The Amazing Web

by Harry Stephen Keeler

  “Pat, did you ever get up and give a short speech at a certain private meeting held in the basement of the Sportsmen’s Club on or about the 2nd of January and attended by every one of the employees of the Club from the chamber-maids down to check-boy — yourself — in which it was unanimously agreed and even computed that the employees of the club were being mulcted out of exactly 6,600 dollars a year on account of the successful activities toward the abolishing of tipping instituted by Mr. Chalmers?”

  Ballmeier’s rise to his feet was that of a blue-hued sky-rocket. His voice was the roar of a lion.

  “Object, your honour. The defence is again inserting innuendoes regarding the motives of these trustworthy witnesses in testifying.”

  Lockhart spoke from the bench. “I don’t see that I can allow the witness to answer a question like that, Mr. Crosby. It suggests too strongly a motive of personal malice in the trial.”

  “I knew of an innocent defendant once, your honour,” returned Crosby quietly, “who was sent to the penitentiary solely because the malice of the chief witness against her didn’t creep out in the trial. But I withdraw the question which causes Mr. Ballmeier such perturbation.” He waved his hand. “Excused.” And he sat down while Pat O’Brien hastily clambered down from the witness-stand.

  The prosecutor, aided by the judge, had won the two small preliminary tilts. A brief lull followed. Ballmeier shuffled with some papers.

  But Ballmeier’s dogged, unruffled mien, as he sat at the counsel’s table, showed that if he were preparing to lay the keystone of the State’s arch, it would be laid upon a sufficiently strong foundation to hold it from crashing to earth. Yet crash to earth it somehow must, and crash into fine fragments it somehow must, if ever the King Midas were to scour the Southern Seas for the clue to Lindell Trent.

  CHAPTER VII

  THE “YELLOW DOG” EXHIBIT

  BALLMEIER’S next stone in his arch was Mrs. Maude Ganniston, who described herself as a widow residing one door south of the old van Slyke mansion in which Rupert van Slyke had lived alone with a servant. Mrs. Ganniston was a plump woman of about forty-five, a little perturbed at testifying before all these people. Her story was to the effect that she had lived next to the van Slyke residence for twenty years, knew Rupert van Slyke grow from Eton collars and boarding-schools to the age of thirty-three, at which he had met his death. Her recital of the events of the night of the murder, as brought out by Ballmeier’s questions, as simply and solely that while she was lying in bed trying to get some sleep that night, she had heard a shot, and one shot only, which appeared to be close in the neighbourhood, and that she fixed the time as exactly ten o’clock because the chimes of St. Ignatius’ Church, a block away, were ringing while the shot had sounded. When she was turned over to Crosby for cross-examination, instead of trying to attack any detail of her story he proceeded to bring out and emphasize the exact points to which she had just testified for the prosecution.

  “Sure you only heard one shot, Mrs. Ganniston?”

  “Only one.”

  “Sure you hadn’t dropped asleep and heard the nine o’clock chimes or the eleven o’clock or the twelve o’clock chimes, for instance?”

  “No, indeed. I hadn’t gone to bed at nine, you see. And I happened to get up, after hearing the peculiar noise, to set my clock by the chimes. But my clock was right. It was exactly ten o’clock.”

  “Which means, then, that you heard one shot only, and that shot at exactly ten o’clock?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Excused.”

  The beaming look which Ballmeier radiated down from his side of the table showed that Crosby’s definite fixing of the time of the shot as ten o’clock fitted in so well with his plans that he considered the defence was, in truth, simply helping the prosecution. And still beaming, he proceeded to put upon the stand Jerry Noonan, a typical ex-patrolman, elevated by virtue of long treading of sidewalks to the height of “dickship” in an outlying police station.

  “Ten years I’ve been at the 32nd Precinct station,” he told the jury at Ballmeier’s request. “Knew old van Slyke when I was patrolling the beat, and knew the son. Been in the house for a hot cup of coffee many a cold night. Now about this night of January 21. Well, I was out doing patrol work in uniform, taking the place of Hennesy, who was down with the ‘flu. I was standing on th’ corner o’ Western Avenue and Irving Park Boulevard, which is about a block and a half away from the van Slyke house, waitin’ to pull my box for the ten o’clock call. It was five minutes to ten, so I had five more minutes to wait. Up to the mailbox comes old Venson, young Mr. van Slyke’s servant, with a letter. Seein’ we knew each other we naturally drops into conversation. We talks till ten o’clock, when I stops for a couple o’ seconds to ring in, then we talks on for another full five minutes. Then I left him, going west along Hennesy’s beat and Venson going back to the house. It musta been about half-past ten when I spots the patrol-wagon going pell-mell towards Oakley Avenue. Bein’ only temporarily in uniform, I flags ‘em and climbs in. Hears that Mr. van Slyke was murdered. So I was among the first to get on the scene.”

  “And what conditions did you find,” asked Ballmeier, “when you got there?”

  “ ‘Twas a much different Venson I found than the one I’d been chattin’ with at the mailbox when I was ringin’ in my ten o’clock call. He was all up in the air. Two long scratches down his face and his collar ripped off of him. Can’t talk o’ nothin’ but the red-headed man that had come runnin’ down the inside stairway as he come in at the door and give him the strong arm. He was all a-tremble and excited. ‘Mr. van Slyke’s been murdered,’ he said, over and over; and up the stairs we went. I found young Mr. van Slyke lying on the floor of his library on the rear of the second story, face partly turned upward, an’ a red bloody bullet hole in his forehead. No weapon to be found. Right away I got my notebook and took down the main details of Venson’s description of the fellow who’d made a getaway. Young, red-haired, athletic-build. Then I proceeded to make very close examination of the room.”

  “While you’re there, Mr. Noonan,” requested Ballmeier, “will you give to the jury a description of the house at 4020 North Oakley Avenue, the grounds about it and the general topography of the block? You’ve been the policeman on the beat for ten years.”

  “Big beautiful three-storey house, grey stone front,” said Noonan succinctly. “But old-fashioned as the devil. Built in the old days around the eighties, I guess. Houses on each side of it and along the whole block. A small gangway along the south side, connecting the rear yard with the front. Vacant ground at back of the whole row of houses, clear across the block to Western Avenue. Trees in the front yard, and a big elm in the rear, runnin’ within a foot of the library on the second floor.”

  Ballmeier paused long enough to let the topographical aspects of the van Slyke residence sink into the minds of the twelve jurors, then asked:

  “What was the condition of that library, Mr. Noonan?”

  “It wasn’t disturbed in the least. The window that looked out on that elm tree an’ that vacant land at the back was partly open. The electric lights were lighted. That’s all.” He paused. “There was a bathroom on the same floor. In the washbowl was the bloody washrag that Venson swabbed off van Slyke’s forehead with when he first found him and figured maybe he was only grazed instead o’ shot. But Venson hisself can tell you about that.”

  “Yes,” nodded Ballmeier. He continued: “By virtue of your being a regulation plain-clothes man of the district, you at once took possession for your superiors of a packet of loose letters lying in a pigeon-hole of the dead man’s desk?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Then you went downstairs and searched the grounds and the gangway at the side of the house?”

  “Yes, as soon as I’d heard the reports from the men that had interviewed the neighbours at each side.”

  “What did you find in that gangway at the side of the van Slyke residence?”


  “A man’s stickpin.”

  “Before tying up those letters you found, what did you do?”

  “I wrote my initials on each one.”

  Ballmeier then stepping over to a box placed on the clerk’s desk, withdrew from it a letter and a tiny glittering object. He handed the object to Noonan.

  “Will you identify this piece of jewellery?”

  “It’s a stickpin. It’s the one I picked up in the gangway after the murder.”

  “I offer it as exhibit one,” announced Ballmeier. He handed it to the clerk of the court, who proceeded to affix to it a numbered tag which he had in readiness.

  Ballmeier then handed to Noonan a letter in an envelope. “Will you identify this object?”

  “It’s one o’ th’ letters of the loose bunch that I took from van Slyke’s desk. It’s got my initials on it.”

  “I will first read this letter,” announced Ballmeier, “and I then offer it as exhibit two.” He cleared his throat, and thrusting his little bullet head close to the paper, proceeded to give the jury the contents to the last word:

  January 18, 1928.

  VAN SLYKE:

  Dogs like you come to but one fate, and juries usually clear the man that rids the world of such as you. Now I’m going to give you just about two or three more days to change your decision, and then by God, Van, I’m going to kill you just like a dog, like a yellow dog.

  CHALMERS.

  Finishing the brief but pungent message, Ballmeier handed it over to the clerk and it was marked as exhibit two. Turning to Noonan, he excused that august gentleman, and Crosby, heaving a sigh, took up the cross-examination.

  “Mr. Noonan, was there anything of value in that room for which a common yeggman might have made an attempt to burglarize it, coming in from the window by way of the elm, and shooting down van Slyke? I take it your years in the force have made you an experienced hand in burglary cases.”

  Mr. Noonan appeared a bit suspicious of the complimentary reference to his police experience.

  “Well,” he said with a shrug of his shoulders, “the wooden chest — or cabinet — or what-you-may-call-it near the fireplace, I suppose.”

  “Oh, so there was a wooden repository there? Will you describe it?”

  Noonan looked bored. “Sort of vertical chest, made o’ thick black wood, about five feet high and maybe three feet or so square. Had Chinee dragons carved and inlaid on it. Had three ivory sticks what pulled in an’ out o’ slots in the thick wall next the door of the — the — chest. These here sticks each had a hole in the end that stuck out, like for a finger to catch in, and they were like rulers, havin’ marks along ‘em except that there was Chinee characters at each mark instead of numbers.”

  “And what were these peculiar ivory drawsticks that pulled out or pushed in, and moreover were graduated with marks?” Crosby asked.

  “I found afterward,” said Noonan, with a shrug of his shoulders, “that they’re the way one gets into the vertical chest. You pull each stick out to a certain mark, or Chinee character, only, an’ if each one is on the right mark at the same moment, the door falls open.”

  “So this massive Chinese wooden box, this vertical chest as you call it, made of heavy, tough, thick wood, hand-carved and inlaid and very beautiful, was then, Mr. Noonan, a safe — and moreover a precursor of our present-day safe, since it had a combination lock operated by ivory drawsticks instead of nickel-plated dials?” Catching Mr. Noonan’s reluctant assent, Crosby turned to the jury. “The article somewhat carelessly described by Mr. Noonan as a chest is to-day in the possession of, and in use by, Mr. Leslie van Slyke of Chicago, Rupert van Slyke’s cousin and legal heir. It was made in Canton about the seventeenth century, according to the dead man’s statement to his cousin, whom Mr. Ballmeier may subpœna if he wishes. Yet, as this witness has just proven, this mere ornament, this antique, was a thing of practical utility — a safe — having its combination mechanism just as much as any modern safe with combination dial. This is a fact which deserves much consideration.” He turned to Noonan again.

  “I am now going to ask you a series of questions which can be answered simply by ‘yes’ or ‘no’ on your part, Mr. Noonan.” Crosby paused. “First, do you know a reporter on the Chicago Daily Tribune by the name of Charley Canfield?”

  Noonan nodded. “Yes.”

  “Did you, or did you not, on the night of the murder, while you were examining the grounds, receive a phone message at the house from your Precinct station telling you to report back to your station at once?”

  “I did.”

  “When you got there, did you receive the transcript of a phone message from your wife saying that your youngest child had been scalded, and a permission from your chief to go off duty for the rest of the night?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you at once hastily remove your uniform, get into your civilian clothes, call a taxicab and start out for your home on North Rockwell Street?”

  “I did.”

  “Were you accompanied in the taxicab by this Charley Canfield of the Chicago Tribune, who happened to be in the station house and who took this measure for getting some sort of an inside story of the murder from the man who had known the van Slykes, father and son, and who had already examined the house and grounds?”

  “Yes.” And Noonan added, a bit dubiously: “He rode all the way home with me.”

  “After you had ascertained that your child was not nearly so badly hurt as your wife had reported, did you then repair to the front hallway of your home where Charley Canfield was sitting, to discuss it further with him?”

  Noonan nodded, his face a bit glum.

  “Did you then raise the receiver of your phone and ring the 32nd Precinct station from which you had just departed?”

  Again Noonan’s assent, more uncheerful than ever.

  Crosby picked up from his portfolio a piece of paper, which he studied. He looked up. “I shall now read off to you an alleged telephone conversation complete, and I shall ask you whether you did or did not talk these words, or words to their general effect, into the transmitter of your phone, and if not, just what were the words which you did repeat.” And amid a very pronounced silence in the court-room, he read off slowly and distinctly:

  “ ‘Hello, Captain in? No? Sergeant there? Out? Who’s on the wire? Oh, Jake Kilduff. You’re working out from the Chicago detective bureau, ain’t you, Mr. Kilduff? Well, you’ll do. This is Jerry Noonan of the 32nd. Mr. Kilduff, while I was examining the gangway next to that van Slyke’s residence to-night with lighted matches, I spotted a stickpin some yards ahead of me just about the time my last match went out. I picked it up and put it in my pocket — yes, the coat pocket of my uniform. Yes. After I came out to the front yard, I was called back to my station, and from there rushed home on account of an accident in my family. Now that stickpin might or might not have anything to do with that murder, but I want to turn it over before I get a calldown. Yes, the right-hand pocket. Yes, I know there’s two pins there. No, I can’t describe which pin it is, Mr. Kilduff, because as I told you my match went out just as I caught the flicker of it and I picked it up in the darkness. But I’ll tell you the one it ain’t. It ain’t the pearl one. That’s one I bought for a dollar to-night from a prisoner. That’s my own. Yes, the other one of the two. All right. Don’t get me in bad. I’m sorta upset.’ “

  Crosby stopped and looked up. He laid the paper back in his portfolio. There was a painful silence.

  At length Noonan found his voice. “Well,” he said sullenly, “them’s the words — or about the same words I said.”

  “Then how, Mr. Noonan,” asked Crosby, “are you able to identify a stickpin given you by the prosecutor, when by your own words you couldn’t describe it to the headquarter’s man who took it from your uniform coat pocket?”

  Noonan was nettled, even angry. He attempted to wave off his faux pas by an airy, faery-like gesture of his hamlike hand. “Oh well,” he blustered, “I was tol
d that this was the pin that was taken by Jake Kilduff from my coat pocket. Grantin’ that it is, then it’s the one I found in the gangway, ain’t it? That’s all clear, ain’t it? I’m not perjuring.”

  “No, I don’t think you are,” agreed Crosby, “but I think you’re a bit hasty and over-enthusiastic in your methods. The facts of the matter then, Mr. Noonan, are that you can’t definitely identify this very pin that was just handed you as the very pin you picked up, except that you merely understand by hearsay that they are the same? Is it not so?”

  “Well,” began Noonan angrily, “it — ”

  “Yes or no?”

  “I tell you — ”

  “Yes or no?”

  “No.”

  Crosby’s eyes held a triumphant gleam. The next step in the combating of this stickpin identification would come when Krenway, chief of the Chicago Detective Bureau, was put on the stand. So for the present, enough. He turned his attention once more on Noonan.

  “One more question, Mr. Noonan. Although you initialed each of those envelopes you found in Mr. van Slyke’s desk, you didn’t initial the letter it contained?”

  “No.”

  “Then as a further matter of fact, all you can identify is the envelope just handed you and not the letter inside at all?”

  “Well, I — ”

  “Yes or no?” Crosby snapped.

  “Objection,” shouted Ballmeier, furious.

  “Objection not sustained,” said Judge Lockhart, leaning forward.

  And Noonan, with one reluctant monosyllable, was forced to admit that only the envelope of the alleged threat-letter could be identified, and when he started clumsily to explain that the envelopes never left his superior’s safe at the station, thus to demonstrate perhaps that the contents could not have been changed in any plot against the young clubman defendant, Crosby neatly excused him from the stand before he was one-third through with his tangled explanation.