The Amazing Web

by Harry Stephen Keeler

  Crosby read it through. It was brief and was, in fact, his own letter, and one which he had typewritten himself and mailed to his unprepossessing client some five or six days before.

  “This is my letter all right,” Crosby admitted, handing it back. “But what about it?”

  “Simply this, Crosby,” Considine asserted gruffly. “Viggman gave you those eight coloured diamonds, worth 150,000 dollars, either to use to bargain with Rosecrantz whom he shot in St. Paul, or else to make a case for him and get him his liberty. Didn’t he, eh?”

  “I have once told you people,” Crosby bit out, “that a lawyer doesn’t divulge any relations between himself and his client.”

  “Better give him the facts, Mr. Considine,” advised Krenway.

  Considine leaned forward in his arm-chair, his big hands across his pudgy vest. “Crosby, your man escaped jail late Tuesday night, and two of our operatives, who were coming into St. Paul in a machine from a trip down State, picked him up on a road on the Minnesota side of the river. He has made a full confession of his own free will, and he tells us over his signature that you demanded those stones from him before you would even consider taking his case. He tells us furthermore that you in turn supposedly locked ‘em in a safety box in Winniston, and came back to the jail and told him that you’d put ‘em in box 589, sealed in a cough-drop carton. And now what about this much, eh?”

  “Hm!” said Crosby, tapping the floor with his foot. “So Viggman has confessed, eh?” He turned to Krenway, ignoring Considine. “How do I know that Viggman has even escaped, much less confessed?”

  Considine, with a grunt, fumbled in his vest pocket and produced a crisp typewritten document. He handed it to Crosby, and kept an eagle eye on the latter as he unfolded it. True enough. It was dated St. Paul, the morning previous, and at the bottom was the signature “Samuel Viggman,” together with that of several witnesses. Crosby read it through, and then, taking out his notebook, in which he had entered Viggman’s signature that day in the Winniston jail, carefully compared the two. They were identical, he could see that at a glance.

  “Well,” broke in Considine impatiently, “we came down to Winniston yesterday, got out a Wisconsin search-warrant, and in front of eight reputable witnesses — four from the town itself — drilled open your safety box Number 589. We found your cough-drop carton all right, sealed up just as you left it, and with eight cough-drops in it instead of eight diamonds. Oh, such a gyping to give to a poor hard-working crook like Sammy Viggman!”

  Crosby’s jaw fell open. “Cough-drops!” he ejaculated aghast. He stopped. A sudden look of enlightenment flashed over his face. “Say — do you people think I don’t subscribe to the daily telegraphic bulletin sent out by the Chicago offices of the Weekly Detective?” He reached over and without even asking permission seized from Krenway’s desk a short sheet of glazed paper, bearing a number of small photographs in half-tone, together with a series of numbered bits of reading matter, and with one glance at the date at the top dropped his eyes clear to the last item. He nodded his head. “There you are. I don’t forget what I read, especially when I read it only this morning. ‘Eric Worman, cashier of Winniston, Wisconsin, Bank, missing. Funds estimated at 15,000 dollars also missing. Known to have gone to St. Paul, and if not dead supposed to be travelling toward British Columbia. Description: carried yellow suitcase; wore — ’” Crosby broke off and tossed the sheet back on Krenway’s desk.” Well, why are you people wasting valuable time with me down in Chicago here? Why don’t you get out and bring in this Worman before he makes a Jap liner out of Vancouver or heads into the Canadian woods?”

  A scrupulously uninterrupted silence followed his angry denunciation, and it was broken by the calm, forcible words of the sun-browned man whose every inflexion of his voice proclaimed truth and uprightness. Matthew Barr was speaking:

  “Mr. Crosby, you yourself held the so-called A-key to that box, and this key on my watch-chain, which has never left my possession day or night, is the only means by which anyone could have secured entrance to the B-keys. At no time since the installation of that safety-box system has Worman ever had anything whatsoever to do with it, or any access to any part of it, and this I can prove by a dozen reputable witnesses. I might so much as mention that every safety-box holder in and outside of Winniston was called to that bank yesterday to examine his or her safety box, and not one of them, Mr. Crosby, found a single item missing or disarranged. Either you never deposited those jewels in that box, or I — the sole controller of that safety-box system — stole them in some unexplainable way. Fifty years, man and boy, I’ve lived in Winniston. For twenty years I’ve handled money from those people without even a receipt. Now I am here to see this thing out. I am content to let any St. Paul or Winniston jury determine which of the two of us it was — you or I.”

  Crosby sat for a long time, thinking. Finally he looked up.

  “Gentlemen, there seems to be some sort of a mixup here which I am sure we can clean up. Now, so long as I definitely know that Viggman has confessed, I am more than glad to give you the details of my connection with his unfortunate case. First, Viggman did give me this Lord Masefield Octet. Distasteful as it was, in a way, I was willing to be an intermediary between Viggman and Rosecrantz, his victim, in order to live up to the recognized duty of an attorney to aid his client. I had intended to go straight from Winniston to St. Paul that day, but matters of a private nature called me to Omaha instead. As a result, it was a full two days later that I went to St. Paul. I found Mr. Rosecrantz, the diamond merchant, in Bethesda Hospital, and I also found what I had suspected: that he was the only principal who could be negotiated with in this affair, as he had bought the Lord Masefield Octet with his own money and not as an agent. I found, furthermore, that the bullet which they had been unable to draw from his lung had set up an infection, and that he was even then in a high fever. Now, so long as I had taken over Viggman’s interests, there was nothing for me to do but handle them in the way I had promised him. Until Rosecrantz took a pronounced turn for the better, I could do nothing. As for the eight diamonds — well, they were safe in a safety-deposit box, and I myself had the key to that box. My agent notified me just this morning that Mr. Rosecrantz is at last out of danger and able to see visitors. And I had intended going up there the very minute that a break took place in the Chalmers trial.”

  Crosby paused for a moment to get his breath after his long speech. Krenway was the first to break the silence. “Didn’t it strike you, Crosby, as a rather ticklish proposition to hold stolen goods, particularly when they were worth 150,000 dollars?”

  “No, it did not,” was Crosby’s heated retort. “I hadn’t done anything morally wrong. I expected to persuade Rosecrantz to call the whole thing a bad bargain, take back his jewels, and consider that he was very lucky as such things usually go. And Rosecrantz’s jewels were in a safer place that he himself was. He — ”

  “Oh, let us not waste time,” said Krenway grumpily, looking at his watch. He fastened his sour eyes on Crosby. “But I wonder what your idea was in trying to double-cross Viggman. Crosby, when the seals of that cough-drop carton were broken and the contents dumped out on the table in front of eight witnesses, there wasn’t a sign of a jewel. Eight cough-drops — that and no more. As for Worman, this young cashier, Mr. Barr has satisfied us that he had no means, on account of the system used there, to enter those safety boxes. Remember, Crosby, you yourself had the A-key in your possession all the time. Likewise, I am frank to say that I distrust your too energetic and well-fortified attempt to utilize this Worman flight as an explanation.” Krenway shook his head. “Come out of it, Crosby. It can’t be done. You don’t want to go up to St. Paul and face a jury. If you’ve still got the jewels yourself, fork ‘em over. And if you’ve handed ‘em over to some one else, come clean with us and we’ll all guarantee to forget this scene.”

  Crosby’s retort was an angry one, but he shifted one leg to the other uneasily as he spoke. “Yes, I
got ‘em, Krenway, exactly as Viggman has told Mr. Considine here. He seems to have overlooked entirely stating that I took those eight diamonds only as a pledge, planning to get them back to their rightful owner in exchange for an agreement on his part not to prosecute Viggman. All right, I wash my hands of Viggman now. As for the Lord Masefield Octet, I got it. I got the whole eight jewels composing it. You people say that you found only eight cough-drops in that box. Well, I give it all up. I throw up my hands. Somebody’s crooked and I pass!”

  A silence followed his wrathful answer. Then Considine, leaning forward in his arm-chair, spoke.

  “Crosby, you’ve been rather hard up lately for money, haven’t you? Been in trouble with any woman? For instance, blackmailed or anything?”

  Crosby regarded the big St. Paul sleuth with eyes narrowed to slits. “Is this thing developing into a farce?”

  Considine took from his vest pocket a square yellow sheet of paper. “Here’s the original copy of a telegram that came into Winniston the day you were there. Young fellow took it off the wires and delivered it to you personally over at the hotel desk. It had been relayed from St. Louis by way of Chicago, and it says: ‘Arrange to have without fail 44,000 dollars in cash Friday morning your office. This will cover all.’ “ Considine paused, then added: “It’s signed ‘Mabel Mannering.’ I suppose you’re willing, Crosby, to bring in this Mabel Mannering and let us talk to her — in fact, have her tell us exactly why she is asking of you 44,000 dollars in cash?”

  Crosby swallowed hard. With difficulty he refrained from biting his lips. “I will not,” he remonstrated. “I will — I will do nothing of the kind.”

  Krenway gave a short, hard laugh. “All right, Mr. Considine. So long as your extradition warrant is coming down on the three-thirty train, I’ll turn him over to you.” He rose from his desk to signify that the interview as far as he was concerned was over. “Crosby, unless you can get two bonds — one in favour of the city of Chicago, and one in favour of Mr. Considine’s agency in St. Paul, I’ll have to make you go back with him on the night train. I don’t want to be unfair to you, considering that you’ve got this Chalmers trial on your hands. It’s up to you. You’ve got two hours ahead of you.”

  And as Crosby without a word stepped to the phone to call for old Edgar McCarthy, the bondsman with whom he had had so many dealings in the past, he fell to thinking gravely as he held the receiver close to his ear. At last he was to realize what it meant to have the evidence directed against him instead of his client; at last he saw with uncommonly vivid vision what it was to mean to sit in the position of defendant. It would mean that as a criminal lawyer he would be broken — broken completely — that that long line of luckless men and women projecting down into the future must turn as one person from him — the “square guy “who had become a “double-crosser.” One thing was certain. If he explained here — now — or later in a St. Paul court — the truth of the damning “Mabel Mannering” telegram which had risen to confront him at this crisis in his affairs, then the truth must come out at last that Al Lipke, notorious crook, one-time defendant in a jury-fixing case, the Big Brains and the Booking Agent of the Underworld, was implicated in the disappearance of John Carrington, that the vanishing of the chief witness against the defence in the Chalmers case was something planned, arranged for and paid for.

  CHAPTER XXII

  THE COOL ONE RENDERS AN ACCOUNT

  CROSBY was in the mood of dejection. All in all the private hearing had taken less than the hour, with Victor Considine and Matthew Barr testifying, Viggman’s written confession and the copy of the telegram; and now he, David Crosby, found himself held in two bonds of 50,000 dollars and 15,000 dollars respectively, on the implied charge of grand larceny, but fortunately, it is to be admitted, without a line in the ever-hungry papers.

  It was in this downcast frame of mind that he was now calling Longinelli, the Italian saloon-keeper of West Madison Street, by ‘phone and demanding that Lipke come to his office by five o’clock.

  Sure enough, although he had called at twenty minutes to five, the slippery Lipke, always “out “at Longinelli’s, yet evidently always at the Italian’s elbow, entered the office and strode through the open door of Crosby’s inner room just as the latter’s mahogany clock on his desk tinkled the hour of five. The young man closed the door, and with eyes that were cold and hard surveyed the leonine figure which, with its brown suit, its carnation in the buttonhole, its grey kid gloves and grey suède-top shoes, made the black-haired, pink-faced Lipke a far from unhandsome person.

  “Out with it, Lipke, and out with it all quick. Everything in the Chalmers murder trial is gone to smash. What in God’s name did you pull?”

  Lipke dropped gracefully down in the mahogany visitor’s chair, and remarked casually, stripping off his grey gloves. “Gone to smash, eh? Has Carrington appeared to testify?”

  Crosby shook his head impatiently. “Come, Lipke, I want the truth now. You pulled that Carrington disappearance, didn’t you?”

  Lipke regarded him under lowering eyebrows. “We pulled it, don’t you mean? You and I? For you were in it, of course, just the same as I.”

  Crosby sighed. “Lipke, I was no more in on that deal with you than the man in the moon. Do you think I play the game that way? But now to get out of this beastly mess that Chalmers has got himself and me in. Lipke, give me all the facts and give them to me quick. I’ve not got much time to work.”

  Lipke, the imperturbable, gave a cautious sweeping look about the room. “Well, so long as you want a statement; yes, I engineered that deal. Your opponent’s badly wanted witness — John Carrington — is out in a house some distance off in Higgins Road, Cook County, unharmed, sleeping nicely under a little judicious use of the hypodermic, until this trial is over. I suppose you people will weep at the cost, but if I do say it myself it’s the best bargain young Chalmers ever bought in his life. A half-million dollars at stake!”

  “Lipke, you’ve pulled a big criminal deal of some sort, one on a big scale — and you’ve achieved what to your kind is known as a successful result. To me it’s a humiliating thing — a disgrace — and there’s the devil to pay now. Evidently you haven’t seen the accounts of this morning’s trial, but I can tell you that the cat’s nose is already out of the bag. Now I want the truth. Remember, Lipke, whatever you tell me is inviolate between us, but I want every detail connected with this Carrington abduction. I want it all, beginning with that letter of Chalmers’ that I was dupe enough to deliver to you.”

  Lipke coolly drew out a black cigar from his vest pocket and bit the end of it off. “Well, I must say, Crosby, that I thought you were part and parcel of the whole plan considering that you were acting as go-between ‘twixt myself and Chalmers with respect to the money involved. As for me, I’ve done exactly what he wanted done. It took money and it took men and, if I may add something, it took a little thinking.”

  Crosby made no reply, but his eyes continued to rivet themselves upon the genial orbs of Lipke, the Big Brains and the Booking Agent of the Underworld.

  “Well, here’s the dope,” put in that individual after a moment’s pause. “When I left your office the seventh of this month, I left believing this affair was quite between the three of us, you, Chalmers and me. I was confronted with the following proposition: get John Carrington out of the way sometime after the next trial opens, but without leaving trace. For 50,000 dollars and expenses, all the way up to that if necessary. All right. Naturally I first had a little investigation made of Carrington through friends — you get me? Vital statistics about him. Teetotaller. Straitlaced. Member of the Church. One of our stick pillars of society. You know ‘em, Crosby. I know ‘em too. Now I found also that at one time he’d had — what do you call it?” — Lipke wrinkled up his brows — “myelitis, that was it. He’d had acute myelitis, an inflammation of the spinal cord. When he recovered he was left with a sort of rare semi-paralysis of the lower limbs. He could walk, but he had to use two ca
nes, and had to take things easy. Couldn’t cover much distance, and his legs gave completely out on him.

  “Now you’d have thought,” continued Lipke reflectively, “that living out in the north-west section of the city — and with that rare spinal-cord condition — he’d have had a machine. But he didn’t. He’d once been in a smash-up of one and he was strictly off of ‘em as a man is off of mules who has ever been kicked by one. You grasp me, I dare say. So every morning of his life Carrington clumped faithfully along the half-block from his house to the Irving Park line with his paper, boarded the Irving Park car, rode into the city as far as Milwaukee Avenue — the big diagonal thoroughfare — and then rode on in clear to the corner of Canal and Randolph where his offices are located. The only gadding about he ever did seems to be an occasional trip down to his sister’s who lived only a couple blocks from the Irving Park line, and that’s how he happened to meet Archibald Chalmers on Western Avenue the night of the van Slyke murder.”

  Lipke paused a moment. “Well, given a man that won’t ride an automobile, is being given a man that you can’t kidnap very easily. So the simple answer to the proposition was: make him enter an automobile by making him want to enter it. Jam those Irving Park Cars all morning so bad that the old gentleman would either have to reach Milwaukee Avenue some other way or else never get there.

  “To jam a set of cars, all that is necessary is to discharge, say, a young circus near the end of the line and see that all the audience boards a car. And this was exactly what I had to arrange for. I decided upon a big vacant lot at North 60th Court and Irving Park Boulevard for my loading point — excuse me for using stockyard terms in connection with our human brothers.” Lipke smiled. “And in view of the fact that one has to have a pretty good stall for, say, newspaper reporters, and when one advertises for twelve hundred men at 10 dollars apiece, I ran down to New York and rooted up a crack circus daredevil act that had never been performed in public before. I also saw a friend of mine down in certain circles in the Big Town and fixed up a few little telegrams and other matters before I left.