“Well, if Big Vic had ever got you into his clutches, my friend, you’d not only have been prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law in order to bring that 10,000 dollar reward into his hands, but you’d have got a beating that would have taken five years off your life. You’d have given up the location of those eight stones if Big Vic and his men had to half-kill you. And if you know anything of Considine, then you know what the result would have been. He and his right-hand men, legal crooks that they are, would have raked off a stone or two from that loot — 20,000 dollars to 40,000 dollars of your only leverage toward securing your freedom — and they’d have sworn the stuff in your cache was shy. And you? Well, you’d be up in Stillwater, paying the bill.”
“Before I ever let any grafting dicks in on my game,” said Viggman with a show of bravado, “I’ll see ‘em in hell first. But I guess you’re right, Mr. Crosby, about me bein’ caught red-handed. An’ that’s what I need a mouthpiece for. Are you willin’ to go on up to St. Paul and do the bargainin’ for me with Rosecrantz?”
“I am — and I am not,” Crosby admitted. He continued to gaze at the other. “Viggman, what becomes of you fellows after you get pulled out of trouble? Do you learn a lesson and stay out, or do you tumble back in again? Is your case a pathological one, as Chapin claims, or is it functional? I wonder.”
Viggman surveyed him uncomprehendingly.
“I’m going to make an experiment with you, Viggman. They tell me in my profession that your kind never reforms — that they don’t want to reform. But somehow I believe it’s because they haven’t really had a chance. Prohibition is on us. You’ll drink little now — and still less as months go on. Viggman, I’m willing to pull you out of this mess — not for your dirty money out of which I’ll take only my travelling expenses — but in order to make an experiment. I want to bring you back to Chicago, put you to work, watch you, give you a friendly hand when you need it, and see whether in five years, under proper mental guidance, this whole thing of crime doesn’t actually smell to Heaven in your nostrils. Now if I did pull you clear, would you be willing to settle down in Chicago, report to me every week, and change your whole life?”
Viggman nodded. “Yes. You bet.”
“Then I’ll do it. Once for all I’m to satisfy my mind on this question for all time to come. Now first about yourself. You’re in here for sixty days. The Wisconsin law says that if a sentence is imposed a prisoner can’t be gotten free to stand trial in another State through the parties in the other case paying his fine. Likewise, as long as this 10,000 dollars holds over you, this town will never let loose of you. So all you do is to sit tight and congratulate yourself that Victor Considine’s men haven’t got you. I had intended going to Omaha from here, but nevertheless I’ll go to St. Paul and see Rosecrantz. A man-to-man talk with him, coupled with the matter of the 150,000 dollars at stake, will settle the matter but one way. And then to our experiment. But first of all, Viggman, I do no bargaining, of course, until I hold in my hand the necessary thing with which to bargain.”
“You mean — ” said Viggman, slightly taken aback.
“That you’ve got to come across with that loot,” was Crosby’s stern answer. “You’ve got to come clean with me. All clean. Remember that.”
Viggman thought for a minute.
“Mr. Crosby, I’ve heard o’ you an’ I’ve heard that you’re strickly on th’ square. I trust you. But remember — I’m lookin’ to you to do your best to help me wiggle out o’ this mess.”
“I’ll put it through all right for you!” declared Crosby, realizing the powerful persuasiveness of being able to return 150,000 dollars worth of diamonds to the despoiled diamond merchant. “Which doesn’t mean that you don’t deserve a stiff penitentiary sentence for shooting a man down.” He paused. “But I’m ripe to work out a theory with you. And when you’re all clear of this, Viggman, take my advice, stick to that job I’ll get you in Chicago, and forget this thing called easy money.”
Viggman laughed quietly. Then he did a strange thing. He rose to his feet and taking down from the hook above the cot his ragged, dirty, shapeless felt hat with its wrinkled greasy band, gave the band a slight rip with his fingers. It came away in a succession of sharp jerks and tears, spilling into his hand eight scintillating jewels that seemed both to reflect and radiate the beautiful colours of the spectrum.
“There’s the loot,” the latter was saying. “Carryin’ it all th’ time on me — and nobody could ever have known it.”
As he took them from Viggman’s hand, Crosby inspected them a little closer. So this was a diamond octet — the Lord Masefield Octet? Beautiful indeed its eight stones were unset, and far more beautiful and unique must they be when placed in a setting appropriate to their value. Crosby placed them carefully in a pocket of his black leather wallet. He withdrew the cap from his fountain pen and opened his note-book to a page marked “signatures.” “Now,” he said, “you’re safer than you’ve been for a long time, Viggman. I’m going to put those stones in a safety-box at once where nobody can get them either from you or from me. Then I’m going to report very shortly that prosecution is waived in your case and the reward is withdrawn.” He held out the fountain pen and the note-book. “And now your signature, according to my custom, on line eleven. Just for comparison in case of any communications from you.”
Viggman signed unhesitatingly on the line indicated. Crosby put away his pen and note-book. Then he arose. “I’ll write you about conditions without being too specific,” he told the other. “So you’ll have to read to some extent between the lines.”
“An’ if anything happens to you?” said Viggman troubledly. “Say, any train wrecks or something? Where do I get off then?”
“I’ll protect you on that just as soon as I place the stones in safe keeping,” Crosby assured him. Then he rattled the chair loudly against the bars of the cell as a signal for the marshal to come and let him out.
Presently the latter came and after a laborious locking of doors to and fro, Crosby found himself once more out in the morning sunlight.
From the jail he went back to his hotel-room for a few moments to see whether any telegrams had come for him, and to wash away the grimy contact of his recently acquired specimen for his experiment in sociology. Then, after ascertaining that there was a train to St. Paul in an hour, he made his way over to the town bank, stopping in on the way at a drug-store to purchase a box of Pelton’s cough-drops. These he carefully emptied in his right-hand coat-pocket, but retained the empty box in the same coat-pocket.
The town bank of Winniston, which was apparently a county bank, Crosby found appreciably up-to-date. There was one man working away in the cashier’s cage, a tall young man, his eyes possessing a cold — bluishly cold-stare, the part of him visible above the window, shapely, effeminate, and clad in a smartly cut brown coat. Young as he was he affected a more mature appearance, for he wore a foppish brown beard and a brown moustache. In contrast to this Beau Brummel in habiliments and hirsute adornment was an old bookkeeper with round shoulders and thinned hair slaving away in the rear of the bank over a great ledger. At a desk, back of a railing at one end of the customers’ enclosure, sat an elderly bluff-looking man in his shirt-sleeves, his honest, keen-looking face covered with a healthy bronze. On his desk was a typical desk sign of brass which proclaimed: “Mr. Matthew Barr, President.”
Crosby went straight to the lone cashier’s window. “I’d like to rent a safety-box in which to place some private papers,” he said.
The effeminate-looking youth pointed with what seemed to Crosby to be a petulant gesture toward the elderly man who sat at the desk in the outer space. “See Mr. Barr over there. He handles all the keys for the boxes.”
And over to Mr. Barr went Crosby.
Mr. Matthew Barr filled out a card. Crosby signed it. Mr. Barr then stood and manipulating an intricate-looking steel key with a solid gold head which hung as an ornament from his watch-chain, unlocked a stout steel cabin
et door, revealing a very neat arrangement for taking care of the so-called male and female keys of a safety-deposit-box system. On the back of a second steel door inside, this one locked with a combination dial instead of a key, were some hundreds of bright brass hooks, each one numbered. Mr. Matthew Barr took from number 589 a flat key of intricate pattern, on the shaft of which Crosby could see was etched the number “5-8-9 — B.” Then, neatly shielding the dial of the second door with his hands, he twirled it around and threw open the second door, revealing again a panel containing a little forest of numbered brass hooks, placed exactly in the same pattern as the previous set. From this he took down from hook 589 a key which, when he transferred it to Crosby a minute afterward, bore etched on its shaft “5-8-9 — A.” Then closing up the inside receptacle and locking the outer, he led the way to the vault room, which was provided with a neat little mahogany closet with swinging door, electrically lighted, and fitted with sealing wax, tapers, matches and writing material for the use of customers using the vaults. Mr. Barr first turned in the lock of box 589 the key marked 5-8-9 — A, which he handed to Crosby.
“This will be your key, Mr. Crosby,” he instructed him. “Please take good care of it, as we have no way of replacing a customer’s key.” And turning in the lock-box the key marked 5-8-9 — B, obviously the bank’s key, he drew out the steel safety-box.
“Just use the cabinet there, if you wish, and on the way out pay Mr. Worman, our cashier, 3 dollars for the rental. He will give you a receipt.” Then he politely withdrew from the enclosure, but turned in the doorway. “Any time you wish access to your box, just come to my desk. Mr. Worman has no connection with the safety-boxes.”
Crosby nodded acquiescence. With his box in his hands he stepped into the cabinet and drew the door to, till the spring lock clicked. Then, completely screened from observation, he withdrew from his pocket the empty coughdrop carton, and opening his leather wallet carefully removed from it one by one the Lord Masefield Octet, dropping each jewel in the empty carton and counting it as it fell. Then he closed up the pasteboard receptacle, and lighting the taper sealed it tightly on both ends with red wax. This done, he placed it carefully in the empty lock-box, closed down the tin cover, and carrying it back to the machined socket into which it fitted slid it back in and dropped the nickel-plated steel lid. It clicked, shut sharply, and trying the box both without his key and with it, he knew that the Lord Masefield Octet was safely locked away until such time as he wished to have final access to it.
On the way out of the bank he stopped at the cashier’s window and paid Mr. Worman the sum of 3 dollars, receiving in return for it a receipt written in a dainty, finicky hand. Then he went straight back to the hotel to get his valise, stopping in for the last time at the lock-up. “I want to see Viggman once more just through the bars of his cell,” he directed.
The marshal, complaining grumpily under his breath, led him back once more through the maze of locks, and as soon as he stood alone on the outside of the cell, Crosby motioned Viggman over.
“The stuff is now deposited where it’s safe,” he told the latter. “In case of my death, or anything like that, it’s in box 589 of the town bank, sealed up with red sealing wax in a Pelton coughdrop carton. Now I’m off to St. Paul.” And, summoning the marshal, Crosby left the place for good.
But when he got to the hotel to settle up his bill and get his valise, something happened that was to change the course of his plans appreciably. A youngish-looking fellow with stolid face, light yellow hair and Teutonic blue eyes stood at the desk holding a yellow telegram in his hands.
“You’re Mr. Crosby?” asked the yellow-haired youth. Crosby nodded.
“Ludwig Kamerath’s my name. Telegraph agent over at the depot. I just got this on the wire. It’s from St. Louis, relayed here from Chicago.”
Crosby tore it open. It bore the sending address of St. Louis and was dated the evening before. Its contents read simply:
ARRANGE TO HAVE WITHOUT FAIL FORTY-FOUR THOUSAND DOLLARS IN CASH FRIDAY MORNING YOUR OFFICE. THIS WILL COVER ALL.
MABEL MANNERING.
Mabel Mannering! This was the name agreed upon between Lipke and himself. He glanced at the telegram again. Forty-four thousand dollars! And all in cash. And Friday morning. Chalmers was paying a stiff price to break John Carrington’s story. But it was his own money and his own affair. One thing was certain, however: if the cash were to be obtained for the man Lipke by Friday morning, the bonds coming to Chalmers on his thirtieth birthday, to-morrow, would have to be secured early in the morning at Omaha and marketed on the Stock Exchange that very day. As for Viggman and the wounded jeweller who lay in Bethesda Hospital, St. Paul, this could hold over a day or so considering that Viggman was safe in his place and the jewels safe in theirs.
So, instead of boarding a train for St. Paul twenty minutes later, he was boarding a train fifteen minutes later which would land him in Omaha that night.
CHAPTER XV
ERIC THE WILY
MR. ERIC WORMAN, cashier of the bank of Counties Pecham, Wilder, Deaconshire and Devon, should conceivably have borne on his face a look of profound dudgeon as he worked alone in the bank on the night of Monday, September 19, at such a late hour as nine o’clock, for it is but natural that labour guards jealously its rights in the infringement of capital upon labour’s time. But for some strange reason Mr. Worman’s face bore a smile of satisfaction that would make it appear that to work late, finding a mere balance on trivial matters financial, was the sport and recreation of bank cashiers.
Once he raised the receiver of the phone and called Mr. Matthew Barr, the president.
“I’m still at the bank, Mr. Barr,” he said, “but I’ve found that error and I’ll be out by ten. I located it after about two hours’ checking up. Old man Doddson had entered a withdrawal as a deposit again.” And with the commendatory words of Mr. Matthew Barr ringing in his ears, he hung up.
He stood for a moment ruminating, arms akimbo, leaning against the shelf of his cashier’s cage, his face with the cold blue eyes still bearing a pleased look. Talking to Matthew Barr at this hour of the evening seemed, somehow, to bring back to his mind that night, some months before, when Barr lay ill in bed at his cottage, and he, Eric Worman, had called solicitously at the old man’s home. That evening when he had politely and without even so much as a thank you, while the old man dozed off, stepped to the massive gold watch-chain strung in the vest which hung across the chair at the head of the bed, and with a neat little cake of wax taken a perfect impression of that gold-headed key to the outer door of the safety box key repository.
Of course, the impression of the key which opened merely the key repository itself was not of superlative value, considering that the duplicate which Eric had carefully filed from it opened only the outer door of that cabinet — exposed only the bank’s set of so-called “B” keys to the boxes. Indeed, watch as he might, try as he might, he had never been able to worm out of the brain of the one man who held it — Mr. Matthew Barr! — the combination back of which lay the corresponding set of keys — the so-called “A” keys — which were given out to customers. Still, the best of systems are defective, as was evidenced by Eric’s satisfied recollection, as he stroked his pointed brown beard and his foppish moustache, of those three instances when tanned and felt-hatted farmers, crawling stupidly about the bank, had handed in their keys at his window at the expiration of their box leases. It was in just those three instances, in the very short space of time, in fact, in which he had called them back and directed them to take them to Mr. Barr’s desk, that he had again neatly taken an impression with his little cake of wax.
With one careful look around, he thrust his hands in the topmost shelf of his desk and drew forth to the very edge four thick paper-wrapped packages, bearing on their faces the blue-pencilled figures respectively of 500 dollars, 3,000 dollars, 6,500 dollars, and 4,700 dollars.
He paused for several minutes, gazing out through the high plate-gl
ass window of the bank toward the tiny street, which, however, was deserted. However, he decided nevertheless not to take any chances on this, his last night. So he put on his hat. Then snapping out the lights he tiptoed around in the dark with his hands full of marked packages of money, to the side window of the bank, massive and barred, which led on to a pebbled footwalk off the street.
It was open on this balmy evening, and reaching carefully out from the darkness within to the gloom without, he felt upwards to the low eaves of the building. Here, finding a series of deep niches, he carefully deposited the money packages, two to each niche. Then, closing down the window and locking it, he hurried back and snapped on the lights again, so that should some casual townsman be passing outside he must simply think that Eric Worman, cashier, working late as usual, had decided to start for home, but had suddenly remembered something and had again turned on his lights.
For a second or two he now stood back of his cashier’s cage again, and this time he inspected something which he pulled from his vest pocket, four flat keys made out of bright steel, evidently home-made ones, yet the intricate indentations of each carefully cut and smoothed with the file. One of them was numbered in indelible pencil that shone purplish under the light, 208; one 195; one 589; and one somewhat different in design from the others, “Keybox.”
Again he looked toward the street. It was quite deserted. Eric believed in extreme caution, caution in all things. So on his fingers, under cover of the shelf, he drew a pair of chamois skin gloves which resembled human skin in their hue. This done, he walked nonchalantly around and out of the cashier’s cage, directly over to the key vault above Matthew Barr’s desk, which was however shrouded in semi-gloom, and unlocking it with his home-made key marked “Keybox” abstracted in the twinkling of an eye from the visible row of brass hooks the keys 2-0-8 — B, 1-9-5 — B, and 5-8-9 — B. He had duplicates of three of the second “A” set in his pockets. Those were the three which in past months had been flung down at his window. Those were the three from which he had quickly taken wax impressions. And those three had since been re-leased out to new customers.
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