicab waiting silently at the curb.

  The drive through the silent streets of the city was made with no conversation on the part of anyone. At length the machine drew whiningly up in front of the dingy old building at the mouth of the La Salle Street tunnel which for years uncountable had housed Chicago’s detective headquarters.

  Inside, Chalmers made his way undecidedly along, guided a bit at different turns and stairways by one or the other of the detectives at each side of him. At a door the glazed glass of which bore the painted letters “Inspector Krenway,” ablaze with lights and the buzz of conversation at this quiet hour of the morning, they stopped, and the man at Chalmers’ right opened it without knocking.

  A roomful of men met their gaze. A good many of the occupants were evidently reporters, for their cameras and notebooks lay around them. In the centre, at a flat-top desk littered with papers and photographs of various sorts, sat a man of about thirty-six years of age, with black hair, flecked with iron-grey, keen, piercing ferrety black eyes, and an expression on his smoothly shaved face which was that of the sour, disappointed individual in life. He was in his shirt-sleeves.

  “Here’s Chalmers, Chief Krenway,” said the spokesman of the plain-clothes men.

  He of the thin lips and the grey-flecked black hair shoved an empty wooden chair out from his desk, by means of his foot. “Sit down, Chalmers,” he said in a voice that held a suspiciously over-friendly note in it.

  The young clubman sat down on the proffered seat.

  “Chalmers, why did you kill Rupert van Slyke to-night?”

  Archibald Chalmers answered but five words.

  “So Van’s dead, is he?”

  “You didn’t know it, eh?” said the chief sarcastically. “Come Chalmers, be sensible. We’ve got the goods on you. What was the reason?”

  “I see,” remarked Chalmers easily, “that you have me here as a murder suspect. Well, I have nothing whatever to say until I consult my attorney.”

  “Where’d you spend the night?” barked Krenway suddenly.

  Chalmers made no reply for a full minute. He looked at Krenway through cautious eyes. “In my rooms.”

  “Th’ hell you did,” snapped Krenway. “Not around ten o’clock, you didn’t. You spent that time putting a bullet into van Slyke’s brain. But why’d you do it, Chalmers? Why’d you do it?” He leaned over. “Now listen, man. We got that letter you wrote him. They’ve got the servant you grappled with, over at the 32nd Precinct station now. In other words, Chalmers, we’ve got you dead to rights. It’s only three in the morning now. You pulled that stunt at ten bells Only five hours elapsed. If we’ve got it on you this much before dawn, how much’ll we have on you by to-morrow morning, by to-morrow noon, by to-morrow night, eh? Answer me that?”

  “Evidently you’ve brought me up here to third-degre me. You’ve come out point-blank with the accusation that I killed Rupert van Slyke. I might as well tell you now that I wasn’t born yesterday. You can’t third-degree me or anyone else in this year 1928. I’ll show you up before the papers and have your job as well if you try any such stunts as that. Now I’ll let you ask me one question, and that’s all. After that, I want a chance to call a lawyer and I want it damn quick.”

  “Well, I’ll ask you the one question,” snarled Krenway savagely. “And here’s the question. Did you or didn’t you kill van Slyke to-night?”

  “And here’s my answer,” replied Chalmers with a sneer in his voice. “If I had killed him, would I tell you anything else but no? Would I put myself in your electric chair? And if I hadn’t killed him, would I say anything but no? My answer in either case would be no. What else could it be? So here’s my reply to your question. N — O, no. Get it? You are a fool, Inspector Krenway, if I may be allowed the comment, for my answer isn’t worth a tinker’s damn. Take it for what it’s worth to you, though.” His eyes turned to a telephone across the room. “I want to call my lawyer, or the British Consul.”

  Krenway leaned back in his swivel chair. Through half-closed eyes, smouldering with rage, he surveyed Archibald Chalmers. “British subject, eh? So!” Then he turned to the two men who had brought him in. “We’ll hold him all night and book him in the morning for preliminary hearing. Send out no messages to any lawyers or British Consuls either until after 8
a.m.” He turned on Chalmers. “If you’d been a little more civil, my friend, you’d have gotten — ” He broke off, and nodded curtly to the tall plain-clothes man who had accompanied Chalmers from the Drexel Boulevard flat. “Take him downstairs and lock him up.” He turned to the reporters. “I guess that’s all for you boys to-night. Sorry.”

  Chalmers arose with dignity, and, without even a backward look at the man at the flat-top desk, followed the men who had taken him from his warm bedroom, miles away. Down they went, past corridors, doors, little stairways, and to the basement, where a sleepy night lock-up keeper searched him, removed from his pockets every bit of money and papers, unlocked the barred door of a corridor of cells and led the way to one of the row, neatly whitewashed, furnished only with a hardwood bench, and cut off by a strong iron-barred door.

  As Chalmers stepped in the cell, and the door banged behind him, he gave one message to the night lock-up keeper. “Please call my attorney, Mr. James F. Melford, as soon as you can. West Washington Boulevard until business hours. The Rookery Building after that. Keep a five-dollar bill out of my change for the service. And see that I get some decent breakfast in this hole.” And laying out his silk-lined overcoat on the single bench the cell contained, he prepared himself for a long night.

  With the arrival of daylight came a warm breakfast such as was probably never before served to a prisoner in that lock-up, borne on a tray by the old lock-up keeper, whose attitude, now that five-dollar bills had been mentioned, had changed appreciably.

  “Did you call Attorney Melford?” was Chalmers’ first question.

  “We had orders not to call him until morning. State’s attorney’s directions, Mr. Chalmers, on night arrests. Too many habeas corpus proceedings, you see, without the State being represented.” He paused in the doorway. “But I’m going to call him in a half-hour, sir.”

  At eight-thirty came Melford, a tall, white-haired man of about fifty-three, with gentlemanly bearing and rather mild demeanour. For years he had been the family lawyer in America of Chalmers and of Chalmers’ father.

  “I’m sorry, boy, to hear the news,” was his greeting, as soon as he was ushered into the cell and they were alone.

  “What’s in the papers?” was Chalmers’ hasty and precipitate retort.

  “They’ve reproduced your letter to van Slyke. He was killed at ten o’clock last night, in his bedroom, and the murderer escaped down the front stairway of his home, grappling with the house servant. He — he had red hair, Archie,” Melford added reluctantly.

  “I see,” said Chalmers. He paused, biting his lips. “Mr. Melford, I called you down here, not to look out for my interests, but to get some information from you on one point. What I want now is the name of a crack criminal lawyer right in this town, one that you can personally recommend. One that won’t hold me up, just because I happen to be mentioned in Town Tattle and the Clubman occasionally: for you know as well as I, how I’m fixed on the cursed money question.”

  Melford thought. “Archie, I don’t know how badly you’re entangled in this mess, but I want to see you protected the best I can. Now I suppose Fosdick, who doesn’t touch a case involving murder under 10,000 dollars cash down, is out of the question.”

  “Absolutely,” averred he of the red hair. “Absolutely. You know the money situation with me as well as I. With Uncle Peter holding on with grim earnestness to life — poor old boy — there’s no chances of any sum like that.”

  Melford proceeded to reflect upon the matter further. Of a sudden he spoke. “Have you any objections to a young man, Archie?”

  “None whatever if you say he’s a No. 1. But, Mr. Melford, he’s got to be a crack youngster.”

  “Then I feel I’ve got the man for you, Archie. I’ll give you his name and send for him myself if you say the word. Crosby is his name. David Crosby — just that, and I’m acquainted with him at the Bar Association. My brother Enos, in business out on the coast with my other brother Tom, as ship chandlers, wrote me to look him up here in Chicago when I got time. He came up to Chicago in the spring of 1924 from a little town down in Kansas. Took the examination for the Bar here in Illinois and passed it without much trouble. Must have made a good impression on Weidekamp — ”

  “Weidekamp, eh?” interrupted Chalmers. “Why, Weidekamp was the best criminal lawyer in the Middle West. Died last year, didn’t he?”

  Melford nodded. “Yes, the same one. Well, Weidekamp needed an assistant for detail work and took him in his office, and I’ve heard from other sources that for three years Crosby worked twenty hours a day for pretty near next to nothing. When Weidekamp died last year, Crosby opened up his own office. He cleared Stanley Talcott, that Board of Trade clerk, in the 50,000 dollar bond theft-case. The whole Bar were betting that Talcott was guilty, and when the jury voted not guilty we all figured that Crosby had slipped one over for sure that time. Then, two weeks later, came the news of the capture of Abe Ginsburg in Mexico City with the stolen bonds, and Ginsburg’s famous confession which showed that Crosby had simply cleared an innocent man after all. Incidentally, Archie, he got exactly 250 dollars for his work in that case and it was worth 2,500 dollars.”

  “He interests me,” was Chalmers’ prompt comment. “I was at Atlantic City when that Talcott case went on trial. This is the first I ever heard how it came out.” He paused. “What was the errand that brought him to your brother Enos out on the coast?”

  James Melford smiled a quizzical smile. “The man has had some kind of a love affair back in his life — I don’t know the exact details. Some girl that meant something to him sailed to Australia a number of years ago, and disappeared. It seems that some well-known crook died on a volcanic island in the South Seas some years back, according to a more or less incoherent bottle-message picked up, and among his loot, taken from the vessel he decamped from — the same vessel this girl of Crosby’s sailed on — was a handbag made of silver sixpences — her handbag, as Crosby happened to know. That handbag is still on this island. Circumstances cover up the location of this island, however, so much so that a search of the whole South Seas between the Equator and 20 degrees South would be necessary to find it. But the girl’s location — her hiding-place, so far as I can determine — as well as some new name she took because of some private misfortune, is engraved on the inside of the metal bag. It appears that all he’s working for is to get money enough to charter a ship and men, provisions and coal, and start out to comb the whole South Seas for that island, and incidentally for that handbag. A pretty wild project, isn’t it?”

  “Hm!” Chalmers studied on the matter for a moment. “Not so wild, though,” he commented. “It merely shows that he’s just a bit more of a fighter than the ordinary man. Mr. Melford, send Crosby over here. I want to talk money with him. I tell you this affair is going to go further than either you or I think.”

  Melford arose. “I’ll get him on the phone, Archie, in the outside corridor, and have him over here in a jiffy.” And with a warm handshake of his young client in matters of property, he summoned the lock-up keeper and left the cell.

  Crosby was evidently a live wire, for he arrived within fifteen minutes, and Chalmers surveyed the man he had chosen in the dark to defend his interests.

  The latter was undoubtedly young. He looked to be around thirty — no more. “Now, Mr. Crosby,” began Chalmers as soon as the other had introduced himself and was seated on the wooden bench at his side. “I’m in trouble. And I have a hunch that this affair is going to wind up in court before I’m done with it. First thing I want to know is what are your charges — your fees?”

  “Before we step to that,” said his visitor, “let me get the straight of the international status of affairs. Mr. Melford informs me you are a British subject. What is this British angle?”

  “Born in England,” said Chalmers laconically. “Father and mother legally separated early in my life. Father came to America and planted himself and his business interests here in Chicago. He never to
ok American citizenship, however. The English courts decreed that I should remain six months of the year with each parent. Formed the habit, therefore, of living in each country, and when my mother died I continued it automatically ever after. Never gave up my British citizenship, in honour of her memory, and also because it seemed as though London and Chicago were just a pair of suburbs to me — both an integral part of my life. Now to my vital question again. What are your charges or fees?”

  The answer was something different than Chalmers, accustomed to pay for things at the highest prices, expected. “My fee depends upon the size of your pocket-book, Mr. Chalmers. Suppose we say one half your yearly income would be my fee if this thing goes to trial? If that is satisfactory, write me an initial retainer of — say — 250 dollars, and we’ll proceed to talk things together.”

  Chalmers laughed a mirthless laugh.

  “Your proposition is more than satisfactory to me,” he said, “but lest you have any illusions about my financial status, I might say that my sole income is 6,000 dollars per year, payable quarterly, and paid me directly by my uncle, Peter Chalmers of Omaha, incidentally a naturalized American. Sort of a brotherly love agreement” — his voice grew a bit bitter — “between my father and him, that he was to take over the joint manufacturing interests and the rest of the Chalmers’ estate, and pay me the sum of 6,000 dollars per year until his own death, when of course I come into everything.”

  Crosby appeared to listen only with a mild degree of interest. “All right, my dear fellow. That puts my fee at 3,000 dollars then, doesn’t it? So you’re confident, are you, that you’re going to wind up in the American law courts, eh, before a jury?”