The Washington Square Enigma

by Harry Stephen Keeler

  As the newsboy went up the street, leaving the stand protected only by the paper-weights, Harling stepped quickly over and read the headlines.

  BODY OF EVANSTON LANDLORD FOUND IN VACANT HOUSE ON WASHINGTON SQUARE

  POLICE SEARCHING FOR BROWN-SUITED MAN CONCERNED IN THE KILLING OF SAMUEL P. BOND, SR.

  As the newsboy did not return, Harling took the liberty of reading the entire article. It ran:

  The body of Samuel P. Bond, senior, of Evanston, owner of many pieces of Chicago real estate, was found today in No. 63 West Delaware Place, one of the old-fashioned, vacant buildings fronting Washington Square on the North Side. Death had resulted from a stab in the eye with a five-inch ornamental hat pin, the shaft of which was found still sticking in the eyeball and piercing the brain.

  The alarm was given to the police shortly before two o’clock through the efforts of Mr. Courtenay Vandervoort, Bond’s intimate friend. Mr. Vandervoort had an important appointment with the Evanstonian for one o’clock but when he called at the North Shore home, Bond was not there.

  According to the servants, Bond had not been home all night, but this, likewise, was nothing unusual, since the Evanston man often spent the night in one of Chicago’s many downtown hotels.

  Mr. Vandervoort, in view of certain crucial aspects of his appointment, concluded that something was wrong, and remembering that Bond had mentioned something the previous day about examining some of his vacant property, urged the servants to call the police.

  The younger Bond, also of Evanston, called by telephone, was able to furnish the addresses of some of his father’s vacant pieces of property, including the one at No. 63 Delaware Place; this had been vacated over two years pending the erection by Eastern capitalists of a huge, modern hotel on Washington Square. With this as a clue, the police from the Chicago Avenue station succeeded in finding the dead man in the first room they entered — the former first floor front of No. 63. The length of time during which the body had been dead could not be definitely determined, but the limbs were rigid.

  When the police entered the deserted place, a man in a brown suit, concealed in a basement pantry, sprang out and disappeared through the rear, eluding the pursuing officer by jumping on a purple coupé that was passing along Dearborn Avenue.

  Shortly after the evidences of the crime were found, three negro boys were arrested in an alley near Clark and Schiller Streets for shooting craps. In the pockets of one was found a peculiar, conical fragment of green jade, covered with a fine network of silver threads. This piece corresponds exactly with a tiny second fragment of the substance which was picked up by one of the officers in a closet of the first-floor front where the murdered man lay.

  The negro boy, however, through the testimony of his two companions, was able to prove that he purchased the jade and silver fragment from a brown-suited man with brown eyes, about thirty minutes after the time when the one living inmate of the house is known to have fled from the police.

  A further peculiar feature of the case is that Sergeant Michael L. Bond, of the Chicago Avenue station, remembered that he was called upon at his home some few weeks ago by a man with a brown suit and with brown eyes, of the same description given both by the negro boy and by the officer who chased the fugitive from the house. The latter, it seems, was trying to find the whereabouts of S. P. Bond, senior, whose name was not in the Chicago directory. Sergeant Michael Bond was unable to elicit the reason why the man wanted this address, and was unable to give him any assistance.

  It will be recalled by a few Chicagoans that Samuel P. Bond, senior, of Evanston, was the owner of the Vanderhuyden ruby, worth over one hundred thousand dollars, stolen from him the night of a house party at his North Shore residence some two weeks ago, when his safe was blown open.

  The police believe that the brown-suited man is the agent who established the location of the jewel for the gang who later cracked the safe. There is no doubt that he and and the elder Bond met together by appointment in the vacant house today to bargain for the return of the ruby. In the quarrel that ensued, the agent stabbed Bond to death with an old, ornamental hat pin that he picked up either on the place or in the rear yard; then later returned to rob the body and was accidentally discovered by the police.

  All the depots, flying fields, lodging houses and hotels are being watched so that the criminal may be apprehended before another twelve hours.

  CHAPTER VII

  MORE OF THE UNEXPECTED

  WHEN he had finished the article, Harling walked away from the news stand, as he saw the owner of it returning. Reaching a spot on busy Madison Street, where the tide of passers-by was not so thick, he leaned against the iron railing of a building, and tried to pull his thoughts together.

  The irony of Fate! The old, much-used phrase came mechanically to his lips as he thought over the dumfounding revelation given forth by the Extra. Here he had been hopelessly seeking all over Chicago from one end to the other, trying to find one S. P. Bond, senior. And then just on the eve of discovering his man in the outlying city of Evanston, as he undoubtedly would have done, the newspapers were shouting out that the man he was searching for was dead. Murdered! And the big dramatic twist to the situation was that he himself was being looked for by the police for having done the deed.

  Mentally he berated himself for having entered that fatal empty house in the search for a piece of chandelier. But, he reflected bitterly, he had been only trying, after all, to secure the five dollars by which to pursue further the search for the very man who, it appears, was lying on the floor of the house, dead. Mentally he condemned himself for selling the tiny green jade fragment to the negro boy, but again his common sense came to his rescue and told him that only in that way had he been able to reach the address of the man who had provided him with the five-dollar bill, which was just about all that now remained between him and starvation.

  Again a picture came into his mind — the back of a slim girl in a brown velvet suit, seated in a purple coupe, her hand clutching a headless, tailless, green jade dragon that had once formed the ornamental head of a hat pin. Harling laughed grimly. He, of all persons in Chicago, knew one hidden detail of the crime on Washington Square, and yet he, for his own safety, dare not reveal it to the police.

  Well he knew the police methods of the larger cities; methods which held a man, innocent or guilty, in jail for weeks and weeks, subject to cruel grillings, physical as well as mental; grillings which in the past had brought confessions from the lips of victims who afterward had proved to be innocent. He wondered what the next few hours were going to bring forth for him, with all the depots and lodging houses being watched for a man with a brown suit and brown eyes.

  The sight of a big traffic policeman idly glancing in his direction threw Harling into a sudden panic, although his common sense should have told him that it was far too early for the news to reach those officers who were on their beats. Then, panic-stricken as he was, he woke to the realization that he had not eaten for twenty hours; that a restaurant stood almost at his elbow, empty at this late hour of the afternoon, so he turned quickly into it, breathing a sigh of relief that he had found a haven in which to rest a short while, secure from the passing pairs of eyes; a haven in which to figure what he was to do with his lone five-dollar bill — against at least a hundred trained hounds of the law.

  Entering the door, he went back to the very last stool of the lunch counter. There he glanced nervously over the bill of fare and ordered a copious meal, hot and appetizing. Then he waited in an agony of suspense for it to be brought on.

  While he fidgeted on his stool, he took stock of the whole unpleasant situation into which he had precipitated himself. In turn, he fought several untenable suggestions; one, to give himself up to the police and tell his story, true and yet unbelievable as it was; another, to make for the nearest railroad yards and try and catch the first freight train out of the city, away, any direction, away from Chicago, and still another, to purchase a suit of overa
lls, don it, and take a room as a laborer in the outlying section of the city.

  When the steaming food came, he ate quickly. It burned his throat as it slid down, but he thought more clearly as it began to take effect on his somewhat fagged nervous system.

  He arose, glanced at his check which was for thirty-five cents, and went up to the front end of the restaurant where a big, bulky man, evidently the proprietor, presided over the cash register. There, Harling tossed his five-dollar bill and his check to the man behind the counter, and waited nervously until he could pocket his change and hurry into a quieter part of the city to think things over with some degree of clearness.

  The man at the cash register rang up the amount and slapped the bill into a compartment of the bill drawer. He started to fumble in the change drawer, then as if by a sudden thought, he picked up a printed post card and studied the wording on it. Harling watched his actions uneasily, his own eyes reading the address side of the postal that faced him. It read:

  To Restaurant Proprietor,

  14 West Madison Street,

  Chicago.

  Daily Report

  From Merchants’ Protective

  Association, Chicago.

  The man behind the counter, as if his memory had been suddenly refreshed, withdrew the bill he had just deposited, and scanned it carefully. Then he pulled out a reading glass from beneath the counter, and held it above a corner of the bill, examining one of the scrolls with painstaking care.

  “Sorry, my friend,” he remarked, glancing up, “this bill’s a beauty, all right, but my little card here from the Merchants’ Protective Association says to examine the end scroll on all fives of the B-12225555 issue that come in. And this end scroll’s just the way it describes. Phoney, all right. But slip me thirty-five cents and I’ll give you back the bill, so you can slide it off somewhere else. I’m not — ”

  “Counterfeit!” ejaculated Harling, suddenly awakening to the meaning of the other’s words. “Counterfeit!” he repeated. “Why — why — ” he stammered and stopped in dismay. “But it’s all I’ve got to my name, outside of three lone cents. I can’t pay for the meal — unless — it comes out of that bill.” His face fell. “Are you sure it’s counterfeit?” he repeated, unbelievingly.

  The face of the proprietor darkened. “Say, none o’ that, my friend. You bet your life it’s phoney. I see you standing out in front a while figuring whether you could find a sucker in here. If you can’t pay for your meal, then maybe you can explain to the nearest police station why you’re carrying around a phoney five of the B-12225555 issue.”

  He glanced out of the window. A blue-coated police officer was strolling past the plate glass window. Harling, turning his head, saw the man and caught his breath sharply. Already the proprietor was tapping on the glass. The officer stopped, gazed in, then turned curiously toward the entrance of the restaurant. And Harling realized, with an engulfing wave of despair, that circumstances again were fast making him an unwilling victim of a cruel network which he did not even understand.

  He could explain easily enough about the counterfeit bill, but his suit was brown; so were his eyes. He would be held in custody on the more serious charge of the two now trembling above his head — the charge of murder!

  CHAPTER VIII

  A TRIP TO THE LAKE SHORE DRIVE

  WITH one of the lightning-like decisions which come to those who find themselves trapped, their backs to the wall, Harling gave one glance at the officer coming in from the outside; then he spun like a top, shot like an arrow through the empty restaurant, kicked open the swinging doors to the kitchen filled with a steaming range and many odoriferous kettles, and fled past the fat cook, who stared stupidly from under his white chef’s hat.

  Harling did not stop at the kitchen door, however, for the alley door loomed invitingly open. Through it he went, and pell-mell up the narrow, gloomy alley, his worn shoes beating a tattoo against the cobblestones. He slowed down as he came near the opening which was on State Street, Chicago’s busiest thoroughfare. Then he slipped out on the sidewalk and became swallowed up in the pushing, jostling throng.

  He threaded his way in and out rapidly, and at Washington Street cut eastward and made his way to the Lake Front and Grant Park. Here he slipped away from the boulevard and took up a seat on one of the lonely and deserted benches. He lost no time in taking stock of the new and unpleasant situation that confronted him, struggling in his mind to find what his next step must be.

  Now, outside of those three pennies, he was without money entirely, for the five-dollar bill he had tendered in the restaurant brought him no change; neither had it come back to him. The police were looking for one of his description as having guilty knowledge of the crime on Washington Square, and it was no simple trick to disabuse the police of any ideas of that sort they might hold. He had no friends; no relatives.

  Bitterly he thought of the man Rafferty who had been the cause of his getting into this whole, unfortunate tangle, and then had rewarded him with a counterfeit bill which made necessary an actual flight from the arm of the law. He thought too of the girl who had driven so rapidly away from Washington Square, her tiny hand clenching the green jade dragon that had constituted the head of the ornamental hat pin with which the man Bond had been murdered. Had she been the perpetrator of that crime some few hours earlier and had she gone back to the place to regain the instrument with which it had been done? He shook his head. The whole thing was quite unexplainable.

  But, from thinking about the matter, an idea came to him. If this girl, for some reason, wished to keep her identity, her possible connection with the crime, secret, she loomed forth as the one possible source of help to him, Ford Harling, who was an actual suspect in the case. Indeed it was more than likely that she would render aid of some sort if she knew the strange situation in which he was floundering, and particularly if she could be made to realize that he of all persons in Chicago knew that she had held in her gloved hand part of the weapon which had killed Bond.

  To be sure, he could not prove that fact, but it might serve to frighten the girl into coming to his assistance. Just what assistance he needed, Harling did not know; he was not sure whether he needed money or advice, or even refuge for the time being. One thing was sure, though, it would be a matter of only a few hours before the police would pick up a man in a brown suit, with brown eyes — himself, in other words. So anything was better than the uncertainty of the present moment.

  Harling shrugged his shoulders and with a glance at the leaden sky, arose from his bench. He forged north along Michigan Avenue, and in several minutes was traversing the huge, doubledecked Michigan Avenue bridge; a moment later he had crossed over and was on the north side of the river, in a different commercial world entirely from that on the south. He walked briskly, now, as much from uneasiness as from the chill of the early November weather, and soon the blue enamel street signs changed to Lake Shore Drive. The clock on the dashboard of a standing limousine which he passed, showed the time to be twenty minutes to five; already the dusk was creeping over the city.

  Ten minutes later, he walked firmly up the steps on the same splendid brownstone house on Lake Shore Drive to which he had followed the purple coupé. His long ring on the massive bronze bell to the left of the polished copper gate was answered by the same short dark-skinned servant — a young and very amiable-looking Philippino, as Harling could now see him to be — who had piloted the machine to the rear, some few hours earlier in the afternoon.

  “I’d like to see the young lady who drove up here today in a Rollinson coupé,” Harling said resolutely.

  The Philippino servant’s eyes roved rather dubiously up and down his somewhat bedraggled clothing. “You weesh see Miss Trudel Vanderhuyden, eh? You weesh see her?”

  “Miss Trudel Vanderhuyden,” repeated Harling, carefully. “Yes, I’d like to speak to her for a few minutes on a very important matter. Tell her that, if you will.”

  The Philippino boy stood asid
e and motioned Harling to step in. “Joos follow me, eef you weel.” He led the way to a splendidly furnished library at the rear of the spacious front hall. Around the walls were ranged bookcases filled with expensive leather volumes and surmounted by busts of marble and bronze, as well as trophies of the chase. A great, hand-carved, oak table, standing in the center of the Oriental rug that covered all but the edges of the polished, hardwood floor, supported an ornate electric lamp of hammered silver. A number of large leather rockers and leather straight-backed chairs were ranged carelessly about the room, and a colossal grate of red brick held a cheerful, crackling wood-fire which had evidently been kindled on account of the chill in the November air. “Be seated, sair,” said the servant. “I weel call Mees Vanderhuyden.”

  He left the room and Harling dropped into one of the great leather chairs, wondering what sort of an interview he was going to have. No matter, he reflected bitterly. He had everything to gain and nothing to lose. Presently he heard footsteps approaching, and a girl entered the room — the girl whom he had seen only from the back in the purple coupé.

  She was now clad in a house gown of shimmering blue silk, tied about the waist with a girdle of braided gold cord. Her eyes were as blue as the silk which she wore, and her golden hair, done into bewitching curls by the artistry of a doubtlessly experienced maid, seemed but to emphasize the whiteness of her soft neck where it was exposed by the low gown. Her features were clear-cut; delicate; her complexion was that of the princesses in the old fairy tales.

  At her entrance, Harling had risen in surprise. His jaw fell open and he stared and continued to stare. “You — you — ” he stammered. “Why — why — ”

  But the girl, staring in return at him, her own lips parted in amazement, advanced toward him quickly with hands outstretched. “Mr. Ford Harling!” she cried, as if in utter unbelief. “The man who saved my life in Frisco Bay!”