The Victorian Rogues MEGAPACK ™: 28 Classic Tales

by Maurice Leblanc

  The lumberman watched Sir Harry narrowly as he read the contract, then turned back and reread it. Somehow, far back in his canny Scotch mind, there still remained his first reasonless but persistent doubt of the Englishman’s integrity; but if his customer was satisfied with this contract, Muir conceded he must admit himself wrong. Meanwhile he was on his guard.

  “Absolutely correct and satisfactory from my standpoint,” Sir Harry announced finally. “As it suits you, Mr. Muir, shall we sign and consider the matter settled?”

  Sir Harry scrawled his signature at the bottom of the page. Muir did the same.

  “And now except for the matter of the advance payment, our business is satisfactorily settled, I think.” Sir Harry drew out a sheaf of checks on which Muir recognized the same consulate insignia he had seen on his customer’s credentials and filled out one for ten thousand dollars to the Muir Lumber Company. He flipped it across the table to the lumberman.

  “If our deal is as satisfactory to you as I am sure it will be to me,” Sir Harry said, “we are both to be congratulated.”

  He lighted a cigarette, smiling inwardly at the double meaning in his words, and sauntered out to the automobile in which Betty Girard was waiting for him.

  Muir indorsed Sir Harry’s check and called his cashier.

  “Mail this to our bank,” he said, “and instruct them to notify me by ’phone when it is honored.” To himself he added: “When it’s cashed, and not till then, we’ll put a night shift, to work. Everything seems all right—it can’t be otherwise as far as we are concerned; and yet I still have a wee doubt in my head. I wonder why.”

  Mid-afternoon found Sir Harry Westwood Cameron again within sight of the offices of the Muir Lumber Company. Timing himself accurately, he hurried in just as the mail to go out on the afternoon logging-train was being made up.

  “I find I made a stupid blunder when I gave Mr. Muir his check this morning,” he said to the cashier. “I drew it on the bank in which the Canadian instead of the British funds are deposited. Has the check gone yet? No I That’s fortunate. This is the check you should have had. I’ll exchange with you, if you don’t mind.”

  He handed out a new check drawn on a different bank and made out, as the other had been, to the Muir company, for ten thousand dollars.

  “Certainly,” acquiesced the cashier, opening the letter he had written the bank at Muir’s command and handing Sir Harry the first check as he laid the second aside to await indorsement before being mailed. Sir Harry tore up the check in his fingers and let the fragments flutter to the floor.

  “Fortunate I happened to discover my error before it passed out of your hands, wasn’t it?” he said. “It would have been a beastly nuisance to have rectified it, bound up as I am by red tape. Thanks, awfully.” And he sauntered out.

  Hidden in the palm of his hand was the check returned to him by the Muir company. The one he had torn to bits in the presence of the cashier was an exact duplicate except that it lacked the one essential that gave it value—the indorsement of John J. Muir.

  The blood raced through Sir Harry’s veins as he turned up Sherwood’s boardwalk. The touch of that magic bit of paper, concealed in his hand, was like fiercely intoxicating wine. He knew he needed only to present it at the Muir company’s bank, now that it bore the guaranteeing indorsement of the lumberman, to receive without question gold that would buy all he craved in the world of pleasure. And when that gold was gone, there would still be Betty to be cajoled, threatened or abused into giving him more in endless abundance. A single month of freedom had given him wealth!

  Nothing remained to be done now but to cash the check when the bank at Ukiah, forty miles away, opened in the morning, and then to disappear, leaving those he had mulcted to count the cost of the acquaintanceship of Sir Harry Westwood Cameron.

  Betty, of course, must go with him. Begrudging each moment that still separated him from the actual possession of the money waiting at the bank, he hurried back to the Girard ranch to find her. He showed her a telegram written to himself by himself recalling him secretly and at once to San Francisco to undertake an “urgent mission” and urged her with convincing sophistry to marry him that night in Ukiah.

  “This sudden summons to undertake a new mission may mean anything, Betty dear,” he pleaded. “It may mean a dangerous trip to the City of Mexico—that was spoken of before I came here; it may mean months of separation; it may—”

  Betty laid her hands in his.

  “The only happiness I hope for, the only happiness I ask of life, is to share all your dangers and troubles,” she said, “I am not afraid—with you.”

  Sir Harry caught her gently and drew her to him.

  “You will go? You will marry me tonight and send me away—if I must leave you—with the comfort of knowing that you, my wife, are waiting for me here and longing, as I shall be, for the happy day when separations are over and we can go home to England—together?” There was a cruelly masterful gleam of satisfaction in Sir Harry’s eyes. Once bound to him by a wedding ring, he never intended that Betty Girard should see her mountain home again—never, at least, till he had wrung the last available dollar from her father’s rich forests.

  “But Dad?” she whispered, stirring in his arms.

  “I will explain to him. He will understand and consent,” Sir Harry answered.

  “Then, if you wish it, I will go.” And Betty, who had begun by declaring the idea of an immediate marriage to be impossible, hurried away to pack a suit-case while Sir Harry went to her father. When a girl is eighteen, in love and spells Romance with a capital R, her own heart pleads with irresistible potency a cause such as Sir Harry’s seemed.

  Old Sherwood Girard, simple-minded and unsuspecting as Betty herself, had drawn his wheel-chair to the spot on his porch from which he could best see the rolling stretches of forest he loved with the love of one who has met and mastered in their peaceful solitudes the problems of a lifetime. Sir Harry showed his forged telegram and explained that he and Betty wished a father’s consent to an immediate and secret marriage.

  “Why secret?” the old man asked, studying Sir Harry’s face with eyes, level and keen, though dimmed by age.

  “Because, Dad,” said Sir Harry, laying his arm affectionately round the old man’s shoulders, “the world must not know that I have even been in Sherwood, until the lumber I have bought here for our armies is safely landed at its destination. Nothing afloat is safe from the U-boats. The mere fact that Sir Harry Westwood Cameron, known representative of the British Government, has been in Sherwood, if published, would be ruinous to our projects. You know what your American newspapers are. They would make a sensation, with pictures, likely enough, of the news that our little Betty has become Lady Cameron. Our wedding will cause no comment in Ukiah, where I am not known and shall not use a title that I sometimes regret is mine. What does it matter when or where we are married? Betty will return to you tomorrow to wait here for the day when this new duty to my king is done and I can return to claim her. Give your consent, Dad. Her happiness and mine depend on it.”

  Sherwood Girard leaned back in his chair in silence. This sudden wedding seemed uncalled for—almost unseemly.

  “And yet,” he mused, “I am old, and age is always slow and hesitant in the face of youth. Twenty years ago Betty’s mother and I thought a month a year while we counted the days to our wedding. Why should I deny my children now, what they wish?”

  He turned to the man beside him.

  “Give me your hand, boy,” he said, gripping the palm outstretched to him as do men to whom a spoken word and a handclasp are a bond that may not be broken. “It shall be as you—and she—wish. And Sir Harry,”—the old man’s voice was tremulous with emotion—“be very good to my little girl, very good, my boy, and very, very kind. She’s only a child.’”

  �
�I may tell her?” cried Sir Harry, leaping to his feet.

  “Yes, and then send her to me. And may God be good to you—as good as you are to her.”

  “Amen,” added Sir Harry with seeming reverence, but smiling at the design in his heart that made the word a blasphemy.

  Sir Harry drove Betty to the train in the early evening and left her auto in the village garage. He would follow in it after nightfall, he told her, as the necessity of keeping his departure absolutely secret was imperative. Meanwhile she was to go to a Ukiah hotel and wait. She agreed. Without a thought of possible evil, she waved him a tremulous, happy au revoir and began the wedding journey the bigamist intended should deliver her irrevocably into his ruthless hands. With a cruelly satisfied smile Sir Harry watched her go, and returned to the Girard home to wait, in a scorching fever of impatience, for the darkness that was to cover his own flight.

  That night while Sherwood Girard sat in his wheel-chair watching the moon rise over his redwoods and wondering how he could ever endure the loneliness he would suffer if Betty left him while he lived, Sir Harry said a brief farewell, took the auto from the garage, piled in the suit-cases he had hidden by the roadside and turned the car down the empty, moonlit road that led to Ukiah and the realization of every evil hope he had nursed through five weary prison years.

  CHAPTER XI

  THE SPIRIT OF THE CUSHIONS KID

  Sherwood’s block-long business street was silent, dark and deserted. The one gleam of light in the night was from the incandescent that hung above the big safe in the offices of the Muir Lumber Company.

  Examining the strong-box with the calmly critical eye of an expert stood Boston Blackie. He ran his hand delicately over the burnished steel, fondled the combination knobs and turned to the masked man with him who was unpacking a suit-case.

  “It’s a good box,” he said. “Let’s get at it. It will take a half-hour to cut into it, and that hick watchman might get back before his time.”

  Two steel cylinders that just filled the bottom of the suit-case were taken out and set up before the safe. From each a hose led to a metal nozzle punctured by a tiny blow-hole. A heavy curtain of blankets was carefully draped above and around the outfit to cut off from the street the dazzling, bluish light of the flame that was to eat through the solid steel. Boston Blackie took off his mask, replaced it with heavy automobile goggles and then crawled beneath the blankets, which were propped away from the door of the safe by chairs.

  “If the copper comes before I finish, don’t forget what I told you,” he warned. His companion nodded assent.

  From beneath the blankets there began a hissing, spluttering sound, and between them the faint reflection of a blinding light was visible. The second man, armed and masked, stood just inside the front door peering out into the night from behind drawn curtains.

  Twenty minutes passed. There was a faint thud as a heavy piece of metal fell to a cushioned floor. The spluttering noise ceased for a moment, then began again. Five minutes, and there was another thud on the floor. Then the light beneath the blankets died, and Boston Blackie, throwing them aside, rose from their folds.

  “She’s open,” he said. “Take a look.”

  Both doors of the safe were swung back, and a round, gaping hole in each showed where the irresistible heat of the oxyacetylene torch had carved its way through the solid steel as a knife slices cheese.

  Boston Blackie drew out a dozen or more unbroken packages of currency and a canvas sack full of silver, and scattered them on the floor.

  “It’s the pay-roll, Lewes,” he reported in a whisper. “I am glad it happened to be here tonight. It would be a nifty little haul, eh?”

  So far, Boston Blackie had conducted the business of the evening with skill, dispatch and in all ways as a man of his reputation might be expected to do. Nothing remained to be done to complete a neat job but to bundle the money into the empty suit-case and slip out the rear door. Instead, the safe-cracker began a series of preparations which would have puzzled and amazed others of his hazardous profession.

  First he put on his mask. Then he unlocked the front door of the office with a master key he took from his pocket. He opened it and left it slightly ajar. Returning to the safe, he studied carefully the arrangement of the desks and counters, finally indicating one with a jerk of his thumb.

  “Get behind there, Lewes, and whatever happens, keep out of sight till I give you the office. Here is your blanket; and be sure you get him on the first throw, for we can’t have any noise.”

  Blackie tossed a blanket to his pal, who obeyed him in silence.

  “He isn’t due for twenty minutes, but he might be ahead of time, and we mustn’t have any kind of a rumble tonight,” he commanded as he drew a chair behind the safe and seated himself. He rolled a cigarette and lolled back, waiting, with the unruffled nerves of a man enjoying a quiet evening smoke in his own home.

  The lighted incandescent left the dismantled safe and scattered packages of money in plain sight from the half-open door, while the minutes dragged slowly away in absolute silence.

  As the clock showed the passing of the hour, a step sounded on the board sidewalk down the street.

  “He’s coming,” whispered Blackie, slipping out of his chair and crouching behind the safe as he readjusted his mask.

  The footsteps approached slowly and suddenly stopped before the open door. There was a quick ejaculation of alarm as the watchman saw the wrecked safe and scattered money. He hesitated, fumbling for the revolver he never before had needed, and his eye roamed the room in sudden fear of a bullet from its shadows—a bullet either of the two men hidden within could have sent into his body a dozen times as he stood silhouetted against the window.

  But no shot came. Instead Blackie, who had been watching from behind the safe in grim amusement, slowly rose into view with his hands held high above his head.

  “Don’t shoot,” he cried. “You’ve got me. I quit.”

  The watchman succeeded at last in dragging out his gun and covered the safe-cracker.

  “Keep your hands up,” he commanded nervously, advancing on his prisoner. “No monkey business, or I’ll pop you sure.”

  “I don’t want to commit suicide,” growled Blackie. “You’ve got me with the goods, and I surrender.”

  The watchman felt for his handcuffs with his left hand.

  “That settles it,” ejaculated Blackie disgustedly as the bracelets came into sight. “I thought I might get a chance to beat it when we got outside in the dark, but now, I suppose, you’re going to cuff me to yourself. I’m done for keeps.”

  “That’s just what I’m going to do!” the watchman exclaimed, adopting the suggestion and showing rising excitement as he thought of the reward his night’s work would bring him from the lumber company. “Then I’m going to march you over to Mr. Muir’s house and keep you safe till he gets the sheriff. You thought you could come up here from the city and blow a safe and get away with it, did you? I guess you know now you can’t.”

  He locked one handcuff over Blackie’s extended wrist and snapped the other on his own arm.

  “Come on, now. March,” he commanded.

  “You’re some copper.” As he snapped out the word “copper,” Blackie drew slightly away from his captor. It was the signal for which Lewes was waiting.

  The thick folds of a blanket dropped suddenly over the watchman’s unsuspecting head. A blow on the wrist knocked his revolver from his hand, and he was thrown to the floor, struggling fiercely but in vain to free himself. With his free hand Boston Blackie snatched a bottle from his pocket and emptied it over the blanket. The captive’s struggles grew fiercer, then gradually ceased as the sickly sweet fumes of chloroform tainted the air. At last he lay quiet and inert.

  Blackie drew out a bunch of keys, unlocked the handcuff that still boun
d him to the unconscious man and rose to his feet.

  “Neatly done, Lewes,” he said smilingly. “He’s out. I’ll attend to him now. You get the boys and the auto. Be quick, and remember—not a sound from the engine.”

  Lewes slipped out the rear door and disappeared.

  Blackie lifted the blanket and examined the drugged watchman—then dropped it lightly back over his face.

  “Not even scratched, and he’ll have a story to tell after this night that’ll last him the rest of his life,” he mused.

  A moment later Blackie’s quick ear caught the sound of an auto being rolled quietly by hand into the alley behind the building. Three masked men appeared at the rear door. Between them, bound and gagged, was a prisoner at the sight of whose white, rage-contorted face Boston Blackie’s lips parted in a singular smile.

  The prisoner was Sir Harry Westwood Cameron.

  Sir Harry’s bloodshot eyes roved in terrified amazement over the strange scene before him—the wrecked safe, the packages of money scattered over the floor, the body hidden by the blanket, and the four masked men who guarded it. When his auto had been stopped at the bridge a half-mile out of town and he himself seized and bound, he had thought himself the victim of a hold-up. But what sort of hold-up men were these, who carried him back to the office of the Muir Lumber Company—the last place on earth he must be at dawn—and held him there now amidst the ruins of a cracked safe?

  “I’m going to take the gag out of his mouth. I want to talk to him. If he speaks above a whisper, crack him over the head,” said Blackie to his helper.