The Amazing Web

by Harry Stephen Keeler

  “I lived in fear and trembling, counting on Archie all the time. Finally Archie told me his plan. And I, helpless, unable to think, prayed only to be extricated from the situation; made no remonstrance at the methods he intended to employ. I only wanted to get back those incriminating love-letters I had fatuously written to Rupert.

  “It was on the night of January 21 — the night of the murder, Mr. Crosby — when I raised my receiver to ask the time of Central. She answered me that it was nine-fifty-eight. It checked by my wrist-watch. Just about sixty seconds later, for my hall clock was chiming, my phone rang. I answered it. It was Archie’s voice. It was a little brusque, a little bit nervous. ‘Mrs. Cornell — Hester,’ he said, ‘under no conditions ring my rooms to-night as you have done for some nights past.’ I asked: ‘Archie, where are you?’ He said: ‘In a drug store far out on the north-west side near — ’ Then I heard Central break in on the conversation and say: ‘Will you kindly drop your nickel, please!’ I heard him remonstrate with the words: ‘But I have dropped it, Central.’ And she got out of the conversation as rapidly as she had got in. Then I heard the melodious sound of great chimes over the phone. I asked: ‘What is all that chiming going on, Archie?’ He replied: ‘A church bell up the street is chiming the hour of ten. I’m surprised that you can hear it.’ He paused and then added: ‘Now remember, Hester, don’t ring my rooms until to-morrow. I think to-night I’ll get back those letters for good and all.’ And he hung up.”

  Mrs. Cornell paused. “And there you have my story, Mr. Crosby. Those very chimes — the chimes of St. Ignatius’ Church — which helped in the first trial to establish the exact hour when Rupert van Slyke was shot to death, were ringing as Archie talked to me on the phone.”

  Crosby leaned back in his swivel chair and wrinkled up his brow. Life to-day had been one complication after another.

  CHAPTER XXIV

  THE LONE GLADIATOR GIRDS UP HIS LOINS

  LEANING back in his swivel chair, Crosby addressed Mrs. Cornell. “Now, Mrs. Cornell, you say van Slyke had only an unlimited service phone?”

  “Absolutely,” she averred. “If you will look at the telephone directory of the day of the murder, you will see that by his exchange.”

  “But you heard Central break in on your conversation with Mr. Chalmers at ten o’clock and ask for a nickel?”

  She nodded, her fingers smoothing out the moist handkerchief she had used.

  “I suppose you secretly investigated after the arrest to see where the nearest public coin telephone was?”

  She nodded again. “A block away, Mr. Crosby, in a drug store on Belleplaine near Western Avenue.” She paused. “And a man cannot cover a distance like that during the fraction of a minute that a church bell is chiming.”

  “No,” he agreed. He thought hard. “It was Chalmers’ voice on the wire, you are sure?”

  “Absolutely,” she said vehemently. “Even on the phone his voice is unmistakable.”

  Crosby glanced at his watch. “Now Mrs. Cornell, for Lindell’s sake I am going to make a hard fight. I don’t know whether I am even to get any sleep to-night. All I know is that I will have to work quickly if I work at all.” He glanced at Lindell Trent and a look of pain came over his face. “I might viciously attack a certain State’s witness to-morrow at heavy cost to the State, by asking that witness where she spent a certain part of her life around November, 1922. It would mean more sensation — but — well — it cannot be done.” He shook his head, gazing tenderly at the girl. Then he arose from his chair.

  “I am going to ask each of you to excuse me now, for I must do a thousand things to-night before that trial opens to-morrow.”

  The two women arose. Mrs. Cornell gave him her hand without a word. Then she slipped from the room, leaving him alone with the younger one.

  He thrust out his hand to Lindell. “Little girl of the olden days, this is all I dare ask — I who have upset your whole life so. But, Lindell, you have said, have you not, that if I can save Chalmers for Mrs. Cornell’s sake, you will forgive and forget all? Is — is this a compact?”

  Her eyes filled with moisture. “Oh, David, please do something — something! I have the same faith in you now that I had then. We cannot let an innocent man be convicted, nor a woman’s name be bandied around in a court-room and in the newspapers.”

  He dropped her hand. “I will do my utmost, little Lindell, for you.”

  She smiled a wan smile as she turned in the doorway. A moment later the door closed softly behind her and he was alone.

  He lost no time in raising the telephone receiver and ordering a taxicab. His brain was slowly quieting down now to the big task in front of him. And when the taxicab driver, cap in hand, came to the open office door, Crosby ordered the man to take him first to the county jail. Within ten minutes after leaving the Otis Building he was being locked in the cell with Chalmers.

  “My God, Crosby,” said that young man, white as a corpse, stopping his pacing up and down long enough to greet his attorney, “I’ve lived a thousand deaths since noon to-day. And you haven’t even been near me. They — they’ve turned the whole case inside out on me — and — and I’m done for!”

  Crosby dropped down close to him. He spoke firmly, but in a low voice. “You did a terrible thing, Chalmers, in putting John Carrington out of the case. Why did you do it?”

  Chalmers sighed. “Oh, you ought to be able to see why, Crosby. I was desperate at the thought of forfeiting that half-million because I couldn’t get an acquittal. I tried to sit by in dignified silence like an Englishman, and what did I get for it? Months more of hell. Now I determined to play the American game — the American way — hand out the money and rake in results. What was 50,000 dollars compared to a life of freedom plus an inheritance ten times as much as fifty thousand? But now — ” He stopped.

  “Well,” commented Crosby sternly, “it’s a mighty good thing I didn’t know it. And the American way hasn’t proved as advantageous as the dignified English way you were going before.” He paused. He lowered his voice, although he knew that this precaution was needless with those thick brick walls, and that empty tier of cells across the way. “Chalmers, a whole host of things have happened to-day. For one thing, my South Sea Island scheme is exploded. The girl I have been searching for for five long years is found. I no longer need the ship which is promised as my fee in this case. And I am in serious trouble myself now, even under heavy bonds on a criminal charge — and all on account of Lipke’s telegram signed ‘Mabel Mannering’ asking for 44,000 dollars, which I dare not explain. Lipke has been at my office and I have made him tell me all, and John Carrington is to be brought back to his home by midnight. Also, Mrs. Cornell had been closeted with me for an hour, and — ”

  “Hester — Hester has told you the facts?” said Chalmers, staring at his attorney.

  Crosby nodded silently.

  The lips of the young clubman tightened into a thin hard line. “I’ve fought for seven long months now without bringing her into it, and by God I’m going to finish the thing the same way. Damn them all, newspaper reporters and lawyers altogether, all they want is the name of a woman — a woman to centre their nasty notoriety around. But they’ll not get it if I have to go on the stand and say I killed him for some money in his safe. They’ll not get it. Her story shall go unheard.”

  Crosby said nothing in reply to the other man’s excited outburst. Finally he spoke. “Chalmers, when that shot was fired at ten o’clock, you were a block away in a drug store, were you not? You were talking to Mrs. Cornell on the phone?”

  Chalmers nodded, viciously thrusting back from his wet forehead his mat of thick uncut red hair.

  “Was this before or after you came from van Slyke’s residence?”

  The answer was low. “Just before. I had just had the ill luck to meet John Carrington on Western Avenue, and worse, had had to sign up his subscription book. This set me to thinking. I knew my well-laid scheme would go further up in the air if M
rs. Cornell should phone to my rooms with my double lying on the bed in my room with the rubber face mask on. She had been telephoning me several nights around this hour. So I hot-footed it to the first drug store, and called her up to caution her.”

  “After leaving the drug store, you went to van Slyke’s?”

  Chalmers nodded.

  “At any time that night were you in that gangway at the side of the house?”

  “Yes. It was my stickpin they found there,” replied Chalmers bitterly.

  “So you really went up the rear tree, did you? And you found the partly opened window, which was always left so on account of the overheating of the room?”

  “Yes.”

  “Room lighted up, Chalmers?”

  Chalmers nodded his head. “Yes. God — what I saw! He was lying on the floor, face up, a nasty bullet-hole in his head, blood all down his face. I had fully expected to find an empty library. But there he was, dead, a corpse, shot down in his own home. His eyes were wide open with a stare that seemed to bore me through to the soul. I tell you, Crosby, I was panic-stricken.”

  “Where do you suppose the fellow was, at this moment, who subsequently grappled with Venson?” asked Crosby. “I believe your story, I’m frank to say, because you’re in a panic and you’re telling the truth.”

  “I am,” averred Chalmers. “That fellow — he must have been snooping around in the outer hallway trying to get the lay of that house. Now if he were somebody who knew the old van Slyke residence well, he would have escaped either by the elm tree, or else been out of the house long before Venson arrived back there, which was about ten minutes after ten, judging from Noonan’s watch. In other words, he and Rupe knew each other, but he didn’t know Rupe’s house. Then — of all the damnable luck! — when he heard Venson come in the front door, he made a run for it.”

  “You went no farther after you gazed in the room from the elm tree?” Crosby inquired.

  Chalmers wiped off his damp forehead. “Go farther? Me — go into a room with a murdered man? Not I, Crosby. I tell you I was weak all over for a few seconds. I forgot Hester — forgot everything during that long inspection. Then I wondered if Hester — if Hester had hired someone to go there and kill Rupert — if she had been the cause of his murder. I — I had a hunch that moment that for that bullet hole I would some day sit in a prisoner’s dock, fighting for my life. As for the selling of her letters to Town Tattle — well, that was all over now.”

  There was silence. “I can’t help but admire your grit, Chalmers, for protecting Mrs. Cornell as you have. I don’t know that it’s just to you, though, that you should risk electrocution for her folly.”

  “Say nothing against her,” snapped his client angrily.

  “No offence meant,” said Crosby patiently. He could see that Chalmers was wrought up to the breaking-point, evidently having paced his cell all afternoon. He changed the subject. “In view of the fact that van Slyke gave up an important part in that theatrical performance, it would appear that he expected someone to call there that evening? Is this not so?”

  Chalmers nodded half-heartedly. “Yes, unless it was spite work on his part.”

  Again silence filled the small enclosure. And again Crosby broke it. “Chalmers, that rubber mask and astringent treatment that your doctor put you on must have helped that damaged nerve of yours. Both sides of your face are firm and even.”

  “Yes,” said the other, “but look at the abstemious life I’ve been living here to boot. Ought to cure a nerve condition, let alone help it.”

  “Another question,” said Crosby. “Chalmers, do you still want to hurt your appearance with the jury by your refusal to let the jail barber trim your hair?”

  “To hell with the jury,” sneered Chalmers, his bitterness evidently returning once more in an all-engulfing wave. “To hell with ‘em all. That jail barber — that louse-covered prison bird? But what’s it got to do with my case, anyway? Let’s — let’s pay attention to business.”

  “Yes, let us,” agreed Crosby ingratiatingly. His forehead creased into tiny thoughtful wrinkles. “I have had a tip handed me that they have what they call the death car, Chalmers. In other words, your speedster which I proved in the first trial by Joe Skoggins, the negro garage owner of East 42nd Street, had been sold before the murder.”

  Chalmers’ face was dejected, even sullen. “Oh, they’ve got everything, I guess,” he railed. “Yes, I owned the speedster all the time. I used it the night of van Slyke’s death — parked it on Western Avenue not far from where I met Carrington — but it’s been locked up in its garage ever since my arrest.” He shrugged his shoulders. “But you say the State’s uncovered it. Well, it was due to happen.”

  Crosby sat thinking for a moment longer. Then he glanced down at his watch. He spoke.

  “Now, Chalmers, I must go. I’ve got a dozen places to call at to-night. I’ve got to work hard if I expect to find daylight in this thing. So for the present I’m leaving you. Hold your nerve. I’ll not put Mrs. Cornell on the stand so long as you refuse your permission. But I have a faint idea or two concerning this case that’s trying to batter its way into my brain.” He rose. “Good-bye.” He thrust out his hand.

  Chalmers emitted a long, despairing sigh. “Good-bye — and go to the devil. Oh no, I don’t mean that, Crosby. I’m nearly crazy now. Save me, Crosby. Save me, will you? I didn’t kill van Slyke. I swear it. Or — or now that you no longer need that ship specified in our contract, maybe you’re no longer interested in me and in my case?”

  Crosby paused, his hand on the iron door that the summoned jail guard was just unlocking.

  “Chalmers, I am more interested in your case to-night than at any time in our past relationship. Be assured of that.” He whisked himself rapidly away down the corridor and out to the waiting taxicab.

  Once outside, he ordered the driver to carry him to 4240 Drexel Boulevard, the address of Chalmers’ bachelor apartment. The trip consumed eighteen minutes. Arriving there, Crosby rang the bell. It was Oscar Okerburg, the valet, who answered the door, and he ushered Crosby into the parlour where Mrs. Morely, the white-haired old housekeeper, sat rocking back and forth. Crosby lost no time in getting to the point.

  “Okerburg, I see that you have to-night’s paper on the stand over there; so I dare say you’ve read to-day’s testimony. Now about your own testimony in that first trial. When you stated that Archibald Chalmers lay on his bed in front of your eyes all evening, were you stating your own conviction? You will remember that you said nothing about the rubber complexion mask, either to me before the trial or to the jury during the trial.”

  Mrs. Morely answered for him. “Oh, sir, we neither of us dreamed that anyone but Archie lay on the bed. The flaming red hair, the red and purple felt slippers, the bath robe, the book, the incessant cigarettes — we just knew it was Archie. It was Oscar who told me, when we first talked together after Mr. Chalmers’ arrest, that so long as we knew Mr. Chalmers hadn’t been out of the bedroom, the best thing we could do for his case was not to mention a word about the rubber mask.”

  Crosby turned to the high-cheekboned valet. “So you thought you were telling the truth anyway? Yet you knew, did you not, about the existence of this Jordan Jones, the former marine, who is a double of Mr. Chalmers?”

  “Of course I knew about Jordan Jones,” assented the valet. “Both Mrs. Morely and I knew of him, for Mr. Chalmers just about this time was taking flowers to him in the hospital. But this Jones, you see, has an artificial foot, and his hair isn’t red. It’s black as coal.”

  “I see.” Crosby rose. “Well, that’s all, I guess. I was pretty certain that both of you people believed your own story implicitly. That’s all. I’ll be going now.”

  And back again to the waiting taxicab he went.

  This time he returned to the Otis Building and dismissed his cab. Upstairs in his office he paced up and down, up and down, thinking, pondering, reflecting.

  At length he rang for another ta
xicab, and was waiting down in the street when it drew up to the kerb. This time he drove clear out to the 32nd Precinct police station into which the murder alarm had gone that fateful night from the van Slyke residence near-by. He was closeted for quite a while with the switchboard operator, a young fellow who wore a green celluloid shade over his eyes and gave the very Scotch name of Andrew McTaggett. And when Crosby left McTaggett and the station as well, his face was set in more rigid lines than ever. And again back to his office he drove.

  It was now close to eleven o’clock at night. He raised his telephone and calling the nearest A.D.T. Station, asked for one Jimmie Higgins. After he hung up, he worked for several minutes under the hanging light above the stenographer’s desk, and finally evolved on a perfectly blank sheet of paper a cryptic typewritten message which read:

  Watch your step. Plans are already made to arrest you for the van Slyke murder, on the theory that you intended to rob him. You are under surveillance now.

  A FRIEND.

  Typing a blank envelope with an address which he secured from his notebook, he sealed up his brief communication. The thin weazened face of the boy in the blue messenger cap who came to the door of the office ten minutes later brightened up at the sight of a five-dollar bill in Crosby’s fingers, and he listened attentively to the latter’s words.