They mounted, found the writing room off the main lobby deserted, and made themselves comfortable at a table.
“Now, am I to understand, sir,” asked O’Meara cautiously, “that you’re acting with full authority for Mr. Hopkins?”
Driscoll nodded and produced his blank check. “Yes, here’s the check. I say, though I’ll have to glance at the lease. As I understand it, you hold a prior lease to the property, including the oil rights?”
“Exactly, and very much prior it is,” said the other dryly. “But I’m not carrying the documents about with me, y’ understand. It’s already gone to the district attorney.”
“What?” exclaimed Driscoll.
The other smiled broadly. “Yes, you’d better realize to start off that we’re not bluffing, my friend. However, the charges will not be formally entered or the complaint signed, until morning.”
“Eh? Oh, I see.” Driscoll relaxed, looking slightly puzzled. “But, my dear fellow, I gathered that I was to turn over this check, after filling in the amount, and you were to give me the original of the lease! You know, I can’t do that if you haven’t the document, and I can’t bargain with you before I examine it.”
O’Meara chuckled and slapped his thigh.
“This isn’t the old country, Mr. Driscoll. If we make a deal, I can get the document here within ten minutes. Here’s a photostat of it, and a copy of the charges.”
He produced a rolled photostat copy, which turned the original black writing into white, and several typed carbon pages in a legal folder, constituting a copy of the charges made against Hopkins and substantiated by the original lease.
Driscoll studied these very briefly, paying small attention to the charges and much to the photostat, which showed both front and back of the lease in question—a typed document occupying both sides of a sheet.
“I suppose it’s quite legal over here,” and Driscoll glanced up, “to conclude a document on the back of a sheet, instead of using a second sheet? A minor point, perhaps.”
“Legal enough,” said O’Meara complacently. “Looks pretty clear, eh? The last paragraph carries the kick, Mr. Driscoll—mineral rights.”
“So I perceive,” Driscoll, with a helpless gesture, laid down the papers. “Well, I take it there’s no use beating around the bush, what? As you say, the last paragraph has—er—the kick. As to the price—”
“Fifty thousand, my boy, and not a nickle less.” O’Meara hooked his thumbs in his vest and surveyed Driscoll with beaming air. “No argument. If you try to beat me down, the price goes to sixty thousand.”
“Eh?” Driscoll looked flustered. “I say, I haven’t tried to beat you down, though!”
“And,” pursued the other, “in cash. Cash, understand? I’m not turning over that document in exchange for a check that can be stopped. On the Day and Night Bank, eh? Fair enough. We can wait here until a friend of mine cashes the check, then I’ll give you the paper.”
“I suppose that’s quite all right,” said Driscoll. “Fifty thousand, eh? You’ll not mind if I telephone Mr. Hopkins to give him my opinion?”
O’Meara waved his hand grandly. “Not a bit, not a bit! And I’ll be getting my friend Legrand to help us out with the bank—”
“I’ll want to look at the original document before I sign the check,” said Driscoll, with a stubborn air. The other chuckled.
“And so you shall, me lad! I’ll meet you here in fifteen minutes, say.”
Driscoll nodded.
* * * *
Five minutes later, ensconced in a telephone booth, he had Hopkins on the line. “Everything’s fine, Hopkins,” he said crisply. “I’m going to gamble with fifty thousand of your money, whether you like it or not. In fifteen minutes, O’Meara will endorse your check for fifty thousand, and I believe Legrand will take it over to the Day and Night Bank to cash it—you drew on that bank. Whoever cashes it, will telephone us, and the papers will be turned over to me.
“Now, Hopkins, it’s up to you to have Legrand arrested—the minute after he has telephoned, understand? Not before. Arrange with the bank to give him marked thousand dollar notes, and be sure they’re taken from him and held as evidence.”
“I don’t know what you’re driving at, but I’ll do it,” said Hopkins. “On what charge can he be arrested?”
“Charge conspiracy to get money under false pretenses,” and Driscoll laughed. “I warned you it’s a gamble. Are you game?”
“Go the limit,” growled Hopkins. “And depend on me.”
“One thing more—and it’s highly important. Send one of your private detectives along with the officer to make the pinch. Have him remark, so that Legrand can hear it, that I am the chief investigator of the documentary section at Scotland Yard. Get that?”
“Eh?” queried Hopkins. “But you’re no such thing!”
“Never mind. Don’t fail, now!”
* * * *
Leaving the booth, Driscoll made his way back to the writing room, and was smoking placidly when O’Meara hove in sight, accompanied by a thin, swarthy man in evening dress.
“This is Mr. Legrand, Mr. Driscoll,” and O’Meara beamed. “Well, we have the papers in the case—you want to look over the lease, I believe?”
“A mere glance at it,” said Driscoll, sitting down.
O’Meara produced the document, remaining at his elbow and spreading it out. Driscoll fumbled in his pocket and produced a magnifying glass, then took a look at the front and back of the lease. He leaned back and shrugged.
“Very good, gentlemen. That blank check—ah, yes! Here it is. I suggest that Mr. Legrand cash it, and then telephone us—it’s a bit of a ride from here downtown, you know, and we might conclude the matter more promptly. I’m a bit pressed for time.”
“Suits me,” said O’Meara assuredly. “I was going to propose the same thing. Give us a call as soon as it’s cashed, Jack.”
Driscoll filled out the check, then glanced up.
“I’ve made it out to you, Mr. O’Meara.”
“No matter, my boy—I’ll endorse it, and they know Legrand there.”
It was all very pleasant, very open and aboveboard, a little business deal among gentlemen. O’Meara dashed off his signature, blotted it, and with a bow Legrand took the check and then departed.
Driscoll picked up the carbon copy of the fraud charges, and idly glanced over them, then turned abruptly to O’Meara.
“Oh, I say! You’d better write me out a receipt—here, on the back of this will do,” and turning over the papers, he presented the reverse side of the carbon sheets. “Merely a matter of form to show Hopkins—a receipt for the payment for the lease.”
“As Legrand’s attorney, yes, yes,” and O’Meara, producing a fountain pen, indited the requested receipt and signed with a flourish. “You don’t mind if I turn this receipt over with the document when we get that ’phone call? Always well to be careful, my boy.”
“Of course.” Driscoll produced his cigars. “By the way, what do you know about the racing down at Tijuana? I was told that if I came here I should look up the place.”
O’Meara knew all about horses and racing, and talking brilliantly and with enthusiasm, was astonished when a call boy summoned him to the telephone. He was gone for five minutes, then returned, rubbing his hands and beaming.
“Everything settled, Mr. Driscoll! Very sorry to show perhaps undue caution, but you know how careful one must be, eh? Here is the lease—here, receipt, charges, everything! And you might tell Hopkins he got a bargain. If we’d been inclined to hold him up, we might have asked double the money.”
“Quite so,” said Driscoll, and pocketed everything in sight “Charmed to have met you, sir. Perhape we’ll meet again in the near future. Good night!”
So he departed to his waiting car, and O’Meara chuckled.
* * * *
At nine o’clock on the following morning, a curious company assembled in the handsome private office of Hopkins’ suite in the Wi
lshire building. Since the previous night, very hot telephone wires had brought this company together.
Joseph O’Meara was present, and he looked like a ruffled and angry turkey-cock. With him was Legrand, who was out on bail, thinner and more sallow than ever, his black eyes flaming with restrained fires. Behind the flat-topped desk of Hopkins sat Driscoll, very amiable, with a number of documents piled before him. Hopkins sat at his side. White, the lawyer, was at a table by the door. Somehow the place took on the air of an official bureau.
“Let me tell you, sir,” said O’Meara impressively to Hopkins, “we’re going to have the satisfaction you have promised for this outrage! In causing the false arrest of this gentleman on trumped-up charges, you’ve gone too far!”
“One moment, if you please,” intervened Driscoll smoothly. He caught the eye of Legrand and smiled. “Kindly remember your dealings are with me, as agent for Mr. Hopkins.”
“You, yes!” O’Meara swung on him hotly. “I hear you’re an English detective, here from Scotland Yard.”
“Not in any official capacity. Will that reassure you? Or Mr. Legrand?”
“I have nothing to do with Scotland Yard,” drawled Legrand, with a shrug.
“Precisely. But you recall that Scotland Yard has had something do with you, my dear sir. Or is the cable which I have just received mistaken in saying so?”
At this suave thrust, Legrand shrank into himself and kept quiet.
“Now, O’Meara, let me state the premises simply as possible,” said Driscoll, becoming very crisp and business-like. “We have here a perfectly legal lease of the Dominguez tract for grazing purposes, containing at the end an added clause covering oil and mineral rights for a period of five years. This lease was bought from the holders by Mr. Legrand. There is no question as to its legality. Am I correct?”
“You are, sir,” returned O’Meara with dignity. “A lease on the oil and mineral rights was later and illegally granted Mr. Hopkins, causing my clients great distress.”
“Let us stick to the point at issue,” intervened Driscoll. “It is the added clause of the elder lease—you note, I say the ‘added’ clause. In two places, the typing of this added clause crosses portions of the signatures to the lease. The clause is brief but comprehensive. With a due regard to possible investigation, the clause was written by the same typewriter, the identical typewriter, which drew up the body of the document. This displays great acumen.”
O’Meara sprang to his feet, purple with rage.
“Are you inferring, sir—do you dare to infer, that this clause was added to the document at a later date?”
“I infer no such thing,” said Driscoll calmly. “I state it as a matter of fact. A stereoptic microscopic photograph of these crossed lines shows that the ink signatures had become oxidized and set long before the typing which touches them was applied to the paper. I happen to have made a study of such things and can qualify as an expert. A new typewriter ribbon was used for the body of this document, and also for the added clause—a ribbon thick with ink, which the microscope shows ran into the fibres of the paper. It did not run into these fibres at the intersections, for there the ink of the signatures had already filled the fibres.”
O’Meara sat down. “This is absurd! It’s childish nonsense!”
“Undoubtedly; of a sort to send you to San Quentin, sir,” said Driscoll. “We have here two pens, taken yesterday from your desk by Mr. White; that was the real purpose of his visit to your office. They will be established as evidence. One was used by Legrand in writing the last anonymous letter; the other pen was used on the two previous occasions. He was so unfortunate as to leave a very clear thumb-print on one of these pen-holders—but perhaps I need not go into that, Legrand? The subject of certain prints still on file in London, I mean.”
Legrand, who had turned deathly white, said nothing. O’Meara, chewing an unlighted cigar, watched Driscoll with ferocious intensity.
“Now, the subject of our present meeting,” continued Driscoll suavely. “You gentlemen owned this lease, drew up certain charges in connection with it, and abandoned them when we made an open purchase of the lease. You have fifty thousand dollars of our money, at present being held by the courts as evidence—marked money. It is now our turn to hand this lease and the accompanying evidence to the district attorney, charging both of you with conspiracy, fraud, and several other felonies—Mr. White has drawn up quite a list of the alleged offenses, and two officers are now waiting outside to take you both into custody.”
“It’s a damnable outrage!” shouted O’Meara, springing up again. “You’ve no proof that we extorted money from you by threats—”
“I have your own charges against Mr. Hopkins; on the back of them you very kindly wrote out a receipt for the fifty thousand dollars.
O’Meara stared at him, turned purple, and mopped at his brow.
“It’s a trap!” he exclaimed. Driscoll smiled.
“You realize it, then? Good. Take your choice, O’Meara and Legrand. One hundred thousand dollars in a check to be cashed before you leave this room—or you go out of here as prisoners and this evidence goes to the district attorney. Eh, Hopkins?”
“You’re damned right!” said Hopkins, with obvious and cruel enjoyment.
One hour later, Hopkins, alone with Driscoll, handed his guest a check.
“There’s your half the loot, Driscoll,” he exclaimed, laughing. “And you’ve earned it. But what about that thumb-print of Legrand on the pen?”
“He didn’t leave any,” and Driscoll smiled. “Neither am I an official of Scotland Yard. But how was he to know? Let’s have a drink.”
“Keno!” said Hopkins heartily, and clapped him on the shoulder.
THE BLUE BEETLE
I
A Fokker two-seater, painted a brilliant emerald green, thrummed over the hills enclosing the city of Suifu and its hundred-odd thousand people, circled above the Yangtse waters, and then dropped and ran to rest on the parade ground just outside the city walls—scattering, in the process, the officers’ training corps which was there learning the rudiments of war.
O’Neill threw back his helmet, abandoned the controls, and swung one leg over the edge of the cockpit, with a cheerful grin at his companion.
“Compliments of General O’Neill to General Burket, and would the general care to land?”
Bert Burket heaved up his brawny frame, cast a glance at the agitated scene, and reached for his automatic pistol.
“Not by a damned sight,” he observed. “Not just yet, at all events! Watch your step.”
The scattered youth of Suifu were reforming. Called by gongs and bugles that clashed on the air, troops were coming on the double from every direction. For a moment things looked bad. Then a group of officers broke through and came running to the plane, on whose wings were the golden characters giving the name of Field-Marshal Wang, governor of Szechuan. One of them called excitedly, O’Neill waved his hand and swung down to earth, meeting them with a gay salute and addressing them in the peculiar Szechuan dialect—he had spent his boyhood in this section of China and spoke its tongue fluently.
“Greeting, gentlemen! General O’Neill and General Burket, foreign advisors of the governor, on a special mission to General Cheng. Kindly have our plane protected.”
One of the astonished group saluted, shook hands, spoke a few words of halting English, then beckoned the nearest party of soldiers.
“Twelve men on guard over the jade dragon. If anyone attempts to touch the lung yu, shoot him. Orderly, bring up my car for the honorable visitors!”
He introduced himself as Colonel Li, chief of staff to the local governor, and shook hands all over again. General Cheng, he explained, had established his headquarters at a former temple on one of the surrounding hills. Although the summer was still far away, Suifu was sickly hot and was filled with some sort of plague. This was naturally no affair of Cheng’s, since several foreign missionaries were in the city and it was their b
usiness to fight plague.
Sunset was approaching as the antiquated flivver of Colonel Li chugged up a steep hillside road and came out on a wide paved terrace, where a ruined temple had been converted into a commodious, if rather gimcrack, sort of palace. Gone were the dust and squalor of the overflowing city. Built, like most river towns of China, on the peninsula between the Yangtse and its even mightier tributary, the Min, Suifu glittered like a great solid triangle below.
From this outspread view, the transition was abrupt to the inner hall of the gaudy buildings here on the terrace, where General Cheng received his two visitors. Unlike the spindly, opium-sodden rulers of the lower country, this bandit chief who governed at the head of the great river-gorges looked what he was—a sturdy hill-man, broad-faced, heavy-eyed, with few graces. He could speak nothing but his own dialect. He was simple, primitive, brutally efficient, and regarded the emissaries from his nominal overlord with plain, open suspicion. None the less, he showed some courtesy.
“You are my honorable guests and shall have a room here,” he said. “Perhaps tonight after dinner, I may hear your errand. General O’Neill, you speak our tongue well.”
“I lived as a boy in Chengtu, where my father was in business,” said O’Neill.
“You have written authority from Governor Wang?”
O’Neill produced the document, and a secretary read it aloud. As it was unusually comprehensive in scope, the reading produced a great effect. Then the two visitors, with their scanty luggage, were taken to the rooms prepared for them. Colonel Li undertook to supply two generals’ uniforms in an hour’s time—not guaranteeing the fit, however.
Left alone, Burket met the twinkling eyes of O’Neill with a laugh.
“In the lion’s den, eh?” he observed, and lit a cigarette. “I can imagine his face when he finds that we’ve come to assert Wang’s authority and fine him fifty thousand China dollars for defying his boss!”
“Of which we collect half, don’t forget.”
“If, as, and when paid, sure.” Burket made a wry grimace. “The more I think about that chap Wang, the more I admire him! He gives us a plane, makes us generals with wide powers, and turns us loose to collect from his recalcitrant sub-bandits and bring them to terms. He’s rid of us, and the odds are a thousand to one that we get scrapped en route.”
The H. Bedford-Jones Pulp Fiction Megapack Page 89
