The Amazing Web

by Harry Stephen Keeler

  He left the door of the key-vault a mere sixteenth of an inch ajar so that he could later quickly replace the three “B” keys. A glance again at the street showed him that it was quite deserted. Boldly, a ledger under his arm, Eric marched into the vault room.

  Inside, however, he did not snap on the lights, lest someone — some busybody — on the outside might reason that Eric Worman was in the safety vault room too long a time. Instead he drew a small electric pocket light from his pocket and used it with equal success.

  The first box he tried was number 195. He inserted in its lock the duplicate of the “A” key which even now was in the possession of old Owen Harrison, whose extensive farm was two miles to the north of Winniston. After completing its turn he withdrew it and inserted the 1-9-5 — ? key. The front of the box fell open with a pleasing click, and, pocket light in hand, he drew out the interior coffer and looked within. A grunt of disgust escaped him, for one look at the contents showed him one lone paper on the top of which were to be seen the typewritten words: “This is my last will and testament.”

  He lost no time in slamming the box shut. Then he turned his attention to box 208, whose key was now in possession of old Mrs. Pawley, who lived in the mansion upon the hill. Again by the use of the two keys, he revealed a box which contained some miscellaneous papers yellow with age, some sort of a deed with a map attached, and a book containing war savings stamps. He locked it promptly up again, and now, rather discouraged, turned his attention to the third and last number 589.

  Number 589 caused a curse to rise to Eric’s lips. That was the box leased by the prosperous-looking stranger, Crosby by name, who had stopped off in Winniston some time back. And all it contained was a box of Pelton’s coughdrops, such as he himself often used Eric Worman was surely out of luck!

  He picked up the pasteboard carton, however, and examined it in the light of the torch. It was sealed on both ends. He shook it. Something rattled. He tore off the end and dumped the contents in his hand. And what he saw in the soft palm of that member caused a gasp to rise to Eric’s lips. Eight gems that scintillated and sparkled in the beam of white light like bits of fire.

  Eric Worman had always been a quick thinker. Only for a second did he stand pondering. Then he swept the stones into his side pocket, snapped out his light, and stepped back to his cashier’s cage, opening the door of the washroom as he went and turning on the light. At his desk he found what he wanted: a package of Pelton’s coughdrops. He smiled a mocking smile as he emptied them into his left-hand coat pocket and then, very accurately counted off eight into the cardboard carton whose ends he closed tightly. This much done, he again repaired to the vault room as he had before. Sixty seconds in the cabinet sufficed to seal neatly the ends of the box with the same red wax that had sealed its forerunner. And thirty more seconds sufficed to drop it back in the casket which protruded from the wall, and three to close that casket tight.

  This time, on emerging from the vault room, he walked boldly out and locked the great door securely behind him. He snapped off the lone light in the washroom which cast a little too much illumination in the general direction of Matthew Barr’s desk. Then, fortified by the increased gloom, he replaced the three “B” keys on their respective brass hooks, stripped from his hands the gloves which he stuffed into his pockets, and prepared to turn off the solitary light in his cage and set the electric burglar alarm system. Thus it was that within ten minutes after the coughdrop-box episode, Eric Worman, his soft rakish grey hat on his head, was stepping from the front door of the bank, now securely protected against thieves and such marauders!

  Down the long street of the little town he went, jauntily. Then up a side street he proceeded, and presently was turning in at a tiny cottage painted green, with broad shutters which hung outward from the windows. The widow Creely, with whom he boarded, greeted him as he came up on the porch.

  “Workin’ late to-night, were you, Eric?”

  “Yes, Mrs. Creely. Had to find one of old man Doddson’s errors to-night, so the bank’s books will be all clear to-morrow. I’m going up to St. Paul to-night on an unexpected business errand and want things all clear in the morning.”

  “Then ye won’t want yer breakfas’ in the mornin’, Eric?”

  “Not to-morrow, Mrs. Creely. But I’ll be with you at supper as usual.”

  He passed upstairs to his room, and by the light of his coal oil lamp carefully packed his bright garishly yellow suit-case with a number of things; a suit of dark blue serge clothing, from which every vestige of name and tailor had been carefully removed the night before; a shirt, newly bought and two collars, all without mark or maker upon them; a soft felt hat, black, with the name of the town’s general store removed from it as in the case of the suit. He also put in a comb and brush, a towel and soap, a suit of underwear, a pair of socks quite different in hue from the light tan ones he wore, and extra handkerchiefs, all of which articles bore not a single identifying mark, a safety razor, a pair of small scissors, three blades, a stoppered flask of soapy water and a black gunmetal watch. The stones in his pocket he tied coolly in the corner of his handkerchief and pinned this by a safety-pin to the lining of his trousers pocket. He inspected with a reflective look on his face a mysterious bulky green paper package, square in shape, and then made room for it in the sparse contents of the suitcase. He dug up from a bureau drawer a tied-up parcel and removing from this the brown paper and string-revealed a bright steel trowel which he insinuated gently down in the folds of the loosely packed blue serge suit.

  At last he emerged on the porch, and placing the bright yellow suitcase at his feet sat down on the top step for a while and gossiped with the widow Creely.

  “Hard lines, Mrs. Creely, to have to pile out of town, on a night when I ought to be in bed.” He yawned. “Got to be done, however.”

  He picked up his yellow suitcase and with it in his hand went down the street. As he reached the bank on his way to the depot, Eric stopped to fumble at his shoestring exactly where the pebbled side path which separated the bank and old man Hoskin’s store intersected the sidewalk. He saw as he fumbled that the street was quite deserted. Back he slipped in the corridor-like space to the barred side window which looked out upon it. In a trice he had taken down from the eaves above it his four bulky packages of money, had silently opened the suitcase and had jammed them deep into it and closed the cover tight upon them. A second later he had emerged and was walking down the hill which led to the depot.

  At the station he set down his suitcase and chatted with Ludwig Kamerath, the town dispatcher.

  “See you’re on duty nights this week, Lud,” he said. “Don’t like it, do you?”

  Ludwig Kamerath, yellow hair and straight holland-blue eyes, shook his head stolidly. “I do not like it,” he said. “But got to split up the tricks even. Where bound, Eric?”

  “St. Paul,” said Eric easily. “Give me a round trip for the eleven-fifteen. Chair car, Lud. Expect to be back on the six o’clock to-morrow.”

  Ludwig Kamerath punched a tiny perforated double coupon, and depositing in the cash drawer the even change he received, repaired once more to his telegraph key which had started a violent chattering. As for Eric, he boarded the flyer, and wended his way into the chair car. After the conductor took up his ticket, he sat back in an apparent doze like that in which the few remaining passengers sat. Once he rubbed his eyes like a waking man, and in the dim light that fell from the ceiling of the chair car, inspected a tiny slip of notations in his own handwriting. He could recall a day in St. Paul when he had bought a tramp a dinner and had drawn forth from him a number of tramp experiences and tramp data. “It’s dis way, cull,” the tramp had explained in response to one particular leading question. “It’s a mail train and she carries nuttin’ but mail coaches. She starts out from de Pacific coast, an’ don’t make no stops ‘round dis territory except Fargo Nort’ Dakota, St. Paul, w’ere she drops a car, an’ Mormon Junction, Wisconsin, w’ere she switche
s off anodder car to go sout’ an’ west. I makes a hunerd times w’en I’m makin’ Chi, ridin atween any o’ dem front coaches tru’ de night. After she pulls outen Mormon Junction she don’t make no more stops afore Chi escept w’ere she waits a full half-hour to give the pass to a nort’ out o’ Chi, out in de weeds near a place called Dunning, w’ere de Chicago Booby Hatch is located.” And thus in this strain, with the result that Eric’s little slipful of notes made in pencil, and which he now scanned a little anxiously, read:

  Pulls out from Pacific North-west as Great Northern mail train. Carries mail coaches only. Generally eight or nine. No stops between St. Paul and Chicago except Mormon Junction, and a spot on the outskirts of Chicago called Dunning. Mormon Junction 12.20. Outskirts of Chicago 8.14. Stands twenty minutes or more. No Brakemen.

  On hearing the train slowing down, Eric peeped from the window, pressing his eyes close to pierce the black velvet of the night. Thus he saw the well-known water tower of Mormon Junction which he had so often glimpsed on daylight trips to St. Paul. He tightened a little in his seat. He heard the train come to a grinding, whining stop, and saw passengers arising in the night from the car to change lines here. He watched out of the window until he saw the conductor move down toward the brightly lighted station, then he slipped down the aisle and down the steps to the gravelled platform of Mormon Junction, but instead of going up toward the station he turned exactly the other way and slipped off into the darkness, across a great field of burdock weeds.

  In a few minutes the train had started off again northward toward St. Paul and Eric Worman was left in a field of burdock weeds. His silver watch with its luminescent hands showed the time to be one minute after twelve. Nineteen minutes dragged by. And when these same luminescent hands showed the time to be twelve-twenty, the shrill scream of a whistle sounded the approach of the Great Northern east-bound mail. He waited where he was until the mail train slowed up and began taking water at the tank, some distance in his direction from the station platform. Slowly he made his way through the burdock field, weaving in and out, hanging tight on to the yellow suitcase, and when two melancholy toots of the whistle announced that the train was about to start, Eric Worman crept from the burdock weeds, and swung himself easily up the tiny iron ladder, that hung at the edge of one of the great steel-studded cars. There, between that coach and the one behind, he found a most convenient and comfortable ledge on which to sit.

  It was about one-ten in the morning, he realized, when the flash of a passing station showed him the briefest of brief glimpses of the stolid face of Ludwig Kamerath seated at his key inside under the electric bulb, followed by several landmarks of the town of Winniston. And now Eric Worman, who had left Winniston that night and had travelled north toward the twin cities, was south toward Chicago — and nobody knew that tiny yet valuable fact.

  The night passed, a night through which he roared his way. And when at last the black fields on either side of him became a grey veldt steaming in the leaden dawn, he was cold and blue and stiff. And when still fifteen minutes later, the mail train finally stopped and stood stock-still, a quick glance at his watch showed him that here must be the point where it waited on the siding for a north-bound out of Chicago.

  A cautious peep out one side showed him the engineer leaning from his cab, gazing unseeingly out over the adjoining tracks. A peep out of the other showed him that the coast was clear, and still better revealed a tangle of tall weeds close to the track with some distance off a wood dense and thick. Like a flash he was off, yellow suitcase and all, from the ledge and into the weeds, and here he crouched flat for full fifteen minutes, shivering from the cold and the damp until at last, as a swift passenger train bound north shrieked past the spot like a demon, the mail train ground slowly off and Eric Worman was alone on the north-western outskirts of Chicago.

  The first thing he did was to pick his way through the fields of weeds, and into the woods. Here it was more gloomy, but the sky was growing brighter, and he shortly found a small clearing close to a tiny creek which bubbled its way along a rocky bottom.

  He opened his suitcase, and by means of the bottle of soapy water, the small scissors and the safety razor, proceeded to cut off his beard and moustache and shave his face entirely. A new Eric Worman stared back at him from the pocket mirror he used, and when he tried upon his ears and nose the pair of gold-rimmed spectacles which he had bought in St Paul and never yet worn, he was startled by the violent transformation.

  He shivered frightfully as he stripped himself of every vestige of clothing, socks, underwear and all, and standing on one dry rock quickly garbed himself in duplicate pieces from the yellow suitcase. He warmed up quickly as he buttoned himself into the new snug woollen union suit, and then, piece by piece, as it were, he became a young man garbed in neat blue serge instead of in a striped and rather audible brown. He washed completely and carefully in the tiny brook, using his soap and towel, and piece by piece, as he dressed, he tossed his discarded garments into a neat pile close by.

  It was a full hour and a half when, fully satisfied with the results, Eric proceeded to remove the turf and dig a hole not far from a big oak tree. The steel trowel which he had bought performed admirable service in this task. Of course he had already removed from the pocket of his brown suit the eight stones which had travelled with him from Winniston, and he had, in fact, made them into a neat paper-packet by means of a pair of stout rubber bands and some of the green paper around the square bulky packages he had brought. This green paper-packet he had placed on one side together with the four cumbersome packages of currency and the gun-metal watch. As his hole grew to the necessary depth, Eric dropped into it every garment he had worn away from Winniston. Then he piled dirt over the contents, stamped it down, laid back adroitly upon it the turf he had neatly removed, and threw the surplus soil and lastly the trowel into the singing creek.

  Now he was down to elementals — money, stones and container — which was exactly where he wished to be. He pondered a moment. In the open suitcase he arranged the bulky packages of money under sundry canvas straps in each section which was supposed to hold shirts. The eight stones in their green paper-packet he worked back of the upper shirt flap itself, where it was held fast by the pressure from the bands. Some 35 dollars in bills and change, taken from his other clothing, he deposited in the pockets of his new blue serge suit. He locked his case with his key. And with the dark felt hat on his head, he emerged from the wood a few minutes later on to a road which ran on the other side and parallel to it.

  Suitcase in hand he walked jauntily along, meeting no one, until finally he reached a sparse group of houses and stores. The chipped porcelain letters on a one-story wooden post office said: Dunning, Illinois; and across from this structure stood a great institution composed of hundreds of brick and red stone buildings, the Chicago State Hospital. And directly in front of the gate itself terminated an electric car-line which appeared to come from over a crest or rise in the street, a block to the east, and on one of whose trolly posts was nailed a wooden sign reading: “City Limits.”

  A mean-looking street-car drawn up at the end of the line, with its west-end exactly even with the sign “City Limits,” bore the words: “Chicago Surface Lines.”

  The important question now before the house was whether or not this particular car went straight to the heart of the city, which was exactly where Eric wanted to merge his own quite unobtrusive self. Or did this car only skirt the great city back and forth, to and fro, never entering the sacred portals of metropolitan existence? True, to step up and ask the conductor was but a simple thing, but there was something about this procedure that didn’t appeal to Eric’s over-cautious nature.

  So he allowed the car to draw away without him, remaining sitting on his suitcase at the kerb, whistling gaily and nonchalantly as though he were waiting to be joined by a companion from the asylum across the way. And in turn another car came like a yellow beetle over the crest of the hill a block to the
east of him. It, too, drew to a stop.

  At last two lone voyageurs like himself — a labouring man and a youth — appeared over the crest to the east, and as they drew up at the terminal Eric perceived that they wore the habiliments of honest labour. Donning his most ingratiating smile, he tackled the older of the two. Did this car marked Broadway take one straight to the heart of Chicago?

  No, this car did not, he was punctiliously informed. If he took this car — which travelled solely on Irving Park Boulevard, an outlying street — to its destination, and thence transferred to the intersecting line, he might be all morning travelling many useless tiresome miles.

  What he should do was to stay on this car only until it crossed that great diagonal thoroughfare — Milwaukee Avenue, which cut slantingly across Chicago and took one into the heart of the city much, much quicker. And furthermore, he should remain on the back platform where the exit door was, if he would dismount when the conductor should call “Milwaukee Avenue,” since there was a circus disgorging its spectators a few blocks east on the line, the cars this morning were loading up terrifically at that point, and would be hopelessly jammed. If he now went inside and took one of the many empty seats, he would never, never extricate himself from that jam and get to the exit.

  A circus! In the early morning! How droll, Eric reflected, was metropolitan life.

  But he was pleased indeed to get this vital information, which would save him many hours of travel, and as his informants now appeared busy about their own affairs, he withdrew himself politely to one side until the next car came along. Now he boarded it.

  Eric stood on the rear platform as he had been instructed, ready to shift his corporeal self and possessions to that Milwaukee Avenue car when they should cross that line, and he looked at his watch. The gun-metal timepiece showed the time to be exactly eighteen minutes past nine in the morning. The sun was shining brightly. He began to whistle once more his gay little air. For Eric Worman was no more. No pictures existed of him unshaven; no pictures were in existence of those earlier days in Rennsville.