Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  Seven was — Tiddliwinks!

  Tiddliwinks had won. And Ikey had enjoyed himself. Ikey was the calmest man on the course now. Unless you had watched him while the race was on you would never have believed that he had had a cent on the result. He left the grand stand quite leisurely, and strolled toward Abe Maxstein’s stand with his hands in his pockets and an air of almost boredom.

  “Hello, Coley!” shouted Abe. “You made a killing that time, and no mistake! What are you goin’ to bet on in the next?”

  “Nix!” said Ikey. “I’m through! This is where I draw your money, same as I promised!”

  “What? Not goin’ to have another bet!”

  “Not today! Come on, shovel out! It’s about your turn!”

  “All right, Coley, all right. Suit yourself! I’ll have it all back again one o’ these days. You watch! Here y’are — here’s your five thousand back — same bundle you gave me. Looks like good money to me, all right, but you never can tell. Anyhow, you’ve got it back again, whether it’s good or bad; and here’s the rest. That’s a thousand-dollar bill, in case you never seen one before; an’ there’s two o’ five hundred, an’ here y’are two more fives, an’ five, ten, fifteen, twenty centuries. There! Are ye satisfied?”

  “Right y’are!” said Ikey. “Always did get a square deal from you, Abe! S’long! Oh, hi, Abe! Half a minute! Got change for this thou?”

  “Nope. You stick to what you’ve got, and thank your lucky stars you’ve got it! No time to make change! Now, then — runners in the fourth race.” And he started calling out the names. And Ikey pouched his money, and turned his face homeward with a bulging pocket and a feeling of absolute contentment permeating his whole anatomy.

  CHAPTER VI. — In Which Ikey’s Streak Of Luck Begins To Hold Out Symptoms Of Getting Thin

  THESE rapid changes of scene are growing just a trifle bewildering, aren’t they? But there is worse to come. We’re back again now with Lizzie Wingfield. She hasn’t gone to bed yet. She hasn’t even undressed. She is sitting in the rocker by the window, crying a little from time to time, and much too miserable to notice anything, or care about anything, or even think about anything except the hollowness and mockery and rottenness of all the wide, wide world.

  Very nice people who have very nice ideas always tumble down into the depths of despair when their exquisitely fine-drawn notions fail for once to pan out. It is only crooks and people like ourselves who can view things dispassionately.

  If you had told Lizzie Wingfield at that minute that there was any common honesty or kindness or sense of fair play to be found in the universe, she wouldn’t have believed you. She would have been quite polite, but unconvinced.

  There was a little noise that came from just behind her — ever such a tiny little noise — the sort of noise that a mouse might make. And she didn’t notice it. The noise was repeated two or three times.

  It came from underneath the blind that hid the window behind her chair scratch! scratch! tick! tick! — and then, all at once — snack! quite loud and sudden. But still she didn’t notice it. Then the window began to rise, slowly, gently, ever so gently, inch by inch, Silently, until the bottom half of it was up almost as far as it would go.

  She felt the draft then, for the wind blew the blind out into the room until it nearly hit the back of her chair; and she got up to change her position.

  She started to pull her chair over into another corner of the room, and in doing so she faced the window; and as she faced it the blind went up suddenly with a whir-r-r and a clack! and the black, dark, rainy night outside became visible, with something almost as dark that crouched and moved on the window- sill between her and the murkiness beyond. And she didn’t scream. Like her now, eh?

  “Hush!” said a voice. “Hush, missie! Not a word! I won’t hurt yer! I’m comin’ in, but I won’t do a thing to yer! Not a word, now! Quiet!”

  She didn’t care. What if all the burglars in the world came in! They could take her wedding trousseau if they cared to. Goodness knew she didn’t want it, and there was nothing else to take! And if they killed her? Bah! What did she care for that, either! She would be really and truly glad to die.

  She drew the chair back to make room for the burglar, or whatever he might be, and Keyhole Ikey stepped down into the room — Keyhole Ikey, dressed in his professional costume of almost black serge suit, black gloves and very dark gray cap.

  “Hush!” said Ikey again, turning to close the window after him, and holding one warning finger up to his wicked-looking nose. He closed the window carefully and then pulled down the blind.

  “Darned clumsy of me!” he remarked. “I oughter ha’ got used to them roller- shades by now. Fancy me springin’ that one like a new beginner! Now, missie, is the door locked?”

  “You can see for yourself!” she answered. “Why do you ask? Have you come to kill me?”

  “Kill you! Lord love you, no! The very idee! Look alive, missie, an’ lock that door — that’s a good gal; I gotter be kinder quick. Go on, now; it’s up’ to you. You’re runnin’ this apartment — not me!”

  She walked over to the door and locked it, amazed at her own meekness in obeying him so promptly. Then she leaned her back against the door.

  “Now, what is it?” she demanded.

  Ikey fumbled in his inside pocket. In one pocket he had the fifty hundred- dollar bills that he had stolen, and in the other was the bundle of odd amounts that the bookmaker had paid him.

  Both amounted to the same sum; but whereas it could make no possible difference to the lady which roll she received so long as she got her five thousand dollars back, it might make a lot of difference to him. A hundred- dollar bill is easily negotiable anywhere, and a thousand-dollar bill is not. He found the right pocket at last, and laid the bookie’s money on the dressing- table.

  “There y’are, missie! There’s your money back! I’m the guy what took it! A little bird told me as how you needed it bad, so I brought it back to yer. It ain’t the same identical money; but it ain’t green goods, I give yer my word, an’ it comes to the same amount. Go on count it! I’m in a hurry!”

  He pushed the bundle of bills a hit farther along the dressing-table and drew back toward the corner, so as not to frighten her.

  Imagine her sensations! Here was the utterly unheard-of happening under her very eyes — apparently the key to half her troubles thrust into her hand by an absolute stranger in her own room at half past eleven at night a self-confessed burglar handing back the money he had stolen, and without a hint of compulsion!

  It was not a bolt from the blue; it was a bomb from the black. Of course, she didn’t believe it. She stood staring at him, with her eyes wide open, round and wondering. And Ikey laughed, and his laughter broke the spell to some extent.

  “It’s quite true, missie! I ain’t kiddin’ yer! Come on — count your money an’ let me git!”

  She walked over to the dressing-table and counted the bills like a woman in a trance, and still refusing to believe her senses. But there was no blinking the fact that on the table lay five thousand dollars. She counted it twice to make sure.

  “That right, missie?”

  She nodded.

  “But I don’t understand. I—”

  “I know you don’t! O’ course you don’t — don’t try to! Lord love yer! why, what’s the matter with the woman? I took your money, an’ there it is back again; there y’are! There it is, an’ that’s all about it! All you’ve got to do now is hold your tongue an’ look wise — savvy? Put me down as a white guy that didn’t want to harm yer, an’ there you’ve got it. Now, good night, missie! Take my tip an’ go to bed — hit the hay an’ play you’ve been dreamin’! You’ll find the money all there in the mornin’, so kid yerself you never lost it! An’ shove it in the bank first time you get the chance, missie, so’s folks like me don’t get another chance at it. So-long, missie. Good luck!”

  And Keyhole Ikey opened the window again softly and disappeared by the w
ay he had come. When he had gone, Lizzie Wingfield stood and stared first at the closed window, and then at the money in her hand, and stared, and stared, and- pinched herself to see if she were dreaming, or dead, or what; but the bills were there, and they were tough and soft and crinkly; and the pinch hurt her, and made a little red mark come on her white arm, and no, she didn’t believe it. It was altogether too impossible, and too absolutely good to be true.

  Once again Ikey climbed quietly down the fire-escape, and dropped ten feet or so into the yard beneath him. Then he crouched in the shadow of the wall for two whole minutes and listened. There was nothing moving, that Ikey could hear, so he sneaked out of the yard, following the passage that led to the street in front.

  At the end of the passage was a gate; it was an iron gate that squeaked on its hinges when people opened it; so Ikey placed one hand on the top of it and vaulted. And as he sprang an ominous blue form stepped out-from the darkness, and a voice said gruffly: “What ha’ you been doing in there?”

  Ikey ran. Goodness, how he ran! And he could sprint, could Ikey. He ran like the wind, dodging all the time into the shadows, thinking as he ran, and picking his way where it might be hard to follow him. But Patrolman Baines was on his track; and Patrolman Baines had done a quarter once in fifty-two. He was new to his job; and keen as mustard, fit as the proverbial fiddle, and game as a wagon-load of tigers.

  Ikey panted, and swore beneath his breath. Patrolman Baines panted, and put on a spurt and grabbed him. Ikey ducked. The patrolman stumbled, and Ikey tripped him.

  But Baines was an athlete as well as a sprinter; he grabbed Ikey more firmly as he fell, and the two went down together, and in less than a second Ikey lay face upward on the pavement in the grip of a hammerlock hold that nearly wrenched his bones apart.

  “Now,” said Patrolman Baines, “you?ll come along o’ me an’ give an account o’ yourself. Are you comin’ quiet?”

  “Yep,” said Ikey. “Go ahead; I know the way.” The patrolman held him by the sleeve, too confident in his own strength to trouble about putting on the handcuffs.

  “What were you doin’ in there? he asked. But Ikey, with the wisdom of the wise, said nothing.

  They welcomed Ikey at the stationhouse — gave him a ringing welcome, for they all knew him.

  “Aw! Can all that chin stuff!” said Ikey. “What am I charged with?” “With being a suspected person,” said the lieutenant, writing in the book before him. “Put him in the cooler and search him.” So Ikey was led below.

  It took them just ten seconds to find the five thousand dollars in Ikey’s pocket, and thirty seconds more to tell the news to the lieutenant, who wrote down the numbers of the notes carefully and then rang up police headquarters on the phone. After about five minutes’ conversation over the wire, during which he referred repeatedly to the notes in front of him, he hung up the receiver with a jerk and ordered:

  “Fetch that guy up here again. We may as well alter the charge now as later.” So Ikey was once again stood up before the lieutenant’s desk.

  “You’re charged now,” said the lieutenant, “with being in possession of stolen goods, to wit, book-notes the property of the San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Sacramento Trust Company, as well as with being a suspected person and being found in possession of burglar’s tools.”

  “Aw!” said Ikey. “That all? Can’t yer think o’ somethin’ else? Ain’t the city hall missin’, or somethin’?”

  “Put him back in the cooler!” ordered the lieutenant; and back Ikey went.

  CHAPTER VII. — Across The Continent

  THERE is no means of helping Ikey just for the moment; the police have got him, and it takes a bigger pull than we have got to unclutch their fingers. So we must leave him in confinement, and leave Mrs. Ikey — tailormade and tearful - rushing round New York arranging bail bonds. She ought to be able to manage that all right, seeing what careful drilling Ikey has given her with a view to just such an unfortunate occurrence. This story has got to move, and we must move with it; so we are in San Francisco now. The offices of the San Francisco, Los Angeles and Sacramento Trust Company stand at the corner of one of the many streets leading down to the harbor, and the president’s suite is in 4, the front of the building, two flights up. We are in the president’s private office now. We have finished gaping in silent and respectful wonder at the richness of the furnishings and the splendor of the ten-pile turkey carpet, and we are watching the president himself — a middle-aged man with a red neck and a parting that reaches from ear to ear. He looks angry, and he is. He has reason to be.

  “Come here, Brown!” says the president in a voice that sounds like a garbage- can being dumped into an ash-cart. And a long-nosed, pale-faced man named Brown comes running from the next room.

  “Sit down!” orders the president; and Brown sits down opposite to him.

  “I can’t make head or tail of this business,” says the president; “and what’s more, I’ve got to start for New York on tonight’s train; so I’ve no time to look into it. You’ll have to do it. If only young Walter Bavin were here! But just when I want him most the young idiot throws up his job and goes to New York to marry some infernal woman!”

  “I didn’t know he’d gone.” Brown, be it noted, is a superior sort of person who affects to ignore any one below the rank of manager.

  “Well, then, take it from me that he has! That’ll save time! He left the day before yesterday, and I’m sorry he’s gone. Now, then, you remember that five thousand dollars that was missing from the receiving-teller’s department a short time ago? Well, all I did about it was to notify the police and give them the numbers of the missing notes; we’d had them straight from the United States Treasury; so that was easy. I didn’t offer a reward, and, in fact, I thought very little more about it; the sum wasn’t big enough to make a fuss over. But see here what’s happened. Look at this — and this — and this!”

  He tossed three envelopes onto the table, and in each of the envelopes was five thousand dollars in bills. In the first envelope, which bore the San Francisco postmark, was a piece of white paper, on which was written in a disguised hand, “Returned with thanks by the man who took it.”

  In the second envelope, which bore the Los Angeles postmark, was another and smaller envelope, on the outside of which were written the words, “Herewith the missing five thousand dollars.”

  And in the third envelope, which had the New York postmark on it, was a telegram-blank on which somebody had printed, in capitals, “This money was recently stolen from you; please take it back and forgive the thief.”

  None of the three communications bore any signature, and, beyond the postmark, not one of them gave any clue to its sender’s identity.

  “And now, look here!” said the president. “Not one of the bills contained in either of those envelopes bears a number corresponding to any of the stolen ones; and here’s a telegram I’ve just received from the chief of police in New York, stating that they’ve captured a man there with every one of our missing notes in his possession. Now, what d’you make of it?”

  “Did all those letters come today?”

  “No, they didn’t. You’ve only got to look at the postmarks to tell that! The point is, they’re here. We lost five thousand, and, counting what the police in New York have captured, we get twenty thousand back. That won’t do, of course; all this money here belongs to somebody else; our money seems to be in New York; and as I’m going there on tonight’s train, I will attend to that end of it myself. You must see to this end.”

  “But what do you want me to do?”

  “Your suggestions are very helpful today, aren’t they? In the first place, all those letters were registered; that ought to afford some clue.”

  “I’m afraid not. The post-office people aren’t allowed to give any information.”

  “I know that. But aren’t there ways and means?”

  “Not that I know of.” “Well, get hold of Newman, then; he’s the receiv
ing- teller that is responsible for the missing bills. Find Out what he knows about it. I’ve suspected that man ever since the money was first missing, but there was no proof to go on; so I said nothing. But get him up here again and give him a regular grilling, and find out what he knows; I haven’t time to see to it myself. I’ve several other more important things to attend to, and after that I’ve got to go home and settle up some business there before I catch the train; so I must hurry. Now, have you got that? Is there anything else I can tell you? Very well, then. Wire me in New York if anything turns up, and I’ll wire you if I get any news from that end. Between the two of us, we ought to be able to throw some light on the mystery.”

  CHAPTER VIII. — Which Enlightens Lizzie Wingfield And Certain Others

  LIZZIE WINGFIELD might be mournful and hopeless, but she had to have some exercise. Even beautiful maidens whose last left belief is in the scoundrelly depravity of all humanity are apt to study their complexions; she studied hers in the mirror, and then concluded to go out for a walk. Besides, she wanted to meet the tailor-made lady again with the perambulator and tell her all about the burglar who had brought the money back.

  So she arrayed herself in the “going away” dress that formed part of her marriage trousseau and in the dream of a hat that she had bought for the wedding and might just as well take into use now that the wedding was “off,” and started down the stairs.

  And at the top of the front steps she stood still for a second to feel whether or not her hat was on straight; then she glanced once up the street to the left, and once down the street to the right, and nearly fainted. She would have surely fallen down the steps and broken her neck or twisted her ankle or something if Walter hadn’t caught her.

  Yes, there was Walter, just that minute arrived from San Francisco — big, strong, broad-chested, gray-eyed — handsome as any man has a right to be, and neat as a bridegroom. He caught her in his big, strong arms, and so saved the situation and the story. He didn’t kiss her, though. It wouldn’t have been proper to do it out there in the street, and, besides, he wasn’t quite sure yet how he stood. He kept his arm round her, though, in case she should happen to fall again.