“Neither do I against you. I am planning to go back to Denmark in about a month. ‘My native country, thee,’ and all that sort of thing. Before I start, I have a favor to ask of you.”
“What is it?”
“I want to get married.”
Brant smiled and drummed his fingers on the desk.
“That’s very laudable,” he answered. “Marriage is often an excellent asset to a man’s success and honesty.”
“Quite so. Have I your permission to marry the young lady of my choice, under honorable conditions?”
“Certainly! Why ask me?”
“There’s a very special reason, Mr. Brant.”
“Which is—”
“She happens, at present, to be under indictment for forgery in this city, and out on bail. This forgery she committed without my knowledge or consent, in a kind of moment of inadvertence, so to speak. Her bail is two thousand dollars. I’m her bondsman—indirectly. Well?”
“Well?”
“I want the indictment quashed and the bail bond returned. She could jump bail, easily enough, and I could afford to lose two thousand dollars without serious inconvenience. But that doesn’t suit my purpose. First, because two thousand dollars is really money; and second because forgery’s an extraditable offense, and I don’t intend to have my wife a fugitive from justice. Therefore, I’m asking you to do me this favor.”
“Well, you are a cool one, I must say!” exclaimed the district attorney.
“Very true. Will you arrange the matter for me?”
“I like your nerve!”
“I’m glad of that, Mr. Brant. It’s helped you before now. Please make a note of my fiancée’s case. It’s docketed as No. 327, for the spring term. And—”
“Why, this is preposterous!” cried Brant, reaching for the push button. “Good day, sir!”
“Wait,” smiled Vestine, gently pushing back the other’s hand. “Suppose you refuse me, what then?”
“Why—why—”
“Imagine the disastrous effect on you, if the facts of my trial and conviction—the inside facts—should come out.”
“What d’you mean?”
“I mean,” answered Vestine, with not a trace of emotion, “that if you refuse me what I ask, I shall positively have to tell you the truth about yourself.”
“What truth?”
“Truth that you won’t want the opposition newspapers to get hold of. Will you quash the indictment?”
“Certainly not!”
Vestine sighed, as if with regret for Brant’s obstinacy.
“Too bad,” said he. “You force me to disclose facts that might so easily have remained hidden. Facts that will forever destroy your peace of mind and your confidence in—well, in certain persons you might prefer to trust. Before I tell you, I ask again whether you will do what—”
“Why, this is insanity! I should say not!”
“It can all be done very quietly. ‘No bill’ is a formula covering a multitude of errors. And I am prepared to make restitution on the check forged by the young lady. Then away we go, back to Denmark, and all is merry as the traditional marriage bell. What do you say, Mr. Brant?”
“I say this interview is ended! And do you realize you’re trying to intimidate me, to suborn justice? Do you know what the consequences of that may be to you?”
“My dear Mr. Brant, pray listen to reason,” persisted Vestine. “I assisted you in your marital program, and brought happiness to your wife and you. Now I am asking a little reciprocation, that’s all. In the name of your excellent wife, I beg you will allow another woman to become mine, free and clear.”
“See here, Enemark, or whoever you are,” rapped out the district attorney, “we’re not going to discuss this any further. My wife’s name isn’t going to be dragged into any matter by a man who—”
“Sh!” smiled the Dane imperturbably. “My good young man, I see you are one of those unfortunate beings who can’t be led, but must be driven. Well, then, on your own head be it. The fact is—”
“I don’t want to hear your ‘facts!’ I’ve heard enough, had enough of you. I advise you to go, now, before—”
“The fact is, Mr. Brant, in that famous case of yours I was what your American slang so picturesquely calls ‘the fall guy,’ that made the corner stone of your success, I was bought and paid for in the market—bought and paid for, like a herring, by your esteemed father-in-law. And the price paid for me was just exactly—”
VI.
“That’s a damned lie!” cried Brant passionately, starting up.
“The price paid for me was just exactly fifty thousand dollars which I at once very securely invented in Danish securities,” Vestine calmly finished. He, too, stood up. “With accrued interest, and the rates of exchange as they now are, I am comfortably well off ‘in my ain countree.’ I have exchanged a life of chance and insecurity for one of respectability and competence. I no longer need continue any activities that might bring me into conflict with the law.”
“You—you—” choked the district attorney, but could articulate nothing.
“I have purchased a controlling interest in a reform newspaper at Aarhus, Denmark,” smiled Vestine. “My wife-to-be, whom you will release, will help me do uplift work—quite like yours, that is perfectly safe and pays fine dividends, as Mr. Cozzens, the Honorable Mr. Cozzens, well knows. As your humble servant and fall guy, I ask you the one favor in question.”
“Fall guy, nothing! It’s a damned lie!” Brant had grown quite livid with agitation. His hands twitched.
“Please phone the Honorable Cozzens,” requested Vestine. “Ask him to come to this office for a few minutes. And tell him to bring Best-policy Bogan with him. Say Mr. Vestine is here, spilling immense numbers of appalling beans. Go on, Mr. Brant, call your father-in-law, who ‘framed’ you to success.”
Brant gasped, paled, reached for the phone, but did not take it up. Suddenly he sat down, with an oath.
“It’s—it’s all a—”
“Of course,” laughed Vestine. “All a fairy story of mine. Hans Christian Andersen, my esteemed compatriot, isn’t in it with me as a raconteur, is he? By no means! For that reason I am so intimately acquainted with the way the first clue was fed you; with all the details leading up to the arrest; with a score of other factors in the case, as I’ll prove directly. For that reason I am—”
“Hold on!” choked Brant. “What number did you say that case was?” His eyes looked hunted. “That case you—the case of that woman?”
“My fiancée, you mean?”
“Yes, your fiancée.”’
“Ah, that’s better. It is No. 327, on the spring list. I see your memory needs refreshing. I can refresh it to any extent you may need. And you’ll attend to the matter at once?” Brant nodded.
“I’ve had enough of you,” said he hoarsely. “Get out! I wish you were both in hell!”
“On the contrary, we’re leaving it for good. Well, I’ll expect you to take action inside of twenty-four hours. That will square everything. I squared the bank, squared your highly necessitous legal record, squared myself with fifty thousand dollars of your esteemed father-in-law’s money—which really bought you your present success as well as my own—and squared your father-in-law.”
Vestine smiled at Brant, who, disarmed before him, stood there speechless and staring.
“Just one more thing before I go,” said the Dane. “This case represents a very pretty mathematical problem. It is known as the Theorem of Pythagoras. Mr. Cozzens and you and I form a triangle. Perhaps I may state it better by saying we three are the three sides of a right triangle. I insist on being the hypotenuse, or longest side. I’m the hypotenuse, because the square of the hypotenuse equals the squares of the other two sides, added. And I’m going to be squared, now. I’m going square. Hope you and the Honorable Cozzens are, too.”
Speaking, he drew from his pocket a slip of paper, a blue check, and looked at it; and as he looked, he no
dded.
“No more prison for mine, thank you,” said he. “Under your law, a man can’t be twice put in jeopardy of his life or liberty for the same crime. Even though guilty, if he’s tried and acquitted, that lets him out. So I’m safe now. Therefore, I don’t mind telling you—”
“What?”
“See this check?”
“What is it?”
“It’s the one that Markwood Hinman cashed. The one that was taken from Henry Kitching, after he had been knocked cold in the alley.”
“The forged check that—that disappeared?”
“Yes.”
“But how did you—”
“Listen, my dear young man,” answered the Dane. “What I got for being the fall guy, and agreeing to be tried by you before a fixed jury—facts that your father-in-law will verify—was a good deal more than fifty thousand dollars. I got—”
“What else? What more?”
“Perpetual immunity. Now you know. But you will never dare tell the world. That would ruin you. But now you understand.”
He struck a match, lighted the check, and held it till it flared. He dropped the ashes into the wastebasket, picked up his hat and gloves, and turned toward the door.
“Here, wait a minute!” gulped Brant “What—what’s the idea? Where did you get that check—and what do you mean by immunity, if—if you aren’t the man that—that killed—”
“Ah, but I am, you see,” smiled Vestine impassively. “Good-by!”
THE SUPREME GETAWAY
Originally published in People’s Magazine, October 1916.
“Serene, indifferent to fate.” Slatsey leaned back with a sigh of almost perfect bliss in the huge, padded Morris chair and drew at his priceless panatela.
Dr. Bender, in the depths of a leather rocking chair, his slippered feet on the table, smiled with beatitude.
For their rooms in the extreme privacy of the neat little Hotel de Luxe were marvels of bachelor comfort.
On the table reposed a tray with fragmentary remnants of a delectable feed—always including Pod’s ultimate joy, rich rice pudding with lots of butter and cream, and with fat raisins of the juiciest.
“Pretty smooth dump, this,” grunted Pod, with another sigh. During the past weeks of inactivity and gorging, he had put on a trifle of forty or fifty pounds.
“Me for the De Looks, every time! Ever since the big gilt dropped into our kicks, after that Vanderpool race, an’ we stowed away, I’ve been strong for the resher-shay stuff they hand out here. The way they act certainly makes a hit with muh!”
“And no fly-cops butting in, either,” added Ben. “I tell you, Pod, this con-throwing isn’t such a much, beside the real refinements of a home like this. Now that we’ve brought home the bunting, me for squaring it, a bundle of A-1 bonds, and respectability.
“That’s my dope—that, and a continuation of this chow, with a little something dry on the side. What more could a couple of honest, retired congents require?”
Pod sighed again, still more deeply; but this sigh held less of happiness than the first.
Bender’s reference to “home” had stirred the smoldering coals of a new sentiment in his huge heart—love-coals, now being blown upon by Birdy McCue.
And in Pod’s disturbed mind visions began to rise. Not even the memories of rice and raisins could quite smother the growing flame.
Birdy was the pals’ own particular waitress. Her complexion was of cream and rose-petals, her eyes a May-sky blue, her luxuriant hair a yellow wherein no H2O2 had ever mingled its corrupting influence.
Birdy’s bare arm was firm and rounded and very white, also her V-cut waitress’s shirtwaist disclosed a full throat, and her apron-straps rested over a more than Junoesque bosom.
In addition to all this, an occasional glimpse of her ankle as she swung in and out the double-doors of the dining room disclosed it to be of that trim and silk-stockinged variety which oft-times leads to reveries.
In fine, Birdy was one buxom, healthy, beautiful young woman, full of life and the joy of life, weighing-one hundred and forty-two, age twenty-five, ripe and fair—yes, a peach.
Pod sighed for the third time, very heavily, and forgot to smoke. Had his rubicund face been capable of it, he would have paled slightly.
Ben shot a quick, keen glance at him, by the mellow light of the frosted electric table-lamp. His brow wrinkled. Did he, too, sigh; or was it an extra deep inhalation of the perfumed cigarette-smoke he loved so well?
Pod noticed neither the look nor the possible sigh of his running-mate. For he was thinking—of Birdy; pondering on the blissful existence of the past few weeks, so warm, well-fed, and secure, disturbed only by the gnawings of the insistent love-bug which, its period of . . . incubation now past, was beginning to bite in real earnest.
He was mentally reviewing the situation. He had, well he knew, made no false step; he felt himself in favor with his Juno.
The first day at the De Luxe he had slipped her a five-spot, from an obese roll.
“This is just kind of a starter, kid,” he had remarked nonchalantly. “I’m an extensive feeder, an’ I want you to remember me. I can talk to a chicken egg cassy-roll louder than any man in Manhat.
“I can reach further an’ stab a pie deeper than a Mafia knifing a snitch, an’ I hold the international rice-puddin’ long-distance record, bar none.
“Crab-meat is where I live, see? I’ll stow away grouse and truffles against all comers. Are you on? You be the fixin’ kid and keep things comin’; shove a little chick lunch up to the room every p.m. about eleven; let me do the bill o’ fare through, an’ repeat, an’ you’ll gather. Got it?”
“I’m on!” she had smiled with a dazzle of white teeth. “And your friend?”
“Oh, him? Say, he’s dyspeptic. A good fella, you know, but—It’s me that’s the bear on eats. So chase ’em in lively, kiddo, and—you know!”
Birdy had remembered, and had chased ’em in. Every night, too, the tray had come up to No. 18 with succulent dainties piled; and not once had there been dearth of sugared rice-pudding and raisins simply bursting with juice.
And the love-bug, hidden among all those ambrosial dainties, had bitten deep. Now Pod was simply one vast culture-medium for the virus. Every ounce of his three hundred and fifty-seven pounds was potentially enamored of a goddess who could steer such eats to him. Which made the case extremely serious.
“Say, Ben!”
“Huh?”
Pod only shifted uneasily in the huge chair, and sucked at his smoke, which had gone out.
“Oh, nothin’,” he mumbled. “I was just thinkin’, that’s all.”
About a week after this first faint flapping of the wings of self-exposition, a wonderful September moon, full and round and golden, shone through the heat of the city haze and flooded the windows of the pals’ sitting room. They sat smoking, lights out, with their feet on the sill; and the magic of the night, the orb, the breeze, stirred Slats to confidences.
“Say, Ben,” he commenced once more, embarrassed as a schoolboy. He could face the world with a smile, and “con” it without batting an eye; but to open his huge heart to his pal caused the sweat to bead his brow. Uneasily he mopped it. “Ben?”
“Huh?”
“Say—you an’ me—we—you know.”
“Know what? Uneasy? Want to beat out on the pike again, and put the trimming tools to work once more? Forget it! All off, Bo! We—”
“Back up! You’re in wrong! You an’ me, we’ve been runnin’-mates now for ten or twelve years. We’ve nicked high an’ panhandled low. Sometimes we’ve been on the outside, lookin’ in, sometimes the reverse.
“We’ve got ours in about every known country in the world, an’ some unknown countries; we’ve laid on velvet an’ again on the rods. Our little mob of two has certainly been some swell mob, an’ you’ve been one classy pal, but—well—”
“Well, what?” demanded Ben, with a sharp, half-guilty glance at the huge bulk beside
him in the moonlight. “What you got on your chest?”
“I—this—I mean, this single life proposition ain’t the silky frame-up it’s touted to be, after all,” Pod continued hoarsely.
“When a gink is young an’ everythin’s fallin’ his way, he naturally rolls away from anythin’ permanent in the skirt line. All right! But when the ivories begins to shy off and the noble brow begins to connect with the neck, right over the dome of the bean—aw, nothin’ to it, kid, nothin’ to it!”
Slats made an out-sweep with his huge fist, as though to drive dull bachelorhood away, and sighed powerfully. “It’s then a man gets ripe to tumble for something smooth in the she-line, Ben! It’s then he’s the fall guy for the cozy home idea! Say! Ain’t you never framed it, what? Ain’t you never fell for none o’ this here cream stuff, yourself?”
Ben only shifted uneasily in his chair, and grunted something unintelligible.
One might have thought a sudden chill of hostility had all at once fallen over him; but if so, Slats took no heed. Instead, with a rapt smile at the moon and a new timbre in his mighty voice, he went on resistlessly:
“Love, ah, love! It’s some best bet, believe me. It’s a right steer, an’ no come-back! Love builds the cottage where the birds do a warble an’ they’s ivy round the door, like in them illustrated songs, Ben.
“Love comes across with the prattle of innocent voices an’ the patter of feet that ain’t never hiked on no White Ways. Love greets you at the door with a glad fin, after you’ve had the rough toss outside.
“It bats you on the knob with baby mitts an’ whispers ‘Dad!’ in your receiver. It sets on your knee an’ hands you a kiss, front o’ the fireplace when the snow is blowin’ outside. Oh, it’s the smooth proposition, kid, surest thing you know!”
“Uh-huh?”
“Nix on this rovin’, Ben! Nix, not, no more! No more raw deals. All it means is, even hidin’ up like here, always afraid somebody’s goin’ to cook us, after all.
“It means stir, in time; a slip-up, somewhere, some day; and for a finish, the slab an’ the table. I been thinkin’, kid, thinkin’ long an’ hard.
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