“Mr. McGann,” the girl continued, “instantly did so, the mild-looking old conductor not daring to interfere, and the little Irving Park car stopped dead in the middle of the block. Then my self-appointed cavalier spoke, as I tore myself a short path to the step and climbed down on to the pavement. ‘Now ye boonch o’ roofnecks,’ she mimicked admirably, ‘that there lad standin’ there on th’ street happens to be a little lady that kim doon to make a ten-dollar bill like the rest o’ ye loafers, to pay ‘er landlady up, and ye go an’ drive ‘er offen the car and squash ‘er suitcase to pieces, and muss ‘er all up. She’s a fr’ind o’ mine, me gay buckies, an’ if she’s willin’ to take a chance on th’ money givin’ out, the least yez can do is f’r wan o’ yese to kick in wid another black suitcase before Oi pull the bell an’ start the car again. So kick in.’
“Inside of two seconds, everybody on that platform began to shout to his neighbour to turn his suitcase over to me, as if it were all a good joke, and I — well — I confess that I stood undecidedly where I was on the pavement for I hesitated to come back to Mrs. Capsum’s without that suitcase.” She stopped. Mrs. Capsum remained quite silent.
“ ‘Here’s a handsome lad got a nice black one,’ came a voice from the rear of the car, right by the window. ‘He says he’ll give it to the lady.’ Shouts began to come from every direction. ‘Come on, Professor, come on. Kick in!’ ‘Don’t be a piker, Percival.’ ‘Can’t you see a lady’s waitin’, Clarence?’ ‘Hurry up, Ferdinand, you’re elected.’ Those were but a few of the remarks addressed to him, but he was evidently refusing and holding on to his suitcase. Of course it was embarrassing to me, as I didn’t want anyone forced to make good my loss. And then something happened. A man in a green sweater close to him, evidently impatient, pushed the young man’s hat down over his eyes, and as the little inoffensive fellow shook himself free and raised one hand to clear his eyes, a slim youth with a cigarette in his mouth next to him twisted his suitcase out of his hand, dropped it right over the sill of the end of the car and Mr. Mike McGann pulled the bellcord twice, the car shot off with a jerk and the last thing I saw was the little man with the gold spectacles raising a terrible commotion with about twelve laughing hoodlums hanging on to him so hard that he couldn’t even move.”
Lindell Trent paused for breath. “Well, there was nothing left to do under the circunstances but pick up the empty black suitcase, which I did, and trudge along the street. As for the empty suitcase, which was locked, when I got home that afternoon I put it carefully away in my closet here and commenced to watch the daily papers, thinking I might see an advertisement for it from the poor little man the crowd had manhandled so. I had no money to advertise myself, as I paid nearly all my cheque over to Mrs. Capsum for arrears on my room rent. And there in the closet it has been ever since — at least until this morning when Mrs. Capsum asked me to return the one I borrowed, and I got it out, dusted it off, and borrowing a suitcase key up the hall opened it to see if there was any clue to the owner of it.”
She stepped over to the closet of the room, and unlocking the door of it with a key which she took from a ribbon around her neck, and fumbling under a pile of clothing which appeared to have fallen to the floor, withdrew a black suitcase that was entirely concealed.
“When I opened it, I found that while it was nearly empty it was not entirely so.” She snapped open the brass catches as she spoke. Crosby, back of the Japanese screen, glimpsed as he leaned forward in his chair, four oblong packets, from the torn wrapper of one of which peeped a fleck of green. “I found strapped in the canvas strips of the shirt-pocket these four packets marked 500 dollars, 3,000 dollars, 6,500 dollars, and 4,700 dollars, one of them showing bank notes through the break in the wrapper.” She inserted a slender finger back of the canvas flap. “And back of this flap I found this little green paper packet strapped up with rubber bands.” She snapped off the rubber bands and unrolled it on the bed as she spoke. “At once I sent for you in order to turn it all over to your department. That is all, Inspector Krenway.”
A tense silence had accompanied her cryptic words. Then both Bailey and Krenway were on their feet, crowding close to the bed.
“Diamonds, or I’m a liar!” ejaculated Bailey crudely.
“Diamonds is right, Bailey. The Lord Masefield Octet that Crosby was supposed to have lifted himself. And part of the loot of that Winsconsin bank cashier that fled north to St. Paul. Can you beat it?” He whistled.
They were passing the stones from one hand to another, all crowding around the scintillating cascade, Mrs. Capsum’s visage the very picture of dumbfoundment, Lindell Trent’s face the only one of them all that was unconcerned. Then Krenway turned to Bailey.
“It’s plain that that lad did have a means of entrance to some of those safety-boxes after all, but it beats me how he happened to land with a black suitcase on a Dunning car going in to Chicago Tuesday morning when he fled north to St. Paul midnight Monday with a bright yellow one?”
“No mystery about the Dunning car, chief,” returned Bailey curtly. “He must have cut back on his tracks at Mormon Junction, Wisconsin, and landed that old timer of a Great Northern mail train that so many boes and Johnny-yeggs have ridden into Chi. As to just where he changed suitcases — hm!”
The girl spoke up. “I don’t think your party changed suitcases, gentlemen. If you will examine that tiny fragment of green paper in which the diamonds were wrapped up — ” She stopped.
Krenway was smoothing it out in his hand already. Then he laughed out loud. “Torn from the wrapper of a two-quart bottle, Bailey. Listen here: ‘Swelzheimer’s Instantaneous Stain for Tan Shoes and all Leather Goods. Colour, jet. Wholesale size’.”
He looked up toward Lindell Trent. “Well, Miss Trent, I’ll have to say that you’ve been the mechanism that has recovered what is probably the biggest steal of the last six months. And I’m sorry to say that there’s no reward been offered either for the bank cash or the stones which belong to a St. Paul jeweller.” He took out of his pocket a note-book and wrote rapidly in it with his fountain pen. Then he tore off the page and handed it to her. “Here is a receipt for the entire contents of the case, each item enumerated. The camouflaged suitcase itself we’ll have to take along as part of the evidence if Worman is ever picked up. The poor boob, Bailey. A fugitive from the law, his loot gone, afraid even to advertise for it lest he land in a cell, and stranded in Chi on whatever money he had in his pockets. His goose was cooked when he boarded an Irving Park car that morning with a pretty girl like Miss Trent here, and two blocks later took on a crowd of roughnecks filled with 10 dollars apiece and the devil. Talk about hard lines for a hardworking absconder!”
He picked up the suitcase. “Well, good evening, Miss Trent.” It was plain that he was impatient to get back to headquarters with the biggest police scoop of the day. “We’ll want you to come down there to-morrow.” He looked at Bailey. “Got the name of that Irish coal teamster who was a witness, and the place where he works? All right, good. Let’s go.” And they were gone.
Crosby came out from behind his screen. His face was very white. He took both of the girl’s hands in his. “Lindell,” he breathed, “it was an unfortunate day for you when I entered your life, but a mighty fortunate one for me when you entered mine.”
“And you’ve got something to thank Archibald Chalmers for after all, haven’t you, David?” she said. “For when he desperately hired Mr. Lipke to weave a net to ensnare the chief witness against him, your diamonds were fished up for you at the same time.”
“Only thanks to you being in the scheme of things,” he said happily.
“I have been the mechanism that has cleared your name, haven’t I, David?” she said, a bit wistfully, and like a little child that wants to be petted.
He nodded. They were both silent for a few seconds.
“David,” she said suddenly, “how much have you saved up from your five years of practice?”
He gazed curiously down a
t her. “Seven thousand dollars, Lindell. But I have prospects to-day that will astound you. As for what I have saved — well, I haven’t counted the cheque for 10,000 dollars which Archibald Chalmers sent me in lieu of the ship — the original payment agreed upon in our contract. That cheque I shall destroy, for never was I involved in a more intricate tangle of professional ethics in my life.”
She shook her head firmly. “No, David, do not do anything like that. If ever a man earned 10,000 dollars and earned it cleanly, you did when you cleared him in the face of every discouragement.” She put her hands on his shoulders. “David, have you ever looked forward to the price you will pay for the successful years that will come — the successful years in criminal law?”
He gave a harsh laugh. “I have no illusions, Lindell. I have a clear realization of the long years to come. Of the hundreds of truth-telling witnesses I shall have to beat down into a state bordering on hysteria. Of the other hundreds of witnesses whom I shall put on the stand and who will craftily perjure themselves and play false with me, their own attorney. Yes, the road to the moon is directly through the muck. But I am not afraid. I can fling it off as fast as it tries to cling to me. And I intend to earn every dollar I can to make you happy — to make up to you that mistake of mine in the long years ago at Brossville.”
She looked up at him. “David, do you remember the old Hipple farm two miles west of Brossville?”
“The old Hipple farm!” he echoed delightedly. “Indeed, I do. The one with the beautiful English hedges surrounding it. And it had the only windmill for miles around! And the up-to-date machinery, and the beautiful red barns and the electric-lighted bungalow. Wasn’t old man Hipple a modern one, though?”
“David,” she said. “The old Hipple farm has been for sale — machinery, house, everything — for some three months since old man Hipple’s death. The price asked is 17,000 dollars.” Her face grew full of memories. “David, have you ever longed to go back — to the soil, and the wind and the sunshine — ”
“And the wavy fields of clean wheat, yellow wheat?” he put in enthusiastically. “To stand in the doorway of a summer evening,” he added, “and know that something like that was all mine? That I was helping to produce clean sweet food for the thousands. A hundred times yes,” he said.
“David, it’s a dubious road after all, isn’t it, this road to the moon? You have won. You have beaten this game. But you can’t beat it for ever, David. Have you ever thought that you — you would like to go back to Brossville, to the wheat, the Kansas wheat, the golden wheat of our young days?”
“So many times,” he said fervently, “that you could not count them.” He looked down into her troubled brown eyes. “Dearest, would you like to go back to the Hipple farm — as ours — and the English hedges and the windswept fields? If you would — if you would go back with me — so help me, I’d gladly give it all up, the criminal law with its prizes and its triumphs and — and its muck.” He held out his arms. “Let’s go back together, and the only law we’ll know for all time to come is that you shall be the judge, the jury and the prosecutor for the rest of our days. Will you do it? I know you want to.”
The only answer was the spectacle — the strange spectacle — presented by a judge, jury and prosecutor held in the arms of the defendant in the case!
THE END
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This is a work of fiction.
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ISBN 10: 1-4405-4830-7
ISBN 13: 978-1-4405-4830-7
eISBN 10: 1-4405-4323-2
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