The Amazing Web

by Harry Stephen Keeler

  Chalmers nodded. “I’m sure you have. Now I want to hire you to make this trip to Omaha for me, so long as I can’t go myself and Melford can’t be located. Whatever the fee is, just give me a bill for it when you get back and I’ll gladly pay it. I want the first-hand information in regard to uncle’s will and I want someone there to-morrow morning when it’s read. You can get that eight o’clock train on the North-Western that’ll put you in Omaha at eight in the morning, and let you sleep all night. Will you do this to help me out, Crosby?”

  “All right, I’ll make the trip, and I won’t charge you much more than expenses.” He glanced at his watch. “Now I’ll dictate a paper downstairs in the jail office and send it up here to you. This paper will make me your attorney in the Omaha matter and your representative for to-morrow. Sign it and send the guard back with it. See you again about Sunday morning.”

  “Without fail,” said Chalmers uneasily. “Let me know early Sunday, Crosby. If there’s any complications on this estate, I’ve got to know ‘em at once. I don’t understand the wording of that telegram.”

  He broke off and said good-bye, and the turnkey, coming at Crosby’s push of the bell, let the attorney out.

  At eight o’clock, Crosby, fortified with a good meal and armed with the paper he had dictated in the jail office and Chalmers had sent down to him, signed, boarded the eight o’clock flyer for Omaha.

  Promptly at one minute after eight next morning, dressed and shaven, Crosby stepped out of the depot at Omaha, and after a breakfast started up town on foot to the City National Bank Building.

  The Omaha National Bank Building was a modern enough building, but the offices of Marchbank and Marchbank on its fourth floor were gloomy old-fashioned offices, equipped with furniture of a past day. The three Marchbank brothers themselves were like their offices: tall, antiquated-looking men of solemn visage, each as musty in his attitude as were the leather tomes on the bookshelves of their reception room.

  A dozen or more people, evidently servants and tradesmen, were assembled in a small office to the left of the reception room, and Crosby guessed that they were there on the same errand as himself. He made himself known to the elder Marchbank, and exhibiting his credentials, took up a chair in the far corner of the office which the old lawyer indicated.

  At nine o’clock promptly the elder Marchbank closed the door of the small room and took a chair up at the front.

  “As you all know from the notifications you have received,” he announced simply, “Mr. Peter Chalmers died at Plattsmouth, Nebraska, last Tuesday night, a very ill man. Mr. Chalmers, during the last two years of his life, was an invalid, unable even to manage his interests, which have been in the hands of the Union Trust Company of Omaha. But to the end his disposition was sunny, his mind was clear, and his principles were as straight and clean as in those more fortunate days of his active handling of the Chalmers interests.”

  From his breast-pocket the elder Marchbank took a long, legal-looking paper. “His will, of which this is the carbon copy, was made some two years ago by Mr. Chalmers in these offices. It involves all of you who are assembled here, and Mr. Chalmers’ nephew residing in Chicago. Mr. Chalmers’ estate, without going into it in too much detail, is valued at about a half million dollars.”

  Marchbank looked up a moment and then began droning through the legal verbiage with which wills open.

  Soon the personal legacies began. The reading of this section was punctuated by delighted exclamations from the tradespeople and servants assembled in the room.

  Then Marchbank, clearing his throat, went on:

  “ ‘To my nephew, my only relative, Archibald Chalmers of Chicago, I bequeath the balance of my estate, subject to immediate withdrawals for the purpose of the bequests herein named, this estate to be turned over to him in its entirety on his thirtieth birthday, September 15, 1928, if my death occur before that time, and at once if my death take place after his thirtieth birthday.”

  Marchbank now looked up from his reading and without folding up the typewritten document spoke.

  “This last bequest has been amended by a codicil dictated and signed by Mr. Chalmers at Plattsmouth some months ago, and since it concerns only Mr. Chalmers’ nephew and in no-wise affects the interests of those parties I have named, I think I shall excuse all but Mr. Archibald Chalmers’ representative. The cheques for the bequests, I am informed by the Union Trust Company, can be called for next Tuesday at their offices.”

  One by one the group filed out, chattering, feet shuffling, broad smiles radiating from each one’s face. At last Crosby and the old lawyer were left alone in the room. Marchbank, closing the door after the last man, took a chair close to Crosby.

  “Now about this codicil, Mr. Crosby,” he began. “I thought on account of the publicity factors involved that it were best for the coming few days to maintain privacy about it. So for that reason I shall read it to you alone.”

  “If you will,” was the younger man’s reply.

  Marchbank once more adjusted his silk-hung glasses. And from a set of hand-written and very finely inscribed lines at the bottom of the carbon copy, he read off:

  CODICIL TO THE WILL OF PETER CHALMERS.

  My nephew, Archibald Chalmers, named as principal legatee in the above will, shall receive the legacy specified under the conditions specified only providing he secure a verdict of acquittal from twelve men in a court of law with respect to the charge of murder upon which, at this writing, he stands indicted in Chicago. Said estate shall continue to be held by the Union Trust Company pending the outcome of this indictment, and if said Archibald Chalmers be convicted upon any points charged in the indictment or fails to secure a complete verdict of acquittal from a jury of twelve men, the Chalmers estate shall go to the founding of a school of religious study to be known as the Peter Chalmers Theological Institute, details of which are in the hands of Marchbank, Marchbank, and Marchbank of Omaha. With the following exception, to wit: —

  The stocks and bonds constituting my personal property described in my will and now in my safety box, having been left to me directly by Archibald Chalmers’ father, shall revert to said Archibald Chalmers on his thirtieth birthday, regardless of any conditions herein specified.

  Crosby’s mind was staggered by the peculiar complication that had so suddenly entered the affairs of his client.

  “When was this will made?” he asked Marchbank suddenly.

  “It was made,” the elderly man replied, “about two years ago. The codicil was added by Mr. Chalmers last January after he learned from the newspapers at Dr. Golden’s sanatorium about Archibald’s indictment for murder up in Chicago.”

  “Too bad he had to know about Archibald Chalmers’ indictment at all,” commented Crosby. He reflected a moment. “But one thing is certain, isn’t it? — and that is the stocks and bonds which he describes go to my client without any conditions attached?”

  Marchbank nodded. “Yes, on his thirtieth birthday.” He glanced down at some pencilled figures he had made on the edge of the carbon copy. “Fifty-one thousand dollars they total at present New York Stock Exchange quotations — and I don’t think the amount will change much by next September.”

  “You have a copy of the complete will and codicil for me?”

  Marchbank extended his own. “This you may have. We have here a further copy.”

  Crosby put it in his pocket. Then, taking up his travelling grip, he rose.

  “Good day, Mr. Marchbank. I guess I’ve done all I can do here to-day. I’ll write to your firm from Chicago as soon as I convey the news to my client.”

  CHAPTER X

  THE DEFENCE ERECTS ITS ARCH

  THE crowd which, early on Monday morning, filled to overflowing Judge Lockhart’s beamed and spacious court-room that had held so many murder trials in past years, was more marked than at any of the days preceding.

  Crosby, sitting in his usual place at the table, his client next to him, surveyed curiously first the cro
ss, tired faces of the jury, who had been locked up for two long days, and then in turn the crowd that waited hungry, expectant for something — anything. His eyes roaming idly over the sea of faces fell once more upon the veiled woman who, in spite of the crowd, had again secured her usual place in the front row, and again he felt that irritation at the thought that he was being watched, that his every move was being viewed through calm grey eyes which saw the little moves as well as the big ones. Then the sea of faces became fixed and quiet, and the low mutter of voices died away as the sharp rapping of the gavel proclaimed that the trial was on.

  “Friday night,” announced Judge Lockhart, looking down at the two lawyers, “the prosecution closed its case. This morning the defence will begin. Mr. Crosby, you may call your witnesses.”

  Crosby rose. “My first witness,” he announced casually, “will be Mr. Ignatius Y. Hickey.” He nodded to the clerk of the court.

  The hush in the court-room now became exceedingly marked, and twelve cross looks on the faces of twelve jurors vanished for the first time. Crosby, standing by his table while his witness was emerging from the forest of faces at the back of the court-room, slid towards his client a sheet of yellow paper on which he had been scrawling a few pencilled words during the last minute while the clerk was calling the court-room to order. Its pencilled message ran:

  Now don’t be disconcerted, old man, when our friend Rudolph across the way rips into my first witness. I want but one statement concerning a certain threat out of this witness — just a pebble to begin my arch with. But I got a tip this morning just before court that Ballmeier is exceedingly well read on a subject about which this witness will have to touch in order to testify about this threat. If Ballmeier flays him a bit about matters extraneous to our case, don’t worry. It has nothing to do with our arch. We’ll have our pebble.

  And as Chalmers read the message eagerly, tearing the manila sheet into small bits as he finished it, Crosby turned to greet his first witness.

  Mr. Ignatius Y. Hickey, who climbed blithely into the witness-stand, proclaimed somehow the peculiar combination of literary man and man of action. He was of the human type which defies guessing its age, and might have been in late twenties, his thirties, or his early forties.

  Crosby’s first question was the customary one concerning the witness’s name, but his second and its reply caused a slight puzzlement to arise on various faces inside the bar.

  “What is your profession, Mr. Hickey?”

  “I am a genealogist, with which profession I combine that of writing articles for magazines and newspapers showing the lineage or ancestry of various public characters.”

  Crosby opened his portfolio and took from it a large double-page newspaper spread, which could be seen to be replete with the half-tone reproduction of photographs, documents, and the usual sensational heads which intrigue much-bored humanity on a Sunday morning.

  “I now hand you a syndicated newspaper feature article which appeared three years ago in the Sunday supplement of at least one paper in nearly every city of substantial size in the United States. This article purports to trace the descendancy of the notorious pirate, Captain Kidd, who operated in the Indian Ocean in the years 1697 and 1698, and shows how the various branches have died out through these nine or ten generations, winding up at last with but one living descendant, Mr. Rupert van Slyke of Chicago. Will you tell the court where you first saw this article and the documents and records produced in it?”

  Mr. Hickey glanced at the paper.

  “I wrote the article,” he said, and handed it back.

  “At whose request?” inquired Crosby.

  “At the suggestion of the managing editor of the Amalgamated Sunday Feature Syndicate,” was Mr. Hickey’s reply.

  “You made a very careful examination of the family tree of Kidd, the pirate?”

  “Extremely so, sir.”

  “Will you tell the court of your telephone conversation with the dead Rupert van Slyke prior to the publication of this article?”

  Mr. Hickey nodded, thumbs still in pockets of vest. “After completing the article, I sent a carbon copy of it, as well as photostats of the documents, to Mr. van Slyke and then called him up next day. I asked him whether, since he was the last of this notorious pirate’s blood, he would not complete the article with an interview, and I told him we could easily buy a photograph of him from any photo press agency, but would like to suggest that he pose for a photograph of himself in pirate costume, since I understood that due to his inheritance of family mementoes he possessed some of the — er — habiliments or accoutrements that Kidd used in his nefarious activities in the Indian Ocean. I urged him to round out the article.”

  “And what was his answer?”

  “He was very angry. He objected very much to our proofs that the fortunes of his branch of the family were indisputably established by some of Kidd’s ill-gotten gains. He threatened a suit against me and the Syndicate if we published this article.”

  “And when you refused to kill the article, what then?”

  “Rupert van Slyke said: ‘Hickey, if that article is published, I will search you out at the Press Club and shoot you dead. Mark my words’.”

  “But you published it?”

  “Yes, sir. The Syndicate did. You have the article there.”

  “Did he attempt to put his threat into execution?”

  “He did not. We came face to face later at the Palette and Chisel Club on North Dearborn Street. He only glared at me, turned on his heel and walked out of the place.”

  Crosby gazed out of the window a moment. “That is all, Mr. Hickey. Mr. van Slyke’s unfulfilled threat is all I am interested in. Perhaps Mr. Ballmeier may wish to ask you a question or two about that.”

  Mr. Ballmeier evidently did want to ask a question or two about something, for before Crosby had finished speaking the prosecutor had risen to his feet, and he actually appeared to bristle.

  “You are an authority on pirates, Mr. Hickey?” he inquired, and there was in his voice a suppressed virulence that suggested nothing other than the ire of a man whose favourite hero of fiction has been maligned.

  “No, sir, I am not. The biggest authority on that subject to-day in the United States is Professor Percival L. Brown of the University of Chicago. I am a genealogist.”

  “In other words, you search family trees in order to find skeletons roosting on the branches, eh?”

  “Well, we certainly do find ‘em,” admitted Mr. Hickey, somewhat freely. The court-room tittered and the jury smiled.

  “In this case,” said Mr. Ballmeier, himself the only unsmiling one, “you started with what you thought was a skeleton in somebody’s closet, and hoped to wind up with an honest man?”

  “Yes, sir,” said Mr. Hickey.

  “You what?” roared Ballmeier, unwilling to believe such good luck as that the witness had admitted something strongly suggestive of blackmail.

  “We hoped that tracing down the descendancy of the notorious pirate, Captain Kidd, would lead us to some prominent character — preferably rich, too — so that we would have a good newspaper story,” admitted Mr. Hickey imperturbably.

  “Oh yes. Mr. Hickey, you know so much about pirates, may I ask what you know definitely about Captain Kidd’s alleged manipulations in this field?”

  “Well, I know he pirated the Quedagh Merchant and was specifically indicted for that by a competent and special grand jury in London composed of such men as Sir Edward Ward, Sir Henry Gould and Sir John Powell.”

  “Oh, you do,” said Ballmeier sneeringly. “Did you know that within these last two decades there was unearthed in the musty files of the English Public Record Office by no one else than Ralph D. Paine, the sea-story writer, the actual French pass which the Captain of the Quedagh Merchant tendered Kidd, when Kidd hoisted the French flag; and did you know that Kidd had letters of marque and reprisal authorizing him to prey on French vessels?”

  “I did not know that the alleged
French pass of the Quedagh Merchant had ever been unearthed,” said Mr. Hickey, much interested. His face darkened. “Still, Kidd was a pirate, you know. Nobody gainsays that.”

  “I suppose that you would find it greatly difficult,” said Ballmeier sneeringly, “to conceive of the fact that William Kidd might be an honourable gentleman, a Scotch mariner, who was simply impressed into the service of hunting down pirates by the King of England himself, who with the Earl of Shrewsbury and the Earl of Romney all had a share in the outfitting of Kidd’s ship, The Adventure? I suppose you have never given thought to the fact that the official mark of Kidd and all his men as well, which consisted of a crown — a crown, Mr. Hickey — with a human boot beneath it — is derived from the fact that they were sent by royal authority to exterminate pirates and crush the nests on the island of Madagascar. How about it, Mr. Hickey?”

  “What you say, sir, is informative but of no significance in relation to Mr. van Slyke’s threat about which I was called here to testify,” said Mr. Hickey, now appreciably nettled.

  “So you were able,” said Ballmeier, ignoring the thrust, “to pick up very nicely the family thread of this gentleman, who, like all mariners of that day, undoubtedly had offspring in every port?”

  Mr. Hickey smiled. “I followed only the legitimate branch, sir. Kidd’s wife, at the time he became a pirate in the Indian Ocean, was living on Liberty Street, New York, with one daughter by Kidd, and one only. It was that daughter, Elizabeth Kidd, who provided the basis for tracing down.”

  “Your newspaper article practically claims that all of Kidd’s fortunes were not captured when Lord Bellomont dug up the sum of £6,471 at Gardiner’s Island off Montauk Point, New York?”

  “Exactly, sir. My investigations of title show that Kidd’s wife and daughter lived in a little cottage on Liberty Street, paying twenty-two shillings rental per month; but that they suddenly blossomed out in a large mansion in Boston, following Kidd’s bold visit to that city. I would further emphasize that they took title to this mansion in the daughter’s name. The natural inference is that a woman and girl who blossomed into affluence at such a juncture of affairs did so at the expense of spoil. The course of those family fortunes which terminate with Mr. van Slyke become easily traceable starting with the title to that Boston mansion.”