“I sold the steel stocks right on the exchange here in Chicago through an agent. The Denver four per cents. and the Oregon Falls seven per cents. I shot down to a broker in Kansas City, and marketed them there. I raised $4,600, all in all, as the Oregon bonds had taken a sharp tumble. I turned the whole thing over to Michaelovitch, together with a sixty-day note secured, as he demanded, to protect him in case of my death. It was a stiff price, but I had met it. I was safe for sixty days.”
“Now, one minute, please,” put in Folwell. “I want to get the time scheme of this thing clear. The envelope those bonds were in was one that your step-father made out of an old drawing I had done for him. And out of that same envelope Michaelovitch made a label to go on a deck of cards containing a threat of death to Johnstone Lee unless he closed up his business. How did that envelope get into his hands?”
“I took the bonds down to him in the original envelope,” said Lionel. “But he would not accept them. He demanded cash. He left it up to me to do the work of marketing them. Perhaps he suspected I had lifted them. I don’t know. It was that same night, in the little kitchen of his shack on Goose Island, that I transferred the bonds to my vest pocket and used the envelope to jot down in front of him several different sums he had dunned me for in our previous interviews. In fact, Folwell, he never saw me but that he demanded some money on account. For weeks I was absolutely strapped. I left the envelope there with the figures on it showing him that I had already paid him the sum of $135 in small amounts. Then, as I told you, I took the bonds and sold them, through agents, and turned the actual cash over to him. As for the option on the two-colour fountain pen that was in the envelope with the certificates, I could do nothing but tear it up.”
“How large a note did you have to give this Michaelovitch? And how much do you owe him to-day?”
“The amount of my note was $5,265, but I threw the monkey wrench into the Russian’s readiness to jimmy up my marriage,” said Lionel. “That was the principal thing. I knew I could hurry up my marriage a bit, and pay it off after I came together with Roslyn. And I tell you I am in the right, Folwell. If Olga is dead in mind, she is dead in body. Why should I obey a crew of stupid law-makers who chain a man for life to an insane partner? Too bad they can’t get caught by their own laws.”
Folwell made no reply to this. “Of the $135 you paid him prior to the big settlement,” he declared, “was a $50 cheque paid you by your stepfather on commissions. I may as well confess that this was the clue by which I traced out the whole thing. Now a question: Why was Michaelovitch satisfied to take a note for $5,265, when he knew you had nothing, knew that you might die suddenly, and knew that your marriage with this rich girl might fall through?”
“Because,” proclaimed Lionel triumphantly, “I hood-winked the beggar. Because I secured the note by my stock in father’s National Industrial Securities Company — my twenty-five per cent. which, when he was alive and in control, wasn’t worth a tinker’s damn. I endorsed the stock in blank and turned it over to Michaelovitch pinned to the note. The poor fool thought it was security. It was nothing but sixty days’ leeway for yours truly, and a shrewd way out of a tight fit.”
“But wasn’t that giving him an inkling that Eaves was your father, and perhaps giving him a further leverage on blackmailing you?”
Lionel shook his head sagaciously. “Not on your life. So far as he knew then I had no relatives alive, now that mother is dead. The cheque on the Shanks Dictatograph Company I merely told him was some commissions I had earned. It didn’t bear the old man’s name, you see. The stock I told him I had inherited from my mother, and I guffed him into thinking it was gilt-edged. When he accepted it, he didn’t dream that J. Hamilton Eaves, the president of the National Industrial Securities Company, and Lionel Pettibone, who owned one-fourth of the stock, were father and stepson. If he had, he might have suspected at that time that some sort of a stunt would have been pulled off to make the stock worthless.”
Folwell desisted on any more questioning along this line. There was still much about the case that was puzzling, but it was doubtful, now that Lionel’s relationship to things had been uncovered, whether the latter could clear up certain factors. Folwell thought for a moment. “What sort of a man is Michaelovitch?” he asked curiously.
“He is a silent, brooding type of individual, bitter and disgruntled,” said Lionel freely. “He has had some great blow in his life, but I do not know what. He is exactly the type of man who would like to see wealth and private property wiped out of existence. His English bears an accent, but it is precise; it shows that he is a well-educated man on things Russian. But he has sunk to being a mere carriage-washer and mechanic. The reason? Booze, beyond doubt. He drinks freely — makes the stuff himself. In fact, Folwell, it’s from him that I’ve got a pint now and then when my nervous system was run down and needed a tonic. How he found out about my marriage to Olga Bresloff, I have no way of knowing. And perhaps I never shall know.” He paused. “Now, Folwell, you have the whole story. You promised to be a good fellow. I’m going to hold you to that promise. I have a right to marry Roslyn, if this insane wife of mine refuses to die. But if this man is to be arrested and made a figure in the newspapers for a few days, why need my relationship with him be brought into the thing? I told him on the telephone yesterday that I would be prepared to finish all negotiations with him in a few days. Now, if he’s arrested, he will need that five thousand bucks worse then he ever needed it in his life — for lawyers for his defence. It may even be that after he’s locked up at detective headquarters I can succeed in gyping him with a cheque into turning over to me the present location of that marriage certificate. Then I can stop payment on the cheque and let him go hang. Any verbal statement of his is worth nothing.”
Folwell smiled. “It may be that he’s too astute for anything like that,” he declared, marvelling at Lionel’s continual preparations to trick somebody. “And it may well be that before you’re done, you’ll be contributing five thousand dollars to the legal defence of the man who killed your stepfather.”
Lionel shook his head. “He may be tried, convicted and electrocuted on any of the first three murders, if the police complete a case against him.” He paused. “However, I’ve myself to look out for. And you’ve yourself, Folwell.” He gazed at the other. “Now you’re going to be a good fellow, I take it. What are you going to hold me up for?”
Folwell drew a long breath. He had not forgotten how Lionel had brutally tricked him some time earlier that day, but he had no intentions of doing likewise. So he carefully refrained from making any promises or uttering any phrases through which Lionel could later claim that a direct lie had crossed his lips. He spoke:
“Of course, you are going to turn back that confession to me, are you not?”
“Yes, yes, yes,” breathed the younger man.
“And you are going to clear me in the eyes of the public and the Press and the police on the theft of those bonds? Mind you — I don’t ask you to incriminate yourself — but you will have to clear me. Can you do it?”
Lionel thought hard. His face suddenly brightened up. “Jimmie Pennley!” he ejaculated. He thought a moment. He nodded energetically. “Folwell, I’ll fix that whole thing so you’re absolutely cleared — and cleared in the public press. I promise you that. Will you be satisfied?”
“For the present,” replied Folwell grimly. He resumed speaking. “Now, there is still a third thing. If you see my proposition then, I stand willing to go to the police, to give them my facts in such a way that this man will be arrested for murder, but that the steps leading up to it — the steps involving Lionel Pettibone — will become the property of nobody, not even them. And likewise, as I said before, I am not going to go either to Roslyn Van Etten nor to Jacob Van Etten.”
“Yes, yes,” said the younger man hurriedly. “What — what is that third thing, Folwell?”
“It is this,” answered Folwell quietly. “Lionel, your stepfather swindled the mo
ther of Avery Reardon — ”
“Avery Reardon! The girl who was drowned,” interrupted Lionel.
Folwell ignored the interruption.” — swindled the mother of Avery Reardon out of $19,500 in American Airplane Stabilizer Company Stock. The second you have returned that confession to me, cleared me publicly on the theft of those bonds, and given me a due judgment note for $19,500 for 195 shares of American Stabilizer Stock, made out in favour of Sarah N. Hepburn, I leave here, and I have forgotten that there is a Lionel Pettibone on earth.”
“You — you want that I should buy back that stock?” said Lionel in a low voice. He looked curiously at Folwell. “And how much for yourself, Folwell?”
“Nothing. I have named my terms.”
A long silence, punctuated only by the ticking of the clock, filled the room. Folwell, in his chair, finally began to stir restlessly. At length he pulled out his watch and stared pointedly at its face.
Lionel spoke. “I will fulfil the terms,” he said. He passed over to the desk, and opening a little steel drawer withdrew from it a paper which he tossed across the intervening space to Folwell. Then he fumbled in another drawer, producing a pad of printed forms. He wrote rapidly, only the scratching of his pen being audible. The paper Folwell examined carefully. It was his confession, bearing his signature. He touched a match to it and tossed it in the grate, where he watched it burn brightly and then crumble into ashes. At this juncture, Lionel stopped writing, put away his pen, and drew over the telephone to him. Thumbing over the leaves of the orange-coloured telephone book, he raised the receiver.
“F-R-A-4-9-0-0” he spelled off rapidly with his lips as he whirled the automatic dial seven times in succession. Folwell listened curiously, wondering what number Franklin 4900 might represent. There was a pause. Then a clicking. Lionel spoke into his transmitter. “Franklin 4900? Chicago Evening American? Give me Mr. James Pennley, city editor’s room.” Another pause. “Pennley? Jimmie Pennley? This is Lionel Pettibone talking. Yes, Jimmie, I’ve got a story for you — an exclusive. It’s about that confession business that was in the papers, and this man Folwell that worked for my stepfather, Eaves. Yes. Get it down, Jimmie. Those bonds weren’t stolen at all; the old man must have had delirium tremens or something. They’ve been in a pigeonhole of his desk in his room all the time. Yes. Yes. Certainly. No, he never put ‘em in the vault at all, I guess. Old age? Sure, or paresis maybe. Who knows? About Folwell? Yes. The police bully-ragged him and he got stubborn and refused to talk. Folwell was supposed to sign a promissory note — the old man was going to loan him $100 for thirty days — and he simply signed the wrong paper, that’s all. I’ve got the paper here he should have signed, and I’ve given him back the one he signed by mistake in a hurry. Yes — the one the old man drew up thinking he could grill one of his employees into confessing. Yes — mistake all around.
“What? The old man’s letter to this man, John J. Jeng of New York? Well, Jimmie, if you knew the old man and the inside of his business as I do, you wouldn’t be puzzled there. However, here’s the dope as to that. You see he’d been pestered to death by people to whom he had sold stock in various promotions trying to borrow money on it. He was in the business of selling stock, Jimmie; not loaning on it. You get me? But he couldn’t refuse loans out and out, for this would cast discredit on his own rosy statements as to the value of his promotions. It’s plain as day to me, because I happen to know him.
“After he discovered that paper, signed by mistake, of course, Jeng’s brother, friend, lawyer, or somebody who knew Jeng, dropped into the office to discuss the matter of a loan Jeng was evidently going to make this Nathan Shanks on his stock in the Shanks Dictatograph. This caller must have been a bit nosy, and must have asked the old man point blank why he didn’t loan Shanks the money himself if the stock was so good. The old man up and flashed the confession paper as an alibi. The stock was good, he probably assured Jeng’s friend, but he himself couldn’t personally loan on it. Why? Because he’d just been robbed of fifty-one hundred dollars. Get it, Jimmie? Foxy, eh? Oh, that’s all right. He was only a relative by marriage, remember that. Pan him in the paper if you want to.
“And, say, listen:
“Now in writing the letter to Jeng Monday night while he was alone, he knew the fellow who had come in on the New Yorker’s behalf to investigate, would also write a letter to Jeng mentioning the actual seeing of the confession. So he casually mentioned its existence in his own letter, knowing that the report of the talk would back him up. It was taking an advantage of Folwell, of course. Yes. Certainly.
“Now in writing this up, Jimmie, hammer the old man if you will, but don’t throw too much doubt on his stock-selling propositions. All I want is for Folwell to get the clear deal that’s coming to him. Story’s yours entirely. Yes. Yes. Any time, Jimmie. Ring me here. Of course it’s good for a front page. I’ll say it’s a human interest story.” He hung up and looked at Folwell.
“There, Folwell, I’ve given you a clean slate on the public Press. Hearst’ll play that up as a real human interest drama. And I’ve had to lie like a trooper to do it.” He picked up the paper he had written, which had lain drying in front of him, and brought it over to Folwell, thrusting it down in his hands. Folwell spoke as he examined it.
“Well, take care of your Chicago American reporter yourself now,” he directed. “As long as you’ve cooked up this explanation, I’ll leave you to finish it. Don’t send him around to me. I shan’t grant any interviews, or prolong the lie.” He scrutinized the paper. It was a promissory judgment note for nineteen thousand five hundred dollars payable in three days, and dated exactly three days before. It was made out to Sarah N. Hepburn and signed by Lionel Pettibone. The amount filled in was nineteen thousand five hundred dollars. It bore the words, “Value received in one hundred and ninety-five shares American Airplane Stabilizer Company Stock.” Whereupon Folwell folded it up and placed it in his vest-pocket, knowing full well that that beautiful brown stone house and lot, if not the assets of the company to which Lionel was now sole proprietor, would cover the amount of that promissory note and many more as well. He rose.
“And now,” he said, “for the detective bureau, to help bring about the capture of Michaelovitch, the most insolent, dangerous and scientific murderer running the streets of Chicago at this moment. After he is landed, perhaps we’ll all learn how he manages to make away with men who are warned of their death, and to kill others who have taken every precaution that he shall not even know where they are hiding!” He thrust his hat on his head. “I’m off.”
CHAPTER XVI
ALL QUIET ON HICKORY AVENUE
AS Folwell left the brownstone house and stepped briskly along under the arc-lights of Clarkson Court, he had an impulse to turn back and tell Lionel that his romance with his ‘'million-dollar girl” was over; but he decided to let that young gentleman learn the news when it should be officially released. For the present, he must get to the police and get there quick with the surprising information which he had traced up step by step.
It was a few minutes after seven-thirty when he reached the Central Detective Bureau, and the only person to be found in McIlroy’s office was a broad-shouldered night substitute. He pondered a moment as to whether to consult this man, and then, asking the other for the number of McIlroy’s home ‘phone, went to a booth in the outer corridor and called the detective bureau head at his home on Dakin Street.
McIlroy’s peculiar burred voice was soon audible over the wire.
“Inspector McIlroy,” Folwell began, “this is Jason Folwell. I called up to say several things. One, according to a statement which Lionel Pettibone has given out to the papers, is that he has all the bonds alleged to be stolen from Eaves. I will let you ask him any further questions, however. The other — ”
“Well, what of it?” interrupted the Scotsman gruffly. “Why are you bothering me at my home? To-morrow’s time enough, isn’t it?”
“And the second,” went on Folw
ell, undaunted by the other’s brusqueness, “is that I have absolute evidence that not only indicates that Eaves, Paddon, Rothblume, and Lee were murdered, instead of being possible victims of accident and sickness, but points out the murderer himself.”
“The devil you say! What is your evidence?”
“If you care to come down here to detective headquarters where I’m ‘phoning from,” said Folwell hurriedly, “I’ll give you all the facts. If not, I’ll be glad to come to your home. I’m thinking, though, that action is imperative. Which will it be?”
There was a long pause, as though the man on the other end of the wire were thinking seriously about the advisability of leaving a comfortable home, wife and kiddies on what might prove to be a wild-goose errand. Suddenly he answered:
“I’ll take a taxi and come down at once, Folwell. When you hang up, tell Crane, the night man in my office, to call up Kelsey, and to hold any of the other men that are still around the office. If you have anything worth listening to, you’ll have some listeners. Wait for me at the office, please.” And he hung up.
Folwell went back to the office, where he transmitted McIlroy’s message to the latter’s night substitute. He sat on a hard chair and waited while the other rang up Kelsey, and lumbered into the next room, speaking to several assiduous plain-clothes men who sat studying typewritten reports under the hanging electric bulbs over their desks. It was twenty minutes before McIlroy appeared, and hardly had he entered the room than Kelsey appeared in the doorway through which his superior had just passed. McIlroy nodded to his substitute, and to his right-hand man whom he had just summoned.
“We’ll go in the inside room there,” he said, inclining his head in that direction. “Crane, who’s down to-night?”
“Tom Flannery, Sheffiy, Lyons and Delamater, chief,” announced the man Crane. “Flannery and Sheffly are working on the First National Bank case, Lyons and Delamater on that diamond theft from the New Orleans-Chicago passenger ‘plane of the Southern Airways.”
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