The Big Book of Rogues and Villains

by Otto Penzler

  “What’s this fat woman look like?” asked Ackley. “If she’s going to make a trip we’d better be ready to tail her.”

  The undercover man chuckled.

  “She tips the beam at three hundred and fifty. If you can’t find that sort of a woman in a drawing room on a train, one of us is crazy.”

  “Can that line of chatter,” snapped Sergeant Ackley, “and remember you’re making an official report. We won’t try to tail you. You just go wherever he sends you, but contact the office as soon as you can reach a telephone, and keep us posted. Better rush back now—he’ll be giving that fat dame secret instructions.”

  Scuttle laughed again, louder, more jubilantly.

  “Sarge, I’ve got my rod, and I’ve got my bracelets. If that lump of tallow can pull anything on me you can start me back to the pavements tomorrow.”

  —

  It was precisely seventeen minutes after nine o’clock in the evening. Three faces bent over a glittering necklace of diamonds. There was the heavy face of Scuttle, the valet; the jovial, good-natured face of Sadie Crane, the professional fat woman. And, in addition, there was the sharp, keenly thoughtful face of Stanley Garland, sole owner and proprietor of the Garland Printery.

  “Well,” said Garland, “what’s he want done?”

  “A black and white drawing,” replied Scuttle.

  Garland laughed. “I am an engraver. I have been a sign painter. I have done some art work. But will you tell me why any man should think an artist needed a real diamond necklace to copy from? If there is anything that is sketched entirely different from life it is a diamond. After all, my friends, art is mimicry. And when it comes to sketching light, one must use symbols. And a diamond is imprisoned light.”

  And Stanley Garland stood back and snapped his bony fingers, twisted the little cluster of waxed hairs that adhered to his upper lip, and gazed at his two visitors with obvious superiority.

  Scuttle shrugged his heavy shoulders.

  “I’m obeyin’ orders. He said to take the necklace to you an’ get a receipt. He said for the woman to take a few things and put them in a suitcase and be ready to travel. She’s taking the ten o’clock Flyer.

  “Now if you can put any of that stuff together and make sense out of it you can do more than I can. But the wages I get every month come from this chap, Leith, and when he says do something I do it.”

  Stanley Garland bristled.

  “But I am an artist! I do unique illustrations for place cards. And I take orders from no one. I execute commissions, yes! But orders, NO!”

  The fat woman placed a round hand upon the shoulder of the irate printer.

  “Aw, be a sport! Give him a break.”

  “And a receipt for the diamonds,” reminded Scuttle.

  Stanley Garland looked at the diamonds once more.

  “Where did he get them? I have heard about this perfectly matched necklace. I did the engraving for the invitations to his side show. But I have heard nothing of the history of this necklace. Who owns it? Where did it come from? What jeweler matched it? Was it purchased or borrowed?”

  The undercover man stared gloomily.

  “Now, brother, you’re askin’ real questions. We’ve had fifty men trying to find out the same thing for ten days, and they haven’t uncovered a thing.”

  “Humph!” said Stanley Garland.

  Sadie Crane waddled her impatient bulk across the office that had been fitted up at one end of the printing establishment. She carried her suitcase in her left hand—a suitcase packed under specific instructions from Lester Leith. It contained her professional costume—the jacket and the silk shorts—nothing else.

  She walked to the door that opened into the printery—a door that opened inward. She put the suitcase down on the printery side of this door. Beyond gleamed the polished metal of huge presses, the dim perspective of the darkened printery.

  Lester Leith had given her a sketch of the floor plan of the establishment. He seemed perfectly familiar with every detail. How Lester Leith had known these things she did not ask. She understood, generally, that Stanley Garland had a uniform method of impressing customers who called in the evening to consult with him upon important assignments. He had the lighting of the office just so, the dim perspective of the printery showing just so, behind the open door, and he always snapped his fingers and twisted his mustache and proclaimed he was an artist.

  Lester Leith had advised her of all these things in detail. It was, of course, possible that he had secured the information from Louise Huntington, who had brought several orders to the office of the printery.

  Now Stanley Garland made an exclamation of impatience.

  “Take back the diamonds. I will tell him when I see him how foolish he is to send such a model. But you can tell him that, having once seen them, Stanley Garland can make a perfect…”

  He broke off. There was the sound of a knob upon the outer door, turning very softly, very slowly.

  The undercover man shot out a guarding hand to the diamonds.

  The outer door swung slowly open.

  The white face of Louise Huntington appeared in the crack. Scuttle recognized her, and the hand that had been at his hip relaxed slightly. But the hand that had held the diamond necklace remained in place.

  “Hello, dearie!” said roly-poly Sadie Crane.

  The girl acknowledged the salutation with a nod.

  “Well,” snapped Garland, “come in—if you’re coming in.”

  “Are you alone?” asked Scuttle, suspiciously.

  She nodded her head, came in, and kicked the door shut behind her. Then her right arm, coming slowly up, disclosed the glint of businesslike, blue steel.

  “Those diamonds,” she said, “are stolen. Put up your hands!”

  Sheer surprise held the figures in that room motionless.

  “Stolen!” exclaimed Scuttle.

  The girl nodded down the barrel of the shaking gun.

  “Don’t point that gun this way. You might let it go off,” said Scuttle, moving toward her.

  “P-p-put up your hands!” said the girl. “I shall shoot!”

  “Nonsense!” snapped Scuttle and took the gun from the quivering hand. “You fool! You might have killed somebody.”

  The girl flung herself against his shoulder and began to sob.

  “No, no. I couldn’t have. The gun wasn’t loaded!”

  The undercover man snapped back the breech of the weapon, laughed, and tossed it on the table.

  “She’s right. It wasn’t loaded.”

  Stanley Garland regarded the valet with speculative eyes.

  “You are brave, my friend. You advanced in the face of a threatening weapon in the hands of a hysterical woman.”

  “Bosh!” disclaimed Scuttle. “I’ve had experience with ’em. She wouldn’t have shot, even if the gun had been loaded, but she might have jiggled her hand so bad the trigger got pulled. That was the danger.”

  “Nevertheless, it was brave.”

  Scuttle turned to the girl.

  “Come on, Louise, kick through. What was the big idea?”

  The girl sobbed, straightened, dried her eyes.

  “Well, thank God, that’s over with,” she said.

  Scuttle let his beady eyes bore into hers.

  “Look here, you didn’t think that necklace was stolen at all. You had orders from Lester Leith, now, didn’t you?”

  The girl hesitated, gulped, and nodded.

  “Yes, I did. He told me to take this empty gun, come here and hold you up, on the pretext that the gems were stolen and that I thought you were all accomplices. Then I was to get the gems and go back into the printery…and then comes the funny part…I was to throw the stones out of the window and hide in the printery until Sergeant Ackley came.”

  Scuttle stiffened with astonishment.

  “Sergeant Ackley!”

  “Yes, I was to telephone him just before I came in here, telling him what I was to do. But I wasn’t to tel
l anyone what I had done with the gems. I was to let them search me, and search the printery. I think Mr. Leith wanted Ackley to think the stones were hidden somewhere in the printery, and that I was a thief. I guess he wanted a search made.”

  Scuttle sat down in a chair.

  “I’ve seen that goof pull some fool schemes, but this is the worst of the lot. You telephoned Ackley?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “He said he’d be here in fifteen minutes.”

  Sadie Crane glanced at a huge watch that was strapped around her fat wrist.

  “I gotta be goin’. I gotta catch that train.”

  “You got a cab waiting?” asked Louise.

  The fat woman nodded. “A special cab with a wide door, dearie.”

  “I saw it outside,” said the girl in a toneless voice.

  “What I don’t understand…” began Scuttle, and stopped as a cold circle of metal touched his neck.

  He rolled his eyes backward, saw the snapping orbs of Stanley Garland, the thin lips, the shrewd features.

  “You are a brave man,” said Garland, “and I do not take chances with you. Get them up, quickly! And this gun is loaded!”

  The undercover man read the expression in those snapping eyes, and his hands shot up in the air, instantly, and without hesitation.

  The exploring hands of Stanley Garland fished in Scuttle’s hip pockets, found the service revolver, the handcuffs.

  “Ah!” he purred, “a trap, perhaps. You are a special officer, eh? Well, my special officer, we shall give you a taste of your own medicine. How would you like to feel the bite of your own handcuffs, eh?”

  And the printer clicked the handcuffs on Scuttle’s wrists. Then he turned to the women—the beautiful social secretary, whose sobs had dried as though by magic, and the professional fat woman who regarded the whole proceeding with bubbling good nature.

  “Stay where you are,” he said. “A move and you will be dead.”

  And he scooped up the necklace which had been described as the most perfectly matched diamond necklace in the city, and darted through the door into the printery. He slammed that door shut, and there was the click of a bolt.

  Scuttle regarded his handcuffed wrists in impotent fury.

  “Well, of all things!” said Louise Huntington. “Now what do you think of that?”

  Sadie Crane looked at her watch.

  “I gotta make that train, an’ I got to have my shorts an’ my jacket. I promised him I would, an’ he’s been just like a brother to me! And now that sneaky-eyed cuss has gone and locked the door on my suitcase!”

  Suddenly the roar of a revolver sounded from the printery. A call for help. That call was in the unmistakable voice of Lester Leith.

  Then came the sounds of a struggle, of articles turning over with a crash. Type, piles of paper, chairs, tables, marble slabs, crashed to the floor. Then—silence.

  “If you could just lean against that door right,” suggested Scuttle to the three-hundred-and-fifty-pound woman, “I have an idea I could kick the lock and—”

  He never finished. The bolt shot back and Lester Leith appeared on the threshold. His clothes were torn. His collar was ripped off. There was dust on his expensive evening suit. His hat was gone.

  “What’s all this?” he asked.

  Scuttle regarded him with black, accusing eyes.

  “That’s what I want to know.”

  Lester Leith slumped in a chair. For once his calm control of himself and the situation seemed to have slipped from his grasp.

  “I thought Garland was guilty of those Demarest and other ambulance robberies. I got Louise to pretend those gems were stolen, thinking Garland might fall into my trap when he heard the police were coming. I felt I could hide in the printery, watch him as he escaped, and that he might direct me to the hiding place of the Demarest loot.

  “It worked like a charm, but when I tried to arrest him, he fought with the skill of a professional. And he had an extra gun on him. I took one away. He had another.”

  “Mine,” admitted Scuttle.

  Lester Leith regarded him reproachfully.

  “Scuttle, I’m surprised. You shouldn’t go around armed. That was where my plans went awry. He had that extra gun. I escaped being shot by a miracle—but, Sadie, you must get that train!”

  She nodded.

  “But my suitcase was locked up in the other room.”

  “Get it,” said Lester Leith, “and get started! If you miss the train, my whole side show will be ruined.”

  The fat woman waddled toward the printery door.

  “Did you really telephone Ackley?” asked Scuttle of Louise Huntington.

  She shook her head.

  “That was just the story I was to tell.”

  Scuttle washboarded his forehead.

  “This is all too deep for me. But I’ll get him right now.”

  He awkwardly worked the telephone, and got Sergeant Ackley on the wire. While he was talking with the sergeant, Sadie Crane waddled out of the room, her face streaming perspiration with the effort for speed.

  Her heavy steps sounded on the short flight of stairs outside the door. Then there was the grinding of gears and her cab rolled away.

  It was at that moment Scuttle finished his conversation and dropped the receiver back on the hook.

  “There’s more to this than appears on the surface,” he said, fastening his coal-black eyes on Leith. “Ackley says he had you tailed and you slipped the shadow.”

  Leith nodded ruefully. He took a cigarette from the torn pocket of his dinner jacket and put it to his lips.

  “Admitted, Scuttle. This is one time I made the mistake of actually trying to solve a crime riddle instead of taking only an academic interest in it. Is Sergeant Ackley coming?”

  “Right now,” snapped the undercover man.

  “I’ll tell him all about it when he gets here,” said Lester Leith. “I’m all out of breath now.”

  It was but a matter of minutes before the wailing siren of the police car outside was followed by rapid steps, and Sergeant Ackley at the head of a determined knot of blue-coated men, thrust his way into the room.

  “What’s going on here?” he asked.

  Beaver, the undercover agent, winked warningly at his superior.

  “Take off these handcuffs and I’ll tell my story first,” he said.

  Sergeant Ackley fitted a key to the cuffs, clicked them open.

  “Shoot,” he said.

  Beaver, still keeping in the character of Scuttle, the valet, told his story; told it from the standpoint of a puzzled servant who didn’t know what it was all about, but wanted the police to know the facts.

  When he had finished, Sergeant Ackley turned to the social secretary.

  “Now you.”

  The girl hesitated.

  “Tell the truth, Louise,” said Lester Leith.

  “All of it?” she asked.

  “All of it,” said Lester Leith.

  “Well, it started after I got my employment at Mr. Leith’s place. Things just didn’t seem right, and I was going to quit. Then Mr. Leith told me I was under suspicion in connection with the Demarest affair—which I knew already, of course. And he thought he knew who was really guilty.

  “He told me if I would do just as he instructed he felt confident he could trap the criminal into exposing his guilt. Naturally, I agreed to remain on and follow his orders.

  “Then, tonight, Mr. Leith told me to take an empty gun, go here and try to hold up Scuttle, telling him the necklace was stolen. He said Scuttle would take the gun away from me, and that I was to be sure and tell him I had notified you to come here and that the circumstances of your coming were such that you’d search the place.

  “If Scuttle didn’t take the gun away from me, I was to take the diamond necklace, run into the printery, and toss the stones out of the window.”

  Sergeant Ackley frowned.

  Scuttle interposed a comment.

  “Leste
r Leith, of course,” he said significantly, “being concealed in the printery all the time. When it reached that stage he’d have interfered.”

  “I didn’t know anything about that,” said the girl.

  Sergeant Ackley nodded his approval.

  “Good point, Scuttle. I was just about to make it myself when you interrupted.”

  The sergeant turned to Lester Leith.

  “And now we’ll hear your story. It looks very much as though you’d finally stubbed your toe, my supercilious friend.”

  Leith raised a hand in a gesture of deprecation.

  “Tut, tut, my dear sergeant, you must learn not to jump at conclusions. Wait until you hear my story. The law requires that a man shall have a hearing before being judged guilty, you know.”

  “You’ll have your chance, fast enough,” said Sergeant Ackley, “and just remember that anything you say can be used against you.”

  Lester Leith nodded, made some shift to straighten his torn and rumpled garments.

  “You’ll pardon my appearance, Sergeant?”

  “Oh, most certainly,” said the Sergeant, with an exaggerated air of nicety.

  Lester Leith lit a fresh cigarette.

  “Thank you, Sergeant. You see, I was interested in the Demarest affair. Of course you know of my penchant for studying the newspaper accounts of crime. And the newspaper clippings of the Demarest robbery pointed to what was, at least to my mind, an obvious clue.”

  Sergeant Ackley hitched well forward in his chair.

  “Yes, I thought so. What was the clue?”

  “The ambulance, Sergeant. You see, the ambulance figured as an integral part of the scheme. It had the words Proctor & Peabody painted on it, and everyone agreed that those words were painted quite prominently, too prominently to be in good taste.

  “Now Proctor & Peabody run a line of ambulances and of hearses. It is impossible that a car could have their name lettered on it and escape detection. After the Demarest affair the roads were blocked within a given district and all cars within that district subjected to close scrutiny. Yet the ambulance vanished. Now I had a theory about that, but I couldn’t be absolutely certain. I determined to wait for a short time and see if the ambulance wasn’t used again. It was such a good idea and it worked so easily in the Demarest robbery that I felt certain the criminals would use it again.