The Amazing Web

by Harry Stephen Keeler

  Chalmers’ answer was cryptic. “There are all sorts of cards on the deck, my friend, and I have only my own hand to inspect, remember.” He paused. “All right, Crosby. Let’s go. I’ll write you out a cheque for that retainer before you leave the cell here. And one more thing, Crosby, before I send you out to the lock-up keeper’s desk for my cheque-book. I don’t know how far this thing is going to go. We’ll simply let matters come up as they come. Get this well understood, however. I don’t intend to take the witness-stand under any conditions. I also refuse to answer any questions, even to yourself. As to a certain letter or letters written to van Slyke, and other things which are going to pop up, I have nothing to say. My lips are sealed. I’ll give you what defence I have — the names of two witnesses. At no time, now or later, are you to ask me any questions. Have you got it?”

  David Crosby rose suddenly from the wooden bench. Chalmers watched him with growing uneasiness.

  “Chalmers, you’ve got the idea that you’re hiring a valet or a butler,” were his surprising words. “I don’t know where you ever derived the impression that you can employ a professional man and dictate to him as though he were some sort of an underling. I’m going to let you turn your affairs over to another man, and do myself exactly what Weidekamp would have done had anyone tried to treat him like a 20 dollar a week valet — relinquish your case altogether. Good day, Mr. Chalmers.” He raised his hand towards the button that connected with the lock-up keeper’s desk outside.

  Quickly Chalmers crossed the intervening space between them. He put both his hands on the other’s shoulders.

  “Crosby, forgive me. I apologize. I’m a bit upset to-day. I want you and no one else in this big town to look out for me. I’m not going to get out of this mess at any preliminary hearing. There — there — well, there are reasons. That’s all. I — I cannot say more.” He struggled for some sort of an effective argument. “Crosby, before you go, let me ask you a question — and don’t be insulted. Remember, Melford is a friend of mine and a friend of yours. Now he’s told me something of a certain odd scheme of yours. Wait — don’t be angry. This is of interest to you, I’m sure. How much money have you saved up toward that scheme — that — search of the entire South Sea Islands?”

  The lawyer regarded him for a long minute, through partly closed eyes. It was plain that he was slightly nettled, but at the same time puzzled by the query.

  “Six thousand dollars,” he said. He waited a moment. “Well, what about it?”

  “Remember that I have nothing to say for or against or about that scheme of yours. Now let me ask you just one more question. The biggest obstacle in your way is a ship, isn’t it?”

  Crosby’s eyes bored through the other man. He was still angry.

  “It is. What about it?”

  “Will — will you sit down a minute, Crosby, please? I apologize for my attitude of a minute past.”

  Crosby dropped down on the hardwood bench. He said nothing. Chalmers spoke quickly, a bit nervously.

  “Crosby, 3,000 dollars might mean something to you in that scheme of yours, but I know full well it wouldn’t solve it by any means. I know something of sailing and crews and the expenses of ocean navigation. Been all over the world. I’m a deep-sea man. Now listen to me. You’ll have to take my word for a moment on these details — until you look ‘em up, providing you care to. As I told you before, my uncle is Peter Chalmers of Omaha. He’s rated at over a half-million dollars. Uncle Peter is dying at a private sanatorium at Plattsmouth, Nebraska. They say he hasn’t a chance to live but a few more months at the most. Among the assets of his estate is the oil-burning yacht, King Midas. He had to take it in payment of a huge business debt from George W. Markle, the Boston millionaire who originally built it. It’s a 10,000 ton displacement vessel. Twin-screw. Supposed to be the most mechanically efficient vessel ever constructed. And speed? Well, enough to tell you that it’s made New York to St. Croix in two and a half days. Equipped with electric searchlight, and 50,000 dollars worth of accessories. Registered under uncle’s name, of course.”

  Chalmers paused for breath and continued. “The King Midas just now is being rented out on a month to month lease to a corporation which runs it as a pleasure boat, taking tourist parties down to the West Indies and back. Think of it, Crosby — a thoroughbred racehorse being rented out to carry kids around a track! That’s just what it is. And the reason — well, it’s a white elephant, that’s why. Now, Crosby, when poor old uncle passes over, that yacht goes over to me. I’m the only heir he’s got. And so I’m going to make you a mighty big proposition now. Remember, I know very little about your South Sea Island scheme, but I do know that with your capital and the ship — that is, a mechanical phenomenon like the King Midas — you’d be just about ready to start out on your search of a year or more. And I’m going to offer you a big stake now — and — and remember I’m — I’m ready to come off my high horse as well. You’re the exact man I want to handle my case. I don’t want to look further. Now I propose we forget our talk of 3,000 dollars. I want to put you in the way of a big thing, a case of everything if you win — nothing if you lose. Then you’ll fight like hell for my interests. Take my case, carry me through this mess, accede, please, to my request that I be asked no questions now or ever or at any time by you, and I stand ready at uncle’s death — if you pull me through clean — to turn over that yacht King Midas to you under an indefinite lease, you to use it — one — two — three — five years, if you have to — free of charge, the vessel not to be turned back to me until you’ve finished your quest. This to be the fee, only providing you pull me through clean — with my skirts clear — if they try to try me before a jury, and if they hang me or imprison me, damn them, you to get nothing but the 250 dollars that I stand ready to write you out a cheque for now. I’m putting a big thing your way, because I want you.”

  Crosby, as Chalmers spoke, had opened his cool eyes wider and wider. Now, however, he did not show any further signs of rising in his resentment and ringing the bell at the edge of the cell door.

  “Two questions, Chalmers,” he bit out as the other finished. “Are you willing to sign a contract embracing the offer you’ve just made, said contract to be effective, of course, only if your uncle dies and makes you his heir?”

  Chalmers nodded. “Of course I am.”

  “Chalmers, I’m going to accept your offer. There’s a number of chances I’m taking, but I’m taking ‘em with my eyes open. Somehow, I don’t think you killed van Slyke, but you act as though you’ve a good deal to conceal. If you want to stay off the witness-stand, if you want to keep your mouth shut to matters about which I might want desperately to question you privately, it’s your own affair. This much is certain — I’ll do the very best I can with what I have to work upon. That’s all.” He rose. “Now I suppose you’ll want your cheque-book from the lock-up keeper. And this afternoon I’ll send over a type-written contract after I’ve talked with Jim Melford. You can sign it and return it by the lad that brings it over.”

  “Entirely satisfactory,” said Chalmers, a faint sigh of relief escaping him. “And I’ll sign that retainer now if you’ll get my cheque-book for me.”

  Crosby rang for the lock-up keeper. He left the cell door with him. The two men’s feet could be heard echoing up the stone corridor. Chalmers sank down on the edge of the hard bench once more. He dropped his chin disconsolately in his hands.

  “Melford is right. That young fellow makes up in fight what he lacks in years,” he ruminated. “And I’ve got him hooked up on a proposition where he’ll have to fight to win.”

  CHAPTER VI

  THE OPENING OF THE BATTLE

  AT last Archibald Chalmers, whose strange and baffling case was to cause, perhaps, more breakfast-table arguments than any city happening of small or large degree, was on trial for murder.

  Close upon three months Chalmers had been locked in the county jail. And close upon three months had speculation been rife as to t
he outcome of his trial. The papers which at one time had been more or less evenly divided as to Chalmers’ guilt were, now that the trial was about to begin, more cautious in their captions, yet less parsimonious in the use of their red ink, for the trial of a society silk-stocking who is equally at home on two sides of a great ocean makes for good news.

  The last of the jurymen had been accepted at noontime. The court-room was packed, not a seat being vacant. Outside, a brisk light afternoon snow was drifting against the window-panes, for it was only April. Yet the chill blasts of the end of winter had not deterred the city crowds from turning out in full force. Some, it could be perceived, saw only that one of the city’s youngest and best known society men was to be tried for his life; while others, it was plain, saw only the interesting clash that must ensue for such a rich prize as a silk-stocking’s freedom between Ballmeier — “Blue-Bow” Ballmeier — who during the time that the gallows were still in use in Cook County, had hanged Eckeburg, Cooley, Kane, Johnson, and a whole score of alleged murderers, and David Crosby, a former associate of the Great Weidekamp, an unknown, who either through a lucky fluke or sprouting ability had successfully cleared Stanley Talcott of the famous bond theft case.

  Ballmeier was wearing his famous blue-bow tie!

  “Blue-Bow “Ballmeier they had begun to call him back in 1915, when he had first climbed into the assistant State’s attorneyship, and someone had fortuitously discovered that in each case where Ballmeier had got his man, so to speak, he had been wearing that famous blue-bow which had been his notice to the world that the case was his.

  He made an odd, incongruous figure as he stood at the prosecutor’s side of the lawyers’ table, addressing the jury composed of the usual heterogeneous twelve men. In age, forty-eight or forty-nine, his short hair showing streaks of iron-grey. Head bullet-like, set low on his shoulders; little short squat body; vest wrinkled and heavy gold watch-chain clanking across his breast. Eyes a bit squinty, but keen, dangerous, snapping, intensified by that alert forward thrust of the head.

  And the strange gamut of unlike faces, defendant, prosecutor, jury and audience, was completed by that of Judge Lockhart, who with his rather stern face, made even more stern by his gold-rimmed eyeglasses and their long black silk cord, gazed down thoughtfully, chin in hand, listening to the opening arguments of the man with the blue-bow tie.

  Crosby, sitting next to his client at the long polished table, gazed curiously around him at the crowded court-room. With all his faculties concentrated on Ballmeier and the latter’s opening speech, he found himself still wondering if it were all true, all real.

  And from this source of wonderment his eyes, resting absently on The Woman, brought his reflections, Ballmeier’s speech notwithstanding, to that other source of puzzlement. Who was that veiled woman of thirty-five who sat sometimes in the first row, sometimes in the second, sometimes in the third, but never out of earshot of every word. Back of the black thick veil her features were cut off from the stare of those around her, but he, standing on the steps of the Criminal Court Building, that first morning after the picking of the jurymen had begun, had seen that patrician face as she stepped from the vestibule and raised the all-concealing veil for a moment to signal a taxicab. Thirty-five she undoubtedly was, no more and hardly less. The features refined, the nose and chin and lips those of a delicately reared woman. Eyes a light hazel, and hair a chestnut brown. He saw her now as, while Ballmeier punctuated his remarks by emphatic gestures of his arm, she leaned forward in her fur-trimmed suit, and it persisted in irritating him, the never-broken presence of the veiled woman, almost the first to arrive in the court-room in the morning, so the bailiff had smilingly told Crosby, and the last to leave it after the day’s wrangling over the jurymen was ended.

  But Crosby’s reveries were suddenly broken into by what he knew were Ballmeier’s last words.

  “And so I say to you, gentlemen,” he pronounced, “the State will produce competent witnesses to prove not only the presence of the motive of this skulking crime, but will prove as well that this man Chalmers, who refused to talk at his preliminary examination and arrest, was at that point on the night of January 21 when the shot was fired. And when the State has produced its last piece of evidence, there will be no course left to a jury of intelligent thinking men but to bring in one verdict. And that verdict, I have no hesitation whatever in predicting, will be murder in the first degree. The State has finished.”

  Crosby, with a reassuring smile to the pink-faced clubman at his elbow who leaned forward with a pained expression on his face, rose to his feet.

  “Gentlemen, the State alleges it will prove certain matters of motive, opportunity and what not. All the motives in the world to commit a murder, all the opportunity, are not worth a nickel if the man accused of the crime was not at the scene of the crime, and if the witnesses who so testify cannot be shaken. Rupert van Slyke, my client’s former friend and one-time college mate, whom he is accused of having shot dead at ten o’clock in the evening of January 21 last, was undoubtedly murdered, we’ll all agree. But if my honourable confrère here can prove that my client can so juggle a gun that it will shoot its bullet some eight and a half miles around a number of twists and turns, down some stairways and up again, I make a personal request of you that you send Archibald Chalmers straight to the electric chair in the county jail, and I’ll pull the switch myself; for only with such an example of adroit long-distance shooting, as the defence will prove, could Archibald Chalmers have murdered Rupert van Slyke.”

  He sat down. It was a bold and dramatic speech. The defendant winced visibly. The jury stiffened up and looked just a little more interestedly at this young erect man in the tweed suit who gave his address with such a daring form of expression.

  The first witness called by Ballmeier was an undersized thin little man, slightly bald on top and with a cringing, anxious air about him. In answer to the usual preliminary questions he gave the name of Joseph Smalley and his occupation as that of waiter at the Sportsmen’s Club on Plymouth Court.

  “Where were you on the night of January 14, between the hours of eight in the evening and twelve midnight?”

  “I was at the Sportsmen’s Club carrying on my duties, sir.”

  “Never mind the ‘sir.’ Will you name to the jury two men concerned in this trial who are members or were members of the Sportsmen’s Club?”

  “I’m thinking, sir, you mean Mr. van Slyke, who was murdered, and Mr. Chalmers, who is on trial.”

  “Will you tell the jury in your own words what you heard take place that night between these two men?”

  Joseph Smalley turned toward the jury. “I was on my way to the parlour about nine o’clock, carrying a tray of ices for some visiting ladies. I was just going past the open door of the smoking-room. I caught sight of Mr. van Slyke and Mr. Chalmers standing alone by the big window, facing each other as though they were angry, had had a fight or something. I heard Mr. Chalmers say: ‘Van Slyke, you ought to be killed, and for the price of a Mexican postage stamp, I’d put a bullet through your skull.’ “Smalley stopped. “That’s all, I guess?”

  Asked Ballmeier: “You hurried on then with your ices, and heard no more?”

  Smalley nodded half to the jury. “I — I couldn’t stand in the door and gape at a gentleman’s quarrel, sir. It — it wouldn’t be right, sir. I went on to the parlour with the ices for the ladies.”

  Ballmeier stood thinking, his lips pursed up. “Witness for the State excused,” he said suddenly and abruptly, and to the obvious surprise of the onlookers sat down in his chair after having questioned his witness only three short minutes.

  Crosby, hands in pockets, gazing out of the window, began his examination. He appeared nonchalant, even bored with his task. He made no attempt to elicit any contradictions in the very simple story told by the waiter. Indeed, his first question appeared to have no connection whatever with the incident Smalley had related.

  “What are your earnings as wait
er at the present time at the Sportsmen’s Club, Mr. Smalley?”

  Smalley looked surprised. He half hesitated, then answered: “Sixty dollars a month and board, sir.”

  “What were they prior to December 1 last year?”

  Smalley looked puzzled. “They ran around 100 dollars a month and board before that.”

  “This was due to the stringent anti-tipping rule instituted at the Sportsmen’s Club by the committee in charge of its management, was it not?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Who was the chairman of that committee who induced them to pass a rule which cut 40 dollars a month off your income?”

  “Mr. Chalmers.” There was an appreciably vindictive tone in the waiter’s voice as he bit out the reply.

  Ballmeier was springing to his feet like a shot. “That last question, your honour, is an insult to a credible witness,” he bellowed. “I object.”

  “Objection sustained,” said Judge Lockhart pleasantly. “I can’t see that that should be interjected at all, Mr. Crosby.”

  Crosby gazed up at the bench. “Very well, your honour. I withdraw the question gladly.” He gazed out of the window a long moment. Then turning to Smalley he smiled reassuringly at him. “Excused, Mr. Smalley,” he said. His cross-examination had taken even less time than the three minutes consumed by Ballmeier.

  The next witness was Pat O’Brien, the check-room boy of the Sportsmen’s Club. He was a fresh-faced Irish boy of about seventeen, with blue eyes, coal-black hair, and ruddy countenance that shone from a too generous application of soap. His story was a corroboration of that just told by Smalley. Concluding with him, Ballmeier flipped a paper over his table. He smiled. “That’s all, Pat. You’re excused. Answer any questions the attorney for the defence asks.”

  Again Crosby made no attempt to elicit either contradiction or discrepancy. Instead he braced his shoulders and took a good long breath. He wondered just how far he would get with his next question — his one and only line of logical attack — before Ballmeier, the ever-watchful, would nip that same question in the bud.