The Victorian Rogues MEGAPACK ™: 28 Classic Tales

by Maurice Leblanc

  “Well, sir, we finally got in shape. Over the front door was carved the words: ‘The World’s University; Peters & Tucker, Patrons and Proprietors. And when September the first got a cross-mark on the calendar, the come-ons begun to roll in. First the faculty got off the tri-weekly express from Tucson. They was mostly young, spectacled, and red-headed, with sentiments divided between ambition and food. Andy and me got ‘em billeted on the Floresvillians and then laid for the students.

  “They came in bunches. We had advertised the University in all the state papers, and it did us good to see how quick the country responded. Two hundred and nineteen husky lads aging along from 18 up to chin whiskers answered the clarion call of free education. They ripped open that town, sponged the seams, turned it, lined it with new mohair; and you couldn’t have told it from Harvard or Goldfields at the March term of court.

  “They marched up and down the streets waving flags with the World’s University colors—ultra-marine and blue—and they certainly made a lively place of Floresville. Andy made them a speech from the balcony of the Skyview Hotel, and the whole town was out celebrating.

  “In about two weeks the professors got the students disarmed and herded into classes. I don’t believe there’s any pleasure equal to being a philanthropist. Me and Andy bought high silk hats and pretended to dodge the two reporters of the Floresville Gazette. The paper had a man to kodak us whenever we appeared on the street, and ran our pictures every week over the column headed ‘Educational Notes.’ Andy lectured twice a week at the University; and afterward I would rise and tell a humorous story. Once the Gazette printed my pictures with Abe Lincoln on one side and Marshall P. Wilder on the other.

  “Andy was as interested in philanthropy as I was. We used to wake up of nights and tell each other new ideas for booming the University.

  “‘Andy,’ says I to him one day, ‘there’s something we overlooked. The boys ought to have dromedaries.’

  “‘What’s that?’ Andy asks.

  “‘Why, something to sleep in, of course,’ says I. ‘All colleges have ‘em.’

  “‘Oh, you mean pajamas,’ says Andy.

  “‘I do not,’ says I. ‘I mean dromedaries.’ But I never could make Andy understand; so we never ordered ‘em. Of course, I meant them long bedrooms in colleges where the scholars sleep in a row.

  “Well, sir, the World’s University was a success. We had scholars from five States and territories, and Floresville had a boom. A new shooting gallery and a pawn shop and two more saloons started; and the boys got up a college yell that went this way:

  “‘Raw, raw, raw,

  Done, done, done,

  Peters, Tucker,

  Lots of fun,

  Bow-wow-wow,

  Haw-hee-haw,

  World University,

  Hip, hurrah!’

  “The scholars was a fine lot of young men, and me and Andy was as proud of ‘em as if they belonged to our own family.

  “But one day about the last of October Andy comes to me and asks if I have any idea how much money we had left in the bank. I guesses about sixteen thousand. ‘Our balance,’ says Andy, ‘is $821.62.’

  “‘What!’ says I, with a kind of a yell. ‘Do you mean to tell me that them infernal clod-hopping, dough-headed, pup-faced, goose-brained, gate-stealing, rabbit-eared sons of horse thieves have soaked us for that much?’

  “‘No less,’ says Andy.

  “‘Then, to Helvetia with philanthropy,’ says I.

  “‘Not necessarily,’ says Andy. ‘Philanthropy,’ says he, ‘when run on a good business basis is one of the best grafts going. I’ll look into the matter and see if it can’t be straightened out.’

  “The next week I am looking over the payroll of our faculty when I run across a new name—Professor James Darnley McCorkle, chair of mathematics; salary $100 per week. I yells so loud that Andy runs in quick.

  “‘What’s this,’ says I. ‘A professor of mathematics at more than $5,000 a year? How did this happen? Did he get in through the window and appoint himself?’

  “‘I wired to Frisco for him a week ago,’ says Andy. ‘In ordering the faculty we seemed to have overlooked the chair of mathematics.’

  “‘A good thing we did,’ says I. ‘We can pay his salary two weeks, and then our philanthropy will look like the ninth hole on the Skibo golf links.’

  “‘Wait a while,’ says Andy, ‘and see how things turn out. We have taken up too noble a cause to draw out now. Besides, the further I gaze into the retail philanthropy business the better it looks to me. I never thought about investigating it before. Come to think of it now,’ goes on Andy, ‘all the philanthropists I ever knew had plenty of money. I ought to have looked into that matter long ago, and located which was the cause and which was the effect.’

  “I had confidence in Andy’s chicanery in financial affairs, so I left the whole thing in his hands. The University was flourishing fine, and me and Andy kept our silk hats shined up, and Floresville kept on heaping honors on us like we was millionaires instead of almost busted philanthropists.

  “The students kept the town lively and prosperous. Some stranger came to town and started a faro bank over the Red Front livery stable, and began to amass money in quantities. Me and Andy strolled up one night and piked a dollar or two for sociability. There were about fifty of our students there drinking rum punches and shoving high stacks of blues and reds about the table as the dealer turned the cards up.

  “‘Why, dang it, Andy,’ says I, ‘these free-school-hunting, gander-headed, silk-socked little sons of sap-suckers have got more money than you and me ever had. Look at the rolls they’re pulling out of their pistol pockets?’

  “‘Yes,’ says Andy, ‘a good many of them are sons of wealthy miners and stockmen. It’s very sad to see ‘em wasting their opportunities this way.’

  “At Christmas all the students went home to spend the holidays. We had a farewell blowout at the University, and Andy lectured on ‘Modern Music and Prehistoric Literature of the Archipelagos.’ Each one of the faculty answered to toasts, and compared me and Andy to Rockefeller and the Emperor Marcus Autolycus. I pounded on the table and yelled for Professor McCorkle; but it seems he wasn’t present on the occasion. I wanted a look at the man that Andy thought could earn $100 a week in philanthropy that was on the point of making an assignment.

  “The students all left on the night train; and the town sounded as quiet as the campus of a correspondence school at midnight. When I went to the hotel I saw a light in Andy’s room, and I opened the door and walked in.

  “There sat Andy and the faro dealer at a table dividing a two-foot high stack of currency in thousand-dollar packages.

  “‘Correct,’ says Andy. ‘Thirty-one thousand apiece. Come in, Jeff,’ says he. ‘This is our share of the profits of the first half of the scholastic term of the World’s University, incorporated and philanthropated. Are you convinced now,’ says Andy, ‘that philanthropy when practiced in a business way is an art that blesses him who gives as well as him who receives?’

  “‘Great!’ says I, feeling fine. ‘I’ll admit you are the doctor this time.’

  “‘We’ll be leaving on the morning train,’ says Andy. ‘You’d better get your collars and cuffs and press clippings together.’

  “‘Great!’ says I. ‘I’ll be ready. But, Andy,’ says I, ‘I wish I could have met that Professor James Darnley McCorkle before we went. I had a curiosity to know that man.’

  “‘That’ll be easy,’ says Andy, turning around to the faro dealer.

  “‘Jim,’ says Andy, ‘shake hands with Mr. Peters.’”

  ABOUT BOSTON BLACKIE

  Boston Blackie is a fictional character created by author Jack Boyle (October 19, 1881 – October 1928). Blackie, a jewel thief and safecracker in Boyle’s s
tories, became a detective in adaptations for films, radio and television—an “enemy to those who make him an enemy, friend to those who have no friend.”

  Jack Boyle’s stories first appeared in the early 20th century. “The Price of Principle” was a short story in the July 1914 issue of The American Magazine. Boyle’s character also turned up in Cosmopolitan. In 1917, Redbook published the novelette “Boston Blackie’s Mary,” and the magazine brought the character back with “The Heart of the Lily” (February 1921). Boyle’s stories were collected in the book Boston Blackie (1919).

  BOSTON BLACKIE, by Jack Boyle

  FOREWORD

  The great fire that followed the San Francisco earthquake had burned itself out. Half the city was a seared waste of smouldering ruins. Though the sky by night still reflected the red but dying glow of the wall of flame that had leaped from block to block like a pursuing creature of prey, the undevastated remnant was safe.

  Those of us who had lived through the four unforgettable days of chaos just passed, began to look about us once more with seeing eyes. Men smiled again, as amid the ruin, they planned the reconstruction of a city more beautiful than the one they had lost. The indomitable spirit of a people united by a great and common disaster rose undaunted and hope mastered despair.

  For the moment all men were equal. Gold had lost its value. Food, first of all necessities, was not for sale, and master and servant, banker and laborer, millionaire and beggar, waited together at the relief stations for their equal daily ration.

  Every park, every square, every plot of ground was covered with the improvised camps of the refugees. One hundred thousand people had fled from their homes before the incredibly swift sweep of the fire. They had fled with only such possessions as they could throw together in a moment and carry on their backs. With this inadequate material men built such makeshift shelters for their families as individual skill permitted. Each man was “on his own,” the sole protector and provider for his mate and children.

  Out in Golden Gate Park one Sunday afternoon—the fourth after the earthquake—I came upon a rude but comfortable refuge with a blanket forming each of three walls and a tarpaulin for a roof. Before the uncurtained entrance a man sat cross-legged with a little child on his lap. With masculine clumsiness he was trying to fashion a rag doll from a torn piece of sheeting and a bit of blue ribbon. The tot on his knee watched, smiling, with eyes wide with excitement and pleasure. Nearby, three other kiddies—the eldest not older than six or seven—sprawled on the grass, playing contentedly.

  Something prompted me to pause. The man looked up and smiled.

  “Some job for a mere man, this is,” he said, indicating the caricature of a doll on which he was working.

  “Not so bad, evidently, from your little girl’s viewpoint,” I answered, with another glance at the glowing eyes of the waiting child. “But maybe her mother will improve on it.”

  “I’m the only mother there is in this camp,” he answered. Then, as if he sensed my curiosity: “You see, pardner, none of them is mine.”

  “None of them yours?” I echoed in amazement.

  “Not one. I picked them up, lost and crying—poor, little stray lambs—during the fire. And now it’s up to me to take care of them. I’m hoping their folks, if they’re alive, will wander by my nursery and find ’em. If they don’t—well, I guess we’ll stick together, eh, little pals.”

  That was my first meeting with the strange but, to me, wonderfully human character I have tried to picture with photographic accuracy in the following story. I have hidden his identity under the name “Boston Blackie.” To the police and the world he is a professional crook, a skilled and daring safe cracker, an incorrigible criminal made doubly dangerous by intellect. To the world “Boston Blackie” is that and nothing more. But to me, who saw him in the park, caring, tenderly as a mother, for the forsaken little children the fire had sent him, “Blackie” is something more—a man with more than a spark of the Divine Spirit that lies hidden somewhere in the heart of even the worst of men. University graduate, scholar and gentleman, the “Blackie” I know is a man of many inconsistencies and a strangely twisted code of morals—a code that he guards from violation as a zealot guards his religion. He makes no compromise between right and wrong as he sees it. Principle is, to him, a thing beyond price. Today “Boston Blackie” would go, smilingly content, to a lifetime behind prison bars rather than dishonor the conscience that guides him.

  And shall we judge him, you and I? When prompted to do so, inexorably there rises in my mind the picture of a man, grave faced and kindly, sitting cross-legged on the grass and making a rag doll with loving hands for a lost and homeless little child. It was Christ who said: “Suffer little children to come unto Me” and “Even as ye have done unto the least of these so even have ye done unto Me.”

  With these words before me I halt, leaving the verdict to God Himself.

  —Jack Boyle.

  March 1, 1919.

  CHAPTER I

  BOSTON BLACKIE

  Boston Blackie…in the archives of a hundred detective bureaus the name, invariably followed by a question mark, was pencilled after the records of unsolved safe-robberies of unequalled daring and skill.

  The constantly recurring interrogation point was proof of the uncanny shrewdness and prevision of a crook who pitted his wits against those of organized society and gambled his all on the result of the game he played—for it was in the spirit of a man playing a vitally engrossing game against incalculable odds that Boston Blackie lived the life of crookdom. The question mark meant that the police suspected his guilt—even thought they knew it—but had no proof.

  The name, Boston Blackie, was an anathema at the annual convention of police chiefs. The continually growing list of exploits attributed to him left them raging impotently at his incomparable audacity. He neither looked, worked nor lived as experience taught them a crook should. Traps innumerable had been laid for him without result. Always, it seemed, an intuitive foreknowledge of what the police would do guided him to safety. In short, Boston Blackie, safe-cracker de luxe, was the great enigma of the harried, savagely incensed guardians of property rights.

  Though detectives never guessed it, the secret of Boston Blackie’s invulnerability lay in his mental attitude toward the law and those paid to uphold it. In his own mind he was not a criminal but a combatant. He had declared war upon Society and, if defeated, was ready to pay the penalty it inflicted. Undefeated, he felt the world could not hold a grudge against him. The laws of the statute books he discarded as mere “scraps of paper.” He saw himself not as a lawbreaker but as a law-upholder, for he lived under the rigid mandates of a crook-world code that he held more sacred than life itself. A guilty conscience proves the downfall of most prison inmates. Blackie, his conscience clear, played the game winningly with the zest of a school-boy and the joy of a gambler confidently risking great stakes.

  Boston Blackie was no roystering cabaret habitue squandering the proceeds of his exploits in night-life dissipation. University trained and with a natural predilection for good literature, his pleasures were those of a gentleman of independent means with a mental trend toward the humanitarian problems of the day. His home was his place of recreation and in that home, sharing joyously the perils and pleasures of his strangely ordered life was Mary, his wife—Boston Blackie’s Mary to the crook-world that looked up to them with unfeigned adulation as the chief exponents of its queerly warped creed.

  Mary was Boston Blackie’s best loved pal and sole confidant. She alone knew all he did land why, and, knowing, she joined in his exploits with the whole-heartedness of unquestioning love. Together they played; together they worked and always they were happy in good fortune or evil. A strange couple, so unusual in thought and life and habit that detectives, judging them by other crooks, were forever at sea.

  Seated in their cozy
apartment in San Francisco which for the time was their home Blackie suddenly dropped the current volume on mysticism which he had been reading and looked across the room to Mary, busy with an intricate piece of embroidery.

  “We need a bit of excitement, Mary,” he said with the unconcerned air of a husband about to suggest an evening at the theatre. “We’ll take the Wilmerding jewel collection tonight.”

  “I’ll drive your car myself if you’re going out there,” she answered with the faintest trace of womanly anxiety in her voice.

  “Well, then, that’s settled.”

  Boston Blackie resumed his reading and Mary her embroidery.

  CHAPTER II

  BOSTON BLACKIE’S LITTLE PAL

  The room was faintly illumined by the intermittent flame of a wood-fire slowly dying On the hearth of an open grate. The house was silent dark, seemingly deserted. Outside, the dripping San Francisco fog clung to everything in the heavy impenetrable folds that isolated the residence from its neighbors as though it stood alone in an otherwise empty world.

  Inside the handsomely furnished living-room, and opposite the fire which now and then leaped up and cast his shadow in grotesque shapes against the ceiling, stood a man intently studying the paneled walls—a man with a white handkerchief masking his face and a coat that sagged under the weight of the gun slung ready for instant use beneath one of its lapels.

  The man was Boston Blackie. Concealed behind the oaken panels he inspected so painstakingly was a safe in which lay the Wilmerding jewels—a famous collection.