The Fourth King

by Harry Stephen Keeler

  When the dawn crept in he was calmer, more resigned. The blow had fallen; nothing could be done to undo it. But one powerful emotion now filled his being: If it were true that Avery Reardon had gone to her death through an accident he would, and could, do no more than bow his head. But if it should develop in the next twenty-four hours that she was in some way — as suggested through the peculiar feature of the staring eyes and the fact of her business connection with J. Hamilton Eaves as well — the victim of the machinations of the being who called himself Star of the Night, and new clues should rise as to that individual’s identity, the latter should suffer not only the extreme penalty of the law, but the worst that he, Folwell, could wreak even with his bare hands.

  He wondered how Mrs. Hepburn, Avery’s mother, would take the blow when she should hear the news at her sister’s in Elgin — when she should learn that her only support, her only child, her nearest and dearest, by that one joyous vacation trip had left her for ever.

  Early in the dawn, he crept downstairs and called up the Wisconsin Street house. But it was as he already knew. Only the monotonous ringing in the receiver announced the fact that no one was there with whom to talk, to secure further details.

  The sun finally poured over Rokeby Street once more, but he gave no thought to breakfast. He had no appetite; he wondered if he would ever feel like eating again. As for his unfortunate personal involvement in the Eaves combined murder and theft case, he no longer cared in the least. The one girl whose testimony in court was perhaps to mean so much with a jury sitting on his innocence was gone. And he did not now care what they did, or what verdict any jury might see fit to bring in. And thus he sat, chin in hands, bitter, tired, emotionless, suddenly grown hard, when a ring at the bell downstairs and a later brusque knock at the door of his room announced that a visitor from the outside world was there.

  He went to the door and opened it. There stood nobody else but Lionel Pettibone, dressed in a neat black suit and tie, evidently in mourning for his stepfather. but, incongruously present with the external appearances of affliction, was Lionel’s inevitable cigarette hanging from his yellow finger-tips, and his face was a little flushed as though he had been drinking.

  “Want to speak to you a few minutes, old man,” he began in a surprisingly cordial tone of voice. “Most important.”

  Folwell bowed a tired head toward the chair near by. His first impulse had been to tell Lionel Pettibone that he had had a blow, but somehow the information refused to come. It seemed to him that to have even one word of sympathy from Lionel would be sacrilege. And so he remained absolutely silent. But from Lionel’s later conversation it appeared that he, too, had seen the item that his father’s stenographer had met her death.

  Lionel came in, and sat down on a chair. Folwell, brushing back the recalcitrant hair from the seamed and tired forehead he could see in the mirror across the room, dropped into another chair. “What did you want of me?” he asked abruptly.

  Lionel was busy lighting another cigarette. With the first full-fledged puff he began. “Folwell, lots of things are happening, and I need some one’s assistance. Ever since yesterday I’ve been on the run from home to the detective bureau, and from the detective bureau to the office, and bumping from detail to detail of father’s confoundedly mixed-up business, and coupled with his death I’m just about up in the air. Now I’m confronted with the necessity of a little technical assistance along your lines. I had hoped to have both yourself and Miss Reardon do a little work for me this morning, but I find by the paper that Miss Reardon was accidentally drowned from the City of Duluth night before last. Can you beat it?”

  If Lionel Pettibone had not been the self-centred young cub that he was, he would have seen the look of intense pain that surged across Jason Folwell’s eyes, the sudden whitening of the latter’s face, but his absorption in himself and his own affairs was quite plain to the other man, who merely shut his teeth in a grim line and drew in a long breath.

  “What is it I can do?” Folwell asked. His own voice startled him, it seemed so hollow and unreal.

  “Folwell,” said Lionel, “the Chicago Detective Bureau has turned over to me, on the condition that I prosecute you now that they’ve booked you, a confession which they found in father’s possession — a confession signed by you and stating that you plundered his vault to the tune of about five thou.”

  “And you’re going to prosecute?” queried Folwell weariedly.

  “Not necessarily,” retorted Lionel, and his voice was childishly pompous, “but there’s no reason why I shouldn’t if you saw fit to rob the old man. All right. Now, Folwell, enough in regards to that for the present. What do you know about the Shanks Dictatograph?”

  Folwell wondered how, after what he had gone through, he had the fortitude to sit there and calmly discuss the prosaic details of his everyday life, but by some freak power of spirit and will, he managed to talk, still wondering at the sound, the real sound of his own voice, as he did so. It was the courage that comes to the aid of every one in the hour of bereavement.

  “What do I know about it?” he repeated very slowly. “Well — what do you mean? Its history — its value — its status — its what? I don’t know what your question asks.”

  “Well, I’ll explain then,” announced Lionel, brushing with one hand the sleek black hair across the narrow brow. “It’s about the history of the thing, how father got hold of it; and chances are against your knowing much about those details. Here are the facts, however.” He puffed on his cigarette. “The Shanks Dictatograph was invented by Phineas Shanks, who died afterwards a paralytic in a home for incurables. When father first got wind of the device, and sensed that it was a ripe stock-selling proposition, he investigated it thoroughly. The man to whom the patent rights had been assigned for the sum of $10 was one Nathan Shanks, Phineas Shanks’s brother. Nathan Shanks is a shoemaker by trade, owns a small shop of his own; he’s a bachelor — lives in the rear of his shop — and he’s a sort of a half well-read ignoramus. But he’s a slicker, Folwell. And this is what he did: It appears that Phineas worked for twenty years on the Dictatograph, and that he signed the entire rights over, sick and helpless as he was, to Nathan, on consideration that Nathan Shanks gave him a home for life and handled the business details connected with floating it. Anyway, as father learned in his investigation, Nathan Shanks, after getting the patent rights on the Dictatograph, promptly put his brother in the home for incurables, where Phineas Shanks died some half-year or so later.”

  “But that did not invalidate Nathan Shanks’s ownership of it,” said Folwell. His mind kept straying back to yesterday’s memory picture of a slim girl with a white lace collarette, and it was only with the greatest of concentration that he managed to keep his mind on the details which Lionel was trying for some reason to set forth.

  “Certainly not,” agreed Lionel Pettibone. “Father would not have taken over the proposition by any means unless Nathan Shanks had had complete and perfect title in the patent rights. All right. Now, father incorporated the Shanks Dictatograph and agreed to float it for Nathan Shanks, the latter to receive one-fifth of the total shares in exchange for the patent rights. Nathan Shanks had tried to market the device himself along legitimate channels, but the few men he had tried to deal with were generally suspicious of the machine and doubted whether it would ever supplant stenographers.”

  “Which it never will,” pronounced Folwell.

  “Wait — I’m coming to that,” said Lionel. He paused. “Anyway, father and Nathan Shanks finally cooked up the following proposition: The Dictatograph was incorporated for $1,000,000, there being 25,000 shares at $40 per share par value. It was agreed upon, of course, that they should be sold to investors at $10 per share, or nominally one-fourth of their par value, so as to appear an attractive speculation. You know, and I know, that this matter of incorporation for an exaggerated amount is merely a part of the game to rope in the little investor. So much for that. Nathan Shanks received 5
,000 shares of the stock. The other 20,000 were taken over by father to sell through the medium of his National Industrial Securities Company. Father had literally hundreds of thousands of names of investors who like to dabble in get-rich-quick propositions, and I’ll venture to say he was better equipped than any brokerage company in Chicago to unload that stock.”

  “I take it, then,” said Folwell with a sigh, “that you realize that the Dictatograph is absolutely worthless except as a stock-selling device.”

  “I am glad that you feel that way,” was Lionel Pettibone’s answer, and Folwell wondered why he spoke so sincerely. “For it is for that reason alone that I am going to have you talk to Nathan Shanks this morning.” He paused again, flicking off the ashes of his cigarette directly upon the rug of Folwell’s floor. “Now, as to the outcome of the stock selling, it couldn’t have been better. The stock has been one of the briskest sellers father has ever handled. Through bringing customers to the office, and having them see the actual machine in operation, the sales have gone over with a percentage of one out of every two. The rake-off for father, you can probably guess, has been something not to be sneezed at. Although there is a blue sky law here in Illinois, a brokerage company is permitted to retain twenty per cent. of all money taken in on stock sales, with the result that for every thousand shares father has unloaded $2,000 cash has remained in his fingers. So well did it go, particularly after the new booklets with the coloured half-tones were mailed out, that father up to yesterday had sold all but 7,600 of the 20,000 shares.”

  “After which,” put in Folwell, “I presume the usual stock depression would have been created by dolorous letters about patent infringements, etc., mailed out to the stockholders, a big percentage of the shares would have filtered back at a low rate into the hands of ‘J. Hamilton Eaves’ instead of the ‘National Industrial Securities Company’ and the whole affair would have been worked over again on a richer scale even than the original twenty per cent. rake-off?”

  Lionel Pettibone laughed a sickly laugh.

  “Perhaps,” he said. “Perhaps, Folwell. Father knew every angle of the stock-selling and stock-juggling game. He could boost or lower a claptrap stock without owning a share of it himself. He was a wiz. As for me, I know nothing — only that there stands ready now, almost, the chance to make the sum of $15,200, and I’m unable to do it by my own efforts.”

  Lionel looked about the room. Then he continued: “Here’s the situation: With the old man’s death night before last, I am the sole owner of the National Industrial Securities Company. That was arranged at the time that mother set him up in business. Like my twenty-five per cent, of the stock, however, it’s of no use to me because I don’t know the game. It’s the old man’s brains that were the chief and real asset of the company. I’ll simply have to sell out the options, patents, sucker lists, and furniture to some broker who knows how to use ‘em.” He smoked a minute and then continued:

  “Just prior to the old man’s death he had been working up an unusual prospect — a rich widow, Mrs. Amelia Schwierlitzer by name. She was the widow of a brewer who sold out well just before prohibition began to loom on the skyline back in 1918. It seems that August Schwierlitzer left her, among other things, the sum of $125,000 in Liberty Bonds of the First, Second, Third, Fourth, and the Victory loan. August was patriotic, all right. He had to be with that name! Amelia, with true German perspicacity, is irked by turning her bonds in every few years for other Liberty Bonds, and getting only four per cent, return on all that good money and wants to be engaged in a legitimate business of some kind — something that will earn about 300 per cent, as beer did — all water! — and of which she can be the head. She is very warm on the Shanks Dictatograph. She would be willing to buy an interest in the corporation. But there are complications.”

  “What are they?” asked Folwell politely. He was not over-interested. And he sensed that some kind of a conspiracy was about to be hatched.

  “Simply this. Father explained the whole situation to me the night before he was murdered. Amelia Schwierlitzer had definitely decided to plant her Liberty Bonds in one or the other of two stock propositions One is the Shanks Dictatograph. Father had her almost hooked on it. But she can fall the other way. The other proposition is something handled by another broker. Amelia won’t turn over any cash whatever unless she can get a controlling interest in the company in which she invests.” He laughed a harsh, raucous laugh which rasped on his listener’s jangled nerves.

  Folwell tried to gather his mental faculties together. Then he spoke. “But since you have only 7,600 shares left to sell, you’ve got to get possession of 4,901 shares in order to hand this Mrs. Schwierlitzer a controlling interest, or 12,501 shares.”

  “Exactly,” said Lionel. “Now, as I say, I’m not a stockbroker. I don’t know the inns and outs of the game. But I do know that this woman has definitely put herself down on paper as willing to take this number of shares by six o’clock to-night, providing we supply them; and more than that, I have her signed contract to that effect which was among father’s papers in the desk. Likewise do I know that for a sale of those 7,600 shares at $10 apiece, the rake-off of the National Industrial Securities Company — now myself, Folwell — is the nice plum of $15,200, an actual legal commission.” He consulted a tiny slip of paper, squinting at it. “But I can’t sell the 7,600 unless I can add 4,901 with them. Amelia refuses anything but a controlling interest.”

  He paused, replacing his slip of paper and wiping off his forehead.

  “Now, Folwell, here’s where you come in. The peculiar thing about this whole Dictatograph affair is that Nathan Shanks actually thinks the contraption is a good thing — that it’s going to make him wealthy. He’s mooned over it as long as his brother Phineas from whom he stole it, and he’s at last hypnotized himself into thinking that it’s going to do exactly what the stock-selling literature says. Naturally, he feels that his 5,000 shares are a little potential gold mine.”

  He paused and then went on, as though reluctant to divulge something:

  “Folwell, father told me with his own lips that the Dictatograph is nothing but a stock-selling proposition for suckers. He knew it would be a failure in the commercial world. But that’s neither here nor there. The point is this: Father made a loan of $2,000 to Nathan Shanks on his 5,000 shares, for Shanks wouldn’t part with his patent rights unless he could get some money. He was deathly poor, and had to raise cash for something or other, and for that reason father loaned on his shares. Of course, the loan was practically only a premium which father had to pay to get the thing away from Shanks before some other promotion company snatched it up. Now Shanks hasn’t been able to pay off that loan, and chances are that he never will be able. And this is what I want of you when Shanks comes to my place this morning in answer to my summons.

  “I want you,” Lionel commanded, leaning forward, “to tell Shanks convincingly the exact and whole truth about the Dictatograph — that it’s an industrial flivver — that it’s nothing but a stock-selling scheme — that the value of his shares is next to nothing, and never will be worth more than the paper in the certificates. As a mechanical expert and a graduate of a Tech., he’ll listen to what you have to say. And if he’ll be convinced and release those 5,000 worthless shares he holds, I’ll slip him $3,000 in good American cash, making a total payment to him thereby of $5,000 — a dollar a share! — which is darn good payment for a punk invention that was stolen in the bargain. With these shares in my possession — 4,901 of ‘em, at any rate — I can turn over the whole controlling interest of 12,501 shares to Amelia Schwierlitzer for her Liberty Bonds, and still be some $12,000 to the good.”

  “I must say,” said Folwell with a hard laugh, “that you missed your vocation. You should have followed up your father’s business.” And he wondered if Lionel Pettibone could detect the veiled irony in his voice.

  But that young gentleman was oblivious to such things as voice tones. “To the devil with that game,” h
e proclaimed vehemently. “I marry my million-dollar baby shortly; so what do I want with a dirty old gyp business like the National Industrial Securities Company? It’s London, Paris, Monte Carlo for me then. No more wrinkling of brows or kow-towing to anybody for this kiddo.” He paused. “But the situation just now is this: There’s $12,000 literally standing on my toes till six o’clock to-night. And I don’t intend to kick it over my shoulder.”

  “I’m not keen after your business, or helping you to mulct any rich widows of their Liberty Bonds,” said Folwell very slowly. “Yet so far as merely telling this Shanks the truth about the Dictatograph, well — the truth is the truth. Two questions, if you please. First am I supposed to do any work toward interesting Amelia Schwierlitzer any further?”

  Lionel’s face fell, evidently detecting the negative determination in his hearer. Then it brightened up a bit. “No,” he wavered. “The woman’s hooked already. Better, she’s tied hand and hoof by the contract of purchase. All I want is for you to drive it into that ivory dome of Shanks that the 5,000 shares he holds are worth nothing but a few pennies.”

  “Which is the truth,” returned Folwell. “The unpleasant, but nevertheless true truth.” He looked curiously at Lionel. “And what do you offer for this truth-telling episode of mine? Understand, I’m no longer an employee of your company. I presume you’ve come here to tell me that you’ll hand me back that confession the police got, and that you won’t prosecute me, eh?”

  “That, precisely,” said Lionel pompously. “Folwell, you help me out now by telling Shanks the truth — let it come from you, a man who he must know knows something about mechanics. Drive it into his head, Folwell, and I’ll hand back that confession and call everything square between us.”

  CHAPTER X

  THE HUMAN MULE

  IN spite of the disconcerting blows of the last twenty-four hours, and his loss of a night’s sleep, Folwell found himself able to think clearly and quietly about the matter that Lionel had proposed. With Avery Reardon gone, his last prop, so far as the theory of the telephone repairman went, was knocked out from under his feet. If he should be prosecuted in court, his chances would be more than bad — they would be hopeless in the face of that confession he had so fatuously signed. Now all he had to do to get it back into his possession was to tell the truth — to tell one man, Shanks, the truth. And he knew as he never knew anything else in his life, that the truth was that the Dictatograph was a bubble so far as any hopes of its ever supplanting stenographers went.