“Now about the Bishop, I was afraid you fellows were going to squeal at the price of his services — I got him down in St. Louis, three days after he got out of the Missouri pen on a five-year stretch. I’ve known the Bishop for years. Best ecclesiastical confidence man in the Middle West, and he’s turned thousands of dollars into his pockets. A clever man, the Bishop, but pretty soary and inclined to take things a bit easy after coming out into the free air again. Nothing less than 1,000 dollars would satisfy him, and so I had to pay it.
“Now about the scheme. How would it work? Couldn’t have worked out better. Pains, my boy, that’s all — and attention to details. That’s what spells success in any undertaking. My ad. in the Chicago papers for twelve hundred men with suitcases brought thirteen hundred and forty men — as nice a bunch of roughnecks as you ever saw — and they were all in the tent promptly by 7.30 a.m. Then I ran my act, which cost your client an even thousand iron men, and let the bunch go. Gave each man a cheque and instructions to show this cheque and his street-car transfer at the old real estate shack on the corner of Broadway and Irving Park. The cheques were O.K. of course, for I’d deposited 15,000 dollars in the First National Bank under the name of A. Cloyd, to cover them.”
“The street-car transfer,” Crosby interrupted wearily, “was to insure each man’s boarding the car when he got out of the tent?”
“Exactly,” assented Lipke, the cool. “Well, I figured my twelve hundred men, at one hundred men to the car, would fill the cars for three hours flat, but they kept coming on in carloads clear till way after noontime. It was the suitcase wrinkle, you see, that put my plans that much to the good. There never was a poor stiff living in a hall bedroom or even out on Goose Island that didn’t have an old suitcase around, or some kind of luggage carrier; and so, last minute before I left the car for my ads. in Chicago, I decided to get as many of ‘em — all of ‘em, in fact — to bring suitcases. One hundred men, my boy, will jam an Irving Park car till she busts, but give the majority of ‘em luggage in the way of suitcases and telescopes and so forth, and you’ll have the original hell and confusion.”
“Go on,” said Crosby bitterly. “Your plans were beyond criticism, all right. I suppose your confederate in New York was ready with faked telegrams purporting to be from Carrington to the State’s attorney and his daughter, and to be sent when you notified him. You’re no fool, Lipke; I can see that all right. Go ahead with the story.”
“Nothing much more to it,” said Lipke, shrugging his broad shoulders. “Carrington started for the car line around quarter to nine — his customary time — and they picked him up after he’d stood against the fireplug for thirty minutes, seeing three full cars go by without stopping. He fell for the Bishop like a baby for candy. But what else could he do, anyway? It was a case of gasolene motor or horseflesh for him — nothing else.
“Now the old gentleman never missed a day at his office, and he didn’t intend to miss this day either; so he went in the limousine. Two blocks farther on where the street was all vacant lots again, Bish and the driver jumped at him, trussed him up, stuck a gag in his mouth and whisked him out to a rented house off the Wiggins Road, where he’s lying very comfortable, having a good sleep, well fed between sleeps, till the jury comes out and says Archibald Chalmers is innocent.”
Crosby shook his head slowly. “What did all this cost?” he asked.
Lipke fumbled in his pocket. “I thought when you called Longinelli you wanted me over here for an accounting, so I brought along the full statement with the bit of change that’s coming to your man.” He produced a short typewritten strip of yellow paper which he handed over to Crosby. The latter inspected it, item by item, with a face that was far from pleased. The contents, nicely tabulated and nicely typed, totalled $42,528.31.
Crosby glanced up at the conclusion of his inspection to find lying on the desk close to his elbow a cheque whose figures he could see came to 3,471.00 dollars, made out in favour of “cash,” and signed “C. C. Cloyd.” He thrust back the yellow slip to Lipke’s outstretched hand, and for a moment sat looking curiously at the other. Finally he spoke.
“You’re certainly a cool one, Lipke, and a clever one. I don’t suppose you yourself entered into this thing at any point?”
The other shook his head genially. “Of course not.”
A long silence filled the room. Then Crosby spoke again.
“Well, all I can say is that your nicely working machine was so perfect that it spoiled its own running. There was a young girl attracted out to that tent by your ad. As a result, she passed the corner of Parkside about the time your friend the Bishop induced John Carrington to enter his machine. She testified in to-day’s trial. Now regardless of all this, anyway, Carrington must be released at once. Keep the money you’ve earned. It’s Chalmers’ money, not a penny of it is mine. Thank God for that. But release Carrington in any way that’s simple and quick, and see that he’s back in the world safe and sound by midnight to-night. Do you get me?”
Lipke surveyed him imperturbably. That mocking smile was on his lips again. Then he spoke.
“Well, you and Chalmers are the doctors. Of course you’ve forgotten what you’ve just heard in this office?”
“Forgotten it?” repeated Crosby bitterly. “Forgotten it? I wish to God I’d never even heard of it!” The clock on his desk showed the hour to be a quarter to six. Crosby rose. “You’ll release him at once, will you?”
Lipke too arose. He stretched his huge frame and yawned. “John Carrington will be back in his home by midnight to-night. After all, I should worry — as they say — about you two fellows. If you want to ruin your case and throw good money to the wind, you’re the ones that are out.” And a moment later he was gone.
CHAPTER XXIII
THE VEILED WOMAN
SCARCELY five minutes had Crosby sat, chin in hand, lost in his own gloomy reflections, when the telephone bell on his desk rang sharply. So immersed in his own thoughts was he that he disregarded the first ring, but raised the receiver reluctantly at the second. A young brusque man’s voice was on the end, but friendly in tone.
“David Crosby?”
“Crosby speaking.”
“Tommie Heyworth, Crosby. Dave, I’ve got two little hot tips for you on your Chalmers trial. Little leak out of the State’s attorney’s office. Charlie Canfield of the Herald put me next.”
“Go ahead, Tommie.”
“Well, in the first place, Dave, this fellow Jake Kilduff, who you proved in the first trial was the only man who could legally identify the stickpin found in the gangway next to van Slyke’s house that night, is back in Chicago from South America on business of his own, and they’re going to spring him. So you can look for a positive and final identification of the stickpin now. Sorry to shoot you bad news, old boy.”
“That’s all right, Tommie. It’s been raining on me all day, so just let it pour. And what else?”
“About Chalmers’ speedster. Seems that there’s a peculiar twist of some sort in that testimony in the first Chalmers trial about Chalmers’ garage owner, the negro Joe Skoggins, having sold his car for him a week before the murder. At any rate, they’ve got their hands on Chalmers’ car, and can prove that it was still owned by him the night of the murder and not a block from where he lived. Well, that’s all, Dave.”
“That’s very good of you, Tommie. It’s all news to me. Thanks for the tip.” And with a parting word or two, they hung up.
And sitting amid his gloomy reflections, amid the chaos of himself in the purloining of the St. Paul diamond dealer’s jewels, the tiny clock on his desk tinkled forth the hour of six.
And promptly She came!
He rose from his chair and crossed the floor quickly as the slim figure in its black silk dress paused uncertainly in the open door of his office, a black velvet bag on her wrist, and her big brown eyes surveying the neatly furnished interior.
“Lindell, Lindell,” he breathed, her hands clasped in his own, �
�I can’t believe, dear, that it’s really you.”
She held him off at arm’s length and inspected him with eyes in which a curious interest mingled with what might have been pride. “David, I just couldn’t look you all over to-day in the excitement, but now I can — and David, how different from what you were!”
His face clouded. Then he forced a reluctant smile to his lips. He ushered her to a chair close to his swivel chair, and after closing the door took up a seat by her.
“And now, Lindell,” he demanded, his hand encompassing hers on the chair-arm, “I want you to tell me all. I never, never dreamed that you were to come into my big murder trial and on the side of the State at that. But here you are — and no matter which side you’re on, thank God you’re here!”
“I will tell you about it from the beginning,” Lindell replied. “It was in the steamship offices of the Pacific and Southern Navigation Company where I first met Miss Sparken. I was there inquiring about passport details and transportation fees. Miss Sparken was in there arguing about getting a refund on her passage which she had decided she could not use. Well, David, the upshot of it all was that she persuaded me to buy her passage and her passport, and I, not knowing that I was committing an offence in law, bought them and paid cash for them from the gift the governor’s wife had made me. On the day before the sailing of the Ocean Queen she came to me in the rooming-house on Market and Fremont Streets, San Francisco, where I was staying. She said that her plans had again changed, and that she had since discovered that we were both guilty of a crime which would put us in jail if it were discovered that we had engaged in this passport transaction. I think, David, she knew it all the time; but now, when her plans had changed, she used it for a leverage to get back her passage and her passport. Of course I sold them back to her at once for exactly what I paid her, which destroyed all chances of my leaving on the Ocean Queen as I had expected to do.”
“But the meshbag made of Australian sixpences? The one you bought from the old sailor in San Francisco?”
She made an entrancing little moue, such as a French girl might make.
“Oh, David, that terrible meshbag! It was one of those things which, when we first see them, we think we would give everything we possess to own, and in a week we hate the thing so badly that we would sell it for a penny to get rid of it. When Miss Sparken came to me to buy back her passage, she fell in love with it, and I — was only too glad to get rid of it.”
“And just to think, Liddell,” commented Crosby slowly, “by that same meshbag — at least by the name and address you had engraved on it — I hoped to locate you in Australia.”
She stared at him, a little unbelievingly. “How persistent you were, David, to have fought so desperately to find me. I can’t realize it. As to the name I had taken, it was Anne Wentworth, my mother’s two middle names. Her name, you see, was Marion Anne Wentworth Hazlett when she married my father in New Zealand. I had picked Aborigenn, Australia, a tiny crossroads mail post in the interior, as my future address, knowing that I had an uncle who lived some forty miles from this point. But as I say, I never reached there; never even sailed. Instead, I wound up in the hospital at San Francisco with a fractured ankle caused in a taxicab accident when I was changing my residence from the Market Street boarding-house to a new residence in Oakland, the same morning that the Ocean Queen sailed. That, of course, was why you found I had checked out the morning of the vessel’s departure. I was on my back for six long months. When I came out, my money was gone. And I went to work — now Anne Wentworth, yes — in the city of Oakland, in the country which I had ceased to care for.
“That closes the story,” she concluded sadly. “My plans for reaching Australia were never consummated. But my existence has not been a failure, either. I have drifted, as you might call it, from city to city, working in many places, sometimes for barely enough to support me. But it was when I came to Chicago, some three months ago on my way across the country toward New York, that I stumbled upon a position that has supplied me with certain grounds of knowledge such as I have always hoped to have. The social graces, David, and all the things those words imply.”
Her face clouded. She was silent.
“Go on,” he urged softly. “Do you think that every word about the girl I love — whom I have loved through all these years — is not precious to me?”
She gazed out of the window into the night for a long time. “It is hard, David, quite to open the arms to one who has allowed one’s life to be so disgraced as mine was. It is not something that comes about quickly and easily. Oh, David, I too cared — cared so much, and because the man I cared for refused to fight for me, it made it all so hard, so bitter.”
“But you still do care?” He leaned forward. He gripped her white hands till marks showed upon them. He gazed hungrily into her big brown eyes. “Lindell, I am on the road to success — big success. My practice has climbed steadily. Everything lies in front of me. Everything — ” He stopped short and his face clouded as the memory of this day’s two developments in his life rose like a black spirit. But he thrust it forcibly away by an effort of will, as one holds off a superior antagonist. “Dear, dearest — can we not somehow forget the past together?”
“Perhaps we can,” she said softly. “Perhaps we can.” She paused, thinking. “David, I have spent all afternoon since leaving you with a woman who came at once to my room after the court session was over, and this same woman is coming here in a little while to talk with us both. Once in your life, David, you failed completely to fight for me — and five years of my life were changed and embittered. Now you can make up for it if you will — if you can use all the ingenuity that is in you. This woman is my dearest friend, Mrs. Hester Cornell. I was working for her as a sort of social secretary and companion, and I thought she had left Chicago, but it appears now that she had only slipped away to a down-town hotel, from which she could go each and every day to the trial of Mr. Chalmers, beginning with the date on which the jurymen first began to be selected. She tells me that she did not miss a day, an hour, a minute of the first Chalmers trial. She told me everything to-day, after she saw no one else but her own secretary and companion rise up in court and give testimony by which Mr. Ballmeier is trying to prove that the defence has abducted the State’s chief witness. And oh, David, if she was surprised, you can imagine how surprised I was! I did not dream but that you were still picking away at the law, down in Brossville.”
“Well,” he said, “you evidently reached Chicago since the first Chalmers trial, and so far as I know my name hasn’t occurred since then in the public prints. But please go on, Lindell. Tell me about this Mrs. Cornell.”
“Well, David, she disclosed to me facts about Mr. Archibald Chalmers. If what she says is true, then Archibald Chalmers is not guilty of the murder. He cannot be. And, David, if you love me as you claim you do, fight for him now as you never fought for me. Save him. David, because you are saving Hester Cornell, the finest friend that I have ever known in my life. This, David, is payment for the bitterness of my own life.”
A silence followed her long statement, and it was broken by a light tapping on the door. Crosby rose from his chair and crossing the floor quickly threw it open. In spite of the decided interval since that day of the first Chalmers trial when he had seen what he called “the veiled woman” raise her veil on the steps of the Criminal Court Building, Crosby recognized her at once, and as her eyes rested a second on Lindell Trent seated near his desk, she stepped in and took his outstretched hand in her gloved one.
“I am so glad to meet you personally, Mr. Crosby. And equally glad at last to be able to have a talk with you.” She turned to Lindell Trent, who had now risen and had taken up her velvet bag. “No, Lindell, you too can stay, dear. We three shall talk it over together.”
Crosby closed the door of the office and drawing over another chair waited till Mrs. Cornell had seated herself. Then he dropped into his own. He was the first to speak.
�
��Mrs. Cornell, Miss Trent tells me that you have certain information in your possession which absolutely marks Archibald Chalmers as innocent of this murder. I have fought his entire case out entirely in the dark — never has he given me a single word of enlightenment as to that night. Now if I am even to try to save him, I must have this information.”
The woman with the hazel eyes heaved a faint sigh. “Mr. Crosby, I of all persons in Chicago to-day know that Archibald Chalmers is innocent of that murder. He has remained silent rather than go on the stand and be forced to tell why he went that night to Rupert van Slyke’s house. And all because he was trying to protect me.”
She was crying softly now. Both Crosby and the girl waited until she collected herself. Then she went on a little vehemently. “Mr. Crosby, I am the cause of this whole terrible affair. If Mr. Cornell hadn’t spent so much time away from me in South America, and if likewise Rupert — Rupert van Slyke — hadn’t exercised all the fascinating influence over me that he did, oh — I never would have been carried away by his personality as I was; I would never have written Rupert all those letters of endearment. It was worse than folly. And I realized it only too well when Rupert demanded that we fly together to Japan; realized at last that I had thrown away the love of a good man, a man who protected me and cared for me, for the love of an individual who really was the idler who neither toiled nor spun.
“Rupert declared that unless I went with him as I — I had promised in my letters, he would give those letters to the owner and publisher of Town Tattle, the disgraceful society sheet that is a black blot on the very name of society. And Rupert van Slyke would have done just what he said. I didn’t know what to do. I realized too late that I was trapped. I pleaded and begged with Rupert not to do it, but he was adamant. It was Japan or public disclosure, he persisted. He gave me till January 28 to change my mind. In despair I went to Archie. He had always been such a dear boy. And he was the only friend I could count upon in this terrible thing. He went to Rupert and he must have first appealed to him and then later threatened him. They broke up in bitterness and hatred. That was why Archie must have made those threats to Rupert in the Sportsmen’s Club which were later used against him. But Archie told me — Mr. Cornell was in Buenos Aires at the time — not to lose my courage. He told me that he would get back those letters from Rupert if he never accomplished anything else in his life.
The Amazing Web Page 24
