This is where the private detective comes in. One of his chief tasks is keeping private affairs private.
Sometimes the blackmailer preys upon the father or mother, husband or wife of the guilty one. Sometimes there has been no real guilt but only a situation that can be made to look ugly in the public prints. Sometimes a man or woman is entangled in an innocent affair that can be made to look atrocious by a description easier to misunderstand than to explain.
One day I had a luncheon engagement with Ray. I received word that he would have to change it to dinner. He had had a sudden call. He was unable to keep the dinner engagement either. I learned the reason two days later.
There was a certain wealthy man who had found an old friend of his without a job and in great need of help. The millionaire gave him a confidential position at a big salary. One day the millionaire received a cablegram saying that a woman in Italy was dying of a slow obscure disease that could be cured only by a certain new drug made only in America. Her doctor implored the millionaire to send some of the drug by airmail at once. The millionaire learned that the drug had been recently put on the list of forbidden narcotics and a heavy penalty placed on the sale of it. The manufacturer, hearing the story, offered to give, not sell, the millionaire a sufficient quantity of the drug. The millionaire told a friend in the State Department, and he consented to put the drug in the diplomatic pouch for England. This was done. The medicine was there placed in another diplomatic pouch and flown to Italy. There another State official gave it to the doctor. He gave it to the patient.
The millionaire felt as glad and proud as a Boy Scout who has done his good deed for the day. He had saved a life without breaking a law.
But the young man he had lifted out of poverty saw a chance to get rich quick. He told the millionaire who had befriended him that he would tell his own version of the whole story to the Narcotic Squad unless the millionaire paid him the tidy sum of $150,000.
The millionaire saw ahead of him a public trial with a blaze of the most unpleasant notoriety. Even if he went to the police himself, there might be very serious difficulties about clearing, not only himself but everybody else involved in the transaction.
So he telephoned to Ray Schindler. Just how Ray silenced the blackmailer is one of the numberless secrets of his busy career. The laws against narcotics were meant to prevent criminals from getting rich by selling forbidden drugs to addicts. The business is a gigantic and a loathsome one, and extracts a frightful revenue from human misery and crime. But the law was not intended to prevent a manufacturer from delivering a narcotic to a physician through an intermediary, especially when nobody makes any profit out of the transfer except the patient.
This was an unusual case; a man blackmailed because of a noble deed for which he asked no recompense. That is one of the most criminal things about criminals: they are so unkind, so ungrateful, so ungracious! They make the life of the virtuous and the industrious so difficult! They ask such high wages for so little work!
The annual amount of hush-money paid to blackmailers is as staggering as it is hard to compute. But it is known that the total runs high into the millions annually.
And catching a blackmailer is like picking up a viper. The captive is more dangerous than ever.
Ray Schindler has called blackmail “one of the major industries of the United States and Europe.” He lists among the easiest victims famous stars of the stage, the screen, and the radio. Bad publicity may bring ruin not only upon them but also upon their backers. A wave of disgrace or obloquy sometimes closes most of the theaters to some unfortunate star. This may mean a loss of millions to the producers and theater owners. It opens a Golconda of wealth to blackmailers and awakens their ingenuity.
The industrious blackmailer does not wait for the mistake to be made. He lures his intended victim into traps and nets stealthily spread. A kind gentleman may befriend a strange girl weeping in distress. A diplomat may be drawn into a conversation for a cocktail, an intimate chat. A hidden camera does the rest. The dictograph is a handy tool for the criminal as well as for his pursuers. A weak and temptable man may be decoyed into an apartment for a farewell drink, and there surprised by an alleged husband with a gun and a blank check book. The pretended wife may weep and implore forgiveness, beg the come-on to save her from disgrace, perhaps from death. Even if he realizes that the woman is in on the game, he thinks of the headlines and buys himself out.
The Mann Act was passed as a blow to the “White Slave” business, an ugly business, indeed; but never as large as advertised. The purpose of the Mann Act was to prevent the transportation of girls across State borders for immoral purposes.
But the Mann Act was welcomed with hushed shrieks of joy by the blackmailers. It opened a new world to them. They watched the trains; they kept lookouts in hotel lobbies; they studied hotel registers with a suspicious eye for instances where “Mr. and Mrs.” really meant “Mr. and Mistress.” They would telegraph to the home town of the man and receive promptly a description of his wife, then compare it with the appearance of his companion. With such ammunition in hand one of the blackmailers may approach the man and call him by name, claim to be a cousin of his wife’s and ask to see her, denounce the imposture and threaten to notify the real wife. The victim buys himself off the hook as cheaply as he can. And the blackmailers usually know how much he can afford.
Ray Schindler has estimated that in New York City alone blackmail amounts to millions a year. He has known of rich men being nicked for ten thousand dollars for one evening’s simplicity.
One case that came to his office concerned a wealthy youth of the highest social position. He loved his fiancée and was true to her after his fashion. When he would leave her he would drop into a nightclub for a nightcap. One night he fell into conversation with a pretty girl there. She was there the next night, and the next. They had a few friendly drinks together; then he gallantly dropped her off at her apartment. He never went beyond the entrance door of her apartment house.
One day as he set out for his office, a menacing male of large bulk accosted him by name and accused him of having alienated the affections of his girl, and threatened suit. To prove that he had grounds for action, he produced a detailed report of the young man’s goings and comings for three months. Emphasis was placed on the fact that the young man always went from his own fiancée to the nightclub where he met the other man’s alleged fiancée.
It was particularly sickening to have the young man’s trusting sweetheart dragged into such a nasty business. And who would believe that he had never made an advance to the nightclub siren? A public scandal would not only wreck his marriage to the girl he sincerely loved, but it would probably kill his invalid mother.
So the young man bought the blackmailer off with a check for ten thousand dollars. Only a week later the fellow demanded fifteen thousand more.
Then, with belated wisdom, the victim appealed to Ray Schindler. Very discreetly Ray studied the nightclub girl. He was convinced that she was ignorant of the way she was being used. Her lover, by the way, was a confederate of the notorious Arnold Rothstein, whose own buddies finally bumped him off.
It is part of Ray’s business to deal with the most murderous criminals. He has to make them afraid of him by weapons more awe-inspiring than the guns they probably have in a shoulder-holster or elsewhere, or the possibilities of a fatal ambush. On this occasion Ray went to Rothstein’s pal and said words of this general tenor:
“Listen, big boy. So and so is my client and I realize you’ve got him over a barrel. It’s only fair to you to say that the minute you file your alienation of affections papers, I’m dropping in at Headquarters to whisper what I know about a certain little bond robbery last February. Here’s my card. When you decide what you’re going to do, call me up!”
Within an hour the man had Ray on the telephone and was saying that he thought that both of them had better call the whole thing off. Ray confesses that he took a chance. He had no legal pro
of of the blackmailer’s share in that bond robbery. Ray calls it “cheating cheaters” and admits that now and then he is wicked enough to deceive deceivers.
According to him, the noblest of all the achievements of blackmailers was the complex game by which a Hindu prince was scared into paying no less than $750,000 to persuade an indignant husband not to sue his wife for divorce because he had broken into a Paris hotel room and found the Prince there with the Englishman’s wife. The neatest thing about it was that it was not the husband who broke in but a pretender. The real husband did not learn of it till five years later.
Ray never had a $750,000 blackmail case to deal with, but he had one in which the very wealthy victim had paid out $40,000 and was being dunned for more before he turned to Ray for salvation from progressive poverty. This case was made the more picturesque by the fact that the blackmailers soon discovered Ray’s interest in the matter and with a rare sense of humor began playing jokes on him and his staff. It was very annoying; but Ray all the more grimly resolved to have the last laugh.
The case was not laid on Ray’s doorstep until his client had suffered humiliation and terror for three months, and forty thousand dollars had been frightened out of him. When thirty thousand more was demanded, to be paid within an hour, he promised to dig it up, and went to his office. There his partner noticed his desperate mood and dug the story out of him.
The partner called the firm’s lawyer and the lawyer called Ray Schindler. He listened to the story while the blackmailers waited. They had said that they would stand in the doorway opposite till their victim fetched the thirty thousand; but, by the time Ray could take a look out of the window, the doorway was empty. The blackmailers had grown footsore or alarmed. This, of course, did not mean that they had withdrawn the threats that had already netted them forty thousand and promised them a life income.
In Ray’s version of the case he gives the young unmarried millionaire the pseudonym of Harrington Harker. It will serve as well as any other. The victim’s story was almost unbelievably innocent. He had met a charming young woman in a nightclub. They met often. He always took her home to the Waldorf-Astoria; but had never gone farther than the lobby or an elevator. She told him she was married—Ray calls her Mrs. Elaine Adams. To Ray, young Harker confessed that he had never asked nor received more than an occasional kiss. He did not want to kiss and tell; but Ray guessed that the woman was willing to kiss and sell.
Ray had an intuition that the fair Elaine did not live at the Waldorf, but simply used one or another of its countless entrances and exits as a runway to her own hiding place.
Harker said he never suspected that his innocent philandering was being taken seriously by the girl’s invisible and unreasonable husband. Then, one morning when he went to Central Park for his regular canter along the bridle paths, he was overtaken by two mounted men, who closed in on him and stopped his horse short. One of them said:
“I’ve got a warrant for your arrest.”
“For what, in God’s name?”
“Playing around with the wife of another man. Mrs. Adams’ husband has squawked to the District Attorney. Get off that goat and we’ll all ride down to Headquarters in a taxi.”
Harker turned his horse over to his groom. By the time the other horses were disposed of, Harker was in a state of panic. His family was famous for its wealth. He was afraid that his mother would die of shock if she read her son’s name in the papers as a home-wrecker.
Even the deputies seemed to take pity on the desperate young man, for one of them said to the other:
“Let’s give the lad a break.”
The other slowly allowed mercy to overrule his high sense of duty. But he put a high price on his honor. He thought he might save Harker from prosecution and exposure, but it would cost twenty thousand dollars to buy off the other men in the way.
To Harker twenty thousand dollars was a cheap price to pay for golden silence. He went to his bank, drew out the amount in cash, paid it over and breathed easily again.
He told himself that if he never saw Mrs. Adams again it would be too soon.
He had two months’ reprieve, and then, one morning as he set out to walk to his office, the two horsemen, now on foot, closed in on him again. They told him that they had not found it easy to buy him off for that twenty thousand; and now the lady’s revengeful husband had sworn out a second warrant.
The two men showed Harker an alleged copy of a front page with headlines to the effect that a “Park Avenue Playboy’s Love Nest” had provoked an “injured husband” to court action. When Harker’s bulging eyes saw this, he nearly fainted. The two men had to hold him up physically as well as financially. They consoled him with the kind word that they could stop the publication; but it would cost thirty thousand dollars.
Poor Harker was a bit short financially and could raise only twenty thousand. The two men graciously accepted it on account.
A month later Harker’s morning walk to his office was again interrupted. His tormentors forced him into a cab and demanded, not only the ten thousand he had cheated them out of, but twenty thousand more. Harker pleaded that he did not have that much cash in the bank, and he would have to put up securities and borrow it. They consented to wait in the doorway opposite.
It was then that Ray Schindler was called in and took over. He had nothing to go on except Harker’s vague descriptions of the two men and the girl. He said he had met Mrs. Adams at an expensive and reputable nightclub. But Ray knew that the proprietor, “Mike Mura,” had a bad name and associated secretly with gangsters.
He had to move cautiously, for the premature arrest of the wrong men would only precipitate the beautiful publicity which Harker had already paid so much to escape. Ray subjected Harker to a study of hundreds of pictures in the Rogues’ Gallery. But they gave no clue to his tormentors, and he had no photograph of Mrs. Adams. She did not re-appear at the nightclub and it took several nights’ work there for Ray’s operatives to learn from another girl where Elaine lived.
The manager of the small hotel was a friend of Ray’s—as who is not?—and he collaborated. He let Ray’s men inspect all the telephone calls from Elaine’s room. The reward of many hours of turning over these records was absolutely nil.
The next source might be the hotel maid who took care of Elaine’s room. She was a friendly soul and Elaine loved to chatter with her and show off her clothes. She received many presents but not from her husband, if she had one at all. She called herself “Miss Adams.” Once Elaine had shown the maid a platinum wristwatch sprinkled with diamonds, and with Elaine’s initials engraved on it. Only, the last letter was B. Which was odd. There was a middle initial, too, but the maid could not recall it. She had noticed, however, from the wrapper that the watch had been sent from a California town named Santa Something.
Since the watch was not available, Ray sent his men to jeweller after jeweller till he found a watch like Elaine’s. He had it photographed and many prints made of it. The next thing was the town the watch came from. There are dozens of Santa Cities in California. But that did not stop Ray. He telephoned his Los Angeles office that he was mailing photographs of the watch and the operatives there were told to begin with the nearest town whose name began with Santa, then spread outward in circles from there.
It was not till Santa Clara was reached that an operative ran down a jeweller who remembered both the sale of the watch and the engraving of the initials. He looked up the name of the man who bought it and it was “Edward L. Jonnas.” He came to Santa Clara every year to buy citrus fruits for a New York commission merchant.
The operative trudged from the jewellers to the hotels and the fruit growers and, by asking skillful questions, secured a good description of Jonnas, and learned the name of the New York house he dealt with; also that the middle initial on the watch was “A.” There still remained the problem of where to find Jonnas.
All this had taken a month of toil and travel, telephoning, photography and the running d
own of endless clues that ran up a dark alley and vanished. It must have been a long and busy month for the blackmailers, too. They had done some sleuthing on their own and had finally detected the detective.
So Harker came to Ray to say that a familiar voice had called him on the telephone to say that it would do him no good to put his case in the hands of detectives. That was all.
The next morning the same voice called him and told him to find a man of a certain description and send him to wait on the third of the front steps of the Hotel Astor with a certain newspaper in his hand. Between 4:30 and 5 that man would be accosted by a representative of the voice. He would show letters, telegrams, and photographs, which could be purchased for a price to be agreed on. The minute description of the messenger whom Harker was warned to send made a stir in Ray’s office, because it was an exact portrait of one of his own operatives. But Harker declared that there had been no telegrams, letters or photographs involved in his little affair with Elaine.
Ray sent to the rendezvous the operative the blackmailers had asked for, and had two other operatives watching at a distance. Nobody appeared.
The next day, however, the mysterious voice upbraided Harker for not “playing fair”—a sweet phrase from such a source! The voice described Ray’s two other operatives who had been sent to tail the blackmailers. It was a case of the tailer tailed and it proved that Ray’s office was under close observation, especially as the voice gave Harker another minute description of another of Ray’s operatives and told Harker to have him and no other on the Hotel Astor steps that afternoon.
Meekly Ray obeyed the orders of the criminals he was trying to identify. He sent the operative the crooks had demanded but had him watched by two more men. These operatives, however, had been lent to Ray by a former manager of his bureau who had opened his own office.
The Complete Detective Page 15
