The Big Book of Christmas Mysteries

by Otto Penzler (ed)

  “I reckon as how yer kid’s all right, miss,” he answered consolingly.

  Her voluble confidences had enthralled him, and her reference of this matter to his judgment was enormously flattering. On the rough edges of society where he had spent most of his life, fellow craftsmen had frequently solicited his advice, chiefly as to the disposition of their ill-gotten gains or regarding safe harbors of refuge, but to be taken into counsel by the only gentlewoman he had ever met roused his self-respect, touched a chivalry that never before had been wakened in The Hopper’s soul. She was so like a child in her guilelessness, and so brave amid her perplexities!

  “Oh, I know Roger will take beautiful care of Billie. And now,” she smiled radiantly, “you’re probably wondering what I’ve been driving at all this time. Maybe”—she added softly—“maybe it’s providential, your turning up here in this way!”

  She uttered this happily, with a little note of triumph and another of her smiles that seemed to illuminate the universe. The Hopper had been called many names in his varied career, but never before had he been invested with the attributes of an agent of Providence.

  “They’s things wot is an’ they’s things wot ain’t, miss; I reckon I ain’t as bad as some. I mean to be on the square, miss.”

  “I believe that,” she said. “I’ve always heard there’s honor among thieves, and”—she lowered her voice to a whisper—“it’s possible I might become one myself!”

  The Hopper’s eyes opened wide and he crossed and uncrossed his legs nervously in his agitation.

  “If—if”—she began slowly, bending forward with a grave, earnest look in her eyes and clasping her fingers tightly—“if we could only get hold of father’s Lang-Yao jar and that plum-blossom vase Mr. Talbot has—if we could only do that!”

  The Hopper swallowed hard. This fearless, pretty young woman was calmly suggesting that he commit two felonies, little knowing that his score for the day already aggregated three—purse-snatching, the theft of an automobile from her own door, and what might very readily be construed as the kidnaping of her own child!

  “I don’t know, miss,” he said feebly, calculating that the sum total of even minimum penalties for the five crimes would outrun his natural life and consume an eternity of reincarnations.

  “Of course it wouldn’t be stealing in the ordinary sense,” she explained. “What I want you to do is to play the part of what we will call a reversible Santa Claus, who takes things away from stupid people who don’t enjoy them anyhow. And maybe if they lost these things they’d behave themselves. I could explain afterward that it was all my fault, and of course I wouldn’t let any harm come to you. I’d be responsible, and of course I’d see you safely out of it; you would have to rely on me for that. I’m trusting you and you’d have to trust me!”

  “Oh, I’d trust ye, miss! An’ ef I was to get pinched I wouldn’t never squeal on ye. We don’t never blab on a pal, miss!”

  He was afraid she might resent being called a “pal,” but his use of the term apparently pleased her.

  “We understand each other, then. It really won’t be very difficult, for papa’s place is over on the Sound and Mr. Talbot’s is right next to it, so you wouldn’t have far to go.”

  Her utter failure to comprehend the enormity of the thing she was proposing affected him queerly. Even among hardened criminals in the underworld such undertakings are suggested cautiously; but Muriel was ordering a burglary as though it were a pound of butter or a dozen eggs!

  “Father keeps his most valuable glazes in a safe in the pantry,” she resumed after a moment’s reflection, “but I can give you the combination. That will make it a lot easier.”

  The Hopper assented, with a pontifical nod, to this sanguine view of the matter.

  “Mr. Talbot keeps his finest pieces in a cabinet built into the bookshelves in his library. It’s on the left side as you stand in the drawing-room door, and you look for the works of Thomas Carlyle. There’s a dozen or so volumes of Carlyle, only they’re not books—not really—but just the backs of books painted on the steel of a safe. And if you press a spring in the upper right-hand corner of the shelf just over these books the whole section swings out. I suppose you’ve seen that sort of hiding-place for valuables?”

  “Well, not exactly, miss. But havin’ a tip helps, an’ ef there ain’t no soup to pour—”

  “Soup?” inquired Muriel, wrinkling her pretty brows.

  “That’s the juice we pour into the cracks of a safe to blow out the lid with,” The Hopper elucidated. “Ut’s a lot handier ef you’ve got the combination. Ut usually ain’t jes’ layin’ around.”

  “I should hope not!” exclaimed Muriel.

  She took a sheet of paper from the leathern stationery rack and fell to scribbling, while he furtively eyed the window and again put from him the thought of flight.

  “There! That’s the combination of papa’s safe.” She turned her wrist and glanced at her watch. “It’s half-past eleven and you can catch a trolley in ten minutes that will take you right past papa’s house. The butler’s an old man who forgets to lock the windows half the time, and there’s one in the conservatory with a broken catch. I noticed it to-day when I was thinking about stealing the jar myself!”

  They were established on so firm a basis of mutual confidence that when he rose and walked to the table she didn’t lift her eyes from the paper on which she was drawing a diagram of her father’s house. He stood watching her nimble fingers, fascinated by the boldness of her plan for restoring amity between Shaver’s grandfathers, and filled with admiration for her resourcefulness.

  He asked a few questions as to exits and entrances and fixed in his mind a very accurate picture of the home of her father. She then proceeded to enlighten him as to the ways and means of entering the home of her father-in-law, which she sketched with equal facility.

  “There’s a French window—a narrow glass door—on the veranda. I think you might get in there!” She made a jab with the pencil. “Of course I should hate awfully to have you get caught! But you must have had a lot of experience, and with all the help I’m giving you—!”

  A sudden lifting of her head gave him the full benefit of her eyes and he averted his gaze reverently.

  “There’s always a chance o’ bein’ nabbed, miss,” he suggested with feeling.

  Shaver’s mother wielded the same hypnotic power, highly intensified, that he had felt in Shaver. He knew that he was going to attempt what she asked; that he was committed to the project of robbing two houses merely to please a pretty young woman who invited his coöperation at the point of a revolver!

  “Papa’s always a sound sleeper,” she was saying. “When I was a little girl a burglar went all through our house and carried off his clothes and he never knew it until the next morning. But you’ll have to be careful at Mr. Talbot’s, for he suffers horribly from insomnia.”

  “They got any o’ them fancy burglar alarms?” asked The Hopper as he concluded his examination of her sketches.

  “Oh, I forgot to tell you about that!” she cried contritely. “There’s nothing of the kind at Mr. Talbot’s, but at papa’s there’s a switch in the living-room, right back of a bust—a white marble thing on a pedestal. You turn it off there. Half the time papa forgets to switch it on before he goes to bed. And another thing—be careful about stumbling over that bearskin rug in the hall. People are always sticking their feet into its jaws.”

  “I’ll look out for ut, miss.”

  Burglar alarms and the jaws of wild beasts were not inviting hazards. The programme she outlined so light-heartedly was full of complexities. It was almost pathetic that any one could so cheerfully and irresponsibly suggest the perpetration of a crime. The terms she used in describing the loot he was to filch were much stranger to him than Chinese, but it was fairly clear that at the Talbot house he was to steal a blue-and-white thing and at the Wilton’s a red one. The form and size of these articles she illustrated with graceful gestu
res.

  “If I thought you were likely to make a mistake I’d—I’d go with you!” she declared.

  “Oh, no, miss; ye couldn’t do that! I guess I can do ut fer ye. Ut’s jes’ a leetle ticklish. I reckon ef yer pa wuz to nab me ut’d go hard with me.”

  “I wouldn’t let him be hard on you,” she replied earnestly. “And now I haven’t said anything about a—a—about what we will call a reward for bringing me these porcelains. I shall expect to pay you; I couldn’t think of taking up your time, you know, for nothing!”

  “Lor’, miss, I couldn’t take nothin’ at all fer doin’ ut! Ye see ut wuz sort of accidental our meetin’, and besides, I ain’t no housebreaker—not, as ye may say, reg’ler. I’ll be glad to do ut fer ye, miss, an’ ye can rely on me doin’ my best fer ye. Ye’ve treated me right, miss, an’ I ain’t a-goin’ t’ fergit ut!”

  The Hopper spoke with feeling. Shaver’s mother had, albeit at the pistol point, confided her most intimate domestic affairs to him. He realized, without finding just these words for it, that she had in effect decorated him with the symbol of her order of knighthood and he had every honorable—or dishonorable!—intention of proving himself worthy of her confidence.

  “If ye please, miss,” he said, pointing toward his confiscated revolver.

  “Certainly; you may take it. But of course you won’t kill anybody?”

  “No, miss; only I’m sort o’ lonesome without ut when I’m on a job.”

  “And you do understand,” she said, following him to the door and noting in the distance the headlight of an approaching trolley, “that I’m only doing this in the hope that good may come of it. It isn’t really criminal, you know; if you succeed, it may mean the happiest Christmas of my life!”

  “Yes, miss. I won’t come back till mornin’, but don’t you worry none. We gotta play safe, miss, an’ ef I land th’ jugs I’ll find cover till I kin deliver ’em safe.”

  “Thank you; oh, thank you ever so much! And good luck!”

  She put out her hand; he held it gingerly for a moment in his rough fingers and ran for the car.

  VII

  The Hopper, in his rôle of the Reversible Santa Claus, dropped off the car at the crossing Muriel had carefully described, waited for the car to vanish, and warily entered the Wilton estate through a gate set in the stone wall. The clouds of the early evening had passed and the stars marched through the heavens resplendently, proclaiming peace on earth and goodwill toward men. They were almost oppressively brilliant, seen through the clear, cold atmosphere, and as The Hopper slipped from one big tree to another on his tangential course to the house, he fortified his courage by muttering, “They’s things wot is an’ things wot ain’t!”—finding much comfort and stimulus in the phrase.

  Arriving at the conservatory in due course, he found that Muriel’s averments as to the vulnerability of that corner of her father’s house were correct in every particular. He entered with ease, sniffed the warm, moist air, and, leaving the door slightly ajar, sought the pantry, lowered the shades, and, helping himself to a candle from a silver candelabrum, readily found the safe hidden away in one of the cupboards. He was surprised to find himself more nervous with the combination in his hand than on memorable occasions in the old days when he had broken into country post-offices and assaulted safes by force. In his haste he twice failed to give the proper turns, but the third time the knob caught, and in a moment the door swung open disclosing shelves filled with vases, bottles, bowls, and plates in bewildering variety. A chest of silver appealed to him distractingly as a much more tangible asset than the pottery, and he dizzily contemplated a jewel-case containing a diamond necklace with a pearl pendant. The moment was a critical one in The Hopper’s eventful career. This dazzling prize was his for the taking, and he knew the operator of a fence in Chicago who would dispose of the necklace and make him a fair return. But visions of Muriel, the beautiful, the confiding, and of her little Shaver asleep on Humpy’s bed, rose before him. He steeled his heart against temptation, drew his candle along the shelf, and scrutinized the glazes. There could be no mistaking the red Lang-Yao whose brilliant tints kindled in the candle-glow. He lifted it tenderly, verifying the various points of Muriel’s description, set it down on the floor, and locked the safe.

  He was retracing his steps toward the conservatory and had reached the main hall when the creaking of the stairsteps brought him up with a start. Some one was descending, slowly and cautiously. For a second time and with grateful appreciation of Muriel’s forethought, he carefully avoided the ferocious jaws of the bear, noiselessly continued on to the conservatory, crept through the door, closed it, and then, crouching on the steps, awaited developments. The caution exercised by the person descending the stairway was not that of a householder who has been roused from slumber by a disquieting noise. The Hopper was keenly interested in this fact.

  With his face against the glass he watched the actions of a tall, elderly man with a short, grayish beard, who wore a golf-cap pulled low on his head—points noted by The Hopper in the flashes of an electric lamp with which the gentleman was guiding himself. His face was clearly the original of a photograph The Hopper had seen on the table at Muriel’s cottage—Mr. Wilton, Muriel’s father, The Hopper surmised; but just why the owner of the establishment should be prowling about in this fashion taxed his speculative powers to the utmost. Warned by steps on the cement floor of the conservatory, he left the door in haste and flattened himself against the wall of the house some distance away and again awaited developments.

  Wilton’s figure was a blur in the starlight as he stepped out into the walk and started furtively across the grounds. His conduct greatly displeased The Hopper, as likely to interfere with the further carrying out of Muriel’s instructions. The Lang-Yao jar was much too large to go into his pocket and not big enough to fit snugly under his arm, and as the walk was slippery he was beset by the fear that he might fall and smash this absurd thing that had caused so bitter an enmity between Shaver’s grandfathers. The soft snow on the lawn gave him a surer footing and he crept after Wilton, who was carefully pursuing his way toward a house whose gables were faintly limned against the sky. This, according to Muriel’s diagram, was the Talbot place. The Hopper greatly mistrusted conditions he didn’t understand, and he was at a loss to account for Wilton’s strange actions.

  He lost sight of him for several minutes, then the faint click of a latch marked the prowler’s proximity to a hedge that separated the two estates. The Hopper crept forward, found a gate through which Wilton had entered his neighbor’s property, and stole after him. Wilton had been swallowed up by the deep shadow of the house, but The Hopper was aware, from an occasional scraping of feet, that he was still moving forward. He crawled over the snow until he reached a large tree whose boughs, sharply limned against the stars, brushed the eaves of the house.

  The Hopper was aroused, tremendously aroused, by the unaccountable actions of Muriel’s father. It flashed upon him that Wilton, in his deep hatred of his rival collector, was about to set fire to Talbot’s house, and incendiarism was a crime which The Hopper, with all his moral obliquity, greatly abhorred.

  Several minutes passed, a period of anxious waiting, and then a sound reached him which, to his keen professional sense, seemed singularly like the forcing of a window. The Hopper knew just how much pressure is necessary to the successful snapping back of a window catch, and Wilton had done the trick neatly and with a minimum amount of noise. The window thus assaulted was not, he now determined, the French window suggested by Muriel, but one opening on a terrace which ran along the front of the house. The Hopper heard the sash moving slowly in the frame. He reached the steps, deposited the jar in a pile of snow, and was soon peering into a room where Wilton’s presence was advertised by the fitful flashing of his lamp in a far corner.

  “He’s beat me to ut!” muttered The Hopper, realizing that Muriel’s father was indeed on burglary bent, his obvious purpose being to purloin, extract
, and remove from its secret hiding-place the coveted plum-blossom vase. Muriel, in her longing for a Christmas of peace and happiness, had not reckoned with her father’s passionate desire to possess the porcelain treasure—a desire which could hardly fail to cause scandal, if it did not land him behind prison bars.

  This had not been in the programme, and The Hopper weighed judicially his further duty in the matter. Often as he had been the chief actor in daring robberies, he had never before enjoyed the high privilege of watching a rival’s labors with complete detachment. Wilton must have known of the concealed cupboard whose panel fraudulently represented the works of Thomas Carlyle, the intent spectator reflected, just as Muriel had known, for though he used his lamp sparingly Wilton had found his way to it without difficulty.

  The Hopper had no intention of permitting this monstrous larceny to be committed in contravention of his own rights in the premises, and he was considering the best method of wresting the vase from the hands of the insolent Wilton when events began to multiply with startling rapidity. The panel swung open and the thief’s lamp flashed upon shelves of pottery.

  At that moment a shout rose from somewhere in the house, and the library lights were thrown on, revealing Wilton before the shelves and their precious contents. A short, stout gentleman with a gleaming bald pate, clad in pajamas, dashed across the room, and with a yell of rage flung himself upon the intruder with a violence that bore them both to the floor.

  “Roger! Roger!” bawled the smaller man, as he struggled with his adversary, who wriggled from under and rolled over upon Talbot, whose arms were clasped tightly about his neck. This embrace seemed likely to continue for some time, so tenaciously had the little man gripped his neighbor. The fat legs of the infuriated householder pawed the air as he hugged Wilton, who was now trying to free his head and gain a position of greater dignity. Occasionally, as opportunity offered, the little man yelled vociferously, and from remote recesses of the house came answering cries demanding information as to the nature and whereabouts of the disturbance.