by Otto Penzler
Returning from Europe, a month later, M. Boggs wondered idly when Bill would drop in for a cup of coffee. He had told her he would be here when she returned.
She puttered happily among her treasures. Some fool, she noted, had automatically locked the chest by closing it. One of these days she’d have to unlock it and raise the lid….
Rogue: Sophie Lang
The Signed Masterpiece
FREDERICK IRVING ANDERSON
FREDERICK IRVING ANDERSON (1877–1947), the creator of Sophie Lang, the charming and creative jewel thief, has been largely forgotten by modern readers, having produced two books about farming and only three books of mystery and crime; many additional stories were published only in magazines, mainly The Saturday Evening Post, and never collected in book form.
Perhaps his best-known character is the delightful young woman who appeared in the single volume The Notorious Sophie Lang (1925), a thief of such daring and unmatched success that she is often regarded as a legend who doesn’t actually exist. Much of Sophie Lang’s fame derives from a series of 1930s Paramount films recounting her adventures. She was portrayed by Gertrude Michael in all three.
In The Notorious Sophie Lang (1934), the police use a French thief to capture her, but she and the thief fall in love and escape. In The Return of Sophie Lang (1936), which also starred Ray Milland, the reformed adventuress is on an ocean liner traveling to the United States with her elderly benefactress when she recognizes a “distinguished” fellow passenger; he is actually a jewel thief planning to involve Sophie in the disappearance of a diamond on which he has set his sights. The final film in the series, Sophie Lang Goes West (1937), which also stars Lee Bowman and Buster Crabbe, recounts Lang’s predicament when she evades the police by boarding a train to California. It is not long before she becomes involved with fellow travelers, including a brash but charming Hollywood press agent and a desperate sultan who hopes the valuable gem he is carrying will be stolen. Curiously, although the films had some success, the only volume of Sophie’s adventures was never published in America.
Anderson’s other two mystery collections were Adventures of the Infallible Godahl (1914) and The Book of Murder (1930), selected by Ellery Queen as one of the 106 greatest collections of mystery stories ever published. Deputy Parr, who is outwitted by Godahl in one book and Sophie Lang in another, again has his hands full with assorted crooks in the third and last of Anderson’s fiction works.
“The Signed Masterpiece” was first published in the McClure’s June/July 1921 issue; it was first collected in The Notorious Sophie Lang (London, Heinemann, 1925).
THE SIGNED MASTERPIECE
Frederick Irving Anderson
NUMBER 142, on the south side of the street, was an English basement dwelling of that commodious Van Bibber era of yesterday when Manhattan was still a native island and its inhabitants retained elbow room and a sense of substantial living. Most of the town had taken the hint and moved north, but Number 142 and a few other stalwarts with shiny plate-glass windows, scoured doorsteps and pull-bells still held their ground, with supercilious apartment houses and gilt hotels jostling them on all sides.
Number 142 was occupied by the widow of Amos P. Huntington. The departed, a drab, inoffensive little person, had only once achieved newspaper notoriety, when he blew himself into eternity while compounding synthetic rubber. The relict was a little Dresden china affair; as evidence of her quality she drove a smart plum-coloured brougham drawn by a smarter pair of roached hackneys of a water too luxurious for this day and age; on the box sat a coachman and footman in plum-colour, two stern middle-aged males, close-shaven and showing that curious prison pallor acquired by upper servants who spend most of their days in the semi-obscurity of old-fashioned basements.
This former fashionable section had begun its migration north some years before. One by one the brownstone residences on the north side that faced Number 142 and its few companions had been converted into red-brick stables with sharp roofs, cottage windows, and wide doorways. For a brief period the ancien régime had inhaled the fumes of ammonia and horse liniment and witnessed the capers of a superior class of equines that were led off to the Park afternoons by cockney grooms, to rack and amble for the benefit of the digestions of over-fed masters and mistresses.
Then the superior horses disappeared and in their stead came superior artists who raised north lights over the old hay-lofts, filled the air with the odours of turpentine and wet clay, and for the most part dined unromantically in a pastry-shop around the corner. Then the city, like a rank forest encroaching on a forsaken meadow, wiped the artists and their studios out of the picture, and set up in their place unsightly garages and machine shops for sick motors. The sunny side of the street became slippery with grease from leaky oil pans, the air thick with the odour of gas and rubber. At the curb at all hours of the day and far into the night diseased insides of broken-down automobiles strewed the side-walks, while the begrimed mechanics tinkered and tested. Through all these vicissitudes the old guard hung on grimly, Number 142 and its companions, by protest, seeming to grow more immaculate. Mrs. Huntington, in addition to these aggressions on her domestic peace, had suffered the further indignity of being dragged from her sheltered grief into open court by the insurance guarantors of her departed husband, who maintained that anyone so temerarious as to tamper with synthetic rubber could have but one motive—suicide. Twice the little widow had won the sympathy of the jury, who in two suits had awarded her the full amount of her claim, a quarter of a million dollars.
Directly across the street, in Number 143, was a machine shop which in grime, odour, and noisy clamour differed in no respects from its neighbours. An observant person might have noted, with some stirring of curiosity, that all of its mechanics were young, stood six feet, and weighed 185 pounds. Unknown and unsuspected, Number 143 was of the police; it was one of that series of carefully masked deadfalls which that arch man-hunter, Deputy Parr of Headquarters, had planted in unexpected corners throughout the city. Crime is sporadic; nevertheless it is also regional and vocational. Here through his minions he eavesdropped on the night-birds indigenous to Automobile Alley. In Broad Street he maintained a bucket shop, manned with mammoth messenger boys and clerks; in Maiden Lane a platinum refinery, whose wrinkled old alchemist could tell him at a moment’s notice the chemical signature of any batch of platinum in existence; in Fourth Avenue he had a two-by-four office among the brokers of raw silk, a commodity that attracts thieves as honey does flies; and in Central Park West he conducted, under an able lieutenant, a spook parlour for table-tilting and slate-writing, where occasionally a wire got through from the other shore. Many a poor wight languishing behind bars wondered, but would never know, how he had come so summarily to his doom. It was simple enough, merely getting acquainted and being neighbourly.
At ten of an early winter morning a car of some consequence came to a jerking, sputtering stop, sighed, and died at the curb in front of Number 142. The driver, a man of six feet, weighing 185 pounds, got down, opened the hood, and stood regarding his ailing motor with the forlorn look of a medico whose patient had gone beyond his skill. A red-headed mechanic, six feet of height, 185 pounds of weight, came out. He evinced sympathetic interest and put his head under the hood.
“The Chief,” said the driver, bending down and speaking in the mechanic’s ear, “wants a report on Number 142.”
The mechanic re-connected a high-tension wire with a spark plug terminal, thus restoring the consequential motor to its full faculties, should an emergency arise. He tore a blue ticket in two along the line of perforation, handed one half to the driver with the remark, “No tickee—no washee!” and tied the other half by a stout cord to the windshield of the automobile. The chauffeur strolled away to a back-room haunt of chauffeurs and mechanics, and whiled away a few hours getting acquainted. The mechanic pretended to resume tinkering, meantime studying out of the tail of his eye that respectable domicile opposite, Number 142, vaguely specul
ating on what turn of the weathercock had brought the Dresden china widow under the surveillance of the police.
An hour later Mrs. Amos P. Huntington descended the steps and entered her brougham. She had small feet encased in trim high boots which she displayed by a modishly short skirt; her complexion was very white, her eyes hazel, and her hair of that peculiar shade of mahogany which can be retained only by unremitting attention; she was in full mourning, of a rich correctness that suggested one of those fashionable specialty shops in the next block just off the avenue which devote themselves exclusively to the millinery of grief. Her footman wrapped her in moleskin and mounted the box; her mincing pair moved off in perfect step as if in time to the tinkle of some antique gavotte. At this moment the red-headed mechanic, scratching his auburn thatch with a grim set of fingers, seemed to come to the decision that a trial run was necessary. He started his hypochondriac motor and rolled along in the wake of the plum-coloured brougham, bending a sympathetic ear to catch some symptomatic murmur from the engine.
At Columbus Circle, that eternal whirligig of traffic, the traffic signal fell against the plum-coloured brougham and the horses came to a stop, snorting motors on all sides instantly piling up with the fecundity of a log jam. A man in a brown derby on the sidewalk had his attention arrested by the flapping of the blue ticket of the motor behind the brougham. He halted at the curb, and casually catching the eye of the red-headed mechanic, he took off his brown derby, though it was freezing weather, and mopped his forehead. The red-headed mechanic answered by blowing his nose in a red bandana; and turning, he stared stupidly at the plum-coloured brougham. The traffic sluice was opened, the jam started to move; and the red-headed mechanic now lost interest in the plum-coloured brougham. He turned east and in ten minutes was back at his machine shop.
“Does anyone follow, William?” asked the Dresden china widow in her speaking-tube.
“No, ma’am,” responded William the footman, speaking out of the corner of his mouth, without moving his lips, into the receiver at his shoulder. “There was one,” he added encouragingly. “The mechanic opposite—but he turned off.”
Mrs. Huntington did not permit herself to be lulled by a sense of security. For a long period the gracious lady of Number 142 had never driven out without inquiring sooner or later, “Does anyone follow, William?” It might have intimated a vanity or a fear. There had been occasions which seemed to the capable William to hold forth a promise. But these promises were never fulfilled. Always the particular person or vehicle that had attracted the suspicious scrutiny of William would be lost in the ceaseless traffic of the city streets, much as the red-headed mechanic, who had momentarily aroused William’s interest, was now lost.
That afternoon two studious young men called at Number 142 to test the electric meter. This task, having to do with slide rules and logarithmic calculations and shiny instruments, was spread out on the basement stairway with the interested servants watching now and then, and obligingly handing the two scientists, by request, tools whose nickel-plated surfaces had been especially prepared for finger-prints. The next day telephone linemen asked for and received permission to pass through the house to the roof to untangle some wires. An inspector for the Water Department, a most entertaining fellow, looked over the taps for leaks. Some dispute having arisen in an obscure quarter as to the encroachment on the building line of this row of houses, a young man must enter and open every window from the inside, to measure the protruding sills with a rule. Once when he was leaning far out of the drawing-room window he asked politely over his shoulder would Mrs. Huntington please pass him his magnifying glass, which the little widow did graciously, picking it up quite unconsciously in the hand which held her lace handkerchief. In departing he offered her his fountain pen to sign his call slip, but not seeing his gesture, she used her own pen instead. There were other callers at the basement door, all civil, and, to the outward eye at least, simple. By the end of the week a complete dossier of Number 142 was in the hands of Mr. Parr. It had to do with the mistress and her ménage, down to microscopic details. If she had nursed a fancied sense of sanctified privacy, she must have been horror-stricken to know how easy it had been for Parr’s camera-eyed sleuths to turn Number 142 inside out and upside down. In the preparation of the report, in only one point had they failed—they carried away nothing bearing the imprint of the pink finger-tips of the pathetic widow herself, although her household had been most obliging in this respect. The magnifying glass, when developed in Centre Street Headquarters, yielded only a hazy replica of her dainty kerchief.
II
“I know it is the fashion,” said Deputy Parr, settling himself in his favourite elbow-chair by Oliver Armiston’s desk, “to assign us cops the rôle of solid ivory in modern detective drama. A thick cop always makes a hit!” He shot a venomous gleam at Oliver, who, running his fingers through his single grey lock, looked up from his work but did not deign to reply. “Some bright young man,” went on Mr. Parr ponderously, “might make a name for himself by endowing one of us with a glimmer of brains.” He selected a cigar for himself from the paste-board box by Oliver’s elbow. “I realize,” he said, nipping off the tip with his finger-nails, “that there is a popular prejudice against it. But it could be done—it could be done.” He struck a match with a single magic twist in the air, applied the light, and drew a few meditative puffs, eyeing Oliver through half-closed lids.
Armiston, the extinct author, was merely another phase of Deputy Parr’s amazing versatility. For the most part Parr practised logic, not intuition. Through long experience of the habits and resorts of the creatures he hunted, he set his traps in what he knew to be good game country. Then he retired to wait for some prowling creature to spring them. But occasionally his traps yawned empty, not so much as the snap of a dry twig rewarded his longest vigil along well-proved runways. Then, like his prototype, the savage hunter, Parr would withdraw stealthily to consult his Medicine. Armiston occupied this position. Armiston had been a weaver of tall tales, thrillers. On one occasion he had been too realistic; a cunning thief had actually dramatized Oliver’s fiction as fact, with murder as its outcome. The ensuing sensation had driven the hectic author into retirement. Here the argus-eyed Deputy found him. If fiction could be done into fact, then why not fact into fiction? So reasoned the deputy of police.
His method was direct but subtle. An insoluble mystery or a hesitating dénouement aroused the dormant faculties of the extinct author as the clang of a gong revives the pensioned fire horse. Parr would dress the stage for Oliver with characters and scenery, ring up the curtain on a frozen plot—and in his most ingratiating manner invite Armiston to “go to it.” The results had occasionally been startling. They always, to the matter-of-fact policeman, bordered on the mystic. Oliver’s imagination, once touched off, had an uncanny fecundity.
Now the deputy, with the sigh of too much girth, picked up his left foot encased in a Number 12 boot, and deposited it on his right knee; he tapped the sole significantly, it was a new sole, a very slab of a sole, spiked into place, designed for wear, not stealth.
“It cost me two seventy-five,” he said lugubriously. “It used to cost fifty cents. Even the price of detecting crime has gone up. Sole leather!” he exclaimed with some vehemence, “that’s what achieves results in my business. Whenever I take on a new man, I look at his feet, not his head.”
He paused. Oliver by continued silence seemed to reserve judgment.
“As a matter of fact,” said Parr confidentially, “we don’t detect crime. Crime detects itself.”
“It’s too bad the perpetrators aren’t so obliging,” put in Oliver.
“But, my dear fellow, they are! That’s just the point!” said Parr expansively.
“They detect themselves?”
“Oh, absolutely, inevitably. That is—eventually. The element of time enters, of course. We simply wait,” explained the policeman blandly. “Sooner or later every crook revisits his usual haunts. I have
a man sitting on the doorstep waiting for him.” Parr smiled childishly.
“You must admit it, it requires some intelligence on your part to pick the right doorstep,” said Armiston.
“Not at all!” retorted Parr. “That’s the least of our worries. They give us the address!” He chuckled. Armiston returned to his ciphering. He had the hurt air of a too credulous child who has been imposed on.
“Every dog has its flea,” said Parr, nodding solemnly at the fat Buddha in the corner of the study. “Every crook has his squealer. I have never known it fail, Oliver. If I ever caught up with the squeals that fall on my desk every morning I would close shop and call it a day.” He added gruffly: “I haven’t had a day off in twenty years. Failures? We have no failures. Unfinished business, yes. Sooner or later somebody blabs—blabs to me! That’s what I am here for.” He jabbed his chest fiercely. “Let me illustrate,” he went on gravely. “Did you ever hear of Sophie Lang? I suspect not.” He smiled oddly. “The public never hears of successful crooks. It is only when they fail, when we catch them, that they become notorious. Sophie has yet to stub her toe.”
Armiston shook his head; the name meant nothing to him. But it had a tang, either in its accidental combination of letters, or in the way Parr pronounced it, that suggested inherent possibilities. The man-hunter became mellow in a reminiscent mood.
“We used to have a habit of assigning our bright young men to the Sophie Lang case. It was like sending a machinist’s apprentice for a left-handed monkey wrench, or a quart of auger holes.” He laughed. “So far as my bright young men are concerned, she was only a rumour.”
“Oh, a legendary crook! I say, that’s beautiful!” exclaimed Armiston.
