“Granting, for the sake of reaching an agreement, that you paid the par value of one hundred dollars a share and, taking cognizance of your determination to come out whole on it, I am empowered to offer you—”
The bell rang insistently.
“Hello,” said Mr. Clackworthy into the transmitter. “Yes, this is Mr. Clackworthy; yes, Aubuchon—uh-huh—yes, I understand. He’s here now.”
Mr. Prindivale, sensing a personal reference, looked up quickly; he saw that Mr. Clackworthy’s gaze had grown hard and cold; the air of eagerness as he had jockeyed for the best possible price was gone. The banker, with a sinking heart, realized that something had gone wrong.
“Mr. Prindivale,” said Mr. Clackworthy curtly, hanging up the receiver, “there is no need to discuss this matter further. I find that I shall not need to buy the stock from you, after all.”
“But—but—I don’t understand,” stammered Mr. Prindivale.
“Oh, yes, I think you do,” returned Mr. Clackworthy icily. “One of my men has reported to me just now that you sold your Monotrack holdings some months ago—to some woman; we shall, of course, deal directly with the holder of the stock. You almost hooked me, eh?”
Mr. Prindivale grabbed his hat and fled.
VII.
There was a reason for Mr. Prindivale’s precipitate departure. He cursed because the elevators were so slow and bolted out of the entrance to the drug store at the corner where he knew there was a telephone pay station.
His fingers, fumbling with eager haste, turned the leaves of the directory until he found the name of Mrs. Clara Cartwright. It was, of course, a suburban call and he muttered trenchant maledictions for the operator who seemed to deliberately delay his connection. After five anguished and perspiring minutes Mrs. Cartwright’s soft voice identified itself from the other end of the wire.
“Mrs. Cartwright,” gulped Mr. Prindivale, striving to make his tone normal, “about the Monotrack stock which I sold you—er—I have been thinking it over and I realize that it was—er—entirely upon your faith in my advice that you purchased it. I—I could not, in all—er—fairness, expect you to pay for the burden of my—ah—sincere but mistaken judgment, so I have decided to take the stock off your hands without a cent of loss to you and pocket it myself.”
“Oh, Mr. Prindivale! How lovely of you!” exclaimed Mrs. Cartwright, who had been carefully tutored by her cousin’s husband, Mr. Clackworthy, for this identical situation.
“Yes,” went on Mr. Prindivale, “so I will be right out and give you a check.”
“Oh, there is no hurry, Mr. Prindivale, so long as you promise.”
“But there is a hur—I mean that I am in a hurry to get it off my mind. I know you will feel better with things fixed up; I—Well, I might die tonight, you know. There has been no one out to see you about buying the stock, I suppose?”
“Oh, no; who would want to buy it?”
“Oh, of course not; of course not,” assented the banker, “but—um—in case some one did talk to you about it, I would advise you to do nothing until you talk to me.”
“Oh, Mr. Prindivale!” gurgled Mrs. Cartwright. “You are so excited and everything; I do believe that the stock is going up.”
The banker swore under his breath; he was walking on dangerously thin ice.
“Certainly not; that was just—just a little joke,” he amended.
A taxicab driver, bribed with a twenty-dollar bill, broke all the speed records in getting Mr. Prindivale out to the suburb. The banker found Mrs. Cartwright in the sitting room of her modest little home, evidently waiting for him; she had the stock certificates in her hand.
“I’ll just write a check, Mrs. Cartwright,” he said with hardly the ceremony of a greeting.
“Why, Mr. Prindivale!” the widow exclaimed. “You act so excited. I do believe that something has happened to the Monotrack business.”
Mentally the banker reviled woman for her intuitive powers, as he wrote his check.
“Here you are,” he said, unable to keep the eagerness from his voice; “I will take the stock back now—you see I have not allowed you to lose a cent.”
Mrs. Cartwright tilted her chin and firmly put her hand which held the certificates behind her back.
“I’ve got—what do you men call it—a hunch?” she said. “I have decided not to sell for thirty dollars a share!”
Mr. Prindivale tried a bluff; with an anger which was not entirely assumed, he snapped his check book shut and pocketed his pen.
“Just as you will,” he said coldly; “I try to play good Samaritan and am at once suspected of some underhand scheme to cheat you.”
“I—I am sorry if I have misjudged you,” she returned with a show of penitence. “Of course, if you are sincere in your offer, I suppose—” She paused in sudden thought. “But I can’t get rid of that—that hunch; something seems to tell that I should not sell my stock for thirty dollars a share.”
“And I presume,” said Mr. Prindivale with a poorly concealed sarcasm, “that your hunch also tells you just what price you will get.”
“Now, let’s see!” she cried, like a child playing a game and clapping her hands in fun. “Now, isn’t that funny—a figure just pops in my mind—eighty dollars a share!”
“Come, Mrs. Cartwright,” purred Mr. Prindivale in his most persuasive tone, “I’ll tell you what I will do. Since I have caused you quite a little worry over your apparent loss of sixty thousand dollars, I will permit you to make a little profit—out of my own pocket, you know—as a sort of penalty for my mistaken judgment in advising you. I will give you thirty-five dollars a share.”
Mrs. Cartwright laughed, and how was Mr. Prindivale to know that this was the cue for Mrs. Cartwright’s loyal and trusted servant, Amelia, to connect the electric current which caused a telephone bell to ring in another room? The banker was engulfed by apprehension, that might be J. K.’s men seeking to get in touch with her; he was, somehow, almost sure that it was.
“As—as I was saying”—he stumbled.
“Mis’ Cartwright; there’s a man on the phone as wants to talk to you,” said Amelia; “he says his name’s Clack—Clack something.”
“Just a minute, Mr. Prindivale; you will excuse me for a moment.”
“Wait! Wait!” cried Mr. Prindivale wildly. “Let us close this up before you go; now let me see—” He was hastily doing a little problem in mental arithmetic; Clackworthy had promised to pay the par value of one hundred dollars per share, that would be an even two hundred thousand dollars. If he paid Mrs. Cartwright eighty dollars a share that would total one hundred and sixty thousand dollars, and as hard as the bargain was, a forty-thousand-dollar profit as compared with the clean-up of a cool one hundred and forty thousand dollars that he had visioned was, after all, a good killing.
“You said that you would take eighty dollars a share,” pursued the banker.
“Oh, but I was just joking—really; surely you—”
“You gave me your word, your promise, that you would take eighty dollars a share,” insisted Mr. Prindivale. “You can’t back out now; you must let me have it—you must!”
Feverishly he again wrote in his check book; he forced the slip of paper into Mrs. Cartwright’s fingers and almost forcibly tore the stock certificates from her hand. The widow was apparently too bewildered to protest. And before she could find voice, Mr. Prindivale dashed out of the house. He would have been a much surprised and mystified man if he could have seen her rush to the telephone and call a city number and to have heard her words:
“Amos Clackworthy, you darling, darling man! We have met the enemy and his check is ours. I’m going to rush right out, just like you told me, and have it certified—then I will be right down and give you your hundred thousand dollar collection fee. Isn’t it great to have
a cousin who has a husband with such a wonderful brain!”
VII.
And that would end the story, except for Mr. Prindivale being what is sometimes sneeringly referred to as “a rotten loser.”
When the suburban banker trotted triumphantly up to the Great Lakes Building the following day, two thousand shares of Monotrack Transit in his pocket, he was amazed to find the offices of the Atlas Investment Company vacant. It gradually dawned upon him that something was wrong. In his first burst of rage he visited the district attorney’s office and laid bare the amazing story.
The district attorney, viewing the case from all angles, decided that perhaps morally Mr. Cyrus Prindivale had been most thoroughly bunkoed, but that legally he had merely made an unfortunate investment. The district attorney, too, in delving deep into the details, had uncovered the fact that the worthless stock Mr. Prindivale had purchased from Mrs. Cartwright for one hundred and sixty thousand dollars was the same identical and equally worthless stock that he had sold to her for just one hundred thousand dollars less than that amount. And the prosecutor bowed Mr. Prindivale out of the office with scant sympathy.
By rare coincidence, the district attorney was a nephew of no less illustrious person than J. K. Easterday, and that was how “J. K.” got hold of it and may explain an otherwise mysterious communication which Mr. Amos Clackworthy received in his morning mail.
Mr. Clackworthy and The Early Bird were at breakfast when the Japanese boy entered with the postman’s nine o’clock delivery. From under the edge of the white tablecloth protruded the glossy surface of one of The Early Bird’s new twenty-dollar shoes; he glanced at the shining patent leather and grinned.
“Twenty smackers this time—and worth it,” he said. “You gotta pay real dough for kicks these days, and this pair ain’t gonna get chawed up by no plebeian—that’s right, ain’t it—sodbusters. That Monotrack layout sure has improved th’ transportation situation for yours truly, James; I went down on Boul Mich yesterday, and laid out two thousand iron men for th’ niftiest little racer that ever landed a guy in th’ speeders’ court.”
Mr. Clackworthy, laughing silently, as he read the contents of one of the envelopes which he had just opened, tossed it over to The Early Bird.
“Speaking, James, of our most recent adventure,” he said, “you will, I think, find this the crowning touch.”
The Early Bird picked up the sheet of paper; there was but one typewritten sentence which said:
It is gossiped in financial circles that Cyrus Prindivale, an exceedingly shrewd banker, has recently endowed the School of Experience with the munificent gift of one hundred thousand dollars.
Scrawled across one corner in a bold, masterful hand were the letters: “Okeh J. K.”
ABOUT EUGÈNE VALMONT
Eugène Valmont is not a rogue himself—he is a French detective living in London. In the following case, “The Clue of the Silver Spoons,” he encounters a pair of English rogues.
Look for more of Valmont’s cases in The Second Victorian Mystery Megapack.
Eugène Valmont in THE CLUE OF THE SILVER SPOONS, by Robert Barr
When the card was brought in to me, I looked upon it with some misgiving, for I scented a commercial transaction, and, although such cases are lucrative enough, nevertheless I, Eugene Valmont, formerly high in the service of the French Government, do not care to be connected with them. They usually pertain to sordid business affairs, presenting little that is of interest to a man who, in his time, has dealt with subtle questions of diplomacy upon which the welfare of nations sometimes turned.
The name of Bentham Gibbes is familiar to everyone, connected as it is with the much-advertised pickles, whose glaring announcements in crude crimson and green strike the eye throughout Great Britain and shock the artistic sense wherever seen. Me! I have never tasted them, and shall not so long as a French restaurant remains open in London. But I doubt not they are as pronounced to the palate as their advertisement is distressing to the eye. If, then, this gross pickle manufacturer expected me to track down those who were infringing upon the recipes for making his so-called sauces, chutneys, and the like, he would find himself mistaken, for I was now in a position to pick and choose my cases, and a case of pickles did not allure me. “Beware of imitations,” said the advertisement; “none genuine without a facsimile of the signature of Bentham Gibbes.” Ah, well, not for me were either the pickles or the tracking of imitators. A forged check! Yes, if you like, but the forged signature of Mr. Gibbes on a pickle bottle was out of my line. Nevertheless, I said to Armand: “Show the gentleman in,” and he did so.
To my astonishment there entered a young man, quite correctly dressed in the dark frock coat, faultless waistcoat, and trousers that proclaimed a Bond Street tailor. When he spoke, his voice and language were those of a gentleman.
“Monsieur Valmont?” he inquired.
“At your service,” I replied, bowing and waving my hand as Armand placed a chair for him, and withdrew.
“I am a barrister with chambers in the Temple,” began Mr. Gibbes, “and for some days a matter has been troubling me about which I have now come to seek your advice, your name having been suggested by a friend in whom I confided.”
“Am I acquainted with him?” I asked.
“I think not,” replied Mr. Gibbes. “He also is a barrister with chambers in the same building as my own. Lionel Dacre is his name.”
“I never heard of him.”
“Very likely not. Nevertheless, he recommended you as a man who could keep his own counsel, and if you take up this case, I desire the utmost secrecy preserved, whatever may be the outcome.”
I bowed, but made no protestation. Secrecy is a matter of course with me.
The Englishman paused for a few moments as if he expected fervent assurances; then went on with no trace of disappointment on his countenance at not receiving them.
“On the night of the twenty-third, I gave a little dinner to six friends of mine in my own rooms. I may say that so far as I am aware they are all gentlemen of unimpeachable character. On the night of the dinner, I was detained later than I expected at a reception, and in driving to the Temple was still further delayed by a block of traffic in Piccadilly, so that when I arrived at my chambers there was barely time for me to dress and receive my guests. My man Johnson had everything laid out ready for me in my dressing room, and as I passed through to it, I hurriedly flung off the coat I was wearing and carelessly left it hanging over the back of a chair in the dining room, where neither Johnson nor myself noticed it until my attention was called to it after the dinner was over, and everyone rather jolly with wine.
“This coat contains an inside pocket. Usually any frock coat I wear at an afternoon reception has not an inside pocket, but I had been rather on the rush all day. My father is a manufacturer whose name may be familiar to you, and I am on the directors’ board of his company. On this occasion I took a cab from the city to the reception I spoke of and had no time to go and change at my rooms. The reception was a somewhat Bohemian affair, extremely interesting, of course, but not too particular as to costume, so I went as I was. In this inside pocket rested a thin package, composed of two pieces of cardboard, and between them rested five twenty-pound Bank of England notes, folded lengthwise, held in place by an elastic rubber band. I had thrown the coat across the chair back in such a way that the inside pocket was exposed, leaving the ends of the notes plainly recognizable.
“Over the coffee and cigars one of my guests laughingly called attention to what he termed my vulgar display of wealth, and Johnson, in some confusion at having neglected to put away the coat, now picked it up, and took it to the reception room where the wraps of my guests lay about promiscuously. He should, of course, have hung it up in my wardrobe, but he said afterwards, he thought it belonged to the guest who had spoken. You see, Johnson was in my dressing
room when I threw my coat on the chair in the corner while making my way thither, and I suppose he had not noticed the coat in the hurry of arriving guests, otherwise he would have put it where it belonged. After everybody had gone, Johnson came to me and said the coat was there, but the package was missing, nor has any trace of it been found since that night.”
“The dinner was fetched in from outside, I suppose?”
“Yes.”
“How many waiters served it?”
“Two. They are men who have often been in my employ on similar occasions, but, apart from that, they had left my chambers before the incident of the coat happened.”
“Neither of them went into the reception room, I take it?”
“No. I am certain that not even suspicion can attach to either of the waiters.”
“Your man Johnson—?”
“Has been with me for years. He could easily have stolen much more than the hundred pounds if he had wished to do so, but I have never known him to take a penny that did not belong to him.”
“Will you favor me with the names of your guests, Mr. Gibbes?”
“Viscount Stern sat at my right hand, and at my left Lord Templemere; Sir John Sanclere next to him, and Angus McKeller next to Sanclere. After Viscount Stern was Lionel Dacre, and at his right, Vincent Innis.”
On a sheet of paper I had written the names of the guests and noted their places at the table.
“Which guest drew your attention to the money?”
“Lionel Dacre.”
“Is there a window looking out from the reception room?”
“Two of them.”
“Were they fastened on the night of the dinner party?”
“I could not be sure; very likely Johnson would know. You are hinting at the possibility of a thief coming in through a reception-room window while we were somewhat noisy over our wine. I think such a solution highly improbable. My rooms are on the third floor, and a thief would scarcely venture to make an entrance when he could not but know there was company being entertained. Besides this, the coat was there less than an hour, and it appears to me that whoever stole those notes knew where they were.”
The Victorian Rogues MEGAPACK ™: 28 Classic Tales Page 163
