The Dead Witness: A Connoisseur's Collection of Victorian Detective Stories

by Michael Sims

  “I think you’re right,” the clerk replied, busying himself with his cash register. “I didn’t notice his eyes, but I think you’re right … Thank you. Nice day?”

  Babbing grunted, non-committally, and went to the desk. He gave Barney his umbrella to hold, while he put on his glasses to consult the register. He turned to the arrivals of the previous night. Among the names of visitors from Buffalo and Albany, there was the florid signature of a Spenserian caligraphist who had arrived singularly from Washington, D.C. He was “Thos. Sullivan.”

  Babbing put up his glasses, resumed his umbrella and led the way to a leather sofa. “I think our man is here,” he said to Barney, “under the name of Thomas Sullivan. He writes like a forger, anyway. We’ve got to pick him up and feel him out. I’m going outside to telephone to him. If he’s in his room, I’ll give him a stall. If he isn’t, I’ll have him paged. Thomas Sullivan. You follow the boy around. Nobody’ll notice you. They’ll think you’re looking for some one. Spot Sullivan if the boy finds him, and show him to me when I come back. Then we’ll get together and rope him.”

  “Yes, sir,” Barney said.

  “The telephone booths are down that hall at the left of the desk. There’s a parcel rack there, and you’d better check this bag till we know what we’re going to do. The dining-room’s at the end of the hall. Sullivan may be at breakfast. If any one asks you any questions, you’re looking for your uncle. I’m your uncle. Sit here for two minutes. Then get over by the call desk.”

  “Yes, sir,” Barney said.

  Babbing pursued his placid way to the door, and Barney sat back in the sofa. He had no doubt that Sullivan was the swindler Palmer, but he could not guess how Babbing had come almost directly to the Beaumont to locate him. He puzzled over it, happily. In the background of his thoughts, he was saying to himself: “Gee, this job’s great!”

  When his two minutes had measured themselves on the clock, he went to check his bag. He located the telephone booths. He made sure that the dining-room had not been shifted. As he returned to the lobby, a call boy, circulating among the easy chairs and smoking tables in front of the news stand, suddenly began to crow “Mr. Sullah-van! Mr. Sullah-van!” A cold tingle of excitement ran down Barney’s spine and struck forward into his solar plexus. His vital organs sank inside him, rallied, and rose exultingly.

  “Mr. Sullah-van! Mr. Sullah-van!”

  Mr. Sullivan did not reply. The boy turned down the hall to the dining-room, and Barney sauntered after him. “Mr. Sullah-van!” The head waiter at the door bent indulgently to ask Barney: “One?” Barney mumbled that he was looking for his uncle. Standing in the doorway, he searched the tables anxiously. “Mr. Sullah-van!” A man sitting alone at a far window, signaled to the bell boy. They conferred together. The man shook his head. The boy went on. “Mr. Sullah-van!”

  Barney had seen his float bob to a nibble.

  The boy passed him on his way out, and Barney followed. But there were no more nibbles—neither in the bar, the café, the grill, the barber shop, the wash-room, nor anywhere else. The boy went back to the desk. Barney returned to the telephones and stood looking regretfully down the hall at the door of the dining-room where he had seen his hope. If it had only been Palmer! If they had only landed that bite!

  Babbing joined him there. “He didn’t get him,” Barney reported. Babbing nodded. They went to their seats on the sofa. “He’ll be back,” Babbing said. “He hasn’t given up his room.”

  Barney sighed. “I thought we had him.”

  “How so?”

  “A man in the dinin’ room stopped that bell-hop an’ then turned him down.”

  Babbing rose at once. “That’s our man.”

  “But he turned him down.”

  “Come on. Show me where he is. You’re asleep.” They were crossing the lobby, and Babbing was talking in a low, indifferent, chatty tone. “His name isn’t Sullivan. As soon as he learned that the boy had a telephone call, he knew it couldn’t be for him. None of his friends in town would call for him by that name. Is there an empty table near him?”

  “I—I don’t know.”

  Babbing slowed his pace. “My name’s Thomas Oliphant,” he said. “We’ll get a table near him. Then you go to the telephone and call up the office—one-seven-three-one Desbrosses—and get Chal Snider. Tell him I’m in the dining-room here, and I want to be paged as Thomas Sullivan. Make him insist on the ‘Thomas.’ Don’t forget that. Tell him they’ve paged me as Sullivan and I don’t answer. Then join me at the table. Sullivan’ll stop the boy again. I’ll break in on him. I’m expecting a call. There’s probably a mistake in the name. Thomas Sullivan for Thomas Oliphant. Do you understand? That’ll give us an introduction to him. Where is he? Don’t point.”

  They were at the dining-room door. “There he is. Over at that last window.”

  “I see. I’m your rich uncle from Kansas City. You’re Barney Cook, my New York nephew. Go ahead and telephone. Get me a Tribune.” And Babbing, refusing the offices of the girl at the coat rack, went to meet the head-waiter with all his encumbrances of hat, rain-coat and umbrella. He had evidently a somewhat countrified reluctance to trust his things out of his sight.

  The multiplicity of instructions which Barney had to remember weighed him down to deliberate and cautious movement. He went slowly to the telephone; it took him some time to get the Babbing Bureau; he gave his message to Snider hesitatingly, cautiously, in veiled terms, for fear some one might overhear him; and he was almost back to the dining-room before he recollected that he was to get a Tribune. Consequently, Babbing, in his spectacles, seated at a side-table, back to back with the suspected Sullivan, was concluding his order to the waiter when Barney joined them; and it was evident that there had been some difficulty over the menu. “Now, oatmeal porridge; mind that!” Babbing said. “Real oatmeal. No cattle mashes or health mashes for me. Sit here, boy.” He put Barney at right angles to him. “And cream. Plenty of it. I don’t care what it costs. And here. Wait a minute. I don’t want my bacon fried to a cinder, either.”

  He was talking in an insistent, querulous grumble. The waiter kept saying “No, sir. Yes, sir,” with a sort of cool servility that was professional to the point of contempt. Barney glanced at Mr. Sullivan. He was sipping his coffee, with his head turned slightly. Barney could see that he was “getting an ear full.” The waiter departed.

  “Well,” Babbing asked, “did you get them?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “What did they say?”

  “They said they’d call you up.”

  “Well, they’d better hurry,” he blustered. “If they don’t want my money, I can find lots of people in this town that do. Did they say they had those Bonanza shares for me?”

  “They didn’t say.”

  “Huh! Give me that Tribune.” He spread the pages impatiently. “I don’t see why these New York papers don’t have some Western news in them.” And Sullivan, turning, took an appraising look at him over the shoulder.

  “There isn’t a line here from Kansas City,” Babbing complained. “A New York newspaper’s the most provincial sheet in the universe, bar none!”

  “Aw, gee, Uncle,” Barney laughed. “Quit knockin’ little ol’ New York.”

  “Boy!” Babbing said sternly, “you talk as if your maw had raised you on the Bowery. Where did you ever learn to speak like that? If that’s the sort of grammar you get in your New York public schools, y’ ought to be ashamed of them.”

  Barney had no reply to make, and his uncle’s eye forbade him to make any. He had “caught on to” the game that Babbing was playing, and he was enjoying it precociously; but Babbing was evidently not willing to have him join in it. They waited, in silence, for the call boy.

  And when the call boy came, crying “Mr. Thomas Sullivan” the game developed with the most prosperous rapidity. Babbing interrupted the colloquy between the uneasy Sullivan and the boy, and claimed the call. “My name’s Oliphant. I’ve been waiting here all
morning for a telephone message, and these idiots go around bawling ‘Sullivan! Sullivan’ when I bet they want Oliphant. If you’ve no objection, I’ll take this call Mr. Sullivan—”

  “None whatever,” Sullivan said affably. “I’m sure it’s not for me.”

  “Come on, boy. Show me the ’phone.”

  As he passed, he laid his hand on Barney’s shoulder, and gave him a warning squeeze. It was needed, for as soon as he was out of hearing, Sullivan turned to Barney with a plump, suave smile. “Isn’t that Thomas Oliphant of Kansas City?”

  Barney nodded cheerfully.

  “I thought so. I’ve heard of him. Well, well! So that’s Thomas Oliphant.”

  Barney grinned. “I guess everybody out there knows Uncle Tom.”

  “Did I understand that he’s buying mining stock.”

  “Yep. I guess so. He’s got money to burn.”

  “You’re not from Kansas City?”

  Barney shook his head scornfully.

  “I wonder if he knows my brother-in-law, Billy Smith.”

  “I dunno. You better ask him.”

  “What does he do?”

  “What does who do?”

  “Your uncle.”

  “What does he do!”

  “Yes. What business is he in?”

  “Say!” Barney answered. “What are you tryin’ to do to me? You know what he does as well as I do.”

  Sullivan said hastily: “Well, I thought he might have retired, and—Well, well! I must speak to him when he comes back. Tom Oliphant, eh? It ‘s a small world. Well, well!” And Barney saw their fish on the hook.

  The fish proceeded to climb up the line and fight his way into the creel as soon as Babbing returned; and Babbing at first held him off, suspiciously. Yes, he was Thomas Oliphant of Kansas City. No, not cattle. Leather, sir; leather. William Smith? No, he didn’t know William Smith. He thought he had heard of William Smith, but couldn’t place him. His brother-in-law? A pleasure. A pleasure. Much obliged to Mr. Sullivan for letting him take that telephone call. It was pressing business. They had been trying all morning to get him on the ’phone.

  In ten minutes the engaging Sullivan had moved to the vacant chair opposite Barney, had lighted one of his Padages Palmas rather gaudily, and was listening to Babbing with a flattering admiration showing in his bluish-gray eyes. It developed that Sullivan was interested in Cobalt mines, heavily interested; in fact, he owned one in partnership with some New York mining experts. Being questioned by Babbing upon the rating of the Bonanza mine in the Beaver district, he remarked that it was a hole in the ground, hopeless as an investment. It was not a mine at all but merely a trap for suckers. Babbing was much taken aback. He drank in Sullivan’s knowledge and advice greedily—with occasional hasty gulps of oatmeal porridge and noisy draughts of hot coffee; and Barney’s innocent hunger and absorbed attention were not more childish and convincing than his uncle’s.

  Sullivan blossomed and expanded in that atmosphere of trust. He and his partners were building a hotel for the tourist trade near their mine. He had been working on the plans for the building. They had discovered one of the finest, if not the finest spring of mineral water on the continent. And so forth.

  He leaned back in his chair, making large gestures with his cigar and smiling a broad indulgent smile. He flattered Barney. “A mighty bright boy, your nephew. A mighty bright boy. I’d like to have a boy like that in my business.”

  “Not much!” Barney said pertly. “I’m goin’ in with uncle.”

  Some of Babbing’s coffee got in his windpipe at that moment, and he coughed himself red in the face. Barney kept a straight mouth.

  “I don’t know that you’ll ever be as successful as your uncle,” Sullivan said. “But you’ll succeed. You’ve got it in you! I can see that.”

  He exacted a promise from Babbing that he should go no further in the matter of the Bonanza mine until he had come to the office of Sullivan’s friends, with Sullivan, to look into the “proposition” there. “Excuse me a moment,” he said, when Babbing had paid the waiter. “I’ll just run upstairs and get the plans of our hotel. I want to take them with me. I’ll meet you at the desk.”

  He strutted off importantly. Babbing sat a moment. “If he brings down his satchel with those plans in it,” he said, “you’ll get it to carry. And, at the first opportunity, you’ll cut away with it. Understand? Take it to the office. They’ll have keys to open it there. I’ll get in touch with Chal as soon as I can, by ’phone. If he’s still carrying his Chicago outfit in that bag, we’ve got our case complete. Now, don’t get cheeky. If you’re not careful, you’ll stub your toe!”

  III

  A half hour later, a round-faced and sturdy youth of sixteen, breathing hard because he had been running, sat in a downtown express on the Subway, holding a small black handbag on his knees. He was struggling with a dimpled smile that continually escaped control and exploded in a snort. The other passengers smiled at him, amusedly. He retreated to the back platform, giggling, and grinned at his ease out the door.

  He was still grinning and still breathing hard when he entered the Babbing Bureau at room 1056, and hurried into Babbing’s private office to find Chal Snider reading a morning paper at Babbing’s desk. “Here’s his bag!”

  Snider looked over the top of his newspaper.

  “Whose bag?”

  “Palmer’s.”

  “What!” The cry was not wholly incredulous; it had the quality, too, of envious amazement.

  “Sure! Hurry up an’ see what’s in it. The Chief wants to know. Hurry up. He’s got him.”

  Snider dropped his paper and grabbed the ’phone. “Hello? Hello! Bring me in a bunch of skeletons for a small satchel. Quick.” He caught the bag from Barney. “Well, I’ll be switched. How the hell?”

  Barney wiped the perspiration of haste from his forehead with his coat cuff. “We roped him at the Beaumont. He’d been buyin’ them long cigars.”

  “Well, the old devil!” He sat with the satchel on his lap, expressing a profane admiration to it in a sort of dumbfounded undertone. “The damn old fox! How did he think of that!”

  “Search me!” Barney grinned.

  A clerk came in with the keys. Snider had the bag opened in a jiffy. He dumped its contents on the desk—blue-prints, catalogues, a scratch block, loose sheets of memoranda, an assortment of blank checks, and a roll of money in a rubber band. “The old man’s wad!” Snider exulted. “By G—he’s got the swag back too! Where is he?”

  “He’s off with Palmer. He’s goin’ to ’phone you. He tol’ me to grab the bag an’ beat it. That boob was tryin’ to sell him stock in some fake hotel he’s buildin’ some’rs, when I dropped off.”

  Snider went through the swindler’s papers with appropriate remarks, and then began thoughtfully to pack them back in the bag. “Where did you go from here?”

  Barney told the story in an excited incoherency. Snider nodded and nodded. “He’s slick!” he commented primly, again and again. “He’s pretty damn slick!”

  “Well, how did he know the guy was at the Beaumont?” Barney asked.

  “He didn’t know. He took a chance. He figured that Palmer wouldn’t go far from the depot in the rain. Didn’t you hear him say it was raining hard last night at eight-thirty? He just played a hunch and got away with it.”

  “What’s he goin’ to do next?” Barney demanded in the delighted impatience of youth to know the end of the story.

  The ringing of the telephone bell interrupted them with what proved to be the answer. “Hello?” Snider said. “Yes, Chief. Yes. His whole outfit’s in it. And four thousand of the old man’s money. Yes. Yes.” He tittered. He shook over the ‘phone silently. “Ye-e-s. I’ll ha-ave them.” And he dropped the receiver into its hook and lay back in his chair in a grimacing sputter of fat laughter. “He’s bringing him hee-here. He ‘s pretending he thinks you—you’ve been ki-ki-kidnapped. Hee-hee-hee!” He wiped his wet eyes helplessly. “Palmer won’t let him
go to the police station. They’re co-coming here to get us out to find you.” He jumped up, suddenly, and slapped himself on top of the head with a comical gesture. “I’ve got to get papers for him. Put Archibald wise to what’s coming.” He darted out the door with unexpected agility, and Barney hastened to find Archibald.

  Either Archibald had no sense of humor or it was inhibited by a stronger sense of dignity. Barney’s story provoked no smile from him. “Wait in the operatives’ room,” he said drily. “If we need you, we’ll call you. Leave the bag here.”

  The operatives’ room was a large inner office fitted up with desks that showed inky evidences of long use, typewriters that rattled loosely, and battered filing cabinets. Two men were getting out reports on their typewriters; a third was searching the pages of a telephone directory, page after page, slowly, as if he had been at it for hours and expected to continue it for hours. Barney sat down in a corner and waited. No call came for him. He imagined the scene between Archibald, Babbing, and Mr. Thomas Sullivan, when they should put the swindled swindler under arrest; but he had to take it out in imagining. The operatives came and went as busily as reporters turning in their copy, but no one spoke to him.

  And Barney became vaguely aware of one fact about the life of detectives for which fiction had not prepared him. Like the private soldier in a campaign, the operative of a detective bureau obeys orders without knowing the reason for them and executes commands without seeing their results. He participates in events of which he does not always understand the beginning and sometimes never learns the end. He comes in for a single scene in one drama, and leaves it to play an equally brief part in another. Barney was no longer needed in the affair of Charles Q. Palmer, and he was not invited to watch the swindler’s astonishment when his bag was produced as evidence against him and the police arrived with the warrant for his arrest.

  It was nearly midday when Babbing appeared, and Barney stood up smiling to greet him.

  “Go home and tell your mother what you’re doing,” Babbing said. “And tell her to keep it to herself. I want you to come to Philadelphia with me to-night. Get yourself a suit-case. And bring a suit of old clothes—the shabbiest you’ve got … Here, Clark!” he called. “Show this boy how to make out a requisition for expense money. He’ll need twenty-five or thirty dollars. Be back here at four o’clock.”