The Amazing Web

by Harry Stephen Keeler

  “Now, Jimmie, you’re always experimenting around trying to be a detective; so here’s your chance to do some legitimate detective work. I want this sealed note put into this person’s fingers personally, and before any chance arises for any questions to be asked of you, I want you to do the vanishing act. If you deliver it safely and to the right party, no need to report back to me. If by any chance you can’t, write a report and drop it through the slot of this door. But you must never say ‘can’t’ in detective work, my boy. Deliver the note. That’s what you must do.”

  “Leave it to me,” said Jimmie Higgins confidently.

  With Jimmie’s departure, trailing behind him a lively whistle, Crosby, consulting again one of the papers in that yellow folder, raised his receiver, and called a single number in Englewood. Getting his party after some wait, he gave his name and the single cryptic order:

  “I have decided to use you after all, professor. Will you therefore be at court to-morrow?” And getting the assent of his mysterious party, he hung up.

  Now he consulted a large city directory on the stenographer’s desk, whistling a low but equally satisfied whistle as he did so. Finally he found what he wanted, and again he rejoined the patiently waiting cab. This time he drove straight out west, and it was exactly midnight when he reached number 1235 Tripp Avenue. A tiny cottage, painted green, stood at that number, and he was out in no time ringing the old-fashioned twist bell that he found there.

  It was a full hour before he emerged, but this time there emerged with him one more person, the latter carrying a small hastily packed handbag; and together the two entered the waiting cab.

  Clear to the north side the cab took them now, straight into Crosby’s own residence district where he was acquainted. At a dark store on Division Street the sign on which proclaimed jewellery, watches, diamonds and alarm clocks, Crosby rang a bell which led to a flat above the store. They ascended the stairs. The bald-headed man who came to the door clad only in his nightshirt was manifestly alarmed until he caught sight of Crosby’s face under the gaslight in the hall. Then, with a look of recognition, he politely threw open the door and ushered his visitor into his flat.

  Again a full hour passed, filled with much talk all round, and many sheets of paper and diagrams. And when Crosby and his companion again went to their taxicab, the baldheaded man was climbing into his trousers and getting out the key to his shop.

  From here they drove to the county jail, but ten minutes distant, and Crosby hopped out and entered it, where he examined the register of day employees. Fortified by a certain name he re-entered the cab and again they drove off, this time out on West Chicago Avenue.

  It was three o’clock in the morning when they reached a little stucco bungalow, and this time they had to ring long and hard before they got an answer. A frightened man and woman answered the door. Crosby spoke.

  “Mr. Casey, this is Mr. Crosby of the Chalmers case. May I see you for a few minutes. You’re the deputy, I believe, who handles Mr. Chalmers to and from the jail building, are you not?”

  Mr. Casey promptly ushered his visitors in, and again a full three-quarters, of an hour passed, the woman peeping inside the front room while her better half, clad in his bathrobe, listened attentively and talked a little. At last Casey rose.

  “Well, I’ll do it,” he said. “I don’t see no reason why not. ‘S in th’ int’rusts o’ justice, I reckon. Yep, you can count on me. Be at the place I told you of no later than six in the mornin’ sharp.”

  Out in the hall of the tiny bungalow, Crosby looked up in the classified telephone directory, and finally rang a number. He heard the buzz of the bell in the receiver for a long time before the answering click came. He spoke.

  “Mr. Hans Smelz?”

  “Me? Yah, I am Hans Smelz.”

  “Mr. Smelz, I have an important piece of work in your line that must be done to-night. If you want to make a mighty good piece of money, I’d suggest that you open your shop at once and be prepared for visitors. How about it? If you don’t want the job, I’ll call someone else.”

  “Vork? Tonide?” It was plain that the phlegmatic German mind was trying to correlate all the surprising details. “Sure I vork. Sure I open der shob if you bay me. Come. Der shop he iss here under me — on Vest Madison Streed. I vait downstairs.”

  And as Crosby and his companion entered the taxicab, the man Casey watching them off from the door of the bungalow, he spoke to the cab driver.

  “Take us now to 1956 West Madison Street, please. And better make good speed if you can.” He turned to his companion. “We may snatch a bit of sleep yet to-night in my rooms. It’ll be a good thing, for to-morrow is the big day!”

  CHAPTER XXV

  THE FIFTH ACE IN THE GAME

  THE second day of the second trial of the Chalmers murder case opened with grey skies in which, though bright enough in themselves to illuminate every corner of the court-room, an ominous dark cloud scudding every now and then across the heavens suggested that some time that day a terrific downpour of rain was going to take place.

  Immediately after the tap of the bailiff’s hammer, Judge Lockhart spoke.

  “On the matter of yesterday’s testimony given by one Miss Lindell Trent, I am going to reverse my earlier ruling and allow both this and the spurious telegrams from New York City to be entered as evidence in this case. It seems to me that we are facing one of the most well-defined cases of perjury and collusion of the last ten years.” His voice was stern and ominous. He glared down through his eyeglasses at Crosby, who remained stiff and unmoved under the scrutiny.

  Crosby rose. “On the termination of court yesterday, the witness Miss Trent was excused to the defence. The defence does not wish to cross-examine.”

  He sat down, and a visible wave of disappointment rolled over the crowd. Their countenances reflected their belief that the defence was now lying down in the face of defeat, that David Crosby had at last met his legal Waterloo.

  “Call Edward Venson,” said Ballmeier, humming a little tune under his breath.

  Edward Venson, van Slyke’s houseman and servant, ascended the stand with the typical servile mien that had characterized his original appearance.

  His testimony was a repetition of that given in the first trial. Once more he told clearly how he had chatted with Noonan, the officer of the beat, at the mailbox, until Noonan’s watch showed the time to be five minutes after ten; how he had then returned to the house and entered the front hall door, only to become the target of a mad rush down the stairs of the red-haired man with whom he had grappled, but with no success; and how he had picked himself up and with face scratched and bleeding and collar torn from his neck had gone on up the stairs only to find his master dead on the floor, in a pool of blood; and how he had then called up the police station to give the alarm. At the conclusion of his testimony he waited politely for any question which the prosecutor might ask.

  “Will you kindly look about you in the court-room,” Ballmeier requested, “and tell the jury whether you see the man who grappled with you in the lower hallway?”

  Venson nodded toward the prisoner’s table. “That is the man — to your left — the one with the red hair.”

  Ballmeier heaved a sigh like that of the busy man who is being bothered with a lot of unnecessary detail work. “Excused,” he said, and turned to his portfolio of papers.

  Crosby rose.

  “Mr. Venson,” he asked, “in your association with Mr. Rupert van Slyke as his employee, did he ever discuss or mention casually to you any facts concerning his ancestry, or particularly incidents or people with whom Captain William Kidd was associated?”

  “Just what facts, sir?” asked Venson mildly.

  “Well,” said Crosby ruminatively, “such facts as — ” He gazed at his folder. “If you will now turn over the witness-chair, Mr. Venson, to Professor Brown, so that I may place on record as exhibits or testimony, as the court sees fit, certain bits of history, I — thank you,” as
Venson climbed down. Crosby turned to the clerk of the court. “I would now like to have Professor Percival L. Brown.”

  Professor Percival L. Brown was perhaps the most unlike individual one would ever expect to see qualify as expert on piracy, buccaneering and other super-masculine amusements of the high seas. A little frail man, with fragile pince-nez held to the buttonhole of one coat lapel by a black silk cord, a violet in the buttonhole of the other lapel, dainty moustache, and eyes which twinkled with kindly humour, he presented the very antithesis of the type of man about whom he held the reputation of being a world authority. In qualifying as an expert witness, he declared modestly that he was Professor of Mediæval History at the University of Chicago; special instructor in History-30, the same being the chronicles of man during the seventeenth century, and author of many works on piracy and buccaneering.

  “Professor Brown,” said Crosby, “as a long student of pirates and piracy, would you say that Captain William Kidd was a pirate?”

  “He was a pirate,” declared the Professor simply.

  “On what basis have his defenders striven to make out a case for him as an honest man?” asked Crosby.

  “Well,” said Mr. Brown reflectively, “Kidd, when he was sent out by the King of England and certain other lords to exterminate the pirates on Madagascar, only subsequently as we know to make friends with them, carried letters of marque authorizing him to prey on French vessels. His defenders invariably claim that, in the case of ships which he plundered, he had been presented with French passes. However this may be, his legitimate seizures and his illegal ones have complicated the picture presented by the man.”

  “Was Kidd a murderer?” asked Crosby.

  “Not in the sense that he sank his captured ships or caused their crews to walk the plank, as it is termed,” the Professor explained. “He always turned them loose and relied on his story of having been presented with a French pass.”

  “Outside of this humanitarianism which we may put down to a wholesome fear of the gallows at Execution Dock, London,” Crosby went on, “was Kidd a murderer with respect to his own crews?”

  “Well, he killed his gunner with a blow of an ironbound wooden bucket merely for protesting at being called a ‘lousie dog.’ “ The Professor with a faint flicker of a smile spelled the last epithet after pronouncing it.

  “Who was Captain Josiah Quarlbush?” asked Crosby.

  “Captain Josiah Quarlbush was an English mariner — one of the various figures moving in Kidd’s colourful day — a relatively unimportant figure, however. He was impressed into Kidd’s service and was associated with Kidd for some five months.”

  “From what records extant to-day have you derived what few facts you have concerning Captain Josiah Quarlbush?”

  “We happen to have a portrait of the man done in oils by Sir Peter Lely, long since dead, of course; this painting is preserved in the National Gallery in London, and is entitled simply ‘Portrait of a Mariner’; it has been preserved not because of the sitter, but because the artist himself achieved fame and because it was an essential link in the evolution that was to produce Gainsborough and Sir Joshua Reynolds.” The Professor was now opening his book at where a white cardboard marker protruded forth.

  “Will you be so kind as to allow the jury to see the coloured reproduction in your book entitled ‘Salt Water Portraits of the Seventeenth Century,’ taken directly from this painting by Sir Peter Lely.”

  The jury was now craning its necks, a puzzled expression on its collective face, and Crosby took the open book from the Professor and handed it to the first juryman. The face depicted on the open page was not new to him now, but it still presented a striking picture as he glanced momentarily at it. A man of perhaps fifty years of age looked forth from the highly calendered page, a man who was rugged, red faced, and bore twinkling little blue eyes. His egg-shaped head was bald and sunburned, and gave that part of him the appearance of a Capuchin monk because the baldness was ringed about by a fringe of hair not quite so black as his square-cut beard. The jury was now passing the expensive book gingerly from hand to hand; so Crosby went on with his peculiar examination.

  “Will you, Professor Brown, relate in your own words what very little is known of Captain Josiah Quarlbush?”

  “Gladly.” The Professor crossed one neatly pressed trouser leg across the other. “It appears that some time in the year 1698 there appeared in Bombay at the offices of the British East India Company one Captain Josiah Quarlbush — the same individual whose actual portrait the jury is now viewing — asking for a minor berth with the company’s Eastern branch. The man was badly mutilated, being minus his right leg and minus his right hand. It appears that he had been captain of the Sea Swallow, a sort of free-lance vessel carrying goods for the British East India Company. He had owned a large share in the vessel, but Kidd had sunk it in the Indian Ocean. Its crew was picked up by Kidd, including Captain Josiah Quarlbush, to whom Kidd took quite a fancy, even making Quarlbush a first mate of his ship, The Adventure, and promising him an equal share with the other officers of the plunder achieved by The Adventure. A thick friendship sprang up between them, and Captain Quarlbush was still with Kidd when Kidd went to Madagascar the first time and refused to take the notorious pirate Culliford whom he had been sent out for the express purpose of capturing. Coming out from Madagascar, however, it appears that Kidd began to see signs aboard his vessel of a rebellion or mutiny brewing. Kidd apparently fixed on his new protégé Quarlbush as the leader of the mutineers. Perhaps the man was. Perhaps Kidd’s sailors were only trying to induct him into their cause. There is no telling. Whether or no, Kidd cold-bloodedly marooned him on a narrow key or barren stretch of rock just off the great island of Madagascar and sailed on into the Indian Ocean without him.”

  “And what happened to Captain Quarlbush then?” asked Crosby quietly. The last man on the jury had now viewed the coloured portrait of the little red-faced, egg-headed man with the square-cut black beard who was the subject of this rather bizarre testimony, and they were listening intently.

  “Captain Quarlbush,” declared Professor Brown, “remained on this barren key for some three weeks, and then made a desperate attempt to gain the mainland — Madagascar, of course — on an outfit made from an old ship spar lying there. He made it, but at a terrific cost, for on the way he was attacked by sharks, his right leg was bitten off, and his right hand chewed almost through at the wrist. Lucky for him it was that Bradingham, the surgeon who deserted Kidd on Madagascar — the same very important figure in Kidd’s history who later was picked up incognito in London and whose testimony helped to indict Kidd for piracy — was nearby Quarlbush’s landing-place and saved his life, closing up his leg with the red-hot-iron treatment and amputating Quarlbush’s hand with an old caseknife. We moderns could not live through such surgical methods, but those old mariners appear to have been able to survive anything, for three months later Quarlbush, a crude wooden leg strapped to his stump, his precious right hand preserved like a pickle in a stone jar of Jamaica rum, disembarked from a vessel at Bombay.

  “Quarlbush asked for work,” the Professor continued, “and the Bombay agent of the British East India Company, appreciating his knowledge of teas and spices, silks and calicoes, of shipping and shipping methods — and moreover a very important thing, his first-hand knowledge of Kidd’s psychology and the pirate’s habits — put him in charge of one of the company’s Eastern stations. Here the correspondence ceases, and we may presume that Captain Quarlbush fared more happily on land than he did at sea, and that he waxed fat and lethargic, with the stories of his adventures probably growing every year into fearful and wondrous yarns.” The Professor half-smiled and paused. “This is the extent of our information about this one particular unwilling associate of Captain Kidd.”

  Crosby gazed out of the court-room windows for a moment. The grey skies still maintained their greyness, and an occasional dark cloud still scudded across them at intervals.

 
; “He hated Kidd now, I suppose?”

  “It would be presumed so,” said the Professor impartially, “since he had been despoiled of his vessel, had lost his share in it, then promised a reward by Kidd and a share of the latter’s loot, then cheated out of that and marooned, only to further lose a leg and a hand in addition.”

  Crosby looked down at his papers. “Excused, Professor. I would now like to have Mr. Venson recalled so as to continue our questioning as to Mr. van Slyke’s knowledge of any of these facts. I — ”

  “Just a minute,” said Ballmeier, advancing to the fray. He directed his address to the judge alone. “Your honour, I have a legal right to cross-question this witness now, instead of waiting until my opponent finishes with our witness Venson. However, I am not going to do so. To cross-question on this matter now is to clog the courts and hinder justice which at last is being meted out to this roué and reprobate, Archibald Chalmers, sitting over there and taking everything in as calmly as a man innocent of actually tampering with the courts. All this testimony, your honour, about Captain Josiah Quarlbush and his pickled hand and all the rest of that fol-de-rol is immaterial and irrelevant, and I ask that the whole of it be struck from the record.”

  “I’m afraid so,” pronounced Lockhart, gazing down severely at Crosby. “In pursuing such a line of testimony, we are getting entirely away from the known facts of the matter.” He nodded sadly to the court stenographer who had paused, pencil in hand above the offending pages. “Strike it all out.” And the pencil descended in long vertical swoops.

  Crosby smiled a strained smile. “Very well, your honour.” He turned to the clerk. “I will continue then with my questioning of Mr. Venson.”

  So Venson, the dead Rupert van Slyke’s servant whose cross-examination had been interrupted so that the dainty little Professor from the University of Chicago might interpolate some facts as a basis for further interrogation, again ascended the stand and settled resignedly in it.