by Ron Goulart
“I had thought,” he said, “that they would have come to me. In another week I would have shown that I sent the Sending, and they would have discrowned the Old Man of the Mountains who has sent this Sending of mine. Do you do nothing. The time has come for me to act. Write as I dictate, and I will put them to shame. But give me ten more rupees.”
At Dana Da’s dictation the Englishman wrote nothing less than a formal challenge to the Old Man of the Mountains. It wound up: “And if this manifestation be from your hand, then let it go forward; but if it be from my hand, I will that the Sending shall cease in two days’ time. On that day there shall be twelve kittens and thenceforward none at all. The people shall judge between us.” This was signed by Dana Da, who added pentacles and pentagrams, and a crux ansata, and half a dozen swastikas, and a Triple Tau to his name, just to show that he was all he laid claim to be.
The challenge was read out to the gentlemen and ladies, and they remembered then that Dana Da had laughed at them some years ago. It was officially announced that the Old Man of the Mountains would treat the matter with contempt; Dana Da being an independent investigator without a single “round” at the back of him. But this did not soothe his people. They wanted to see a fight. They were very human for all their spirituality. Lone Sahib, who was really being worn out with kittens, submitted meekly to his fate. He felt that he was being “kittened to prove the power of Dana Da,” as the poet says.
When the stated day dawned, the shower of kittens began. Some were white and some were tabby, and all were about the same loathsome age. Three were on his hearthrug, three in his bathroom, and the other six turned up at intervals among the visitors who came to see the prophecy break down. Never was a more satisfactory Sending. On the next day there were no kittens, and the next day and all the other days were kittenless and quiet. The people murmured and looked to the Old Man of the Mountains for an explanation. A letter, written on a palm leaf, dropped from the ceiling, but everyone except Lone Sahib felt that letters were not what the occasion demanded. There should have been cats, there should have been cats—full-grown ones. The letter proved conclusively that there had been a hitch in the psychic current which, colliding with a dual identity, had interfered with the percipient activity all along the main line. The kittens were still going on, but owing to some failure in the developing fluid, they were not materialized. The air was thick with letters for a few days afterwards. Unseen hands played Glück and Beethoven on finger-bowls and clock shades; but all men felt that psychic life was a mockery without materialized kittens. Even Lone Sahib shouted with the majority on this head. Dana Da’s letters were very insulting, and if he had then offered to lead a new departure, there is no knowing what might not have happened.
But Dana Da was dying of whisky and opium in the Englishman’s go-down, and had small heart for new creeds.
“They have been put to shame,” said he. “Never was such a Sending. It has killed me.”
“Nonsense,” said the Englishman, “you are going to die, Dana Da, and that sort of stuff must be left behind. I’ll admit that you have made some queer things come about. Tell me honestly, now, how was it done?”
“Give me ten more rupees,” said Dana Da, faintly, “and if I die before I spend them, bury them with me.” The silver was counted out while Dana Da was fighting with death. His hand closed upon the money and he smiled a grim smile.
“Bend low,” he whispered. The Englishman bent.
“Bunnia—mission school—expelled—box-wallah (peddler)—Ceylon pearl merchant—all mine English education—outcasted, and made up name Dana Da—England with American thought-reading man and—and—you gave me ten rupees several times—I gave the Sahib’s bearer two-eight a month for cats—little, little cats. I wrote, and he put them about—very clever man. Very few kittens now in the bazaar. Ask Lone Sahib’s sweeper’s wife.”
So saying, Dana Da gasped and passed away into a land where, if all be true, there are no materializations and the making of new creeds is discouraged.
But consider the gorgeous simplicity of it all!
PHANTOM GETAWAY, by Leon Mearson
When the Diamond Building was erected it was said that the day of the jewel robbery was over. In each office, wherever an important desk was placed, there was, under that desk, a button that could be reached by a man sitting in front of it. All a man had to do, if he suspected the intentions of a visitor, was to place his foot on that button and push once, ever so lightly. A bell would ring downstairs, and two private guards, heavily armed, would jump into a private elevator that was kept ready day and night for the purpose. Instantly they would be shot up to the office indicated by the figure that jumped into view when the button had been pressed anywhere in the building.
It worked beautifully. And then came the affair in the office of Marsden & Marsden, diamond merchants. It was a fine spring day. Outside the door of the office of Marsden & Marsden, on the thirty-second floor, a young man paused for a moment. He was not too well dressed—in fact, his coat hung on him baggily and his slouch hat had seen better years. He could have stood a shave with no great damage to his appearance.
One glance up and down the public hall, and he pushed the door open and entered. In the outer office sat the reception clerk and stenographer, Miss Wormser, and two clerks, to say nothing of an office boy who was engaged in doing a crossword puzzle. The young man paused in front of Miss Wormser’s desk.
“I’d like to see Mr. Marsden,” he said.
She looked up. His appearance was not too affluent, but many came in to buy diamonds who did not look as though they could buy food. He looked straight at her, without lowering his eyes. The others looked up once and went on with their work.
“Which Mr. Marsden?” asked Miss Wormser.
He hesitated, then consulted a card. “Sol Marsden,” he said finally.
Sol Marsden was the head of the firm. The entrance to his office lay right behind Miss Wormser’s desk.
“What did you wish to see him about?” she asked politely.
“I’m from Cleveland,” the visitor answered. “Saxton is my name. I wanted to see him about buying some diamonds.”
“Just a minute, Mr. Saxton,” said Miss Wormser, rising from her post. “I’ll see if he’s free at the moment. Won’t you take a seat?”
* * * *
Saxton sat down in a comfortable leather chair, and the stenographer disappeared into Sol Marsden’s private office, where she found her employer engaged in going over the firm’s books with Smithers, the bookkeeper. Mr. Marsden, a middle-aged man with small, rather dark eyes and a single lock of straight black hair which he vainly tried to brush over a tremendous bald spot on his head, glanced up at her irritably.
“I thought I told you I wasn’t to be bothered?” he snapped at her. “I’m sorry, Mr. Marsden. But there’s a Mr. Saxton outside. He says he’s from Cleveland and he wants to buy some diamonds.”
Mr. Marsden laid down his pencil and stared at her uncertainly.
“Er—ah—well, perhaps you’d better let him come in.” The bookkeeper, a spare, graying man of perhaps fifty-five, made as though to leave the room. “No, you better stay, Smithers. I’ll go on with those cutters’ accounts as soon as I get through here.”
The stenographer ushered Saxton in and closed the door behind him.
“You wanted to see me,” said the diamond merchant. “What can I do for you?”
Saxton swept the office with his swift gaze. Marsden was sitting at his desk. Across from him sat Smithers, the bookkeeper. At one side was an open safe, and in the corner away from the window which looked out thirty-two stories above Maiden Lane, was an old-fashioned wardrobe that stood against the wall.
“Do for me?” repeated Saxton, parrotlike.
“You can stick up your hands and keep your traps closed,” he said in a low voice, his right hand dipping into his side pocket like a snake’s head and coming out with a very violent-looking revolver.
The ha
nds of the two occupants of the office went up instantly, and the foot of Sol Marsden went forward warily, seeking for the bell.
“Sit still!” commanded Saxton. “Where’s the diamonds?”
They did not answer, but he followed Marsden’s gaze to the open safe. “In there, eh?”
Marsden started to say something, his lips moving slowly in his gray face.
“Shut up, you!” the holdup man snapped at him. “Here, get up from that desk! And you, too.” He waved his gun menacingly at the bookkeeper.
They got up. He herded them along the wall nervously. “Get into that closet, the two of you,” he ordered, throwing open the door of the large wardrobe. They would have demurred, but a look at the face of Saxton was enough to make them act quickly. They got into the wardrobe, and he turned the key on them.
“One peep out of either of you and I’ll make this door look like a porch screen, get me?” he remarked. All this had taken much less time than takes to tell. To the men in the closet there came the sound of a man moving swiftly around the room and in a moment, silence.
And a moment later the outer office door opened violently and the two guards, guns in hand, dashed in.
“Where is he?” demanded Moriarty.
The office force sprang to its feet. “Who?” shrilled Miss Wormser.
“We dunno,” said Cassidy. “The alarm sounded from this office. From in there, I guess.” He motioned to the door of Sol Marsden’s room.
At that instant there came to them the sound of a commotion behind the closed door of the diamond merchant’s room. There was a sound of pounding on wood, and the smothered cries of men. The two guards crashed through the door and into the room.
The room was vacant. The safe was open, and one of the drawers, emptied of its contents, lay on the floor.
“Let us out! Let us out!” came from the wardrobe in the corner. The office force swarmed in after the guards.
“It’s Mr. Marsden!” screamed the stenographer. “He’s in that closet there!”
“Open the door!” came the voice of the dealer in diamonds.
Instantly the door was opened and Sol Marsden and the bookkeeper, Smithers, tumbled out into the room, pale and excited.
“Where is he?” demanded Marsden, rushing to his safe and examining the contents of the drawers.
“Where is who, Mr. Marsden?” asked Moriarty.
“The feller that held me up,” screamed Marsden.
They looked around. There was no one in the room except the office force and the guards. A smothered scream went up from Miss Wormser.
“Gracious! That Mr. Saxton from Cleveland!”
“Where is he?” demanded her employer.
“Did you let him out?”
“No one came out,” she replied. “He went in but he didn’t come out.”
“That’s funny,” said her employer.
“There’s no other way out of this room…and there’s a hundred thousand dollars in unset stones missing.”
* * * *
Upon investigation it appeared that this was the strict truth. No man had come through the outer office. And yet a man had been there, and with him had vanished a hundred thousand dollars in uncut stones.
There was no other entrance or exit to this room. On one side, the door that led to the outer office, where four people sat who had seen no one come back; and on the other, the window, several hundred feet above Maiden Lane. The guards looked through the window.
No one could have got through that—there was no place to go. The window of the office next door, a few feet away, was closed. “Is that your brother’s office?” asked Cassidy.
“Which—that window there? Yes, that’s my brother’s private office. We took it a month ago, and there’s no door from this room to that. You have to go out to the reception room if you want to get into it,” he answered the unasked question.
The door opened and Sol Marsden’s brother, Morton, came in, drawn by the noise that now pervaded the whole suite.
“What’s the matter?” he asked, his eyes taking in the whole scene. Morton Marsden was younger than his brother, and dressed rather well and carefully.
“Matter! We been robbed, that’s what’s the matter. A hundred thousand dollars in unset stones. That’s all.”
By that time the police came, the station house alarm having been sounded at the same time as it had been sounded on the main floor of the Diamond Building.
An investigation was started at once, of course, but it led to very little. Miss Wormser and the others in the outer office were cross-examined as to the appearance of the crook.
Saxton had come in, but he had not gone out. That was all.
Very little was to be gained from the stories of Sol Marsden and Smithers, his bookkeeper. They had been herded into the closet and had been able to see nothing more.
Morton Marsden, the partner, was questioned. He occupied the adjoining room, but the walls were thick, and he had heard nothing. No, he was not alone in the room. His secretary was with him—she was in and out of the room, as a matter of fact. She had heard nothing, either.
It looked like a dead end, and the authorities ware frankly stumped. A robbery had plainly been committed. That much was certain. But having gained entrance, how had the robber made his exit?
In cases of this kind insurance companies are amazingly quick to be on the job. Ten minutes after the police were on the scene, Marty Durand sauntered in. Marty, light haired, blue of eye and irrelevant of speech, was inspector for the Universal Insurance Company, the concern that had insured the stock in trade of Marsden & Marsden. He came in to see what there was to be seen, since a hundred thousand dollars in diamonds, fully covered by his company, must not disappear without a thorough investigation.
He found there the office force, the two guards of the building, the sergeant of detectives, Higgins and his aide, Martucci, and the two members of the firm. He was quiet as he covered the ground that had been covered by everyone there already, and he wandered about the office in what seemed an aimless fashion, as though he had a certain duty to perform and as though that duty was simply a nominal one, and did not call for any real effort.
“I don’t know,” said Sergeant Higgins finally to him. “It’s a funny one, and you can stick that in your hat. That bird came in here, and he didn’t come out.”
“You mean no one saw him come out,” said Marty. “You’d be surprised how many cockeyed men there are in the diamond business.”
“What do you mean, young feller?” growled Higgins.
Marty Durand shrugged his shoulders. “Oh, nothing.”
* * * *
Sergeant Higgins left him and went, with the rest, to the outer office, where he pursued his investigation and questioning. It appeared that the entrance downstairs had been well guarded, and a careful check had been taken of those who had left the building after the alarm bell. But even that might not be conclusive, because the Diamond Building was a teaming beehive housing thousands of workers and visitors, and they came and went in large, eddying crowds.
Marty Durand found himself alone with Sol Marsden.
“Well, Mr. Durand, you and your company got a tough one this time, ain’t you?” said Marsden.
Durand nodded. “You’re fully covered?”
“Yes,” said Marsden. “But that ain’t the point. Money won’t pay for these stones—they were carefully matched, and it took lots of time and trouble to get them together. I’d rather have the diamonds, because I’ll have to do it all over again, anyway. It was for a necklace.”
“For whom?” asked Durand.
“Mrs. Mollie Service, that’s all,” replied the merchant.
Durand whistled through a fine set of teeth. “The oil man’s wife?”
“That’s her. She was in a hurry, too,” said Marsden.
Durand wandered about the room and paused at the window. He tried to look out through the top window and found his vision blurred. “It’s a wonder they
wouldn’t clean these windows once in a while, in a swell building like this,” he offered.
“Oh, they clean them often enough,” said the diamond merchant “We had a rainstorm yesterday, that’s why they’re so dirty. Why?”
Durand did not answer, but bent over the sill and looked out. After a moment he straightened up and made for the door.
“Finished?” asked Marsden.
“Nearly,” said Durand. “I’m going to take a look in your brother’s room.”
He went into the reception room and knocked on the door of the adjoining office. The voice of Morton Marsden permitted him to enter.
Morton was seated at his desk, going over some books. “Excuse me if I try to get this done,” said Morton. “This is a special rush—”
“Quite all right,” said Durand. “Don’t mind me.”
He looked around the room in an offhand manner. From a side door one entered from the reception room. Another door on the other side of the long and narrow room gave, as he determined, on a filing room; and the door on the small end, the third side, led right out on the public hall. Through the ground glass he could see the outlines of the firm’s name, backwards.
The fourth side was the window side, and there was one large window there. A man could go from this room into the public hall without being seen in the rooms on either side. At a typewriter desk sat a stenographer, Morton Marsden’s secretary. While Durand was there, she got up several times to go to the files, and returned to her desk. He gathered that this was ordinary procedure, and that she was not in the room at every moment.
Durand stood at the window and tried to look out. The window was pulled down and could have stood a cleaning. He moistened two fingers of his right hand and ran them down the pane. Now he could see outside. “Don’t clean these windows very often, do they?” he asked.
Morton Marsden looked up. “Not as often as they need them.”
“When were they cleaned last?” asked Durand nonchalantly.
