Sing Sing Nights

by Harry Stephen Keeler

  When they had seated themselves, he took her hand and looked her over hungrily, from the gold slippers to the string of sparkling stones which hung about her neck and seemed to emit a stream of liquid fire. “Well, dear,” he said, “I’m in no position to talk as a human being to-night — coloured up as I am. But what did he say?’”

  The face of the fairy princess, even under its black silk mask, grew grave. “He — he was adamantine,” she replied. “And not only that, but he flew into a fearful rage. He said that you deliberately and wilfully conspired to ruin the name of his brokerage firm — all the old accusations over again. And he even says now that he’s going to put a stop to your coming here after to-night.”

  The man’s face flushed, but it was not visible under the ochre grease paint.

  “That’s rough,” he commented at length. “Then I wouldn’t be able see you. At least, it would mean that we’d have to meet clandestinely on the outside. Confound the luck! Why wasn’t I born with a million instead of with this cursed poverty? Why — ”

  “Wilk!” Her voice was reproachful. “Wilk, you know, dear, this thing “ — she waved her hand about the room with its evidence of wealth — ” these people are all nothing to me. You know that the four-room flat with you means more to me than a continuance of this supposably, but not really, desirable life. Please don’t worry about what he says. Please don’t say you wish you had a million dollars. What difference would that make?”

  He laughed harshly. “It would mean only this: I could prepare a place to take you — a place worthy of these surroundings you’ve had. True, a big income isn’t conducive to happiness if the right person shares your life with you — you and I are idealists enough to realise that — but the surroundings of that life must not be too crude.”

  For a moment he was silent. Then he turned to her again. They were quite alone. “Shirley, I’m going to tell you of the great plan which I’m praying will solve our problem for us. I had intended to keep the secret until I knew the outcome, one way or the other. But instead, I’m going to tell you to-night, so that, whether I win or lose, you will know that I tried mighty hard to blaze the way for our big adventure.” He paused. “And here, little girl, is the plan in a nutshell. If it goes through then — ” He stopped short, suddenly chilled by the thought of the converse of the proposition.

  “Tell me,” she whispered. “If it concerns our big adventure — then it concerns me. I’m waiting!”

  CHAPTER VI

  THE CLOWN IN RED SILK

  CASPERSON looked down at the eager face close to his own. Then he smiled, in spite of himself. “Well, here it is, Shirley. In the first place, one of the biggest commercial companies in the United States — a corporation that makes automobile tyres, raincoats, and a hundred other articles of rubber — recently offered, through the columns of the advertising trade papers, a prize of ten thousand dollars to the advertising man who could construct the most striking publicity device for their products, whether it was merely a slogan, a design, a catchword, a sales scheme, or a general publicity plan of some sort. I have a young friend, Arthur Sennet, who is also an advertising man. He and I talked the thing over pro and con, and gradually evolved a tentative scheme — an advertising plan — which we believe is a world-beater for this particular case.”

  The fairy princess was interested, her red lips apart. “A plan,” she echoed. “And what is it?”

  “As follows,” he replied. “You’ve read one or two of my old detective stories, written at a time when I had more leisure than I have now. Sennet, too, has done one or two short stories which have had real literary merit as well as decent publication. So our plan involved the following: the construction of a book-length detective novel, the plot to be laid in the plant and to centre about the actual products of this rubber company; a novel which with paper cover could be printed to the extent of hundreds of thousands of copies at a few cents per copy; a book which could be given out with every purchase of any one of their products, whether the product sold at fifty cents or fifty dollars. Do you see what it would mean, Shirley, if it should go over? It would mean that our names as co-authors would pass ultimately into the hands of millions of purchasers; that the circulation of our piece of fiction work would reach a point far greater than any magazine or book publisher could ever give us. It would mean that future work of ours would be considered both in the fiction field and the advertising field — provided it were up to the standard of the first advertising-detective story. But in the doing of it, it meant plainly that we must gamble our brains, our time, our energy, on one proposition — for should it fail to win the big prize, then the novel would be absolutely unsalable anywhere else, since it centres about and involves only the plant of this firm and their products.

  “Very well. Enough to say that we took this gamble. We went down to Akron, Ohio, and got in touch with one of the minor officials, who took us through the plant — enough so that we got our ground data sufficiently. Back we came to Chicago. We studied their products, from auto tyres to raincoats. Ultimately ‘the great rubber-plant mystery’ was completed, and we got the manuscript and the outline of its advertising possibilities off a few days before the contest closed.

  “There’s the status of the affair,” he went on. “Tonight at nine o’clock the judges were supposed to render the decision as to which of the advertising schemes submitted was the most novel and effective. The prize offered is ten thousand dollars. Arthur Sennet is out now, walking up and down the streets or sitting in his new quarters somewhere in Chicago trying to possess his soul in patience, hoping to receive a congratulatory telegram. As for me, I daren’t even think about it myself. If we win — I win more than the five thousand. I figure that I win — you.”

  “Dear boy,” she said, “you are all excited. If you lose — and it’s not at all certain that you will win, call me a little pessimist if you will — you’re going to be terribly hard hit. I can see it in your voice, although your face is no longer the face of Wilk Casperson with all that grease paint. Please, please, Wilk, do not count too much on the winning of it. If you should fail, the blow will be too severe. Try to conceive of your losing the prize as well.” She paused. “Please be assured that I will have my heart in my mouth — that I want you to win it. And reason enough — a reason that I have never told you. There is another man — one in our circle, a clubman — who has made a profound impression upon father. This man cannot be anything to me, especially since you’ve come into my world, but the fact remains that father is just a little hypnotised by his personality, that matters here will not be altogether pleasant for me if I fail to — well — respond. Indeed I want you to win it — for that will mean our big adventure. But I feel for you if your castle tumbles in. So try — please — to look at that contingency.”

  They were interrupted by the approach of two figures. One of them was garbed as a comical clown in bright red silk, his face covered with white grease paint, his eyes ringed with two vivid loops of colours, his eyebrows grotesquely blackened. The other was a tall, slim, silk-hatted clergyman carrying a cane and wearing a long swallow-tail coat. His eyes, masked with a black silk band, wore huge horn-shell spectacles on the outside of the strip of cloth. The two figures came up arm in arm. Both the princess and Casperson looked up at them. Casperson recognised the supposed clergyman as Malcolm Eldredge, Shirley’s brother, through the slim, youthful build and the horn-shell spectacles which the latter wore even when in ordinary dress. The clown, however, was a stranger to him. Young Eldredge was the first to speak.

  “Hello, sis. Having a tête-à-tête?” He looked toward Casperson. “And you — ”

  “Hello, Malcolm,” said the yellow moth. “This is Wilk Casperson. Didn’t know me, did you?”

  Malcolm stared down through his spectacles. “Great Scott, man, but that’s some make-up you’ve got on. I wouldn’t have known you in a thousand years. “He turned to his sister and then pointed at the bright scarlet clown at his side. �
��Bet you can’t guess who this is, sis.”

  Shirley Eldredge smiled blankly up at the clown, who grimaced down at her through his grease paint. “I give up,” she said faintly. “The powder and colour are too — ”

  “So you don’t know me, eh, Meesa Elderedge? I think if I have the fiddle with me you — ”

  “Mr. di Paoli!” she ejaculated.

  “The same,” said Malcolm with a smile, dropping down on the settee and removing his mask, then placing the horn-shell glasses back over his nose. “I found him tickling the vanity of Jack Hennly’s rich maiden aunt over in the corner, and knew him at once. Sit down, di Paoli.”

  “I not like to interrupt,” said the clown, grinning under his grease paint, “but I think I like little dance with Meesa Shirley as repayment for all the musica I have play in her library.” He took from his huge clown pocket his dance programme with its gold pencil suspended from it. “I may surely have the pleasure, Meesa Shirley?”

  She glanced down at her own card. “The next dance is the fifth, Mr. di Paoli. And that one I have with Mr. Casperson here — ” She turned to Casperson and gave him a knowing smile. “Wilk, you have never met Mr. di Paoli. This is Mr. Niccolo di Paoli, the well-known violinist.” She turned to the clown. “And this is Mr. Wilk Casperson.”

  Casperson shook hands with the clown. “It is a great pleasure to meet you,” the latter mumbled. “I do not remember to see you in Meesa Shirley’s musicales.”

  “No,” said Casperson, instinctively disliking this clown. “I’m a pretty busy man, and don’t generally get around in the daytime.” He turned to the girl. “But you were about to arrange a dance for Mr. di Paoli.”

  She looked at her card again. “The next — the fifth — I have with Wilk. The sixth is with Malcolm. My seventh is promised to Mr. Jack Hennly, and my eighth to a friend — to a friend of father’s — who arranged for it last week. The tenth I’ve promised to keep for daddy. Will the ninth suit you, Mr. di Paoli?”

  He bowed. “That is splendid, Meesa Shirley. I have my card all open so as not to mees having dance with you.” He made a quick notation on his own card and bowed again. “Now I not interrupt any more.” And he backed out of the conservatory, bowing all the way toward the open door. A moment later all three in the nook smiled in spite of themselves as they saw him, out on the waxed floor, tickling the neck of a fat woman from whose throat swung a glittering gem of red and white stones which flashed and splashed in the incandescents.

  “A funny chap, that di Paoli,” commented Malcolm frankly. “Like all his race, he just radiates politeness. But I’ve always liked him. And play the violin? He’s a wonder at it, isn’t he, sis?”

  She nodded, smiling. The music outside suddenly struck up. She glanced at Casperson. “Wilk, I told a white fib when I said you and I had the next dance arranged for. I just took a chance that you had kept your card open. Shall we dance or sit it out?”

  He rose and unloosed his brown-clad arms from the peculiar cloth bands which fastened them to the moth wings. “Let’s dance it,” he said enthusiastically. “I’d much rather.”

  So, with a parting nod toward Malcolm, he led her to the door of the conservatory. But at the door he stopped, as her brother, replacing his black mask and his horn spectacles over it, called him back. “Casperson,” the latter said sharply, “may I have a word with you before the dance?”

  Casperson pressed the girl’s arm. “Will you wait outside the door for me, Shirley? Malcolm wants to speak to me.” And he left her, stepping back to the young man in the oldish austere ecclesiastical garment. “What is it, Malcolm?”

  The man, even under his mask, was nervous. “Casperson, can you wait a few days longer for that two hundred? I’ll — I’ll swing the tide sure soon. I’m raising money fast. Let me tell you, I’m desperate.” He licked his lips. “You know I’m for you and sis — straight through. I’ve — I’ve a deal on — several, in fact — and if my plans go through all right I’ll be able to repay you most any day now. And I’ll — ”

  Casperson put his hands on the young fellow’s narrow shoulders. “Don’t worry about that two hundred, Malcolm. The main thing is that the two-thousand-dollar hole in your father’s accounts is plugged up and that he doesn’t know what happened. The two hundred can’t settle your sister’s and my problem one way or the other. And, for Heaven’s sake, don’t try to pay back all those personal loans by any more rash speculation. If a certain deal of mine goes through, I’ll help you out to the extent of a thousand more, so you can pay back Jack Hennly and some of those who stood by you. Remember, your father hates me, but I’m your friend.” The music swelled suddenly in volume. He turned back toward the doorway. “Remember now — no more speculation. Stop it. You’re safe at the office now if only your friends don’t press you and give you away. So stay safe.”

  With a nod Casperson left the imitation clergyman, and soon he rejoined the princess who was waiting curiously outside the door. A second later he was out on the floor with her, swinging along in a one-step.

  CHAPTER VII

  A MESSAGE FROM “A. S.”

  THEIR dance over, the princess and the giant moth repaired again to the conservatory, where they sat talking during the intermission. Then came the music, and also Malcolm, who this time carried his sister off, leaving Casperson to his own devices. The latter, remaining on the settee, and wondering whether to sit out that dance or to look up some lonely débutante and escort her out over the waxen floor, opened his eyes curiously as a blue-clad messenger boy trotted into the now deserted conservatory and ambled along the rows of rubber plants and dwarf trees. As he stopped in front of Casperson, the latter thought for a bare second that the urchin was some child guest in masquerade, but the wizened face and quick, keen, shifty eyes of the boy were never those of a child of the well-to-do. The boy stared at him; his eyes took in Casperson’s costume.

  “Mister, you’re a yellow moth, ain’t yer?”

  Casperson gazed down at him. “Yes. That’s correct; yellow moth. What about it?”

  The boy held a white card in a grimy hand. Den here’s a message fer yer. De’ le’ me in to find yer, an’ w’en I was watchin’ de couples going’ aroun’ I spotted yer over on de other end of de dance floor, and I seen yer go into dis here greenhouse.” He thrust out the white card toward Casperson.

  The latter seized it and studied it in the half-subdued light. Pencilled across the left upper corner, as though a notation for the boy’s dubious memory, were the words: “Yellow Moth.” But the brief message across the face of the card was in ink. The writing was odd, even freakish. The “t’s” bore each a double cross rather than a single one; the periods consisted of tiny irregular triangles; the “y” tail seemed to be tied into a strange, unnatural knot of some sort; and the “e’s”! — they consisted of a peculiar distortion of the Greek “epsilon,” and stood out from the rest of the message like currants in an angel cake. But one look at the initials appended to the communication, and Casperson’s heart gave a jump.

  “From Arthur!” he said, half aloud. He looked down at the boy. “Yes; it’s for me,’’ He fumbled in a concealed pocket of the moth suit and found a coin, which he gave to the boy. “All right, son. You can go.” The lad vanished out of the nearest entrance, and a second later he was trudging round the edge of the floor alive with dancing couples. At once Casperson turned his attention to the text of the message. It read:

  “W.C.: Unexpected developments in our affair. Leave ball immediately if at all possible, and come straight to 912, Ernst Court, for long talk. Outer door of place left unlocked, so walk in. Come upstairs. — A.S.”

  A long whistle escaped him. “It means either that we’ve won the prize or lost it,” he said to himself. “I know Arthur well enough to realise that he’s wrought up. But why in Heaven’s name didn’t he tell me more?” He pondered, puzzled for a second. “He wrote it out instead of typing it. That proves he must have been excited. Told me once that he had used the ty
pewriter for so many years that his fingers had forgotten how to write.” He studied again the example of the strangest of handwritings. “Hope the typewriter doesn’t do that to my hand.” He looked round the room, and then rose. “I’ll have to go — that’s certain. Too upset to remain after that. Thank goodness, I got one dance anyway with my little girl.”

  He picked his way from the conservatory and around the edge of the ballroom floor, now thronged with dancers in every degree of vivid costuming. Near the end he caught a glimpse of Shirley, dancing gracefully with Malcolm. He would have liked to wait and tell her of his being called away, but decided to telephone her first thing in the morning and explain the whole unusual matter. Down the broad stairway he picked his way, and into the gentlemen’s dressing-room, where he found his suit-case, and quickly fell to changing back into street clothes.

  First, however, he had to remove the ochre grease paint from his face; this he did in front of the big mirror which had been placed there for such purposes. He followed as well as he could the directions given him by the costume house which had rented him the yellow moth suit, but found that the removal of grease paint was not so easy as he thought. He smeared on cold cream clumsily, but the more he smeared the worse mess he made of it. When he entered the room the clock on the wall had pointed to ten-fifteen; it had crept to ten-forty, when he got desperate and, smearing his whole face with the cold cream, wiped it off furiously, cream and paint together, with one of the two towels he had brought in the suit-case.

  Scrutinising himself, he found that he now held a bare semblance to a human being, in spite of the fact that there were still traces of the yellow colouring on his neck and ears; but he decided that he had experimented long enough. As dexterously as possible he wriggled out of the yellow moth suit, and changed over into his street clothing. Buttoning himself into a shirt and collar, he packed the jar of cream and the suit back into the suit-case and turned to leave the room. The clock on the wall struck eleven as he left the dressing-room and stepped back into the hallway. Mose, the negro footman, was now on duty at the inner door, and the old black servant stared, puzzled, at Casperson as the latter walked by him towards the grey stone steps.