The Riddle of the Yellow Zuri

by Harry Stephen Keeler

  “Well, it was up to him,” declared Smock airily. “I had written many letters to him in the prison urging this change in the form of title.”

  “Henry Desmond told me, however, Mr. Smock, that after I mailed that paper addressed to you, he could not seem after that to bring things to a climax. One’s natural deduction would be that so long as one of the two parties was protected against his own death, he would not be in particular haste to protect the other likewise. However, let’s drop that point which may be open to serious misinterpretation. Mr. Smock, I don’t believe Henry Desmond is dead. I believe that declaration to come down Friday in the probate court is to cost him and his children fifty thousand dollars. Would you be willing to grant us six months of grace so that we could make a final attempt to locate him?”

  “How can I do that?” countered Smock very adroitly. “Unless I’m in a position to sell to Whitlock, Spayne, Critchley and Evans before tomorrow noon, I’m left with the property on my hands to parcel off into small lots which will not only take a lot of my time to dispose of, but may even bring five thousand dollars to eight thousand dollars less than the one big offer.”

  This was precisely the admission which Carson wished to force Smock to make. Smock had walked nicely into the trap. A pause followed Smock’s reply, and then the younger man made a new proposal.

  “Then suppose we all get together and agree to take the offer of Whitlock, Spayne, Critchley and Evans while the getting is good, but you on your hand agree to give us the six months of grace by depositing Henry Desmond’s half of the purchase money in trust or escrow until we fail to make good on our belief that we might produce him?”

  A laugh that was more of a cackle escaped Smock.

  “What you ask is impossible,” he declared point-blank. “I am not willing to do that at all — and don’t intend to do it. That old Rocky Ridge tract is mine — and that ends it. If you have come here to propose wild ideas such as that, you are wasting your time, young man.”

  Carson surveyed that cold face, and the realization was borne in on him only too indubitably that the human iceberg across from him was immovable, unthawable. He wondered what Smock would say were he to tell the money-lender that incontrovertible evidence had turned up proving that Henry Desmond really was alive. But he dared not even mention this vital point for the reason that Smock might, after obtaining ownership and failing to sell to Whitlock, Spayne, Critchley and Evans for one hundred thousand dollars, sell off the entire tract at as high a figure as he could get consistent with quick disposal. For so long as Smock himself kept possession of the tract, Gordon had assured him, the return of the living man, declared dead, could, by law, set aside the declaration of death. But — once sold or transferred, even to Smock’s own wife — and Henry Desmond was out of things forever so far as regaining the tiniest tithe in the Rocky Ridge tract went. In all probability, Henry Desmond was due to suffer a huge loss. But, Carson told himself, were he to drop the lightest hint here tonight of what he knew, it was absolutely certain that Henry Desmond would be the loser.

  He sighed. Then he resumed the argument doggedly, trying to see just how much he could move this Gibraltarlike rock. “I do not believe Henry Desmond is dead. I feel convinced that we will see him. But this has little conviction to you, Mr. Smock. Then so long as this is the case, I wonder if there is still not a compromise we can make which will at least protect his children, if not him. By your own statement a while back, Whitlock, Spayne, Critchley and Evans stand willing to pay one hundred thousand dollars for this Outer Ravenswood tract. Also by your own estimate of what the tract will bring if dealt out in small parcels at footage rates, which procedure will drag along possibly for two or three years, ninety-two thousand dollars may be about the total of what will be gotten out of it providing it is not held several years longer for its inevitable rise. From this it appears that Henry Desmond’s quitclaim is worth exactly eight thousand dollars to you. On top of this, there is the significant fact that if you can sell right now, you will draw interest for a couple of years on the sales money, which you won’t do if you sell two years from now! That potential interest, at six percent, amounts roughly to — say — twelve thousand dollars. And eight thousand dollars plus twelve thousand dollars equals twenty thousand dollars. Could you not see your way to be fair in the matter and pay over to Marcia and Cary at least the value which that quitclaim possesses to you?”

  “Pay them twenty thousand dollars?” bit out Smock. “Well I should say not! I am a business man — not a charity giver. And I should like to tell you that your logic about interest, which is not yet earned, is very faulty. For if I should die next month, I personally wouldn’t earn any interest, would I? So that puts us back again to the sum of eight thousand dollars which you have an idea I ought to pay them. Well, the answer is ‘nothing doing.’ I have made an offer. That offer stands or falls.” The red which rose to his face this time was the red of anger. He raised a forefinger with which he gestured emphatically as he spoke. “Young man, when I first went into business with a capital of fifty dollars, I made one rule: that was that when I made an offer of any sort, the offer was to stand. For forty years I have followed that rule to the hair — and more than once I have taken losses by standing pat. And I don’t intend to break it now. If you people think you can hold me up simply because I need your quitclaim to put over this particular sale, you will find that you are vastly mistaken. I’ll take my loss, no matter what it is; I’ll take it down to the last dollar. But not one cent — not one penny — will I go beyond the point I have offered. And the day will come — mark you, young man — the day will come — when that boy and girl will wish they had taken their respective thousand dollars while the taking was good.”

  “Well,” said Carson a bit heatedly, “if they decide not to take it, they can, I think, bear their loss of two thousand dollars just as stoically as you will bear yours of eight thousand dollars or so.” He paused. “Then I take it that not one penny more than you offer will you pay for that quitclaim?” He looked curiously at the other man.

  “I’ve made my offer — there it stands.” Mr. Smock took up his cigar and puffed furiously on it. “What have you got to do with this Desmond case anyway, young man?”

  “As I told you, I am merely a foster-son of Henry Desmond and engaged to Marcia Desmond. Marcia has practically delegated to me the authority to say what she shall do about this entire matter. Quite naturally I have therefore come to you in order to obtain a more fair deal for her and her brother. If I cannot, I do not see that I can advise her to turn over the quitclaim.”

  Matthias Smock rose and paced about the room. Then he dropped into his chair. “Well, if you’re expecting me to relinquish one jot of my legal rights, the whole pack and parcel of you are badly mistaken. I’ve offered those two young people one thousand dollars apiece for that quitclaim by or before tomorrow noon. The offer stands — not one penny more. If they throw good money over their shoulders by your advice, they’ve picked out a mighty poor advisor. They’ll not thank you for your counsel ninety days later, I’m telling you that.”

  Carson made no reply to this. Then suddenly he asked: “Mr. Smock, have you any children?”

  He thought he detected a fleeting look of disappointment creep across Smock’s face, but it was supplanted in an instant by the hard, hard look of the inexorable financial man.

  “I have not, Mr. Carson. What of it, if I may ask?”

  To Carson, that fleeting look urged one last tack. He leaned forward. His tone was the tone used by one man to another.

  “Mr. Smock, suppose you had a couple of kidlets — a boy and a girl. Suppose you — not some other man, but you yourself — were sent to the penitentiary for a crime you hadn’t committed. Suppose you escaped. Suppose you didn’t know that events later exonerated you. Suppose the only legacy you had in the world to leave your children was to be lost to them simply because you were unable to come out in the open and draw up the necessary legal papers to
protect them. Wouldn’t you be driven nearly desperate at such a predicament? Wouldn’t it strike you to the heart to know that your children were being absolutely despoiled of their rights purely by the web of circumstance?”

  Smock’s lip curled in the most scornful glance he had yet given his visitor. “In answer to that,” he said sneeringly, “let me ask you this: If you were a young man who was engaged to a pretty girl whose father’s land, held in joint-tenancy, had multiplied in value fifty times, would you work hard or wouldn’t you to get the new owner to relinquish his claims, to threaten him, to cajole him, to bargain with him, so that your wife, coming to you, could bring along a nice dower?”

  At this pregnant retort, Carson reddened from neck to ears. For the first time there was borne in on him the possibility of this misconstruction of his motives in coming here. In simpler language he was put down as a fortune hunter. He rose without a single word.

  “I had a faint idea when I came here tonight, Mr. Smock, that we might adjust this thing fairly for all parties concerned, with no bitterness anywhere. But I see I was over-sanguine. I’ll bid you good evening now. And in leaving I should like to give you official notification that neither Marcia nor Cary Desmond will deliver that quitclaim tomorrow.” He would like to have hurled a further bombshell at that monument of avariciousness by telling him that Henry Desmond was alive, if not located. But for reasons which he had made quite clear to himself he kept his lips tightly sealed on this most vital of all facts. “And if you expect to sell the Outer Ravenswood tract in the future, you may as well prepare to cut it up into small lots and sell it to the little people who will use up two or three years of your time.” And he added: “And pay real estate taxes on it in the meanwhile!”

  And with this last combined hot-shot picturing to Smock the long-drawn-out and not inexpensive procedure in which he must indulge in order to transform the former Rocky Ridge tract into money, Carson bowed himself out of the library door. The white-capped maid, catching sight of him striding down the hallway, came to the front door and let him out, and Carson found himself a moment later out in the fresh night air uncontaminated by the presence of the grasping money-lender.

  He turned his footsteps toward a drugstore at the further end of the street, and reaching it entered its telephone booth. He knew that Marcia must be just rising from bed to prepare her little late meal and start for her night trick on the Kildare exchange. As he rang the St. Giles Lane number, he felt quite clear in his mind as to the procedure for the coming days. First, Cary must be saved from disgrace by the twenty thousand dollar bill his father had sent “for thirty days.” That bill would completely square up his nine thousand and six hundred dollars defalcations at the bank and also allow him to pay in full the ten thousand dollar note he had given Carson for the lost Helium Gas stock certificate, and Carson himself in turn could pay off Mrs. Galioto and save his own office and brilliant future prospects. And in the meantime Henry Desmond must be located some way — even if they had to trace the blotter in devious ways as yet unthought of, and a warning gotten to him to come back at once and seize his property before it trickled from Smock’s hands. This done, explanations could follow in due course. Marcia’s voice came upon the wire. Carson spoke.

  “Honey-girl, this is Cliff. Under no conditions deliver that quitclaim to Smock. If any attorneys come to you tonight at the Kildare exchange, refuse to sign any papers. Cary will do likewise and I have already advised him. Something of the greatest importance has developed, and we must see that Smock is forced to hold the Outer Ravenswood tract for a short while, rather than turn it into money which he can get rid of. Now, is this all clear, honey? Cary will explain more fully in the morning. He is coming back to live at home again with you and Grandfather.”

  Her delighted answer showed her pleasure at what she thought must be some self-inflicted change of heart on the part of her brother, and betrayed only too well how she cared for that little play-partner of her youth. Then saying a hurried good-bye, Carson hung up.

  When he reached his rooms on Scott Street, a short thoroughfare within walking distance of the Loop, he found Cary there sitting in a chair with the electric lights lit. The latter looked as though he had had a good cold shower and a general brightening up, but there were deep lines in his face that had never been there before. His face lighted and he rose as Carson came in, closed the door behind him and threw his hat on the bed.

  “Which was it, Cliff?” he inquired anxiously. “Did — did you locate van Twillingham in some way and get an advance on my man-trap idea — or — or — or was it Smock? Did he — did he suffer a change of heart?”

  Carson laughed sardonically at the thought of the two quite impossible things Cary had just projected. “Neither,” he said briefly. “To get an advance from a millionaire on an idea which he has never yet seen, particularly when his location is unknown, is quite unachievable. And what is the most impossible of all is to convey a sense of moral obligation into a bloodsucker such as Matthias Smock, your revered second-cousin. No — ” He delved into his breast pocket, and unpinning from it the twenty thousand dollar gold note which had come to him through the mails, handed it to the amazed Cary whose eyes stared at it almost unbelievingly. “Cary, that gold note is yours for thirty days, come what may. It’s from my friend — the best friend I ever had on this earth. Why it was sent to me to be used I do not know — but I do know that the only possible use for it now is to save you. The friend who sent it, by the way, is your father!”

  CHAPTER VIII

  THE GODDESS CHANCE AND SAM JOHNSON

  CARY Desmond stared first at the crisp bank note held in Carson’s outstretched fingers, then into his foster-brother’s face. Amazement, incredulity, were written on his own finely chiselled features. Gingerly he took the bill; he scanned it with the practised eye of the bank teller. Again he turned his gaze on the other.

  “Cliff — surely — surely you don’t mean that this came from Father? How could — ” He stopped, at a loss for words.

  Carson inclined his head toward a chair. He drew up one for himself, close to the one which Cary took.

  “Cary, your father was a printer when he was a young man in Liverpool, was he not?”

  Cary nodded dazedly. “So — so Grandfather has told Marcia and me. He ran away from home when he was a boy and learned the printing trade. From that he developed into a mechanician for printing machinery, and in time became a mechanical engineer.”

  Carson nodded slowly. Then, taking the glazed message from his pocket, he outlined to Cary Desmond the happenings of that afternoon. Cary inspected the curly layer of the blotter carefully, nodding.

  “You are right,” he said incredulously. “It is Father’s cryptic way of conveying a message to us without using handwriting — making the big van Twillingham divorce suit serve as the key to his meaning. Your interpretation is right, Cliff. The spacing at top and bottom can mean nothing else than: ‘Be ready to see me — can’t see you yet — watch for next communication.’ Lord, Cliff, what a mystery for Father to be involved in. Do you think that he could be held prisoner in some way?”

  “I did think something like that might be the case,” admitted Carson, “but I would hesitate to accept that as the only solution. One thing we know. His message contained a United States bill worth twenty thousand dollars. That is a factor which can be interpreted in several ways. It may mean that he is wealthy and that it is but part of what he has today — or it might mean that it is a stake he has made and that it is his sole pile. One thing is certain: He knew full well that I was ensconced in my own office here in Chicago, which shows that he has seen the papers describing the new bureau of investigation. I cannot but believe that he knows more than we give him credit for — for instance, that Marcia and I are to be married, and that instead of being merely his foster-son I am soon to be something more close. That could be deduced from the way in which he has trusted me.”

  “But thirty days!” interpolated Cary.
“He tells you to use the money for thirty days. How — ”

  Carson shook his head. “I don’t know the why nor wherefore of that. If it were from anybody but your father, that thirty-day business would worry me a bit. As it is, I interpret it to mean somehow that he is due to arrive back on the scene in that length of time. But I don’t know exactly what it indicates. All I do know is that your father would give his last penny on earth to spare you what he has suffered — I could show you letters from him in prison which tell that only too strongly. It would almost seem that he knows of your embezzlement, and that you have in turn involved Marcia’s happiness through dragging my office here into the smash, the way in which he has come to the rescue. But there is one thing he doesn’t know — and I believe he has become mixed up in his dates: He does not appear to be cognizant of the fact that a week ago he had been missing and unheard-of for seven years. If he knows that his share of the old Rocky Ridge tract is worth fifty thousand dollars today, he fatuously believes that it is still safe. And this is the vital information that must be gotten to him quickly now — that already the seven years of his absence are up and that next Friday he will be legally dead. It is not enough for us to know that we will hear from him again — we must locate him before that time. And in the meantime, it seems to me, we can use this twenty thousand dollars with perfect assurance, for if we locate your father, even if this were all he had in the world, he will be worth several times this by the rise in that old Rocky Ridge tract.”

  “And you think, Cliff, that this Bill Wiswell, the investigator you hired, may be able to find a clue to Father by means of examining the type, or possibly also type matrixes, in all the printshops in Hammond, Indiana?”

  “I dare not hypothesize,” responded the other. “There are other printing presses in existence than open ones, you know — presses concealed in dark basements and boarded-up attics, used by bands of counterfeiters, bootleggers printing imitation whiskey labels and revenue stamps, and so forth. There’s no telling what the circumstances were which gave your father access to a press. Again, this letter bearing only my name and office address in typewriting might conceivably have been only mailed at Hammond, Indiana. If your father is playing some sort of a quiet game of his own against some enemy, it has not been given us to have a peep into it.”