The Washington Square Enigma

by Harry Stephen Keeler

  At this juncture, Harling spoke up. “I’ve announced to Miss Vanderhuyden what I’m willing to do,” he said to the detective. “And to my mind, it’s the only thing that can be done. I’ll simply lie low somewhere about this house until everything blows over; then I’ll slide out of the city some night on a rattler, and both Miss Vanderhuyden and I will be forever safe from any possibility of being connected with the case. Bond, senior, the only person who might have told me what became of the envelope, or the identity of the little, wizened man who wrote his name on it in Frisco, is dead. Bond’s son might know, but I’ve a feeling that my search has failed by the margin of just twenty-four hours. At any rate, ten days after I pull out of Chicago I can be back in Frisco again — a little sadder and a little wiser.”

  “One thing puzzles me, though,” remarked Morningstar to the younger man. “You say you went into Number 63 to get a piece of brass chandelier or brass electrical fixture so you could sell it and reach the fellow who is buying twelve-star nickels for five dollars. All right. But the newspaper said you sold a tiny cone of green jade to a negro boy for fifteen cents. Evidently you reached your man. If you turned over this nickel for five dollars, how comes it that you didn’t seize time by the forelock, and light out for the railroad yards the minute you read the news? You had capital, then.”

  “Capital?” echoed Harling with a faint smile. “Some capital! The man Rafferty had a wallet stuffed with beautiful, crisp five-dollar bills, but in the first restaurant where I tried to change one, the man consulted a little Merchants’ Protective card, squinted at the bill under a magnifying glass, and informed me that it was a clever counterfeit of the B-12225555 issue. Whereupon they proceeded — ”

  “What!” ejaculated Morningstar, half rising from his chair. “Counterfeit — you say? And he had a wallet full of the same kind? And it was of the B-12225555 issue?”

  Harling nodded bewilderedly.

  The red-haired man turned to Trudel, excitedly: “Then congratulate yourself, Miss Vanderhuyden, that you and I have heard Harling’s story so soon, and before anyone else. I happen to know now that this man Rafferty is the self-same fellow who pulled off that stunt in Evanston, and who got away with the Vanderhuyden purple ruby!”

  CHAPTER XIV

  CONCERNING ONE MAZZOLI

  HARLING, amazed, looked at the other, speechless. It was the girl who first found her voice.

  “The man who stole the Vanderhuyden ruby?” she exclaimed. “But how — how can you know that, Mr. Morningstar? How do you — ?”

  But Morningstar was fumbling in his inner vest pocket. Finding a leather bill-fold he jerked it out, and, opening it, took forth a short newspaper clipping, which he handed to the girl. She read it through hastily; then, without a word, handed it over to Harling, who, in turn, read it through eagerly, noting, as he did so, that it was dated the day after that of the clipping he had read concerning the robbery at Samuel P. Bond’s Evanston home. It ran:

  NAB TENOR MAZZOLI AS COUNTERFEIT SUSPECT

  POLICE BELIEVE HE IS THE SAME INDIVIDUAL WHO DISAPPEARED FROM THEIR CLUTCHES TEN YEARS AGO

  Dominic Mazzoli, the Grand Opera tenor and famous radio singer over station WGN and the Columbia network, who was originally discovered by a Chicago opera magnate, was arrested this morning by operatives from the Federal Detective Bureau on evidence furnished by an Italian who was found to be passing counterfeit fives of a new and clever design which are flooding the country. The latter, whose name has not been revealed, claims, under cross-grilling, that he received his last supply of the spurious bills from Mazzoli, through underground channels. He also asserts that he was to receive from Mazzoli a packet of three hundred more bills today.

  Mazzoli, when arrested, indignantly denied the allegations made by the Federal Bureau’s prisoner, and attributes the whole thing to spite-work resulting from an old vendetta. His rooms were searched but nothing incriminating was found in them.

  The Federal authorities, however, have investigated Mazzoli’s movements of the last few days. As a result they are regretting that the information was not in their hands sooner, since an inquiry from a number of guests present at the Samuel P. Bond house party in Evanston, night before last, at which Mazzoli was one of the guests, elicited the fact that as Bond was locking up the Vanderhuyden ruby, which was stolen that night, the tenor requested his host to take charge of a sealed packet for him until morning. The Federal officials believe that this is the packet of three hundred fives which were to go to their prisoner, according to his convincing confession; but the packet, having disappeared through the safe robbery, no evidence is left on which to convict Mazzoli. He is held in high bail, however, on the facts already brought out.

  Horace G. Devontree, the nationally famed expert in Federal prosecutions along the line of counterfeit securities, spurious currency and forgeries, proclaims these bills of the B-12225555 type as coming from the engraving tool of no less a person than Silvestro Ruggieri. The latter, a few people will remember, escaped the police some ten years ago in a running gunfire in New York’s Little Italy, and was thought to have made his way back to Italy as a stowaway on one of the liners. If it could be proven that the packet placed in the safe contained a consignment of these counterfeit bills, authoritatively pronounced as Ruggieri’s indisputable handiwork, the identification will be certain, and Mazzoli’s conviction would be sure.

  At the end of the clipping, Harling looked up. Whereupon, Morningstar, seeing that it had been read by both of his hearers, spoke.

  “Now do you grasp it?” he cried, enthusiastically. “Harling, Miss Vanderhuyden, it’s as plain as A?C. If this man Rafferty had a whole wallet of new fives on him; if the one Harling got proved to be one of the spurious B-12225555’s that are going the rounds, it stands to reason that Rafferty’s the man who got it out of that safe in Evanston — that sealed package of three hundred fives which were to go over next day to one of the circulators. It’s beautiful. It’s mathematics — nothing more! It’s — ”

  “But how about the twelve-star nickels?” Harling broke in, puzzled. “Why was he paying out phoney fives for these coins — for merely the loan of these coins, worth thirty cents apiece?”

  Morningstar threw up his hands: “That part of it is too much for me. But it’s a cinch Mr. Rafferty knows what he’s doing — and it’s up to us to find out why he’s doing it — and also about his little job out in Evanston the night of the house party.”

  He dipped into his hip pocket and drew out a long, slim blue steel gun, the workings of which he inspected carefully. He glanced toward the partly lowered, stained-glass window of the library. Outside it was dark already. The little onyx clock on the mantel struck the hour of six. The red-haired man looked curiously toward Harling.

  “I can’t very well ask you to come along with me,” he said reluctantly, “even though this trip may mean the recovery of a ruby worth a fortune. You’re wanted by the police — at least a man with your brown suit and with your brown eyes is wanted. So I’m going to strike out alone.”

  Harling bit his lip. He glanced toward the girl: “Miss Vanderhuyden, is there an old raincoat on the premises; also another hat?”

  “Indeed there is,” she replied, wondering. “One of Court’s old raincoats has been hanging in his former room, ever since we lived here under the same roof with Grandfather.”

  Harling turned toward Morningstar, his voice trembling slightly with suppressed eagerness: “Then count me in on this with you, Morningstar. This crook of a Rafferty played me a lowdown trick; he nearly put me in the hands of the law under a charge I’m innocent of. And I’m the first one that wants to see him tripped up — in whatever crazy stunt he’s trying to pull off. Will you let me tag along?”

  Morningstar took out his watch and glanced nervously at it: “Then hurry, Miss Vanderhuyden, and get the raincoat and hat. We’ve got to travel some. I’m thinking. This fellow may be ready to make tracks at any moment.”

  Without a fur
ther word, she flew from the room, returning in a jiffy with a long raincoat and a soft felt hat. Quickly Harling donned them, and, after a few brief parting sentences to her on Morningstar’s part, Harling and the red-haired man rushed down the broad stone steps of the Lake Shore Drive residence. They turned west at Burton Place, and hurried on silently until Morningstar spied a lone, yellow taxicab rolling along under the globe-shaded street lights toward North State Parkway. He signalled it and it stopped on the curb in front of them. Both men got in.

  “South Sangamon Street; number 7440!” snapped Morningstar to the driver. “Double speed — double fare! The same on triple — and I’ll pay any fines. But let her out, my man; let her out!”

  CHAPTER XV

  A STEEL-BACKED PROPOSITION

  THE driver grinned and banged the door to. He climbed into his seat, threw on a lever, and with a jerk the machine was off.

  Through the North Side district it shot like an arrow; across the more busy downtown district it rolled at a more moderate speed, and then out again on the less crowded streets of the South Side. It flashed by street after street, each one lighted with its rows of street lamps, and finally, after what seemed an incredibly short space of time, slid into the poorer district which Harling had visited once before, that day. Over several railroad crossings they bumped furiously. At last the machine pulled up with a whining and shrieking of the brakes at the same dilapidated cottage Harling had entered a few hours earlier. The flickering gaslight over the transom showed the number plainly.

  Out of the taxicab and up the steps the two men bounded, Morningstar in the lead. The latter rapped on the door and at the same time drew forth an electric pocket light, which he focused on the white card tacked to the paintless panel. By the sickly faint light from the nearest rickety lamp post, the words on the card had been indistinguishable; but in the rays from the pocket light, they were revealed. They stated curtly, briefly, succinctly:

  NO MORE NIKKELS WANTED

  Morningstar’s emphatic, repeated knock on the door was answered a second after he had returned his searchlight to his pocket. The same slatternly woman who had attended the door before stood in the opening. Even before they had had a chance to speak, she growled:

  “Raff’ty don’t want to buy no more nickels, if that’s what you people come here for.”

  “We don’t want to sell any nickels, my dear madam,” Morningstar announced pleasantly. “We are coin collectors and want to purchase some ourselves.”

  The woman looked bewildered: “Well, mebbe that makes a diff’rence. I’ll see Raff’ty.”

  She stepped down the hallway and rapped timidly on the first door. A gruff voice snarled, “Whaddyewant?” and Harling detected the faint tinkling of a coin, as it tumbled down on the top of a table or something hard.

  “Two gen’lemen to see you, Raff’ty, about buyin’ some nickels. They’re buyin’ — not sellin’.”

  The door opened, but almost before Rafferty himself had thrust out his ugly head, Morningstar pushed his foot in the door, then pressed in, at the same time drawing the long, slim revolver which he had been fingering in the Lake Shore Drive residence. The woman behind could not see this little byplay, but the man Rafferty evidently caught its full significance, for his countenance flashed into a sudden pallor.

  “Want to speak to you, Rafferty,” remarked Morningstar. “May we come in?”

  The man swallowed hard, a couple of times, then opened the door a little wider. After Harling had followed Morningstar into the tiny room, Rafferty closed the door behind them, shutting out the staring woman.

  “Well, what do you want?” he said. He glanced dubiously back of him toward the one, smoky, kerosene lamp that lighted the room.

  “Rafferty,” replied Morningstar, glancing curiously at a wooden table which was drawn out from the wall and which held a great pile of glittering nickels grouped about one which stood alone, as though it were a special selection from the many, “I didn’t drop in here to mince words with you. Phelps Morningstar is my name.” With his free hand he turned back the lapel of his coat, displaying a shining badge that radiated an unpleasant authority of some kind. “Rafferty, those bills you’re handing out to people are phoney ones.” Harling could see the man stiffen with surprise. It was plain that the information Morningstar had just imparted was a real piece of news. “So now, Rafferty, listen close.”

  Morningstar changed his position a trifle, and went on:

  “If you keep mum on where you got those bills, you’ll pick a splendid plum from the Federal pudding: a good, long, generous term in Atlanta Penitentiary for shoving the queer. Out of which, the most you could hope for would be to be put in the same cell with Al Capone — and I hear he’s quite irritable, now that he’s in his fourth year!” Morningstar stopped. “And on the other hand, when you admit that you got those bills from the Bond safe in Evanston, you’ll be free from that Federal charge, but you’ll have to answer a criminal charge of safe-blowing and theft of a one-hundred-thousand-dollar ruby. By God, Rafferty, I’d hate to be in your shoes! The devil and the deep sea, isn’t it?”

  Rafferty uttered not a word. His knees gave way slightly, and he weakly put out one hand against the wall to steady himself.

  “And yet, Rafferty,” persisted Morningstar adroitly, “it might be that if you cared to tell us the whereabouts of the Vanderhuyden gem that you lifted out of the safe, we might be able to find some way by which you could slip out from under. Worth thinking about, isn’t it?” He paused. “How about it, Rafferty? Which of the three cases sounds the best?”

  For the first time, the man with the cauliflowered ears spoke. “I never blowed no safe in Evanston,” he asserted, sullenly. “You jerk me over to Headquarters and I’ll produce an alibi they can’t knock out. An’ I never dreamed, neither, that these here was phonies what I was slidin’ out. W’y — they all had diff’rent serial numbers. Even though th’ numbers did run one after ‘nother. I — I thought they was outa some bank. I — I thought somebody’d slipped some teller three C-notes an’ ast f’r fi’-spots — maybe f’r some kinda pay-off — in some kinda racket.” He scratched his head despairingly. “But even at that, I guess the trumps is yours, Mr. Evenin’star. But what’s your game?”

  Morningstar wrinkled up his forehead, still keeping the long, slim gun trained on the other’s body.

  “So you never made that Pete — kicked in that gopher, eh?” he remarked, surprised. “And you can produce an alibi?” He pondered for a moment. “Then I’ll talk business with you. I’ve got another plum to hold out to you. Rafferty, to prove that you didn’t know you were shoving the queer I’m going to make you tell the coppers how you got a bunch of bills that were inside a certain safe that was cracked two weeks ago. And right there is where you’re going to cough up all you know about the ruby that was in the same safe. I represent Miss Trudel Vanderhuyden, the rightful owner of that ruby. There’s been a reward of five thousand dollars posted for it ever since it disappeared; not by Bond but by her. The minute the police third-degree what they want out of you, they’re richer by five thousand. You get nothing. On the other hand, if you want to do a little talking now — enough to tell me where that stone is — I split with you — twenty-five hundred apiece. Which is it, Rafferty? Talk now, at twenty-five hundred — or later, at nothing?”

  “Don’t need much thinkin’ it over,” said the little man, desperately. “If it’s twenty-five hundred now — and nothin’ later, then it’s talkee-talkee for yours truly, all right, all right. You’re no con man, my fr’en’; I can see that. Even think I’ve heard of you, too. But write it out — what you just said about that half of the five thousand; write it out.”

  Morningstar turned his head slightly in Harling’s direction. “Take the fountain pen out of my vest pocket; also a business card.” Harling did so. “Now write on the back as follows: ‘This is to certify that Chesterfield de Laven Rafferty — ’”

  “Peter J. Rafferty,” corrected the l
ittle man, eagerly.

  “ ‘Peter J. Rafferty on the above date, turned over to the undersigned certain verbal information concerning the present location of the Vanderhuyden purple ruby, on consideration that, if this information leads to the recovery of the above-mentioned jewel, fifty per cent of the standing reward of five thousand dollars is due the above-mentioned Peter J. Rafferty. Signed.’ Leave it blank there, Harling. And put down: ‘Witnessed, Ford Harling,’ and the date. Then take charge of this gun for a minute.”

  Harling quickly finished the card and Morningstar transferred the gun to him. The little man waited patiently, tapping his foot on the floor. Morningstar signed the card and held it out, but Rafferty made no motion whatever to accept it.

  “Just drop it down that crack in the floor,” he said pleasantly. “Then it’ll be safe from forc’ble removal,” he added.

  Harling could see Morningstar bite his lips with vexation, but evidently the latter concluded that he could well afford to dicker with the bullet-headed Rafferty, for he stooped down and poked the card through a gaping crack between the wide, tough boards at his feet, and it dropped from sight.

  At this, the little man relaxed his attitude of vigilant suspicion, and grinned with satisfaction and relief at the sudden favorable turn of affairs for him.

  “Sit down, gents,” he said. “I’ll give you the dope you’re lookin’ for, but remember your promise. I slide out from under.”

  Morningstar nodded emphatically. “Absolutely,” he averred.