The Victorian Rogues MEGAPACK ™: 28 Classic Tales

by Maurice Leblanc

She leaned her head on her hand and her elbow on the table and looked deeply into his eyes. “Let me take those securities,” she said. “I will be able to do safely what you cannot do.”

  Graeme did not seem now to consider the fortune for which he had risked so much. The woman before him was enough.

  “Will you?” he asked eagerly.

  “I will do with them as I would for myself, better, because—because it is a trust,” she accepted.

  “More than a trust,” he added, as he leaned over in turn and in spite of other diners in the restaurant took her hand.

  There are times when the rest of the critical world and its frigid opinions are valueless. Constance did not withdraw her hand. Rather she watched in his eyes the subtle physical change in the man that her very touch produced, watched and felt a response in herself.

  Quickly she withdrew her hand. “I must go,” she said rather hurriedly, “it is getting late.”

  “Constance,” he whispered, as he helped her on with her wraps, brushing the waiter aside that he might himself perform any duty that involved even touching her, “Constance, I am in your hands—absolutely.”

  It had been pleasant to dine with him. It was more pleasant now to feel her influence and power over him. She knew it, though she only half admitted it. They seemed for the moment to walk on air, as they strolled, chatting, out to a taxicab.

  But as the cab drew up before her own apartment, the familiar associations of even the entrance brought her back to reality suddenly. He handed her out, and the excitement of the evening was over. She saw the thing in its true light. This was the beginning, not the end.

  “Graeme,” she said, as she lingered for a moment at the door. “To-morrow we must find a place where you can hide.”

  “I may see you, though?” he asked anxiously.

  “Of course. Ring me up in the morning, Graeme. Good-night,” and she was whisked up in the elevator, leaving Mackenzie with a sense of loss and loneliness.

  “By the Lord,” he muttered, as he swung down the street in preference to taking a cab, “what a woman that is!”

  Together the next day they sought out a place where he could remain hidden. Mackenzie would have been near her, but Constance knew better. She chose a bachelor apartment where the tenants never arose before noon and where night was turned into day. Men would not ask questions. In an apartment like her own there was nothing but gossip.

  In the daytime he stayed at home. Only at night did he go forth and then under her direction in the most unfrequented ways.

  Every day Constance went to Wall Street, where she had established confidential relations with a number of brokers. Together they planned the campaigns; she executed them with consummate skill and adroitness.

  Constance was amazed. Here was a man who for years had been able to earn only eighty-five dollars a month and had not seemed to show any ability. Yet he was able to speculate in Wall Street with such dash that he seemed to be in a fair way, through her, to accumulate a fortune.

  One night as they were hurrying back to Graeme’s after a walk, they had to pass a crowd on Broadway. Constance saw a familiar face hurrying by. It gave her a start. It was Drummond, the detective. He was not, apparently, looking for her. But then that was his method. He might have been looking. At any rate it reminded her unpleasantly of the fact that there were detectives in the world.

  “What’s the matter?” asked Graeme, noticing the change in her.

  “I just saw a man I know.”

  The old jealousy flushed his face. Constance laughed in spite of her fears. Indeed, there was something that pleased her in his jealousy.

  “He was the detective who has been hounding me ever since that time I told you about.”

  “Oh,” he subsided. But if Drummond had been there, Mackenzie could have been counted on to risk all to protect her.

  “We must be more careful,” she shuddered.

  Constance was startled one evening just as she was going out to meet Graeme and report on the progress of the day at hearing a knock at her door.

  She opened it.

  “I suppose you think I am your Nemesis,” introduced Drummond, as he stepped in, veiling the keenness of his search by an attempt to be familiar.

  She had more than half expected it. She said nothing, but her coldness was plainly one of interrogation.

  “A case has been placed in my hands by some western clients of ours,” he said by way of swaggering explanation, “of an embezzler who is hiding in New York. It required no great reasoning power to decide that the man’s trail would sooner or later cross Wall Street. I believe it has done so—not directly, but indirectly. The trail, I think, has brought me back to the proverbial point of ‘cherchez la femme.’ I am delighted,” he dwelt on the word to see what would be its effect, “to see in the Graeme Mackenzie case my old friend, Constance Dunlap.”

  “So,” she replied quietly, “you suspect me, now. I suppose I am Graeme Mackenzie.”

  “No,” Drummond replied dubiously, “you are not Graeme Mackenzie, of course. You may be Mrs. Graeme Mackenzie, for all I know. But I believe you are the receiver of Graeme Mackenzie’s stolen goods!”

  “You do?” she answered calmly. “That remains for you to prove. Why do you believe it? Is it because you are ready to believe anything of me!”

  “I have noticed that you are more active downtown than—”

  “Oh, it is because I speculate. Have I no means of my own?” she asked pointedly.

  “Where is he? Not here, I know. But where?” insinuated Drummond with a knowing look.

  “Am I my brother’s keeper?” she laughed merrily. “Come, now. Who is this wonderful Graeme Mackenzie? First show me that I know him. You know the rule in a murder case—you must prove the corpus delicti.”

  Drummond was furious. She was so baffling. That was his weak point and she had picked it out infallibly. Whatever his suspicions, he had been able to prove nothing, though he suspected much in the buying and selling of Constance.

  A week of bitterness, of a constant struggle against the wiles of one of the most subtle sleuths followed, avoiding hidden traps that beset her on every side. Was this to be the end of it all? Was Drummond’s heroic effort to entangle her to succeed at last?

  She felt that a watch of the most extraordinary kind was set on her, an invisible net woven about her. Eyes that never slept were upon her; there was no minute in her regular haunts that she was not guarded. She knew it, though she could not see it.

  It was a war of subtle wits. Yet from the beginning Constance was the winner of every move. She was on her mettle. They would not, she determined, find Graeme through her.

  Days passed and the detectives still had no sign of the missing man. It seemed hopeless, but, like all good detectives, Drummond knew from experience that a clue might come to the surface when it was least expected. Constance on her part never relaxed.

  One day it was a young woman dressed in most inconspicuous style who followed close behind her, a woman shadow, one of the shrewdest in the city.

  A tenant moved into the apartment across the hall from Constance, and another hired an apartment in the next house, across the court. There was constant espionage. She seemed to “sense” it. The newcomer was very neighborly, explaining that her husband was a traveling salesman, and that she was alone for weeks at a time.

  The lines tightened. The next door neighbor always seemed to be around at mail time, trying to get a look at the postmarks on the Dunlap letters. She had an excuse in the number of letters to herself. “Orders for my husband,” she would smile. “He gets lots of them personally here.”

  All their ingenuity went for naught. Constance was not to be caught that way.

  They tried new tricks. If it was a journey she took, some one went with her whom
she had to shake off sooner or later. There were visits of peddlers, gas men, electric light and telephone men. They were all detectives, also, always seeking a chance to make a search that might reveal her secret. The janitor who collected the waste paper found that it had a ready sale at a high price. Every stratagem that Drummond’s astute mind could devise was called into play. But nothing, not a scrap of new evidence did they find.

  Yet all the time Constance was in direct communication with Mackenzie.

  Graeme, in his enforced idleness, was more deeply in love with Constance now than ever. He had eyes for nothing else. Even his fortunes would have been disregarded, had he not felt that to do that would have been the surest way to condemn himself before her.

  They had cut out the evening trips now, for fear of recognition. She was working faithfully. Already she had cleaned up something like fifty thousand dollars on the turn over of the stuff he had stolen. Another week and it would be some thousands more.

  Yet the strain was beginning to show.

  “Oh, Graeme,” she cried, one night after she had a particularly hard time in shaking Drummond’s shadows in order to make her unconventional visit to him, “Graeme, I’m so tired of it all—tired.”

  He was about to pour out what was in his own heart when she resumed, “It’s the lonesomeness of it. We are having success. But, what is success—alone?”

  “Yes,” he echoed, thinking of his feeling that night when she had left him at the elevator, of the feeling now every moment of the time she was away from him, “yes, alone!”

  With the utmost difficulty he restrained the wildly surging emotions within him. He could not know with what effort Constance held her poise so admirably, keeping always that barrier of reserve beyond which now and then he caught a glimpse.

  “Let us cut out and bury ourselves in Europe,” he urged.

  “No,” she replied firmly. “Wait. I have a plan. Wait. We could never get away. They would find us and extradite us surely.”

  She was coming out of a broker’s office one day after the close of the market, only to run full tilt into Drummond, who had been waiting for her, cat-like. Evidently he had a purpose.

  “You will be interested to know,” remarked the detective, watching her narrowly, “that District Attorney Wickham, who had the case in charge out there, is in New York, with the president of the Central Western Trust.”

  “Yes?” she said non-committally.

  “I told them I was on the trail, through a woman, and they have come here to aid me.”

  Why had he told her that? Was it to put her on her guard or was it in a spirit of bravado? She could not think so. It was not his style to bluster at this stage of the game. No, there was a deep-laid purpose. He expected her to make some move to extricate herself that would display her hand and betray all. It was clever and a less clever person than Constance would have fallen before the onslaught.

  Constance was thinking rapidly, as he told her where and how the new pursuers were active. Here, she felt, was the crisis, her opportunity.

  Scarcely had Drummond gone, than she, too, was hurrying down the street on her way to see Mackenzie’s pursuers face to face.

  She found Wickham registered at the Prince Henry, a new hotel and sent up her card. A few moments later he received her, with considerable restraint as if he knew about her and had not expected so soon to have to show his own hand.

  “I understand,” she began quickly, “that you have come to New York because Mr. Drummond claims to be able to clear up the Graeme Mackenzie case.”

  “Yes?” he replied quizzically.

  “Perhaps,” she continued, coming nearer to the point of her self-imposed mission, “perhaps there may be some other way to settle this case than through Mr. Drummond.”

  “We might hold you,” he shot out quickly.

  “No,” she replied, “you have nothing on me. And as for Mr. Mackenzie, I understand, you don’t even know where he is—whether he is in New York, London, Paris, or Berlin, or whether he may not go from one city to another at any moment you take open action.”

  Wickham bit his lip. He knew she was right. Even yet the case hung on the most slender threads.

  “I have been wondering,” she continued, “if there is not some way in which this thing can be compromised.”

  “Never,” exclaimed Wickham positively. “He must return the whole sum, with interest to date. Then and only then can we consider his plea for clemency.”

  “You would consider it?” she asked keenly.

  “Of course. We should have to consider it. Voluntary surrender and reparation would be something like turning state’s witness—against himself.”

  Constance said nothing.

  “Can you do it?” he asked, watching craftily to see whether she might not drop a hint that might prove valuable.

  “I know those who might try,” she answered, catching the look.

  Wickham changed.

  “What if we should get him without your aid!” he blustered.

  “Try,” she shrugged.

  Arguments and threats were of no avail with her. She would say nothing more definite. She was obdurate.

  “You must leave it all to me,” she repeated. “I would not betray him. You cannot prove anything on me.”

  “Bring the stuff up here yourself, then,” he insinuated.

  “But I don’t trust you, either,” she replied frankly.

  The two faced each other. Constance knew in her heart that it was going to be a battle royal with this man, that now she had taken a step even so far in the open it was every one for himself and the devil take the hindmost.

  “I can’t help it,” he concluded. “Those are the terms. It is as far as I can trust a—a thief.”

  “But I will keep my word,” she said quietly. “When you prove to me that you are absolutely on the level, that Mackenzie can make restitution in full with interest, and in return be left as free a man as he is at this moment—why,—I can have him give up.”

  “Mrs. Dunlap,” said Wickham with an air of finality, “I will make one concession. I will adopt any method of restitution he may prefer. But it must be by direct dealing between Mackenzie and myself, with Drummond present as well as Mr. Taylor, president of the Trust Company, who is now also in New York. That is my ultimatum. Good-afternoon.”

  Constance left the room with flushed face and eyes that glinted with determination. Over and over she thought out methods to accomplish what she had planned. When they complied with all the conditions that would safeguard Mackenzie, she had determined to act. But Graeme must be master of the situation.

  Cautiously she went through her usual elaborate precautions to shake off any shadows that might be following her, and an hour later found her with Mackenzie.

  “What has happened!” he asked eagerly, surprised at her early visit.

  Briefly she ran over the events of the afternoon. “Would you be willing,” she asked, “to go to District Attorney Wickham, hand over the half million with, say, twelve thousand dollars interest, in return for freedom?”

  Graeme looked at Constance a moment doubtfully.

  “I would not do that,” he measured slowly. “How do I know what they will do, the moment they get me in their power? No. Almost, I would say that I would not go there under any guarantee they might give. I do not trust them. The indictment must be dismissed first.”

  “But they won’t do that. The ultimatum was personal restitution.”

  Constance was faced by an apparently insurmountable dilemma. She saw and agreed with the reasonableness of Graeme’s position. But there was the opposition and obstinacy of Wickham, the bitterness and unscrupulousness of Drummond. Here was a tremendous problem. How was she to meet it?

  For perhaps half an hour they sat in
silence. One plan after another she rejected.

  Suddenly an idea occurred to her. Somewhere, in a bank, she had seen a method which might meet the difficulty.

  “To-morrow—I will arrange it—to suit both of you,” she cried confidently.

  “How?” he asked.

  “Trust it all to me,” she appealed.

  “All,” replied Graeme, rising and standing before her. “All. I will do anything you say.”

  He was about to take her hand, but she rose. “No, Graeme. Not now. There is work—the crisis. No, I must go. Trust me.”

  It was not until noon of the next day that he saw Constance again. There was an air of suppressed excitement about her as she entered the apartment and placed on a table before him a small oblong box of black enameled metal, beneath which was a roll of paper. Above was another somewhat similar box with another roll of paper.

  Constance attached the instrument to the telephone, an enigmatical conversation followed, and she hung up the receiver.

  A few minutes later, she took the stylus that was in the lower box. Hastily across the blank paper she wrote the words, “We are ready.”

  Mackenzie was too fascinated to ask questions. Suddenly, out of the corner of his eye, he saw something in the upper box move, as if of itself. It was a similar, self-inking stylus.

  “Watch!” exclaimed Constance.

  “Do you get this?” wrote the spirit hand.

  “Perfectly,” she scrawled in turn. “Go ahead, as you promised.”

  The upper stylus was now moving freely at the ends of its two rigid arms, counterparts of those holding the lower stylus.

  “We promise,” it wrote, “that in consideration of the return… ”

  “What is it?” interrupted Graeme, as the meaning of the words even now began to dawn on him.

  “A telautograph,” she replied simply, “a long distance writer which I have had installed over a leased wire from the hotel room of Wickham to meet the demands of you two. With it you write over wires just as with the telephone you talk over wires. It is as though you took one of the old pantagraphs, split it in half, and had each half connected only by the telephone wires. While you write on this transmitter, their receiver records for them what you write. Look!”