Sing Sing Nights

by Harry Stephen Keeler

  The newcomer was the first to speak: “Well, boy, I see you used the duplicate key I gave you. Let me compliment you on pulling the thing off to a T. But it was a tremendously lucky thing for us that this fellow named Casperson left the place when he did. They’re all on his heels; he’s supposed to be the thief. It was good work, all the same.

  “Wait!” grumbled Moonface, interrupting the other babbling along. “Wait, Gryce, if you please. I came here to tell you that I never got that necklace. Somebody else got it — maybe this Casperson — maybe not. I have an idea, though, who did get it.” He paused. “But I never got it.”

  “Never got it!” half screamed Cawthorne, rising from the chair he was poised to drop into. “Why — why — you’re crazy, man. Of course — say — what are you talking about? Kidding me, are you?”

  “Nix, not kidding you at all,” replied Moonface wearily. “I tell you somebody who danced with her ahead of me landed the necklace. It was gone when I came up for my dance.” He pointed to Cawthorne and his face became a thundercloud. “Old moth, with the yellow bag on your bean, did you think for a minute that I didn’t know your paunch? You dirty dog, do you think I’m not next to your game?” Agitatedly, he rose from his chair and confronted the other, his squat face close to the boiled-beet countenance of the pseudo clubman, who quailed visibly. “You copped that string yourself, Gryce, and your whole rotten scheme was to cast suspicion on me in some way, and make it show up that there was a police character in that room somewhere. They’d have pinched me, wiped off the grease paint from my phiz, and found I was Moonface Eddy Chang. And they’d have beat hell out of me down at the central office trying to make me show where in that hall I stashed it. You’re a fine specimen of a man — I mean, snake.”

  CHAPTER XVII

  WHEN THIEVES FALL OUT

  CAWTHORNE, confronted by this amazing accusation, stood staring, his cold blue eyes popping from his head. At length his words came forth in a mighty explosion.

  “You lie, you dog! You got that string of stones, and now you’re trying to play me for the whole thing. But I’ll fix you, you — ”

  “You’ll do nothing,” cut in Moonface coldly. “You’ll do nothing at all, Gryce. I got out of that place only because suspicion happened to fall on a guest that had to leave early, for some reason. If the thing had gone the way you expected I’d have been in stir by to-day, and you’d have been out of town laughing at the man you double-crossed.” Menacingly he advanced a step. “Gryce, either pry loose of five thousand bucks or I call in the police and spring the dope that you’re Cecil Gryce who worked with me down in Buenos Aires on that consular-paper theft. I’ll do it, if I never do another thing in my life.”

  “You crazy fool!” snarled the other. “Are you looking for sentence to the pen? Want to go back to that hell hole with its cockroach-infested dungeons?” He paused for breath. “Why — you can’t prove I’m Gryce. I can call in the house detective and have you pinched for a sneak thief. Right now there’s a duplicate pass-key on you — the one I gave you. They’d send you over the road. You can’t make me out Gryce, you idiot.”

  “Now, listen,” said Moonface wearily: “I’m no fool at all. If they once get it into their heads that you are Cecil Gryce, the guy that turned the Buenos Aires trick, and that you are in this hotel under a new name they’re going to hang tight till they jug you. That’s certain. You can’t prove up the identity of Wellington Cawthorne further back than a few months. You poor shrimp, where can you furnish a past life? Come out of it.” He snapped his fingers. “You double-crossed me out of those sparklers and we’ll let that go. We’ll forget it. Now cough up a few thousand, and I’ll get out of here. Otherwise I call the house detective.” He stepped over to the telephone and took down the receiver.

  “Wait!” The voice of Cawthorne had in it that peculiar tone which a voice holds when its owner has been bluffed. “Wait — Moonface! Don’t — don’t ring! I swear that I never got that necklace. Now, look me in the eyes. Moonface, didn’t you get it?”

  “I tell you no, Gryce. I didn’t get it. Why, I’d have been out of Chi, and on my way to New Orleans, if I had. Do you think I fell for your bunk story that morning? And now you cough up all the coin in your pocket. And cough quick.”

  A silence. Then came Cawthorne’s voice, clear and cool, preceded by a hard half-laugh. “Moonface, I guess that proves it all right. You’d have double-crossed me if you had got that trinket. I ought to have known as much. You’d never have wasted time calling around here if you’d landed that string of sparklers.” After a moment of silence, he went on: “Now, see here, Moonface, you and I had better be friends. No need for us to quarrel. I swear I didn’t get it. Can’t you tell by a man’s voice if he’s lying or not? — you’re a fellow that’s met men all his life. Moonface,” Cawthorne went on eagerly, “here’s the dope on the thing: my story to you was no lie. I tell you there is a man in this city who has — had is better — something that I can turn over for a hundred thousand dollars to the right men — and I know where those men are to be found. I know them, I tell you. All I needed was the — the thing. That man was Professor Aloysius Silvester, an erratic biologist who had a laboratory on Ernst Court — a specialist on moths.” He paused a second or two. “Silvester was shot dead last night. A Jap that worked for him did it. And I’ll bet that I’m the only man in Chicago who knows why the Jap croaked him. But the main thing I want to impress upon your mind is that the Jap didn’t get what he killed him for; they haven’t found anything in the Jap’s suit-case but clothes.”

  “Where’d you meet this Silvester?” Moonface asked. “And what’s he got that you want?”

  “Aloysius Silvester was no more his name,” replied Cawthorne, “than Wellington Cawthorne is mine. Why, Moonface, that man and I grew up in a little town together. Silvester and his brother — I won’t bother you with his real name — fell heir to a big country estate when their father died. I was just a kid then — a barefoot kid — in the little green-hedged town. And Silvester produced a will wherein his father had cut off the brother without a cent — and left him, Silvester, the whole thing. The estate was worth, probably, a hundred thousand dollars. The funny part was that the brother who was cut off didn’t fight the thing at all, for he’d been estranged from the old man for several years, and the whole town had always predicted that he’d get cut off if the old man ever died suddenly. The court pronounced the will O.K., and Silvester got it all. He sold the whole estate inside of two weeks and left that part of the country. Then came a startling development.”

  “What?” Moonface was interested, beyond doubt.

  “Some young clerk in the recording offices, when examining the will, found a commercial watermark in the paper. He took it into his head to look up the paper-mill record. And he found it to be the brand of a paper-mill that hadn’t started operations until just after the date on the paper. They called in handwriting experts, who found the will to be a forgery, and the man — we’ll still call him Silvester — had decamped. The brother who would have been worth fifty thousand dollars was left holding the bag.

  “That was all many years ago,” went on Cawthorne. “A few months ago, in Chicago, I was down in the Fine Arts Building going up to see a doctor, and I came across a card in the lobby bearing the notice of a lecture to be given in the Fine Arts Hall by Professor Aloysius Silvester, the famous specialist on moths. I studied the half-tone portrait of the old boy, but his grey hair and beard didn’t indicate anything to me. But the mention of moths took me back to the little home town — to the man who swindled his brother — to the man who even as a boy was crazy on moths; who used to collect them, prepare them, trade them with the rest of us, buy them from the rest of us — who used to scour the fields all night with a home-made net to get new specimens. Something told me to go to this Silvester lecture. During the lecture it got very warm, and he took off a black silk glove that he had on his hand, and there was a tumorous growth on the flesh. Do you get i
t, Moonface?”

  “I get it all right,” said Moonface. “That tumorous growth had been there when he was a boy. So you had somebody to blackmail then. You went to him and told him you’d show him up for the forgery of thirty years ago — when you were both natives of the same home town. What then?”

  Cawthorne grinned. “He finally admitted the accusation,” said he. “How could he deny it? The growth on the hand and certain slight resemblances in his features were present. He’d changed his name, of course, as I told you. After he got the estate with the phony will, and sold it in a hurry, he roved round the world collecting moth specimens and loaning them to museums all over. Here in Chicago his rovings had stopped. He had married. Wife long dead, but had a daughter. Both living in St. Clair Street, where I used to call on the old boy. The days of the past, you see, were quite forgotten. So much for that. It ends the story, or at least as much as I see fit to give you right now.

  “Now, listen to me: Silvester had something that he got especially for me, after I brought a little pressure to bear on him. He wanted ten thousand for it, and I was supposed to be trying to raise the balance of the money. Last night he was shot dead. The Jap did it. And, as I told you, I know why — exactly why. Some doubt in the police mind, but none in mine as to why the Jap pulled the stunt. But I’m certain the old boy had the thing hidden where the Jap couldn’t touch it, or anyone else.

  “Now, Moonface, keep your shirt on. Go easy I It’s in the Ernst Court laboratory somewhere. As soon as this murder blows over, you and I will get into that place some night and with electric pocket lights search every square inch for it. When the time gets ripe I’ll tell you exactly what we’re looking for. And when we find it you’ll get half of it — fifty thousand, Moonface — for I can turn it over in a minute for double that sum.”

  A silence ensured, broken at length by Moonface. “All right,” he said. “I’ll take your word for it for the present.” The sound of him rising from the chair where he had dropped during the interview was audible to the watchers. “Well, suppose we slip downstairs and get a cigar and a drink of genuine Johnny Walker from an acquaintance of mine that’s running a blind pig up the street. Might as well be friends. Then I’ll leave you for to-day.”

  “I’m with you.” The big man crossed the line of vision in the crack of the door and reappeared a second later with his hat in his hand. Then came the sound of the door closing, then the clang of the elevator going down. MacTavish, sweating and red-faced, flung open the closet door and Casperson followed him out into the cool air of the room. The plain-clothes man mopped his forehead.

  “Let’s get out of here in a hurry,” he said. “O’Connor, the house detective, will pinch Moonfaceassoon as Cawthorne leaves him and gets out of sight.” He opened the door, and locking it again with the pass-key which Moonface had meekly turned over to him a short time before, led the way down the stairs and through the main corridor to the street. Out on the sidewalk he smiled with satisfaction and said:

  “Some mighty interesting information, eh, Casp, on the mystery of Ernst Court? Now — ”

  “Wait,” interrupted Casperson, staring at a telegraph office where the clicking of many busy instruments sounded. “MacTavish, will you wait on the corner till I go into that office and send two messages — one to the Johnsonian Institute, of Washington, D.C.; the other to Professor Hans Schwenmauer, of the University of California?”

  MacTavish stared at him. “I don’t get you, Casp; I don’t get you at all. But I’ll wait for you — if that’s all you want. Is it connected with Silvester?”

  “It is,” said Casperson,” and, if certain answers come back, you’ll have something interesting.” With this cryptic remark, followed by a wink, Casperson entered the telegraph office.

  CHAPTER XVIII

  A FEW THEORIES

  CASPERSON wrote out two messages; the first was addressed to Professor Hans Schwenmauer, of the University of California, and read:

  Kindly telegraph undersigned at 842 North Dearborn Avenue, Chicago, collect, the following information: Does Vergitilla Phyleas belong to swallow-tail moths or the round-tail group? Very urgent. Please give answer to messenger.

  WILK CASPERSON.

  The second telegram, addressed to the Johnsonian Institute, of Washington, D.C., was worded thus:

  Kindly telegraph undersigned at 842 North Dearborn Avenue, Chicago, collect, the following information: What report was issued by Professor Aloysius Silvester, of Chicago, with regard to his quest for the Vergitilla Phyleas in the tropics between Costa Rica and Colombia? Very urgent. Please hand answer to messenger.

  WILK CASPERSON.

  He rejoined the bewildered-looking MacTavish out on the sidewalk. Together they went for a bite to eat, then moved on to Casperson’s lodgings, where they dropped into chairs.

  “Well, Casp, what do you think of those two crooks?” asked MacTavish. “It seems plain that Moonface didn’t get what he was after; but did Cawthorne? Is he lying, or hasn’t he got it? How do you make him out?”

  Casperson, rocking back and forth, replied: “Mac, first take a look at this little paper I’ve drawn up.” He handed the other paper he had made out, showing each of those who might have stoken the necklace with possible motives or lack of motives. “Then I’ll give you some more surprising dope.”

  MacTavish scrutinised the paper, than laid it on the arm of the chair with a frown of puzzlement on his forehead. Whereupon Casperson handed him the paper on which he had copied the matter concerning the Vergitilla Phyleas. Much of the writing had faded away; parts of certain words were gone completely. MacTavish stared at it dumbly. “What the — ”

  “That paper,” said Casperson wearily,” was written by me with a fountain-pen that I accidentally carried away this morning from Malcolm Eldredge’s room. I had written down some facts that I looked up at the library on the Vergitilla. Now — ”

  “The dickens you say!” snapped MacTavish. “Secret writing ink. And — ” He looked up, and emitted a whistle. “So it was Malcolm Eldredge that had a messenger boy bring that decoy card to you last night — and got you out of the place?” He looked over again the analysis of the situation which Casperson had made. “And this reference to stolen money. What — ”

  Casperson nodded. “Yes, you may as well know about that now. Malcolm Eldredge has been in serious trouble. Lost nearly two thousand dollars — short in his accounts at his father’s offices. Managed to borrow the amount from friends and professional money-lenders, and among them was myself. I lent him two hundred to wipe out the deficit entirely.” He paused. “And this morning, Mac, he gave me back a cheque for two hundred, telling me his brokers had ‘phoned him that some British rubber shares he had bought on margin had soared and he had cleaned up; but he told me not to put the cheque in till late to-day — to hold it unt — ”

  “Until he could turn over his sister’s necklace at some crooked diamond dealer’s where he had the thing all prearranged.” MacTavish smiled grimly. “So the thief wasn’t an outside man, after all.” He glanced down at the sheet again. “And the entry here, ‘Niccolo di Paoli, with no motive,’ then, is all wrong; since Niccolo di Paoli was really Moonface smeared with grease paint and talking like an Italian.”

  Casperson nodded. “Yes, that’s correct. I think we’ve got our man. The question, though, is, what are we going to do? I want to marry that little girl; but I can’t marry her so long as I’m under suspicion. But does it mean that I’ve got to incriminate her brother in order to clear myself? Besides, how is this theft to be fastened on Malcolm?”

  “We can sweat a confession out of him in the chief’s office,” asserted MacTavish grimly. “Some third degree stuff that’ll knock the truth out of him and even bring out where he sold the necklace.”

  Casperson shuddered. “That’s horrible, Mac. I’ve been present at some of your police third degrees. I’d hate to think that anybody I knew was locked up in a room with you fellows — and supposed to have some v
ital information.” He reflected a moment, then said: “You see, I somehow appreciate how pressed to the wall Malcolm Eldredge was — how desperate. Then, too, Mac, I have to remember that, no matter what trouble he actually caused for me, he really tried to throw suspicion on Cawthorne — or Gryce, or whatever we call him — my rival for the hand of the only girl in the world. That fellow’s a crook and I can’t help but feel that it would have been the working out of poetic justic if he had received Malcolm’s decoy note, left the place in response to schedule, and had all this suspicion landed on him.”

  “Well, could you bring yourself to believe,” asked MacTavish after a pause, “that Malcolm and Cawthorne were in league for some reason? That Malcolm agreed to steal it — Cawthorne agreed to dispose of the thing to a fence, and that they both together agreed to get the laugh on Cawthorne’s friend Moonface by inveigling him in there as di Paoli to steal it, and then tipping his identity up before the few Pinkertons present? According to your dance slip you’ve written out here, they both signed up early so that di Paoli — or Moonface — got his dance after they had their chance.”

  Casperson thought for a moment. “All sorts of strange things are possible in this tangle, Mac. There’s no telling. Cawthorne might well have been in collusion with Malcolm, as you suggest. But if any such plans were in existence, the presence of a notorious police character at the ball would be just what they’d need in case of alarm — someone to clear all the suspicion.”

  Presently there was a knock at the door. In the messenger’s hand was not one, but two yellow envelopes. “Two wires, mister, for Mr. Wilk Casperson. Th’ second one come jis’ as I was gointer ride off.”

  Casperson signed for the two envelopes and slipped the boy a coin. Then, standing up, he tore open the first. It read: