The Fourth King

by Harry Stephen Keeler

  “I am not here to bargain,” he declared stiffly. “I am here only to tell you — to warn you — that your connection with Michaelovitch is uncovered, and that you may as well prepare yourself now to give the police the explanation that Michaelovitch, after he is arrested, will give them.”

  Lionel thought for a moment, chewing violently on his lips. His face showed that his mind was galloping wildly, desperately, in a dozen directions. “You say, Folwell, that you have evidence that Michaelovitch killed father and those other three?”

  “Exactly,” the other nodded. “He’s the man beyond all doubt. The evidence fits together like the parts of an algebraic problem.”

  Lionel again thought fiercely, his face making all sorts of contortions. In his agitation he let his cigarette go entirely out.

  “He — he’ll be arrested to-night?” he queried faintly.

  Fowlell nodded.

  More thinking on the part of Lionel. Then he looked up. “Folwell, I’m not surprised. That man is a dangerous individual and a brilliant one. He’s no automobile washer — except for the booze that’s kept him down. That and other things, I guess. But my connections with him — Folwell — it is not necessary at all that I should even be brought into this thing. If — if he could be arrested — and my name kept out of this affair, I’d — I’d be willing to give anything within reason — to do anything. Folwell, won’t you be reasonable?”

  Folwell sighed. “What do you call reason?” he asked. “Particularly when you see fit to try to keep me in the dark about these details? For all I know, you have been in a plot to murder your own stepfather. Do you think I’d remain silent and let an accessory get away from justice?”

  Lionel shook his head vehemently. “No, no, no. I swear it,” he added hurriedly. “Whatever it is — never any murder. God forbid.” He thought hard again for several long seconds. “Folwell, if I tell you the whole miserable thing, will you leave me out of it? Will you promise to view matters from my viewpoint and not use them against me? Will you come to some financial agreement? How — how much do you want?”

  Folwell pointed a finger at the cringing youth who had dropped weakly in the chair across from him. “I’ll tell you exactly what I want before I leave here, providing that the circumstances are such that they warrant my keeping silent. I want no blackmail money — I want no bargains. I want only restitution and justice along certain lines. But one thing I’ll tell you flatly. If you decide that you want to do business with me, instead of McIlroy, you’ll have to make a clean, clean, breast to me — every detail — every fact — or else make it at the detective headquarters in front of every newspaper reporter in town. And it’s only fair to tell you, Lionel, that I have an uncanny ability to spot a lie or a contradiction a mile off.”

  Lionel swallowed so hard that his Adam’s apple bounced up and down his neck.

  “No — no, I’ll be glad to talk to you, Folwell. Only be reasonable.”

  Folwell looked at his watch once more. “I’ll give you fifteen minutes. Then I’m off to the police.”

  Lionel glanced in desperation at the clock. “What — what do you want to know?”

  “Who is this man Michaelovitch?” Folwell asked.

  “He’s — he’s a Russian.”

  “Yes, yes, of course. You’ll have to do better than that, Lionel.”

  Confession for Lionel Pettibone was coming hard. But of a sudden he braced up as though he had decided conclusively that this single individual in front of him would be more of a satisfactory person to deal with than the hounds of the Press. He spoke, a little more calmly this time.

  “Folwell, do you believe the laws for the insane are right? That a man who has an insane wife cannot marry again — cannot even get a divorce?”

  Folwell drew his brows together in a frown of puzzlement. “They are just, in so far that they protect men and women from being thrown illegally into asylums by their marital partners who want to contract new alliances. They are unjust, I dare say, in that they fetter a man or a woman who truly has a partner in that mental condition. To tell you the truth, I’ve never given much thought to the problem. But the law is the law. It says that a man cannot get a divorce from an insane wife — and so it has to be followed.”

  “The whole code of statutes connected with insanity are miserable ones,” said Lionel in a low voice. “The law I have just mentioned ruins a man’s happiness for life — and for no cause of his own.”

  Folwell’s tone was curious, and less hard than at any time in the discussion.

  “You were married once in your life, Lionel?”

  “You will not use anything to blackmail me — or use it against me in any way.”

  “No.”

  “You will not go to Roslyn with any story if this thing clears up for all concerned?”

  Folwell thought of that cold, still form lying in McKinnon’s morgue on Wacker Drive. “Indeed, no — never,” he assured Lionel. But he added no more.

  “I believe you, Folwell.” Lionel paused. “As to your question, Folwell, I was once married. It was when I was living in the artists’ quarter of Toronto, Canada, a good five years ago. I was just a month over legal age. I married a young art student like myself — a girl — Olga Bresloff. Olga was so pretty, black hair, coal-black eyes. I couldn’t help falling for her. She was of legal age, too. She was nineteen. We eloped for the excitement of it. The ceremony took place at the town of White Gables, New York, eleven miles out of Buffalo. It took place at night — nine o’clock, to be exact. Only the minister was present. We were our own witnesses, each of us signing the marriage certificate, according to the American laws which allow that.”

  “And Olga — what became of her?”

  “We couldn’t get along,” said Lionel in a low voice. “Temperament on her part — temperament on mine. We lived together three months in a two-room studio apartment in Toronto. Then we broke up. It was some months after that she rapidly went insane. She was committed to the New York State Hospital for the Insane at Buffalo, where she had gone to continue with art.”

  “Didn’t treat her harshly, did you?” queried Folwell, leaning forward at this strange drama which was being unfolded. “Are you sure it was only temperament that caused the marriage to break up? People don’t go insane without determining cause.”

  A dull red rose to Lionel’s ears and spread across his forehead.

  “No. It was mutual incompatibility — that and nothing more.” But the red which had risen to his face still remained.

  Folwell changed his tack. “What were the chances for recovery?”

  “I paid a lawyer twenty-five dollars once to make an investigation for me, without revealing my connection with the case to him. The hospital had her down as a depressive dement — no recollection of her past life — incurable — would never recover. Health good. Would live for years, barring unexpected sickness.”

  “And then?” asked Folwell.

  “I did no more. I could do nothing. The law being such as it is. I never dreamed that I would ever want to marry again, after my first stormy experience. I lived my own life here in Chicago, both before and after mother met Eaves and married him.”

  “Did your mother know about that marriage?”

  Lionel shook his head. “No. Nobody actually knew we were legally married by the Reverend Jonathan Craddock, of White Gables. Craddock died a year afterward, as I managed to learn. The parsonage in which he lived burned to the ground a few months before his death, records and all. As for Olga, she was as I told you: in a silent, incurable, vacant form of mental disease, unknowing of all that had passed in her own life. I was the only living witness to that ceremony.”

  Folwell’s face carried a look of scorn that was lost upon his auditor. “And then in time you met Roslyn Van Etten; she seemed to care for you; you proposed, knowing that you had a wife alive, and you were willing to marry her, knowing the old marriage was safely hidden?”

  “Why should I not have the righ
t to marry Roslyn?” Lionel expostulated, his voice rising in his agitation. “You, yourself, Folwell, with your own lips admitted the law on the matter is unjust. Olga is mentally dead — she is dead to me — she is, therefore, dead.” His voice became beseeching, cringing, fearful. “Folwell, you — you are not going to be nasty — you are going to be a good fellow — you are not going to Roslyn Van Etten with these facts which I give you from the goodness of my heart?”

  Folwell shook his head silently. Too well did he know that no living man would ever go to Roslyn Van Etten with any stories; only this youth did not. But an indescribable feeling came over him suddenly that Roslyn Van Etten was now perhaps in a better place by far, than married to a man illegally — a man the truth of whose prior marriage some day leaking out could but blacken her own name and spoil her life for all time.

  “No,” he said quietly. “I am not going to Roslyn Van Etten with any stories. You may proceed with absolute assurance on that score.”

  A note of relief came into Lionel’s voice.

  “I knew all the time you were a good fellow, Folwell,” he said supplicatingly. “I — I — I — you know, Folwell, I was joking all the time about that stolen money and your raising cash for that foolish little paper. I — I — am a — a sort of wag — and people never know when I have my — my little practical jokes. I — I was rather cruel, wasn’t I?” Folwell laughed a hard laugh. “If it was a joke, Lionel, I compliment you on your acting. You certainly had me disturbed. But proceed with the story. When and how did you first get acquainted with this man Michaelovitch?”

  “Michaelovitch,” said Lionel, “came to my little studio here in Chicago one day — you know I had a little art studio with my name in the ‘phone directory and my name in gold letters on the window — and he wanted money. Like my one-time marital partner, he was a Russian, and in some way knew that I had married Olga Bresloff. Perhaps he was from Toronto. I don’t know. I’d never seen or heard of him in my life. But he knew what I just told you, and knew, furthermore, somehow, that I was to marry Roslyn Van Etten.”

  “Probably read about your engagement in the papers,” commented Folwell. “It was written up publicly enough.” He paused. “But go ahead. He had looked you up, you say. And he knew of your marriage with the girl who is to-day in the New York State hospital for the insane?”

  “Yes,” said Lionel bitterly. “And worse than that! He not only knew that I was married to her, and knew that she was in the hospital for the insane, but he had the original marriage certificate that must have been among her private papers — the certificate signed in cold black ink by her, by myself, and by Craddock, the minister, who has since kicked the bucket.”

  A whistle escaped Folwell’s lips. “He certainly had something vital as far as you were concerned, my friend.” He knew now full well what the next development must be in such a drama. “Well — how much did he want for it?” Lionel swallowed hard. “His price was a stiff one. He — he asked ten thousand dollars for the paper. He wanted it at once. He said if he didn’t get it, he could get that much from old Jacob Van Etten for saving his daughter from an illegal marriage.”

  “And you didn’t have ten thousand dollars to your name,” Folwell put in. He nodded slowly. “Go ahead. What did you do about it?”

  Lionel was silent for a long minute. “I finally got him to consent to take half the amount — five thousand dollars in cash — and a secured sixty-day note for the rest, and hold the certificate until the note should be paid in full. Anything, Folwell, to keep back the revelation that would kill my marriage with Roslyn. Once married to her and in control of her money, I could take up my note and silence this fellow. I tell you I am in the right. Olga is mentally dead. The law has no right to chain me to her for life. But I must stop him from showing up the only evidence on earth that I had married her — those three signatures on that d — certificate.”

  “Well, how did you expect to raise even half the amount?” asked Folwell.

  A long silence followed. Then Lionel spoke, rather loosely.

  “I — I had saved some two or three thousand dollars. And I — I managed to borrow some from an old schoolmate. I — ”

  Folwell rose to his feet. His voice was full of smouldering anger at the bare-faced attempt to trick him. “It’s time for me to phone for the ‘police,” he bit out. “When we decided to talk this over we agreed to have the truth on your side. But instead we have lies. Lionel, your stepfather once told me rather ironically that the only real money you ever earned in your life was a cheque for fifty dollars as commissions for selling some Dictatograph stock to a former schoolmate of yours. And you yourself told me over the dinner-table the other night when I stayed here, that your allowance was ten dollars a week plus the rent of your studio. And now,” he said, glancing at his watch, “I’ll call Inspector McIlroy and his men, and you can give them what you’re not giving me — namely, the truth!”

  CHAPTER XV

  BLACKMAIL v. HIGH FINANCE

  AT Folwell’s denunciation of him, Lionel nervously licked his dry lips. “Wait,” he managed finally to ejaculate. “Wait. Wait — Folwell. Don’t be precipitate.”

  Folwell returned and stood by his chair, looking down at him.

  “Out with it now,” he said abruptly. “Where did you get that money to make the first payment to Michaelovitch? The truth now — or so help me, God, I’ll ‘phone with no more delay.”

  Lionel breathed hard. It was a terrific battle. Then his answer came, low and shamefaced.

  “I — I took it from the old man’s safe. Those bonds and stocks. It was rightfully mine, I tell you. Mother was dippy over him. She gave him everything to start him up in the brokerage business, and he gave her a dinky little certificate for twenty-five per cent of the stock — a certificate that wasn’t worth the paper it was written on. I ought to know. I got it when mother died. Did I ever get a dividend? No, by God! He hogged every dollar the company made with padded expense accounts and an inflated salary as ‘general manager'!”

  “I see. Tell us how you accomplished your ends, Lionel.” Folwell’s voice was calm, soothing, suspiciously friendly. Here was a most interesting train of facts coming forth in a veritable drama staged in real life.

  “I — I had been to the throat specialist,” said Lionel, “and he had looked down my throat with a polished aluminium reflector fastened over his eye. There was a tiny hole in it through which his eye gazed. It was what they call — er — ah — they call it — ”

  “The laryngoscope,” put in the other.

  “Yes, the laryngoscope. Now, father had put in a new double vault door at his office, with two combinations. It was put in more to impress customers than to lock up anything valuable. But it was burglar-proof all right. Yet if only a person could watch him when he was opening it, it would be easy to get access to it. It — it faced the window across the street. It — God, Folwell, it’s — it’s hard to go on.”

  “Go on,” said the other. “I rather think, Lionel, that you’ve got a more ingenious and brilliant mind than I gave you credit for.”

  “Do you?” said Lionel. He brightened up instantly. His face beamed with self-approbation. The egotist in him had come to the surface like a cork released from deep waters. “Folwell, do you remember that tiny one-window office that was directly across the street from father’s, but one floor higher? The one whose whole lower pane was gilded with gold leaf?”

  Folwell pondered a second, then nodded in recollection. “Yes. There seemed to be a tiny hole or defect in the gilding near the centre of the pane. It was devilishly, dazzling bright, about noontime. I remember your stepfather complained of it one day. One could hardly look across the street between eleven in the morning and noonday. It — ” His face lighted up. “That was your office, Lionel? That is, you rented it? You — ”

  Lionel the egotist, the youth whose ingenuity had just been praised by a mechanical specialist, was now talking. “Yes. I spotted it the day I found a pa
tch of sunlight on the vault, and found it was reflecting from that window across the street. The rent was only $15 a month. The gilding of the window was $11. I had an old telescope used in surveying work that I mounted on a tripod with string. All I had to do was to place it at the tiny hole where I had scraped away the gold leaf. I had a great laryngoscope, Folwell. The throat of the patient was father’s office. The surgeon’s eye reflector was my gilded window. The doctor’s eye was my telescope.”

  “Your father didn’t appreciate you, Lionel. That’s one certainty.” Folwell paused in sardonic admiration. “Then what? You finally caught him in the act of opening the doors?”

  Lionel nodded. Had he been a cat, he would have purred as well. “Yes. The fifth day after I set it up, watching as usual during the time from eleven to noon when the sun was on it, I found myself looking right over the old man’s shoulder, a beautiful patch of light spilled square over the dial of the safe, and the letters of the combination as clear as crystal. I got the outer one that day, but muffed the inner. I filed it away. Two days later I nabbed the inside as well. Three nights later when the old man came home stewed from an afternoon party at the Morrison Hotel I went down with his office key while he slept it off, opened both doors of the safe, and took the envelope of bonds that I found in that private drawer of his.” His voice grew suddenly belligerent. “They were mine, I tell you, Folwell. He hogged everything. They belonged to me. I never received a dollar on my stock.”

  “That may have been all right,” said the other man. “That’s between you and him, of course. But why, oh, why make me pay cash for a confession I signed when you were the one who got the goods?”

  He laughed a dry little laugh. “But you explained that, Lionel. It was a practical joke. Go ahead.” Lionel surveyed him closely, as though not sure whether Folwell were ironical or serious. Then, concluding apparently that Folwell was indeed serious, he finished his story.