The Victorian Rogues MEGAPACK ™: 28 Classic Tales

by Maurice Leblanc

  “Yes,” replied Mrs. Grayson, then her voice trailed off into an indistinguishable whisper.

  “How are you, Kitty?” asked the man.

  “Oh, I have a splitting headache, Jim. I’ve had it all day. I could just get up and—screech!”

  “I’m sorry. I hope it gets better soon.”

  “Oh, I guess it will. They often go away as suddenly as they come. You know I’ve had them before.”

  Drummond’s voice then spoke up.

  “Did you see the Trimble ad tonight?” he asked, evidently of Annie. “They have a lot of new diamonds from Arkansas, they say,—one of them is a big one, the Arkansas Queen, I believe they call it.”

  “No, I didn’t see the papers,” replied Annie.

  There was the rustle of a newspaper.

  “Here’s a picture of it. It must be great. I’ve heard a good deal about it.”

  “Have you seen it?” asked Annie.

  “No, but I intend to see it.”

  They had passed into the next room, and Constance, fearing to be discovered, decided to get away before that happened.

  Early the next morning she decided to call on Kitty, but by the time Constance arrived at the apartment it was closed, and a neighbor informed her that the two women had gone out together about half an hour before.

  Constance was nervous and, as she left the apartment, she did not notice that a man who had been loitering about had quickened his pace and overtaken her.

  “So,” drawled a voice, “you’re traveling with shoplifters now.”

  She looked up quickly. This time she had run squarely into Drummond. There was no concealment possible now. Her only refuge was silence. She felt the hot tingle of indignation in her cheeks. But she said nothing.

  “Huh!” exclaimed Drummond, walking along beside her, and adding contemptuously, “I don’t know the young one, but you know who the other is?”

  Constance bit her lip.

  “No?” he queried. “Then I’ll show you.”

  He had taken from his pocket a bunch of oblong cards. Each bore, she could see from the corner of her eye, a full face and a profile picture of a woman, and on the back of the card was a little writing.

  He selected one and handed it to Constance. Instantly she recognized the face. It was Annie Grayson, with half a dozen aliases written after the name.

  “There!” he fairly snorted. “That’s the sort of people your little friend consorts with. Why, they call Annie Grayson the queen of the shoplifters. She has forgotten more about shoplifting than all the rest will ever know.”

  Constance longed to ask him what had taken him to the Grayson flat the night before, but thought better of it. There was no use in angering Drummond further. Instead, she let him think that he had succeeded in frightening her off.

  She went back to her own apartment to wait and worry. Evidently Drummond was pretty sure of something, or he would not have disclosed his hand to her, even partially. She felt that she must see Kitty before it was too late. Then the thought crossed her mind that perhaps already it was too late. Drummond evidently was working in some way for an alliance of the department stores outside.

  Constance had had her own ideas about Kitty. And as she waited and watched, she tried to reason how she might carry them out if she had a chance.

  She had just been insured, and had been very much interested in the various tests that the woman doctor of the insurance company had applied to her. One in particular which involved the use of a little simple instrument that fitted over the forearm had interested her particularly. She had talked to the doctor about it, and as she talked an idea had occurred to her that it might have other uses than those which the doctor made of it. She had bought one. While she was waiting it occurred to her that perhaps it might serve her purpose. She got the instrument out. It consisted of a little arrangement that fitted over the forearm, and was attached by a tube to a dial that registered in millimeters a column of mercury. Would it really show anything, she wondered?

  There was a quick call on the telephone and she answered it, her hand trembling, for she felt sure that it was something about the little woman she had befriended.

  Somehow or other her voice hardened as she answered the call and found that it was from Drummond. It would never do to betray even nervousness before him.

  “Your friend, Miss Carr,” shot out Drummond with brutal directness, “has been caught again. She fell into something as neatly as if she had really meant to do it. Yesterday, you know, Trimble’s advertised the new diamond, the Arkansas Queen, on exhibition. Well, it was made of paste, anyway. But it was a perfect imitation. But that didn’t make any difference. We caught Kitty just now trying to lift it. I’m sorry it wasn’t the other one. But small fry are better than none. We’ll get her, too, yet. Besides, I find this Kitty has a record already at Stacy’s.”

  He added the last words with a taunting sneer. Constance realized suddenly the truth. The whole affair had been a plant of Drummond’s!

  “You are at Trimble’s?” she inquired quickly. “Well, can you wait there just a few minutes? I’d like to see Miss Carr.”

  Drummond promised. His acquiescence in itself boded no good, but nevertheless she decided to go. As she left her apartment hurriedly she picked up the little instrument and dropped it into her hand-bag.

  “You see, it’s no use,” almost chortled Drummond as Constance stepped off the elevator and opened the door to a little room at Trimble’s much like that which she had already seen at Stacy’s. “A shoplifter becomes habitual after twenty-five. They get to consorting with others of their kind.”

  Kitty was sitting rigidly motionless in a chair, staring straight ahead, as Constance entered. She gave a start at the sight of a familiar face, rose, and would almost have fainted if Constance had not caught her. It seemed as if something had snapped in the girl’s make-up. For the first time tears came. Constance patted her hand softly. The girl was an enigma. Was she a clever actress—one minute hardened Miss Sophisticated, the next appealing Miss Innocence?

  “How did you—catch her?” asked Constance a moment later as she found an opportunity to talk to Drummond alone.

  “Oh, she was trying to substitute a paste replica for the alleged Arkansas Queen. The clerk noticed the replica in time, saw a little spot of carbon on it—and she was shadowed and arrested just as she was leaving the store. Yes, they found the other paste jewel on her. She was caught with the goods.”

  “Replica?” repeated Constance, thinking of the picture that had appeared in the papers the night before. “How could she get a replica of it?”

  “How do I know?” shrugged Drummond coldly.

  Constance looked him squarely in the eyes.

  “What about Annie Grayson?” she asked pointblank.

  “I have taken care of that,” he replied harshly. “She is already under arrest, and from what I have heard we may get something on her now. We have a record against the Carr girl. We can use it against her friend. We’re just about taking her to the flat to identify the Grayson woman. Would you like to come along?” he added in a spirit of bravado. “I think you are a material witness in the Stacy case, anyhow.”

  Constance felt bitterly her defeat. Still she went with them. There was always a chance that something might turn up.

  As they entered the door of the kitchenette loud voices told them that some one was disputing inside.

  Drummond strode in.

  The sight of a huge pile of stuff that two strange men had drawn out of drawers and closets and stacked on the table riveted Constance’s eyes. Only dimly she could hear that Annie Grayson was violently threatening Drummond, who stood coolly surveying the scene.

  The stuff on the table was, in fact, quite enough to dazzle the eyes. There were articles of every sort and
description there—silks, laces, jewelry and trinkets, little antiques, even rare books—everything small and portable, some of the richest and most exquisite, others of the cheapest and most tawdry. It was a truly remarkable collection, which the raiding detectives had brought to light.

  As Constance took in the scene—the raiding detectives holding the stormy Annie Grayson at bay, Drummond, cool, supercilious, Kitty almost on the edge of collapse—she wondered how Jim Grayson had managed to slip through the meshes of the net.

  She had read of such things. Annie Grayson was to all appearances a “fence” for stolen goods. This was, perhaps, a school for shoplifters. In addition to her other accomplishments, the queen of the shoplifters was a “Fagin,” educating others to the tricks of her trade, taking advantage of their lack of facility in disposing of the stolen goods.

  Just then the woman caught sight of Constance standing in the doorway.

  In an instant she had broken loose and ran toward her.

  “What are you,” she hissed, “one of these department store Moll Dicks, too?”

  Quick as a flash Kitty Carr had leaped to her feet and placed herself between them.

  “No, Annie, no. She was a real friend of mine. No—if your own friends had been as loyal as she was to me this would never have happened—I should never have been caught again, for I should never have given them a chance to get it on me.”

  “Little fool!” ground out Annie Grayson, raising her arm.

  “Here—here—ladies!” interposed Drummond, protruding an arm between the two, and winking sarcastically to the two other men. “None of that. We shall need both of you in our business. I’ve no objection to your talking; but cut out the rough stuff.”

  Constance had stepped back. She was cool, cool as Drummond, although she knew her heart was thumping like a sledge-hammer. There was Kitty Carr, in a revulsion of feeling, her hands pressed tightly to her head again, as if it were bursting. She was swaying as if she would faint.

  Constance caught her gently about the waist and forced her down on the couch where she had been lying the night before. With her back to the others, she reached quickly into her hand-bag and pulled out the little instrument she had hastily stuffed into it. Deftly she fastened it to Kitty’s wrist and forearm.

  She dropped down on her knees beside the poor girl, and gently stroked her free hand, reassuring her in a low tone.

  “There, there,” she soothed. “You are not well, Kitty. Perhaps, after all, there may be something—some explanation.”

  In spite of all, however, Kitty was on the verge of the wildest hysterics. Annie Grayson sniffed contemptuously at such weakness.

  Drummond came over, an exasperating sneer on his face. As he looked down he saw what Constance was doing, and she rose, so that all could see now.

  “This girl,” she said, speaking rapidly, “is afflicted with a nervous physical disorder, a mania, which is uncontrollable, and takes this outlet. It is emotional insanity—not loss of control of the will, but perversion of the will.”

  “Humph!” was Drummond’s sole comment with a significant glance at the pile of goods on the table.

  “It is not the articles themselves so much,” went on Constance, following his glance, “as it is the pleasure, the excitement, the satisfaction—call it what you will—of taking them. A thief works for the benefit he may derive from objects stolen after he gets them. Here is a girl who apparently has no further use for an article after she gets it, who forgets, perhaps hates it.”

  “Oh, yes,” remarked Drummond; “but why are they all so careful not to get caught? Every one is responsible who knows the nature and consequences of his act.”

  Constance had wheeled about.

  “That is not so,” she exclaimed. “Any modern alienist will tell you that. Sometimes the chief mark of insanity may be knowing the nature and consequences, craftily avoiding detection with an almost superhuman cunning. No; the test is whether knowing the nature and consequences, a person suffers under such a defect of will that in spite of everything, in the face of everything, that person cannot control that will.”

  As she spoke, she had quickly detached the little instrument and had placed it on Annie Grayson’s arm. If it had been a Bertillon camera, or even a finger-print outfit, Annie Grayson would probably have fought like a tigress. But this thing was a new one. She had a peculiar spirit of bravado.

  “Such terms as kleptomania,” went on Constance, “are often regarded as excuses framed up by the experts to cover up plain ordinary stealing. But did you wiseacres of crime ever stop to think that perhaps they do actually exist?

  “There are many things that distinguish such a woman as I have described to you from a common thief. There is the insane desire to steal—merely for stealing’s sake—a morbid craving. Of course in a sense it is stealing. But it is persistent, incorrigible, irrational, motiveless, useless.

  “Stop and think about it a moment,” she concluded, lowering her voice and taking advantage of the very novelty of the situation she had created. “Such diseases are the product of civilization, of sensationalism. Naturally enough, then, woman, with her delicately balanced nervous organization, is the first and chief offender—if you insist on calling such a person an offender under your antiquated methods of dealing with such cases.”

  She had paused.

  “What did you say you called this thing?” asked Drummond as he tapped the arrangement on Annie Grayson’s arm.

  He was evidently not much impressed by it, yet somehow instinctively regarded it with somewhat of the feelings of an elephant toward a mouse.

  “That?” answered Constance, taking it off Annie Grayson’s wrist before she could do anything with it. “Why, I don’t know that I said anything about it. It is really a sphygmomanometer—the little expert witness that never lies—one of the instruments the insurance companies use now to register blood pressure and discover certain diseases. It occurred to me that it might be put to other and equally practical uses. For no one can conceal the emotions from this instrument, not even a person of cast-iron nerves.”

  She had placed it on Drummond’s arm. He appeared fascinated.

  “See how it works?” she went on. “You see one hundred and twenty-five millimeters is the normal pressure. Kitty Carr is absolutely abnormal. I do not know, but I think that she suffers from periodical attacks of vertigo. Almost all kleptomaniacs do. During an attack they are utterly irresponsible.”

  Drummond was looking at the thing carefully. Constance turned to Annie Grayson.

  “Where’s your husband?” she asked offhand.

  “Oh, he disappeared as soon as these department store dicks showed up,” she replied bitterly. She had been watching Constance narrowly, quite nonplussed, and unable to make anything out of what was going on.

  Constance looked at Drummond inquiringly.

  He shook his head slowly. “I’m afraid we’ll never catch him,” he said. “He got the jump on us—although we have our lines out for him, too.”

  She had glanced down quickly at the little innocent-looking but telltale sphygmomanometer.

  “You lie!” she exclaimed suddenly, with all the vigor of a man.

  She was pointing at the quivering little needle which registered a sudden, access of emotion totally concealed by the sang-froid of Drummond’s well-schooled exterior.

  She wrenched the thing off his wrist and dropped it into her bag. A moment later she stood by the open window facing the street, a bright little police whistle gleaming in her hand, ready for its shrill alarm if any move were made to cut short what she had to say.

  She was speaking rapidly now.

  “You see, I’ve had it on all of you, one after another, and each has told me your story, just enough of it for me to piece it together. Kitty is suffering from a form of vertigo,
an insanity, kleptomania, the real thing. As for you, Mr. Drummond, you were in league with the alleged husband—your own stool pigeon—to catch Annie Grayson.”

  Drummond moved. So did the whistle. He stopped.

  “But she was too clever for you all. She was not caught, even by a man who lived with her as her own husband. For she was not operating.”

  Annie Grayson moved as if to face out her accusers at this sudden turn of fortune.

  “One moment, Annie,” cut in Constance.

  “And yet, you are the real shoplifter, after all. You fell into the trap which Drummond laid for you. I take pleasure, Mr. Drummond, in presenting you with better evidence than even your own stool pigeon could possibly have given you under the circumstances.”

  She paused.

  “For myself,” she concluded, “I claim Kitty Carr. I claim the right to take her, to have her treated for her—her disease. I claim it because the real shoplifter, the queen of the shoplifters, Annie Grayson, has worked out a brand-new scheme, taking up a true kleptomaniac and using her insanity to carry out the stealings which she suggested—and safely, to this point, has profited by!”

  CHAPTER X

  THE BLACKMAILERS

  “They’re late this afternoon.”

  “Yes. I think they might be on time. I wish they had made the appointment in a quieter place.”

  “What do you care, Anita? Probably somebody else is doing the same thing somewhere else. What’s sauce for the gander is sauce for the goose.”

  “I know he has treated me like a dog, Alice, but—”

  There was just a trace of a catch in the voice of the second woman as she broke off the remark and left it unfinished.

  Constance Dunlap had caught the words unintentionally above the hum of conversation and the snatches of tuneful music wafted from the large dining-room where day was being turned into night.

  She had dropped into the fashionable new Vanderveer Hotel, not to meet any one, but because she liked to watch the people in “Peacock Alley,” as the corridor of the hotel was often popularly called.