“It all seems so far away after sixteen years of life with a good man in a good home that I seem to be talking about some far-off person I’ve read about in a cheap novel. I’m horrified to think that even then I could have been such a trusting, unsuspecting little fool. But I was. I was not altogether a bad girl, though. I didn’t rob the bank and I didn’t entertain any customers.
“But I was as afraid of that man Dwyer as if he had been a rattlesnake—if a rattlesnake could be so vile. So I promised I’d do my best. Then, the minute he went out to find a man I packed my suitcase and skipped out of the house. I ran to the station and luckily I had money enough to pay my fare to New York and keep me alive for a day or two.
“I took the first job I could find and by and by a better one, and finally my training in the business college enabled me to get a position as stenographer with a big concern in Brooklyn. I was rather pretty then; but I think it was really my devotion to my work that attracted the attention of the head of the firm and I became private secretary to Mr. Carrington. I fell in love with him and he with me. He asked me to marry him and I did. And we have been happy as happy could be for sixteen years. They have been heaven to me—but now the old hell has come back. And that same man dragged me into it again.
“My husband and I have had every success and every happiness except children. We have tried to replace them with pets, with birds and parrots and that curious old infant, the monkey. They like us and we love them. We laugh and enjoy ourselves in this zoo we keep.”
She was actually smiling again, and Ray was so convinced of the truthfulness of her story to this point that he said:
“Would you mind if I took a few notes so that I wont forget what you tell me?”
“I wish you would,” she said. “They will prove to my husband that I was sincere when I gave you this—you might call it my Farewell Address.”
Her lips began to quiver, and her eyes to glisten, and she went on in haste to escape another onset of despair. Ray took from his pocket some sheets of loose paper, and detached from his keyring a silver pencil with which he jotted down a few words now and then as she went on with her ancient history.
“For thirteen blessed years, my husband and I lived in perfect happiness. Then I guess the fates thought they had neglected me long enough. They brought Dwyer to Brooklyn on some errand, and took me past him on my way home from the market. Suddenly he stopped me and said, ‘Hello, my dear! Fancy meeting my little runaway sweetheart in Brooklyn of all places.’
“I nearly fainted with fright and surprise. I tried to hurry past but he gripped my arm. I begged him to let me alone and told him I was a happy and faithful wife, and he laughed at the idea. He said he couldn’t believe it. Still, he said he would play my game, whatever it was—on one condition. Since I had cheated him out of all the money I could have earned him in Kansas City, I could pay it back in installments. He settled on the sum of five hundred dollars twice a year. He had always earned his living from terrified women and he agreed to rent me out to my husband at that price. But he warned me never to be late with his salary for silence.
“I knew what he was capable of, and I knew how it would break my husband’s heart and end our happiness if Dwyer were not hushed and kept hushed. What I was most afraid of was that, if my husband ever learned of what Dwyer had done to me in my girlhood and was doing now, he would kill the wretch. Then there would be a trial. He would have been acquitted, of course; but his life would have been ruined and his heart broken because of the exposure of my past. And so for three years I—well I have kept Dwyer quiet. And now the whole thing is coming out after all, and my poor darling’s life will be wrecked. But thank God I’ll not be here to see it. I’m a coward to kill myself, I suppose. But I can’t stand everything!”
Once more she steeled herself against a frenzy and went on:
“I followed Dwyer’s orders faithfully to send the money in small bills to the address of one of the girls who was working for him. I kept my promise. My husband was always so generous with me, both in money and in gifts, that I was able to pay blackmail to Dwyer every six months for three years. Sometimes it was not easy to raise the money and I was always in terror of some slip-up; but I felt I had a right to buy my husband happiness and peace of mind even at such a price.
“But now my time is up. Low dog that he is, Dwyer has kept his word and kept out of my life. The very day my jewels were stolen, I put five hundred dollars in small bills in a small box, wrapped it, sealed it, addressed it to Dwyer’s girl, called for a Western Union messenger and paid him to take it to the post office and register it.
“Then I went upstairs and washed my jewels, left them to dry and went downstairs about my work as I told you. When I went back in an hour, the jewels were all gone.
“I called my husband home. You know the rest. And now you know all there is to know. I ought to have told you everything, I suppose, about Dwyer; but I think you will understand why I didn’t.”
“I understand,” said Ray with a sigh of regret that he had himself unwittingly dragged her tragedy to the light, and without coming any nearer to the solution of the robbery. He knew that she was telling him the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. He had been proud of his skill in running it down, but now he felt guilty of ruining her life and perhaps of ending it.
He longed to find some way to redeem her happiness. All the while she was wretchedly pouring forth her story, his brain had been in a fury of thought for some way out.
And he found it.
If I were writing fiction, even my poor old shameless pen would balk and rear up and refuse to put on paper such impossible nonsense. But the historian is always chronicling the impossible nonsense of actual fact; so my pen plods on to the all-but-unbelievable yet undeniable conclusion. It came with a crashing suddenness.
Ray had been calling on heaven for help. Heaven sent him a helper. And what a helper! That diabolical little monkey. His name, by the way, was Mingo.
When the grotesque brat had snatched at the shining buttons on Mrs. Carrington’s blouse, a thought, a mad hope had come to Ray. He had only pretended to take notes as an excuse for waving that bright silver pencil about. He had noted how Mingo’s greedy eyes followed it.
When Mrs. Carrington finished her story and turned her dull funereal eyes on Ray to hear her sentence spoken, Ray laid his silver pencil down on a little table at his elbow, and folded his notes.
Mrs. Carrington started up with a cry:
“Mingo! Mingo! Stop it! Drop it! Mr. Schindler, he’s stolen your pencil!”
The monkey had, indeed, snatched up the shining object and fled with it into the next room. Ray followed him quickly. At the door Ray paused and watched Mingo dancing up and down before one of those huge Chinese vases of majolica ware. This one was as tall as Mingo. He guarded it with jealous ferocity when Ray approached, and thrust him aside. Mrs. Carrington held him to keep him from using his teeth. Ray looked into the jar, and saw on the top of its contents his silver pencil. He showed it to Mrs. Carrington.
“Thank heaven, you got it back,” she cried.
Ray tilted the huge dice box and shook it. A score of silver coins rolled out and scattered everywhere.
“For heaven’s sake!” gasped Mrs. Carrington. “Why, Mingo, you’re a little thief!”
She didn’t know the half of it. With no slight effort Ray lifted the heavy jar and turned it mouth down. There was a gleaming cataract of objects, including diamonds, emeralds, rubies and other gems.
Mrs. Carrington fell in a heap beside them. She wept and wept again. But now her aching eyes were cleansed and soothed by those miraculous pearls, the tears of happiness, of lost happiness regained.
When she grew calm enough, still on her knees, she stammered her infinite gratitude to Ray. Then she ran to the telephone and called her husband.
“Oh, darling, darling!” she cried. “Brace yourself for a shock! There’s been a miracle! A miracle! That wonderful Mr. Schindle
r has found every one of the blessed jewels you gave me. I’d rather have them than a million dollars.
“And he found the thief, too! And who do you suppose it was? It was an inside job after all. What’s that you say? Who? Was it Mrs. Bechtel? Oh heavens, no. No! Nor her boy. Nor anybody. Wait! Wait!
“The thief was our own darling child, that imp of the devil, Mingo. While I was downstairs cleaning up, he was upstairs stealing all our jewels and hiding them. He’s such a kleptomaniac that he stole Mr. Schindler’s silver pencil, and we followed the little demon to the one place nobody ever dreamed of looking—that big majolica jar. Well have to send Mingo to the monkey penitentiary for life. Oh darling, darling, hurry home and let me give you the jewels so that you can give them to me again.”
It is wonderful how many things women can express with tears! Whatever would they do without them? Mrs. Carrington had shed floods of tears when her heart was broken and she was mourning herself as already dead of a broken heart and a broken life. Now she shed even more tears, when everything was suddenly heavenly happy. And the hardboiled detective was rainy about the eyes as she poured out on him her blessings. His eyes were dry by the time Carrington reached home and thanked him for his work. Ray bowed himself out in good order and said he would report to the insurance company.
But he had not finished his work of restoring what he had so nearly wrecked.
First he made a supplementary report to Norman Morey. And he did not have to beg Morey not to tell Carrington what he had learned. That was none of the insurance company’s business. Morey was human, too, and had done his duty in saving the company’s forty thousand dollars.
“I owe you an apology, Ray,” he said, “for calling you a softie who believed everything a pretty woman told him. Life is very confusing. Now we see that even the light that lies in woman’s eyes doesn’t always lie.”
That odious menace of blackmail still remained to poison Mrs. Carrington’s sufficiently tormented soul. So Ray called Furlong on the long-distance telephone again, and gave him another commission. He was to go to that house where Dwyer kept the girl who kept him. And, without of course impersonating an official, he was to kind of sort of give the impression that he maybe might be an officer. Then he was to tell the girls that he had the goods on Dwyer for blackmailing a woman in Brooklyn and receiving hot money by mail, the sort of thing that the Post Office Department took a great interest in. Furlong was to ask the girls to tell him where he could find Dwyer. Of course they would never tell him. But they would undoubtedly tell Dwyer.
Ray finished his instructions by asking Furlong to leave his telephone number with the woman of the house so that she could call him up the moment Dwyer appeared, so that Furlong could come and nab him. For which cooperation madame would receive a handsome reward. Furlong listened and said:
“Well, Ray, you’re the boss. But I’ll lay heavy odds that, instead of turning Dwyer in, the woman will be so afraid of him and the law that she’ll warn Dwyer to disappear. He’ll get out of town so fast and so far he’ll never be heard from again.”
Ray had a good long laugh at that—a laugh long enough to reach from his New York office to Furlong’s office in Kansas City. Ray’s only comment was:
“If Dwyer disappeared forever—would that be bad?”
“I get you,” said Furlong, returning the long-distance laughter all the way. “You can consider him gone.”
Dwyer has never been heard from since. A monkey had made a monkey out of an ancient kind of man who had reached a lower degradation than any so-called “lower animal” ever reached.
The latest word Ray had of Mrs. Carrington was that she and her husband were living happily ever after.
The moral of this uninventable story seems to be: there are times when it is actually a good idea even for a detective to yield to the so-called tyranny of tears, and let his heart argue it out with his head.
4.
RAY’S MOST FAMOUS CASE
Few murder stories have been more picturesque, or had more publicity. Few have been more complex or confusing. Baffling as the mystery was before the trial, it has grown more baffling since. Even more mysterious than the murder itself was the conduct of the prosecution before, during, and since the trial. The Oakes case is probably a permanent mystery of more than one fantastic facet.
This is the way it came to Ray Schindler: the newspapers had blazoned the story all around the globe about the knighted multi-millionaire, Sir Harry Oakes, found gruesomely murdered in his bed in his mansion in the Bahamas; his beautiful young daughter, Nancy, had married a fortune-hunting French Count in spite of her father’s fierce protests and warnings; there had been many quarrels; finally the father was viciously slaughtered.
The finger of suspicion pointed straight at the son-in-law. And many circumstances indicated his guilt. To the ignorant, he was only a conscienceless adventurer anyway, and hanging was assumed to be too good for him even without the added excuse of a bungled killing.
The public wanted to believe him guilty. The public prosecutor was convinced of his guilt and eager to prove it.
To Ray Schindler came the grief-stricken daughter. Her fond young heart was torn in two by love for her father and love for her husband. She seemed to be the only one on earth who believed her husband innocent. There seemed to be only one man on earth able to save him from the gallows—the man who, she had heard, was the best detective on earth. She threw herself on his mercy.
Though his heart was touched by her misery, Ray had his standards of honor as well as of mercy. From what he had carelessly read in the newspaper reports, the husband was guilty almost beyond question. In any case Ray would have to go to a distant island under foreign rule with British rules and procedures and no love for American meddlers. The ground had been combed over once and the evidence impounded under guard.
So Ray said to the beautiful, weeping Nancy Oakes:
“I will take the case on one condition: that if I find evidence of your husband’s guilt I will not conceal it or twist it. I will turn it over to the prosecution.”
That was a hard saying. But where else could Nancy turn? She accepted the conditions. But the prosecution had called in the help of another prominent American detective, and he had turned up a fingerprint in the very vicinity of the murder, a fingerprint of the husband! Nothing is more damning than fingerprints and no one has greater faith in them than Ray Schindler.
Also, by the time he arrived on the scene, the prosecutor had built up a case and persuaded the public of the guilt of the accused. In a murder trial, public opinion, though based on hearsay and prejudice and ignorance, is almost all-powerful. The average jury is so swayed by it that the most heinous murderers are often acquitted and received with ovations fitting heroes returning from the wars. Now and then an unfortunate innocent is convicted by acclamation on the flimsiest evidence.
But Ray Schindler’s motto is to avoid making up his mind before the evidence is all in. Above all things, he fights shy of intuitions and inspirations. He goes after his clues with the single-mindedness and deadly concentration of a bloodhound following the scent where it leads and paying no heed to the ideas or the desires of the mob, or the pulling of the leash. The bloodhound lets the scent lead the leash.
As everybody knows who knows anything about that famous trial, it ended in an acquittal. But the accused was still so unpopular that he was ordered out of the Bahama Islands as an undesirable character. And nothing can make a man more unpopular than to get himself acquitted when the public wants to see him swing or sizzle.
In the course of the trial, Ray’s evidence not only discredited the famous detective brought in by the prosecution, but it left the prosecution completely prostrated.
Long afterward Ray Schindler wrote an article in which he stated that, if he were given a little official encouragement and help, he could put his finger and the evidence on the actual murderer. He even wrote a vain appeal to the Duke of Windsor, then Governor of the Bahamas, t
o reopen the case. The Duke’s secretary replied coldly that the Nassau police would handle any further investigation. This was an icy way of saying: “This is our business; mind your own. No trespassers allowed.”
As the story unfolds, the reader may also acquire a theory as to who really killed Sir Harry Oakes. But an effort will be made to tell it as it disclosed itself beneath the keen eyes, the microscopes and the chemical tests of Ray Schindler, his associates, and the practiced analytical mind of Erle Stanley Gardner, the great detective story writer who was also on the spot.
If you like high life with your murder mysteries, here you have it. A king of England gives up his throne to marry “the woman I love.” She was an American woman, too. He takes the title of Duke of Windsor and is made Royal Governor of the Bahamas.
There in the capital city of Nassau, Sir Harry Oakes, whose fortune was estimated at over one hundred million dollars, is found slain and seared by fire in a most grisly manner. The murderer-elect, by popular vote, is a French Count who had married the beautiful American daughter of Sir Harry Oakes as soon as she reached the age of eighteen and could wed without her father’s consent. Even that wedding was later put in question by her suit for an annulment on the ground that the Count was not fully divorced from his first wife.
Mixed with the murder are hints of savage superstitious practices like the voodoo rites of Haiti, and a theory that the actual murder was committed by a native hired for the job.
Who could ask for a murder mystery in more gorgeous surroundings? What writer of Whodunits would dare pile up in fiction such melodramas as fate and the facts heaped together here?
Sir Harry Oakes, born an American, later transferred his allegiance to the king and was knighted. He had begun humbly and built a huge fortune seemingly more for purposes of revenge than ambition. He had made enemies all the way along his long, long trail from the Klondike to the Congo and finally to Nassau in the Bahamas. The legend was that, as a rugged young man, he had once begged a merchant of mining equipment to stake him to some machinery by way of a loan. He was ordered out of the store. Long afterward, when Oakes was rich, he opened a rival establishment and cut prices till the man who had ordered Oakes out of his store was ordered out of his own store by the sheriff.
The Complete Detective Page 8
