Cherry Ames Boxed Set 9-12

by Helen Wells

  She hoped it was strong proof, because Dance could tell a smooth, plausible story and Otto had quite an authoritative manner. They might even cast doubts on Tom and herself before the questioning was over. What a way to spend Christmas Eve!

  Then Mrs. Julian was admitted. She looked frightened and puzzled, but determined. Dance did not glance at her, and Otto and his wife loftily ignored her too.

  “Come sit with us,” Tom said in a low voice. He drew up a chair for Anna Julian beside Cherry. Cherry smiled encouragement, thinking what a lot had happened that Mrs. Julian did not know about. Not even about her music box.

  There was no time to explain, though. The police captain was giving instructions to a male stenotypist and was ready to begin.

  “I should like to request,” Dance said in a silky tone, “that you discount the testimony of my employee, Mrs. Julian, since she is under suspicion of theft and she naturally—”

  “That will do,” said Captain Donnelly. He turned to a pale and stunned Mrs. Julian. “What can you tell us about Willard Dance and Elbert Otto? Take your time. Don’t be nervous.”

  Mrs. Julian told of her acquaintance with the two men, exactly as she had outlined it for Cherry,

  “Then you never suspected either Dance or Otto,” the police captain remarked. “And yet you worked closely with Dance?”

  “Yes, I did, Captain. But when I made inquiries a few days ago in Boston at the headquarters of the art and antiques dealers’ association, I was, to put it frankly, astonished, at Mr. Dance’s lack of—of professional standing. The bona fide men in the field had scarcely heard of him.”

  “And Otto?”

  “They knew Mr. Otto, Captain, but they could not vouch for him.”

  “You report these men have little or no professional standing. Then what was the reason for Dance being in the antiques business? And Otto’s business? And why the four thefts in quick succession?”

  “Four thefts?” Mrs. Julian gasped. She turned to Cherry for confirmation. Cherry nodded, but waited her turn to speak.

  The police began a systematic questioning of Elbert Otto and Willard Dance. At once both men insisted they had gone into their businesses legitimately, no matter in what light they appeared now. No, they were not in business together and never had been. Simply, they both were in the antiques business.

  “We’ll hear your story first, Mr. Otto,” the police captain ruled. “Remember that anything you say can be used against you in court proceedings. But I advise you to tell the truth.”

  Dance and Otto looked bored. The police captain leaned forward warningly. “We are in possession of certain highly interesting points about the Stoddard highboy, and we know a rose diamond necklace is in Dance’s inside pocket.” Dance nearly jumped out of his chair. “So you’d better tell the whole truth, both of you. The necklace, Mr. Dance! Or shall we search you?”

  Dance handed it over in silence.

  “Go ahead, Mr. Otto.”

  Otto turned ashen. When he spoke, his overbearing manner shrank to submissiveness.

  Otto started his story with mention of his thorough education as an art expert and art historian. Equipped with this education, he had been employed for years by one or another of the large galleries as an assistant appraiser or an assistant consultant—modest routine staff jobs which brought him little or no reward or re cognition. Otto wanted his own enterprise. He was growing older, his time to make a huge success was running out. Then the gallery which employed him went out of business and Otto was out of work. He decided to make the most of his unexpected freedom. A year or so ago he had rented a small gallery at 625 Madison Avenue and, with savings and with contacts, he went into business. Some of the art objects offered for sale were things which he and Mrs. Otto had bought up as bargains over a period of years, and enjoyed in their modest home. Others were art objects and antiques belonging to private owners who placed them with Otto on consignment.

  At first Otto’s business went well. He was convinced that a glittering future lay within his grasp. He was so hopeful that he rented Woodacres as a home for himself and his wife. Woodacres looked, and especially sounded, imposing, and it satisfied Otto’s longings for grandeur. So Otto began to play the role which he had always envied.

  But Otto was an art scholar, not a shrewd businessman, and he was not capable of running his own business. Against established galleries he could not compete; he remained obscure. He drifted into financial difficulties. Soon he was unable to pay the high rent at Madison Avenue. So Otto closed his commercial gallery, planning to use his home as his gallery.

  “Otto Galleries? At Woodacres?” Mrs. Julian half turned to Cherry. Apparently, for all the woman’s enthusiasm as a collector, she had never heard of Otto’s being in business for himself. Mrs. Julian had known him only as an art consultant.

  “Go on. What is your financial situation now?” the police captain questioned Otto.

  “Well—I—” Otto nodded angrily at his wife, who was gesturing to him. “I think I should ask a lawyer, before I say anything more.”

  Captain Donnelly said, “This is not a trial, Mr. Otto. You aren’t pleading anything here and we aren’t passing judgment or sentence. Our job is to find out facts surrounding certain stolen art objects, and you’re here to answer our questions. Mr. Otto, what is your present and recent financial situation?”

  Otto answered reluctantly that during the period while his Madison Avenue gallery was rapidly failing, and then while he and his wife were readying a gallery at Woodacres, he did freelance jobs as art consultant. One of his clients was Willard Dance.

  Captain Donnelly made a note, but let that point go for the moment. “Were your fees as freelance consultant enough to meet your expenses?”

  “Please, they don’t appreciate my husband!” Mrs. Otto burst out. “No, he did not earn much. Not enough. It has been hard. So then he tried to find another job, not just any job, of course. But I tell you, no one appreciates my husband!”

  “So you didn’t earn enough as a freelance consultant, and you couldn’t find the sort of position you wanted. I take it you refused to consider any other or lesser employment. How did you manage?” the police captain demanded.

  “I—I owed several months’ back rent for Woodacres,” Otto admitted. “So I delayed paying my clients when I sold their goods,” Otto muttered hastily. “And what’s more, Dance owes me for my consultant services. Yes!”

  “Don’t blame it all on me!”

  “Be quiet, Mr. Dance. You’ll have your chance to speak. So, Mr. Otto, you misappropriated your clients’ funds. You sold their goods and then pocketed all or part of what you received.”

  Otto did not deny the charge. Captain Donnelly asked if he wanted to say anything further. Otto merely stared at the floor.

  “All right, Mr. Dance, we’ll have your story, now.”

  “Well, as anyone can tell you, I was signally successful in the precious jewelry business,” Willard Dance began. He was giving a good imitation of his usual easy assurance, Cherry thought. She was aware of Mrs. Julian listening with painful interest. “Fine jewelry both modern and antique is, as you know, sir, a related field to art objects and antiques.”

  Willard Dance had decided he could do even better in the antiques business. His late wife had been interested in antiques. Through her he had met Mr. Otto and Mrs. Julian’s family who had collected antiques themselves. Also, he had inherited a few fine antiques from his wife.

  Looking around for a location, Dance hit upon the idea of operating an antiques gallery within a fine, long-established department store. The store of his choice was Thomas and Parke; he applied there. Dance’s earlier success in fine jewelry had impressed the department store, which investigated the business record of anyone applying for a concession and space within the store. Besides, the store liked his idea of an antiques department; it had never had such a department before. The store did not object to the fact that Dance was not experienced nor expert in antique
s; the important fact was his proven business ability. Dance convinced the store that if he had an expert like Mrs. Julian and other qualified assistants, plus Mr. Otto’s consultant services occasionally, he could repeat his earlier business success.

  In addition, Willard Dance in his eagerness to become associated with this fine, prosperous store, offered a contract very favorable to Thomas and Parke. (Too favorable for his own business good, as it turned out.) Dance, confident, overoptimistic, had offered the usual ten per cent of his sales volume, plus an additional five per cent as inducement, guaranteeing the store a minimum of so many thousand dollars per year.

  Space was assigned to him on the sixth floor. He engaged young Mrs. Anna Julian. Dance used his late wife’s social standing and contacts to secure clients, and thus he obtained antiques on consignment. Willard Dance may have known little about antiques, but his genial, courteous, convincing manner persuaded people to let him put up their belongings for sale.

  Dance paused. “I’ve done very well,” he asserted, “at Thomas and Parke. For Thomas and Parke, too, I might add.”

  Tom Reese leaned forward. “May I mention something at this point, Captain? You wouldn’t say, Mr. Dance, that you’re by any chance in debt to the store?”

  “Why—ah—as a store executive, Mr. Reese, you’ve surely seen the monthly statement for my department. You’ve seen for yourself that my department is doing well. Very well indeed.” Dance ran his hand over his thinning hair. “I was perhaps overoptimistic about, possibly, the sales volume, but you’ll concede—”

  “I concede nothing. I’ve been checking up on you and your department all day today,” Tom said bluntly. “Sure I’ve seen the statements, for months—your statements. You fixed them to look rosy, didn’t you?”

  Cherry was growing as excited as Mrs. Julian beside her. Dance indignantly started a denial, but Tom Reese drowned him out.

  “Today, Mr. Dance, I checked up at the warehouse, and with the delivery service, and I pulled out the daily sales slips for your department for months back. Guess what I found, Dance? Your actual sales don’t tally with those rosy monthly statements you turned in.”

  Tom’s glance flickered in Cherry’s direction, and she understood this was the discovery he had hinted at on the telephone. Otto was struggling to keep his face expressionless.

  “I’ll tell the police what happened, Dance, since you won’t,” Tom said.

  Tom Reese discovered that Dance, like Mr. Otto, had drifted into financial difficulties—in Dance’s case, because of overoptimism. Dance had guaranteed the store a minimum of so many thousand dollars—and then business in the antiques department just wasn’t that good. He had been covering up that fact by systematically falsifying his records—claiming sales he never had made, for goods he never had to sell, claiming prominent customers who were out of the country. Thus from the store’s viewpoint, Dance’s department had appeared to be prospering and he had managed to conceal his debt.

  “You owe Thomas and Parke, under the contract you were so eager for us to accept,” Tom said dryly, “a sum well within six figures.”

  “As long as you know it, I won’t try to deny it,” Dance said. He had gone white but was still bland. “I suppose that’s why I was notified I’m to be questioned on the day after Christmas?”

  “Right,” Tom said. “I suppose that’s why you were too ‘ill’ to come into the store today—except after hours.”

  Dance smiled. The stenotypist was taking down the entire conversation.

  “And I suppose that’s why you were leaving for London tonight? You and your accomplices, the Ottos.”

  At the word accomplices Captain Donnelly again took charge of the questioning. Tom sat back in his chair, with a satisfied look at Cherry. But she was by no means satisfied yet.

  The police captain did not waste any words. His questions were curt, penetrating. Otto and Dance, trapped now, supplied the facts.

  Both men had found themselves in a tight financial spot. They discovered each other’s predicament when Otto, needing money, pressed Dance to pay the consultant fees he owed. Dance had to admit he was unable to pay and pleaded for more time. Indeed, Dance did not plan to cheat either Otto or the store; he only hoped to stall for time.

  But Otto could not and would not wait. He pressed Dance so hard that Dance told him of the fix he was in, and how he had falsified sales records. Once Otto learned this, he began to threaten exposure unless Dance “did something soon.”

  At first the two men had no plan, certainly no plan for thefts. Then the Ming vase was stolen by a shoplifter. (The police were convinced of this, because a notorious shoplifter was known to have been passing through New York at that time.) But the store detectives, particularly Pierce, shunted suspicion onto Mrs. Julian. This happening suggested a way out to Otto—that he and Dance could steal antiques themselves out of Dance’s department and use Mrs. Julian as a temporary scapegoat.

  Dance disliked and was afraid of such a plan. He was upset when he applied for but was denied further insurance. He half agreed because Otto gave him no choice. Then he “got cold feet” and wanted to pull out. Otto hounded him—telephoned him repeatedly at the store, and visited him at the store, threatening to expose his false records.

  “So that’s why,” Cherry thought, “he was so agitated about Otto’s phone calls and visits!”

  Dance got Otto to stop his telephone calls by falling in with the plan. He persuaded Otto to use discretion in sending messages. Phone or written messages were too risky, and the two men could not be seen together too often. To this end a marked newspaper, carried by Mrs. Otto, served as a means of communication between the two men for any urgent messages. The markings represented a simple code of prices, meeting places, persons, and dates; the messages surreptitiously dealt with their illicit plans. Mrs. Otto transferred the newspaper to Dance on the busy main floor.

  Mrs. Otto said proudly, “I also helped to find customers, and I helped my husband to receive them at Woodacres”—as if her wifely zeal placed her in a better light.

  After the Ming vase incident provided them with a ready-made setup, Otto and Dance planned to steal the highboy and the rose diamond necklace. They would resell these abroad. Dance and the Ottos felt they would be fairly safe, because the insurance companies’ detectives operated only within the United States. Otto and Dance had their plan figured carefully. Whatever money they could realize from the resale of the highboy and the necklace would tide them over until they established themselves in Europe.

  They stole the highboy with the aid of a man, Eric Fox, who was Mrs. Otto’s cousin. Fox was the one who posed as an “agent.” He came to the department so that the sale would have all the aspects of a “straightforward” transaction. As Cherry already knew from Tom, the highboy was delivered to a nearly empty Fifth Avenue house. This address was rented for a brief period by Mr. Otto, under an alias. Immediately after the store delivered it, the cousin shipped the highboy out of the country to England. Speed was essential, before police and customs could be alerted. Eric Fox, the so-called agent who was wanted, then followed the highboy at once by air to London. Once there, he located a possible customer for it. At this distance the customer could not know that the famous highboy was stolen. Fox had also been making preparations for the arrival of his cousins and Dance.

  As for the rose diamond necklace, Otto and Dance both realized that stealing insured goods which belonged to estates and individuals was a racket that could not last long, before the police and insurance companies became aware of it. They knew their time was running out; they knew they would have to flee abroad. Deliberately, because of the investigations, Dance left the taking of the diamond necklace to the very last moment. It was his department’s most valuable object, the most easily transported and converted into cash. Dance and Otto needed money above and beyond their plane fares, to live on when they reached England, and until they could actually sell and get paid for the highboy.

  “Wha
t’s that?” the police captain asked sharply.

  Otto was grumbling that he had warned Dance not to go back to the store for the necklace “—I never trusted that nosy nurse. Wasn’t it bad enough that she traced the music box to Woodacres?”

  “What!” Mrs. Julian exclaimed. “My music box? Did they steal that, too? Oh, Cherry—”

  Cherry touched Anna Julian’s arm and whispered, “Wait. Let’s see what happens.”

  Captain Donnelly questioned the three culprits about the music box. Otto admitted it was a blunder to take the music box at such a touchy time, and particularly when Cherry was taking so much interest in Mrs. Julian’s situation. But Otto had a quirk, a passion for music boxes, and he could not resist taking this one. He saw it and fell in love with it on the afternoon of the special exhibit. His using it as an illustration to his speech was a convenient way of getting it out of the showcase and into his hands. Then it took only a little dexterity to slip it into his capacious brief case. The crowd, and Otto’s authoritative manner of handling art objects, covered him up nicely. True, store detectives were on duty at the special exhibit, but Otto gambled on their not keeping any particular watch on an established art expert. If anyone had challenged his taking the music box, Otto had planned to say he was going to show it at a customer’s home.

  Dance was obliged by now to back up Otto in whatever he did. After the exhibit, Otto simply took the music box back to Woodacres with him in the familiar bulky brief case which he always carried, and which therefore did not excite any suspicion. Dance waited several days to report the loss of the music box, thus allowing time to cover up Otto’s taking it, and time in which to get Mrs. Julian out of town. For sooner or later she surely would have asked where her cherished music box was. With Mrs. Julian out of the way—and if only the nurse minded her own business!—they’d hoped to be far away before the investigators got on their trail. But after Cherry Ames had discovered the music box was at Woodacres, they knew they must clear out at once.