There was a Crooked Man

by George Worthing Yates

  “Ten people at least have called me up today,” he said, “to spread a little gossip and find out what I knew. I don’t like it.”

  “Calling up from the Lambs’ or the Friars’ or the Astor?”

  “It’s serious, and you know it. What’s the truth about this Englishman? I heard he was—well, it’s been mentioned that he’s connected...” Boxworth completed his meaning by curving a round shoulder towards the window, and the bright cool stone masses of Chelsea Project lying beyond it.

  “I heard it, too.”

  “I’d like to know for a fact,” said Boxworth. “I don’t gossip. I don’t believe it’s right. It does you as much harm as the one you’re talking about. I want to know for my own sake. If you can tell me, Levison, please be honest with me. I’m at an age where—“ he tried to make it seem a little joke “—where I have to keep my buttered side off the floor.”

  Levison lighted a cigarette, inhaled thoughtfully, before he spoke. His thin lips made his words seem sharp, precise, judicial. “We’d be fools to believe all we heard, John. I think we’re fools to let any kind of information affect us. I’m going to mind my business. By the way, look out for that inkstand, compliments of the Dartmouth Bema Board. If I tell you, will you remember that it’s probably meaningless?”

  “I want to know.”

  It was very difficult, in even the least ambiguous circumstances, to tell whether Levison meant what he said literally or ironically. John Boxworth could never decide how much to believe him, and indecision made the man stare absurdly, as if he were watching a magician’s trick. And very much like a magician taking the pigeon from a waistcoat pocket, Levison glanced out the window at the high bulk of the Athletic Club and its higher neighbor, De Lancey College. His fingers nervously linked paper clips together into a chain. He said, “This Chelsea Project, John, must run into a good many millions of dollars. The money, most of it anyhow, came from the Westfalen estate. And after all, it’s the Westfalen money and the Westfalen Foundation that makes our jobs possible for us. Do you know anything about old Westfalen?”

  “But he’s out of the picture. He’s dead.”

  “He’s dead, but he isn’t by any means out of the picture. Do you happen to know how Westfalen made his money?”

  “Chemicals.”

  “Munitions, if you want to be exact about it. It’s my own opinion that this Chelsea development is the result of old Westfalen’s conscience going sour on him. Anyhow, Westfalen and our Lord Broghville were very closely connected in the years between 1908 and 1914. Go to the Library if you don’t believe me, and look up the report of the Senate Investigation Committee that investigated Westfalen.”

  “You mean Broghville is the big shot on the Westfalen Foundation?”

  “That’s a long jump to a big conclusion. But I wouldn’t be surprised if we should hear a lot of talk to that effect in the next few days.”

  “Are you trying to tell me that Broghville is the head of the Project?”

  “I’m trying to tell you, as far as I can see, that Lord Broghville is a name to be respected until this affair is straightened out.”

  “But does that mean—?”

  “I don’t know what it means. In my own opinion, if we keep our mouths shut and our minds on our business, we’ll be a lot better off than we would be if we wasted the rest of the morning guessing.”

  “How did you get hold of all this?”

  “It merely occurred to me that somebody donated more than half a million dollars to found the Bennett School of Political Administration across the street at De Lancey College. Bennett is Broghville. The rest of it, I found in the International Dictionary of Biography.”

  Boxworth shook his head. He mused sadly, “I don’t know. I suppose I ought to have let him get his own detective. I wish I had known about this. What do you think?”

  “I think,” said Levison, “that if we take good care of ourselves, we’ll probably live to see how it all works out.”

  The telephone rang, and interrupted whatever remark it was that John Boxworth had just decided to make. As Levison began uttering staccato monosyllables into the instrument, Boxworth buttoned his coat and went reluctantly away to his own office.

  2.

  Boxworth’s office was on the ground floor, convenient to the ticket windows in the lobby. He descended in the elevator to the theatre, and left the cage free conveniently at the moment when Lord Broghville arrived, and rang for it. To get from the street to the Administrative offices of the Chelsac Theatre is difficult in some cases, and impossible in most. You enter the building by a small door on Eighteenth Street, not far from Ninth Avenue. It was this door that Bennett had entered the night before.

  You enter the door, and confront a severe and discouraging old commissionaire in a plum-colored uniform. He, if it so pleases him, permits you to go past him to a very small private elevator, shaped like the interior of a large cartridge, enameled blue. In this, and at the hands of another attendant in plum, you rocket up to the fourth floor, where the furnishings are more luxurious, and the rooms more spacious than below, and the atmosphere more subdued and impressive, as it should be so much closer to the heart of things. In this upper lobby, there sits yet another attendant, usually a dark and sinister little angel with an innocent face and a disillusioned voice and a uniform of plum. If possible,, he will make you wait, and stare at you as you do so, and smile faintly at you as if he found you the oddest fish to come his way in many moons. On this floor all is very hushed and very tranquil, and politely and impressively intense.

  Beyond this lobby runs a passage, vividly blue, and gleaming with chromium gadgets and lighted glass, bowls, probably from Lalique. The offices themselves open on your right from this passage. Beyond the offices, and also on your right, is the infirmary. The left wall of the passage is blank, except for a small silver door connecting with the heart of the theatre.

  Miss Bannerman sits in a modest, but perfectly appointed, outer office. She is bent, of course, on sending-you away if possible; then on shunting you to Levison to spare Christien; then, if she must, on letting you in to see Christien with proper respect for the value of that man’s minutes. But she is polite about it. And on Wednesday, there could be no question of seeing Christien at all.

  At a few minutes to eleven, the even routine kept its. grip on Miss Bannerman only by digging in hard with its claws. More and more distractions were arising; police thumping about, undeniably important callers appearing two and three at a time, directors telephoning, newspapers making plaintive appeals to authority, and strange faces (Miss Bannerman abhorred them) popping up all over the place. Bennett arrived. Miss Bannerman pointed him into Christien’s office. Holcomb, looking apologetic about his presumption in sitting at Christien’s desk, jumped respectfully to his feet.

  “Peace, Holcomb, peace, for the love of God! Sit down. Thanks for telephoning me. May I sit down? Now, Splendid morning and all the rest of it, with the usual civil observations on the weather. Tell me first about the pass cards.”

  “I got the list. It’s pretty long, sir.” .

  “Ah?”

  “If you want, I can tell you what we got out of it. I went over the whole thing with the police.”

  “Very well, tell me.”

  “In the first place, there aren’t any passes absolutely missing or unaccounted for.”

  “Go on.”

  “All the passes that were used last night were registered at the ticket window. We called up every owner here in the city, and got them to check up. No pass owner gave his card to somebody else to use, unless the user checked in at the window. That’s definite. And every pass owner we called said he could produce his card right away—except a couple of cases where they’d been reported lost months ago, and which the police don’t count.”

  “Have any pass owners disappeared?”

  “Not one.”

  “In short, every pass seems to have an owner, and every owner a pass, with some exceptions
that the police conclude are irrelevant to the case.”

  “That’s right. That’s what I should have said.”

  “Would a counterfeit pass be possible?”

  Holcomb said, “I never heard of one. I should think it would cost more to make than it would be worth, and with the number and name it would have to have engraved on it, why, there’d be so much danger of discovery that—”

  “Quite. Have you a pass yourself?”

  “No.”

  “Has Christien, or Levison, or any of those people?”

  “Christien has one. He carries it in his wallet. Levison has one, but his mother keeps it home. Boxworth keeps his with him, and Suttro had his in his pocket last night, as I happen to know, because I saw him show it to Tussard. Ann Crofts and her aunt haven’t got any. Neither has this boy Raymonds, of course.”

  “All the men who owned passes, excepting Levison of course, had them with them last night?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Every pass has a name on it, and every name a living person attached, a recognizable person who could be brought into court today if necessary?”

  “That’s what we found. But it wouldn’t be easy to take them to court to—”

  “Manner of speaking, I assure you. Take them to tea, not to court, if you like. Pray don’t expect me to take them anywhere. What are the policemen doing out on the terrace?”

  “Looking to see what could have happened to the watchman.”

  “The pass that let in the murdered man hasn’t been found, of course?”

  “How could it be, if there’s no pass missing?”

  “Stupid of me. I should say, has Tussard searched very thoroughly?”

  “We’ve swept the theatre and the halls and the rooms and the terrace and even the sidewalk down below this morning, looking for anything the murdered man might have dropped. Nothing to be found.”

  “Yet he had a pass, and it disappeared. Has it been suggested that he ate it? Have they opened his stomach? And does Tussard think the man removed all identifying marks, then strangled himself on the terrace with his one hand out of sheer overwhelming melancholy. Come, Holcomb! Tell me about the announcements of the meeting—how many were sent, to whom, that sort of thing.”

  “One each to Mr. Levison, Mr. Boxworth, and Mr. Suttro. They were only confirmation of a telephone call. Miss Bannerman out in the other room typed them and sent them around by messenger.”

  “Has Suttro an office in this building?”

  “No. He’s across the street in the College. You can look ,up from this window and see his place.”

  “And all three lost their notices?”

  “Levison threw his away, and it’s a fairly sure thing it couldn’t be used again, because he remembers crumpling it up and dropping it into what was left of a cup of coffee after his dinner last night. There were no coffee stains on the notice that was found on the roof. Well, Mr. Suttro dug his notice out of the trash basket after he left here last night. This—“ he indicated a typewritten notice, rather stained and battered on the desk before him “—this was his. I got it from him to give to Tussard. I can’t see that it’ll be much use to Tussard, because it was tom in half yesterday afternoon, when Mr. Suttro threw it away. Those stains are from the ends of some flowers that went in on top of it.”

  “And Boxworth’s?”

  “Mr. Boxworth has a Filipino valet. The boy empties out Mr. Boxworth’s pockets, and he remembers throwing Boxworth’s notice away about dinner time last night, when Mr. Boxworth changed his clothes. Now unless there’s a fourth notice, and Miss Bannerman says she’s sure there wasn’t, that cripple must have got hold of Boxworth’s, because that was the only one that wasn’t as good as destroyed.”

  “We shan’t quarrel,” said Bennett. “I admire your facts and boggle at the conclusions you draw from them. However. Has anything been made of the list to which the Whittacker ads were sent?”

  “She told me this morning when I called her up, that she didn’t use a list. She says she just took names at random out of the telephone book.”

  “Rot!”

  “But that’s what she says.”

  “My dear Holcomb! I’m not in the directory, I assure you! Look there!” He took the ad from his pocket, flipped it to Holcomb, who read it and returned it. Bennett folded it back in his pocket again.

  “Still, that’s what she says, sir.”

  “Indeed.”

  “I don’t know what’s keeping Tussard. I’m sorry you have to wait, sir.”

  “No matter.”

  “I don’t know how good it is, but you can take a look at it if you want to. It’s a schedule I made out. And there’s a theatre schedule you can compare it to, if you want to. The times are as exact as I could get them...”

  3.

  SCHEDULE FOR CHELSAC

  FRIDAY TO THURSDAY

  FEATURE: STUDY IN SCARLET

  WEEK OF MAY 17

  “Why,” asked Bennett, “did Emma Whittacker sit in the lower hall at the Nineteenth Street stage door?”

  “Oh, that!” said Holcomb. “She stayed down there because she doesn’t like our building, and because she doesn’t like Anthony Suttro.”

  “But how very silly!”

  “Silly is right,” said Holcomb, and dismissed the matter as if it were of no significance.

  4.

  There was a knock on the office door. Not Tussard and Raymonds, but Anthony Suttro appeared, most unexpectedly. Tussard came up to the office a few minutes later, and had to wait.

  Bennett had been thinking, and regarding a distant placid policeman in plain clothes, who moved about on the terrace like a grazing cow in a pasture. The policeman had been taking measurements along the parapet, and Bennett had been sprawling comfortably in a learner chair taking up a large part of the floor with his long legs. Suttro looked at him, and at Holcomb, and wished them good morning. Then he stopped before Bennett to pay his respects to him.

  Suttro, Bennett guessed, was between thirty-five and forty. (He was, in fact, thirty-eight.) He stood a little more than medium height. His large head, however, and his muscular, stocky body, made him appear shorter than he really was. Dark, thick, reddish hair, vivid features, quick and incisive movements, emphasized his look of strength and vitality. He had poise, but beneath it a concentrated intensity, a burning impatience and restlessness, revealed, it seemed, in spite of the smooth and quiet polish of his manners. A schooled Arab stallion of a man.

  Introductions he waved aside, and talked to Bennett as if their reputations were enough to make them known to each other.

  “Pretty grim, this business, Mr. Bennett. Have you heard how Christien is? Not a very nice affair for you to walk into last night.”

  “Quite so.”

  “If Christien hadn’t gone to pieces, you’d have been my guest at lunch with him this week. Sounds a little foolish now, I suppose. But if there’s anything that I can do, I’ll do it, gladly. If I can help, you know. I’d like to stand you a dinner and a quiet talk, but I know you’ll be in Washington tomorrow. Christien told me that. Let’s say that you can call me up, and I’ll be at your convenience any time. You’ll take me up, I hope? Glad to get the chance, believe me, sir...”

  Deftly said, upon a perfect note of ease, without a single dissonance of servility or condescension. Bennett admired.

  Then Suttro launched with Holcomb into matters touching Christien’s absence. Suttro took the center of the room, and clasped his hands behind his back, and braced his feet apart. His chin was lifted when he talked, his voice was exceptionally rich, yet unaffected. And Bennett watched the man with pleasure, hardly listening, until he heard the mention on police.

  “You are in touch with them, aren’t you, Holcomb?”

  “Well, Mr. Boxworth left it up to me.”

  “I’m afraid to tell them something, so I tell it to you.”

  “What’s that, sir?”

  “While I sat waiting here last night, befor
e the row began, I didn’t see anything out the window. They didn’t ask me why. I didn’t feel like running after them today with my little excuse. When things get dull for them, the point may come up, and then you’ll have it for them.”

  “All right, sir.”

  “I had my back to the window. I was sitting where you’re sitting. I was at the telephone.”

  Bennett stirred and murmured, “Dear chap, there’s a perfect alibi.”

  “Don’t I wish it was?”

  “Why isn’t it?”

  “Because I couldn’t get my number. There wasn’t anybody home. I rang it three or four times.”

  “What number, pray?”

  “My own. My bachelor flat in Brooklyn.”

  “I’ll put it down,” said Holcomb, writing.

  “You might as well,” said Suttro. “And another thing. Call them off Miss Whittacker and her niece. That is, if you ever get the chance. I hate to see them run those ladies ragged.”

  “I’ll try,” said Holcomb, “but you know how Tussard is.”

  “I do. Have you heard how much the police are telling the reporters?”

  “I’m afraid I don’t get in on things like that.”

  “In case you do, you’d better know my slant. I want to head off emphasis. The murder had nothing to do with the Chelsac Theatre itself, or with Chelsea Project. A crime that might have happened on the street, or in the subway. A thing that can’t be laid to us, any more than a suicide at the foot of General Sherman’s statue could be laid to General Sherman. And let me know if anything turns up. I want to see how the early afternoon editions handle us.”

  “Dare say you don’t believe all that,” said Bennett, stirring once more.

  “Let’s say the watchman did it,” Suttro answered easily, and took his leave as quickly as he came.

  Almost reproachfully, Bennett stared at the shutting door, and murmured, “Oh, my word! Not guile, within the Meaning of the Act, but leaning perilously far out of the ivory tower this morning, eh? No, Holcomb, it isn’t worth explaining to you.”