There was a Crooked Man

by George Worthing Yates

  “You mean to say the dead cripple lived in Suttro’s house in Brooklyn?”

  “The dead cripple was Suttro, and he lived in his own house. Precisely.”

  “Then why wasn’t the cripple seen coming in or going out?”

  “Because he was sensitive of his appearance, I dare say. He went abroad in the city after dark, and concealed his deformity as much as possible. You may recall that he visited his tailor at night, and with a companion. Suttro’s house was divided into an upper and a lower flat, was it not? Have you investigated the last tenant of the upper flat?”

  Tussard said, “The last tenant was more than four years ago, and Suttro couldn’t give us the name or address, because all the papers were burned in the fire.”

  “Rather ingenious of him,” said Bennett. “It wouldn’t be surprising, would it, if we learned that the ambitious and unprincipled secretary himself had sent those tenants packing. If he intended to do away with his master, that would be a necessary step in the preparations.”

  “Go on,” said the District Attorney. “If he planned the murder, why did he commit it on the terrace of the Chelsac Theatre?”

  “Dare say poor Suttro—the real Suttro, of course—began to suspect. I rather think our mock Suttro was impelled not only by ambition, but, during the last year, by a singular devotion to Miss Crofts. Fed by love, his ambition flamed higher, and his resistance to temptation burned to nothing in the heat of it. We may assume that this secretary led, by Anthony Suttro’s orders, a most circumspect and retiring life. To a young man, these irksome restrictions would cause considerable dislike, perhaps even hatred, for his master. However, he planned to take over for himself the identity of Anthony Suttro, and Suttro got wind of it, and wrote that letter which so confused the case—the letter to Frederick Christien. With no warning, last Tuesday evening, the apparent Suttro, the man who came to Christien’s meeting in response to a telephone call, found himself faced not only with the thwarting of his plans, but with disgrace and punishment. He stood to lose, when he saw his master approach through the darkness across the terrace, both his position as a person of influence, and his job; and, probably more important, Miss Crofts, all in one blow. Impulsively, and with no preparation, he completed a plan that had haunted his mind for years. He throttled Anthony Suttro before the meeting.

  “Believe me, there can be no history more pitiable and more terrifying. Fancy Suttro, alone, friendless, a recluse, unable to speak, scarcely able to get about among other men! How frightful it must have been for him! The effort he must have made to warn Miss Crofts of her misplaced confidence in the man she accepted and admired as the great Anthony Suttro! The difficulty in his way, when he knew himself to appear before Christien and the Executive Committed You may, if you like, piece out his painful journey to the theatre, where he was confronted with the impossibility of gaining admission to the offices even by the use of hi$ own name. I take it he was familiar with the building, probably through the architect’s plans. At any rate, he had to find his way surreptitiously through passages, and come upon Christien’s office by way of the terrace, lest he be stopped by an usher or a lift-boy, and sent out of the building, unable to explain why he had business there. Just as I did, Tussard, you wondered why he received Miss Whit-tacker’s advertisement. It’s quite clear, isn’t it, when we know him as Anthony Suttro, and remember that Aunt Emma, though he had never seen her, must have been a familiar personality to him. As I did, you wondered how he came by a notice of Christien’s meeting. That the impostor had stolen the notice to corroborate his innocence, and to conceal the existence of his employer, didn’t occur to me, to be frank with you, until last Friday. I suppose you notice how neatly the pieces fall into place?”

  Tussard said, “Can I ask you one question?”

  “Oh, do, by all means!”

  “What put you on to this in the first place?”

  “My dear chap, when a man as young as the ostensible Suttro, a man perhaps thirty-five years old, and at the very most forty, claims to have written a very successful and rather serious book in 1914, at the age of fifteen, perhaps, or twelve or so, it must put you on to something. Don’t you think?”

  The District Attorney remarked, “In my opinion—though you’d better see that I’m not quoted, Hackmann!—the police have been too matter-of-fact from beginning to end. It’s not that they’ve been careless about collecting the evidence, as I see it, but that they’ve been damned slack in their interpretation of it. Now, there’s one thing—”

  Bennett took a turn at interrupting on his own behalf, and observed, “After all, Tussard arranged this meeting. I assure you, I have considerable respect for the imagination and the tolerance of a chap who would leave his home tonight, with nothing more to go upon than my all too nebulous assurances. But, pray, you were about to ask me?”

  “I was merely going to remind you that we have on file in our office some testimony that Boxworth gave the police before he died. He said, you may remember, that he and Suttro were together in Suttro’s office at the time the body of the watchman was removed from the Theatre. Do you account for that in any reasonable way? Or was Boxworth unreliable?”

  “I’m afraid I don’t know. Very probably, Boxworth had. no alibi for that hour, and Suttro convinced him of the need for manufacturing a mutual alibi, to prevent further embarrassment for both. But Boxworth suspected, though reluctantly and only after I had influenced him a bit. Boxworth, indeed, went on to suspect the entire truth and I think in his generosity, he may have given the Suttro impostor an opportunity for flight. Flight, however, wasn’t what he desired. And the unfortunate result of Boxworth’s extreme kindness was his death.”

  Tussard drew a cigar from his pocket, lighted it, stretched, nodded to himself, and said, “I was pretty sure you knew what you were talking about.”

  “Ah?”

  “I mean,” said Tussard, blowing out a great cloud of smoke, “when you wanted the watchman’s body kept out of the papers.”

  “I can’t pretend,” said Bennett, “to have expected the murderer to impersonate the watchman in an effort to throw suspicion there. No. I’m afraid fear impelled the fellow into fantastic impersonations. He interrupted his honeymoon for a last attempt at that old game. Though I fancy you know more than I about his return from his journey to Chicago. Miss Crofts will have told you that. You see, I guess far more than I know. I console myself with the opinion that I guess, for the most part, quite well.”

  Hackmann from the window said, “I might as well have the Crofts story, too. How did Suttro get thrown down from the bridge in that place?”

  “Oh, he tried to pull a fast one,” said Tussard. “He had an idea I’d think he was in Chicago, and I’d forget all about him after the watchman showed up once more. He was trying to hide, according to this girl, and he fell off one of those steel ladders.”

  “And the girl?”

  “She came back when he did, to warn Mr. Levison at the Theatre.”

  Tussard had crossed to the door, and he stood there with his hand on the knob drawing thoughtfully on his cigar. The District Attorney returned his watch chain to its proper slope from pocket to pocket, slapped his thighs, and stood erect. He said to Tussard, “Where are you going? After Suttro? I mean—by the way, what is his name?”

  “I’m sure I don’t know,” said Bennett. “Perhaps, since we have the quantity left over after our evening’s labors, we might call him X.”

  5.

  It rained—how it rained!—the day Miss Crofts came out of the hospital. There was a party for her, and for Bennett, who was about to sail openly, honestly (for the malignant Mapes had been disposed of) and finally for England. Tussard, and even the District Attorney, managed to be at the lunch in the Moore House restaurant There was abundant champagne for Aunt Emma to drink, and there was no end of felicitations and hearty handshaking.

  The reporters descended on them like a plague of flies; and particularly on Miss Crofts, in view of the fa
ct that the man she had lately married had been, on the afternoon before, indicted for murder.

  “When did you first find out he was the killer?”

  “I started repacking his bags after we had pulled out of the station. I found the watchman’s coat and hat and keys, and he came into the compartment while I still had them out. He went to pieces.”

  “Did he confess?”

  “As good as.”

  “Did he know you had followed him back to New York?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What did you think when he had the marriage annulled, so he could testify against you?”

  “What could I think?”

  “What was his idea in starting to Chicago, and then coming right back?”

  “He wanted me to register at a hotel for both of us there, to give him an alibi. He said he would throw the police off his trail, and join me in Chicago by ‘plane.”

  “Did he ever threaten you?”

  Ann said, “Oh, no!” With solemnity she added, “But if you have to write something, you can say he cast a kind of funny, supernatural spell over me. You see, I don’t really care any more.”

  It was that kind of a lunch. While Miss Emma Whit-tacker asked tart questions about Prison Reform of the District Attorney, Geoffrey Bennett, Lord Broghville, gently lectured Inspector Tussard on the value of the teaching of sound principles of literary aesthetics to policemen:

  “My dear chap, isn’t it frightfully obvious? For example, you were baffled by the mysterious letter to Christien. You had no idea who wrote it. But I? I knew at once, of course. I knew that the writer of that letter to Christien was, out of all question, the writer of the Suttro books. Internal evidence. Precisely the same toshy prose style, if you see what I mean. Have you ever read Coleridge? Not his poetry, my word, no! Or—let me see!—Longinus on the Sublime. Very sound. Really, I can’t help but feel that you have neglected the classics to the utter dissipation of your wit. Psychology? A booby-trap. Appalling rubbish, if you follow me. If the champagne makes you sneeze, why don’t you drink brandy?”

  At last they all moved off, and Aunt Emma, in the flush of a rapturous enthusiasm, fitted herself by main force in the seat of the hired limousine, next to his lord-ship, where she devoted ten minutes to the exposition of a vital cause—the Union for Promotion of Prison Reform—and solicited, successfully, a fat endowment for her new magazine, to be called, Prison Cry! As she stuffed Bennett’s contribution into her bag, she confessed with a sigh, “Never, in all my born days, have I seen such primitive and unsanitary little cells as there are in the City Prison. And the matrons, how terribly crude and disrespectful!”

  Bennett remained beneficently disposed, and before the ship sailed, he kissed Miss Crofts solemnly on her forehead, and took young Raymonds aside, and led him to the privacy of the purser’s office.

  “A match?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Thank you. Um. Have you asked her?”

  “Asked her?”

  “Come, come, Raymonds!”

  “No, I haven’t. As soon as I land a job, I’m going to.”

  “A job?” demanded Bennett, raising an overwhelming eyebrow.

  “Don’t worry. I’m not going to ask you for one. If there’s anything I’m thoroughly sick of, it’s weeping at all my friends for help. You’ve never had to do it. There’s a very nasty look of I-smell-dead-fish that comes over their faces, and they say they’ll let you know, and they ask you to drop in again in a couple of weeks.”

  “Ah, but what are friends for?”

  “They’re not for sponging on.”

  “Rot!”

  “What do you mean, rot?”

  “Rot. I say, do you go to the cinema?”

  “Once in a while.”

  “Do you find it very dull? No matter. Do you know where California is? One of your States, you know. Out in the west, near Florida, I believe.”

  “I know where it is.”

  “Then go there. See this chap. Ermon is the name, and he lives in Hollywood. I bought a cinema company last year, and this chap is Managing Director. Understand? Good. Marry the girl, there’s a good fellow. Is that clear? Good. Ah, Hope is waiting for me in Southampton, dancing in a frenzy on the dock. That’s the last whistle, and this ship must be off. Go away. Write me how you get on. Dare say you’ll plunge yourself in a priceless pot of trouble, you’ve the knack of it. Quite. Then goodbye, old fellow. I’ll be seeing you, an expression I acquired from Tussard after lunch today. Very nice, isn’t it? Ah. Then goodbye...”

  And Miss Whittacker lost her handkerchief into the Hudson River while waving it from the end of the pier, and Hobey Raymonds’ happiness was hid in the shouting crowd, and Ann wept yet once again, and the ship bore Lord Broghville away upon the wide wastes of the Atlantic. And Raymonds and his bride went to California, where they gave the letter Bennett had left with them, to Matthew Ermon, and this, as Bennett had prophesied, led to a very remarkable affair, which, after all, was really quite another story.

  THE END

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