The Victorian Villains Megapack

by Arthur Morrison

  As the steel door clanged shut behind him, Mr. Clackworthy, through the bars, proffered the turnkey a neatly folded twenty-dollar bill.

  “I want a little information,” he said. “I want to know what kind of a lawyer Edward Stone is?”

  “Punk,” replied the turnkey. “He’s just a young fellow and pretty near starvin’ to death, I reckon.”

  “What relationship has he to Henry Stone, publisher of the Swaneetown Courier?”

  “Brothers they are.”

  “So I guessed.” Mr. Clackworthy nodded. “Call up Lawyer Stone for me and tell him that there’s a hundred-dollar retainer fee waiting for him the minute he gets here.”

  “Then he’ll get here before I can get the receiver hung up,” shrewdly replied the turnkey.

  The prediction may have failed by a few minutes, but Lawyer Stone did not waste any time. He came back to Mr. Clackworthy’s cell, a neatly shabby man of perhaps thirty. He took the hundred-dollar bill which Mr. Clackworthy gave him, fingering it fondly.

  “Stone,” began the master confidence man, “your brother owns The Courier?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “I happened to be looking over it back in the hotel this morning. I saw your name in the news columns and the boost the paper gave you made me lean to the conclusion that he must be your brother. No, don’t interrupt; all of this is quite pertinent.

  “Let me ask you another question: How does your brother and Banker Harley get along?”

  “You say this is—pertinent?” exclaimed the attorney. “Maybe so; anyhow, you’ve given me a hundred, and I don’t know any easier way to earn it than hand you out the family secrets. Henry has to get along with Harley; Harley has a mortgage on the paper.”

  “And the paper isn’t exactly a newspaper bonanza, I take it,” went on Mr. Clackworthy. “The lack of advertising patronage would indicate that your brother is having a tough time of it.”

  “It does look rather sickly, doesn’t it?” agreed the lawyer. “Say, what’s the idea anyhow?”

  For answer, Mr. Clackworthy drew closer to the barred door and whispered into Lawyer Stone’s ear for several minutes. When he had finished the attorney was grinning.

  “I’ll talk it over with Henry,” he said. “I am dead sure he’ll do it; it will save the paper for him. Henry would commit murder for three thousand dollars right now. He hasn’t been able to rake up last week’s pay roll.”

  That same afternoon, less than three hours after the young lawyer’s consultation with Mr. Clackworthy, small boys began to flood the streets of Swaneetown with handbills. They read:

  A GREAT SENSATION!!!

  The Courier takes pleasure in announcing that in its issue tomorrow, and running every week thereafter, it will begin the publication of a sensation series of articles exposing the inside secrets of crooked race track gambling entitled

  FROM BOOKMAKER TO BANK PRESIDENT.

  We guarantee that this series of articles will stir Swaneetown as no other series of newspaper article has ever done. It will describe how a former racetrack gambler, who served several jail terms for a number of offenses, changed his name, accumulated a fortune, and became president of a bank.

  IT STARTS TOMORROW.

  * * * *

  Banker Harley, otherwise Chicago Charlie, was at his desk when someone, coming in from the street, carried in one of the bills. His eyes lighted on the line in big type “FROM BOOKMAKER TO BANK PRESIDENT.” He gave a violent start and, with trembling fingers, began to read.

  He had already been informed, of course, that Mr. Clackworthy and The Early Bird had refused to leave town; that, of course, puzzled and worried him, but this! How had they done it? There was one consoling thought; he could stop The Courier from printing it. He reached for the phone and called The Courier’ office.

  “Stone!” he snapped into the transmitter. “You owe this bank a mortgage for three thousand dollars on your paper. It was due today and you haven’t paid it. I’ll have to foreclose unless you meet that mortgage.”

  “Why, Mr. Harley!” exclaimed Stone with apparent innocence. “Why are you so sudden about it?”

  “I think you already know,” retorted the banker. “Any man who’s loon enough to flood the town with a lot of ridiculous bills like you’re having distributed this afternoon, isn’t sane enough to get credit at this bank. Of course, if you stopped this foolishness I might—”

  “But I couldn’t do that, Mr. Harley,” replied the editor. “I’ve advertised it, you know, and—well, besides, I was just on my way down to pay off the mortgage. I have made other financial arrangements—borrowed the money from a—a Mr. Amos Clackworthy. I’ve got his check drawn on your bank. I’ll be right down.”

  Chicago Charlie dropped limply back in his chair.

  VI.

  Being a man of average intelligence, Chicago Charlie did not need a diagram to tell him what had happened to him. And he wasted no time; he had a situation to meet and he met it. He hurried to police headquarters and flung himself down into the chair at Chief Givney’s desk.

  “Givney,” he commanded, “get an order from the court and bring those two prisoners over here from the jail—and then go away and let us alone. Understand?”

  The chief obediently brought Mr. Clackworthy and The Early Bird from their cells in the jail and conducted them to his private office.

  “Beat it, Givney; shut the door behind you,” ordered Chicago Charlie. “Sit down, you two,” he went on as the door slammed; “sit down and talk turkey. You’ve got me hooked, an’ I know it.

  “I thought I’d run you out of town; it didn’t work. You two came out here to get me; I understand it now—and you put it over. There’s no use raisin’ a fuss about that part of it. The question is—how much do you want?”

  The Early Bird who, a moment before had been the glummest man in seven States, stared in amazed delight at Mr. Clackworthy; somehow Mr. Clackworthy had put it over.

  “I guess you ain’t forgot them ten thousand smackers of mine that you went south with, eh, Chicago Charlie?” James inquired gleefully.

  The banker winced unpleasantly at the name which he had not heard for many years.

  “Cut out that stuff,” he ordered. “I’m willin’ to pay a reasonable amount of blackmail to you two—”

  “Blackmail!” interrupted Mr. Clackworthy. “I am quite sure that neither James here nor myself have any intention of blackmailing you.”

  “Then what do you call it, I’d like to know?”

  “Now come—er—Charlie,” and Mr. Clackworthy smiled. “Suppose we put this on a strictly business basis. You are indebted to Mr. Early in the sum of ten thousand dollars, a debt which has been unpaid for more than ten years. The interest on that, straight interest at six percent, amounts to more than six thousand dollars. Should we compound it, and most certainly it should be compounded, it would reach a very large sum. However, I am sure that he will waive compound interest if you, in turn, would allow him something for the—er—expenses of collection.

  “Surely there is no blackmail in a straightforward business proposition of this character. Speaking as Mr. Early’s representative, I offer you a settlement figure of twenty-five thousand dollars. Not a penny less—er—Charlie; take it or leave it, just as you choose.”

  “Cut it half in two; twelve thousand five hundred,” parried the banker.

  “Not a cent for bargaining,” refused Mr. Clackworthy.

  “How’re you goin’ to call off your dogs?” demanded Chicago Charlie. “How are you going to shut up that newspaper? I guess he knows the whole thing, too, eh?”

  “Not a word,” denied Mr. Clackworthy. “In fact Mr. Early here has not yet written his series of sensational articles, and Editor Stone rather advertised them blind; that is to say, he accepted a gift of three thousand dollars from me, given under the condit
ion that he accepts my—er—suggestion that he popularize his paper with a touch of—ah—sensationalism. Of course he may guess at a thing or two, but so far he knows absolutely nothing.”

  “All right,” brusquely interrupted Chicago Charlie. “I know when I’m licked. I’ve got to cough up. Come on down to the bank just as soon as I have the judge lift the sentences, but you ought to be in the pen—you blackmailers!”

  Mr. Clackworthy chuckled.

  “You know—er—Charlie,” he said, “you brought the whole thing on yourself. You forced us to the one method of—er—collection that we would have never thought of. The Early Bird would never have exposed you—not in a thousand years. He doesn’t play the game that way. But you didn’t know that. You got worried and tried to drive us out of town; if it hadn’t been for that, I would have never known that you were scared to death of a—what The Early Bird would call ‘a squawk.’ I had about given you up as a bad job; if you had let us alone we would have left town tomorrow, and you would be twenty-five thousand to the good.”

  “Come on, boss; save th’ chin music until after I’ve got that jack in my mitts,” cut in The Early Bird. “I been waitin’ more’n ten years t’ find out how it’d feel t’ see Chicago Charlie count out my winnin’s on that hundred-t’-one shot. I reckon that’s worth a few hours in jail, eh, boss?”

  Mr. Clackworthy’s slight shudder seemed to dispute this opinion.