Part 3

Before the astonished men could make move or protest he hurried from the office, automatically counting the steps. He jumped into the waiting machine, Sydney Thames followed, and as Simpson and Jamison ran to the door, he snapped: “Home, John!” to the Irish chauffeur, and the machine sped away.

Around the first corner he leaned forward.

“Sixteen hundred Third Avenue--quick!” he ordered.

“You don’t think those two old watchmen guilty?” asked Thames, in surprise.

“No!” The tone was almost brusque. “Merely an unimportant detail I want to clear up.”

“You certainly left that crowd in the office at sixes and sevens.” Thames laughed at the recollection.

“I intended to. That’s why I went into all those details. I wanted to leave every one up in the air, especially the two detectives. They’ll begin to think now. And they won’t let any one get away before we have made this call. I want to think, now.”

Sydney Thames knew the moods of the blind man; knew he could expect no explanations, or even replies, until Colton was ready to give them; so they sped in silence to the upper East Side.

Soon they were on upper Third Avenue. Overhead the clanking “L” trains pounded their din into the two men’s ears. The streets were crowded with their heterogeneous mass of men, women, and children. The rusty fire-escapes staggered drunkenly across the dirty, red tenement-fronts.

The look of tense concentration left Colton’s face. “A far cry from the luxurious, staidly conservative Berkley Trust, eh, Sydney?” He smiled, leaning back in the cushions, puffing his cigarette as though untroubled by a serious thought; his eyes, behind the smoked library glasses, seemingly fixed on the narrow strip of blue sky overhead.

The car came to a stop.

“Is this it, John?”

“Th’ saloon on th’ corner is fifteen-ninety-four, sorr.”

“Lead the way, Sydney.” Again the twin red spots glowed in Colton’s white cheeks, he jumped to the sidewalk, his slim stick tapping his trouser-leg eagerly.

Thames stepped along beside him, close enough for his coat-sleeve to touch that of Thornley Colton. And with that slight touch to guide him the problemist followed; for Thornley Colton was a trifle sensitive over his blindness, and nothing made him angrier than an attempt to lead him. Sydney found the entrance, between a second-hand-clothing store and a pawnbroker’s shop. As he stopped to make sure of the weather-dimmed, painted number the clothing-store proprietor popped out, rubbing his dirty palms together, and coughing apologetically.

“On which floor does Mrs. Bowden live?” asked Colton sharply.

“Der fourt’, front. You maybe like some clo’es?”

“Is her husband watchman at the Berkley Trust Company?”

“He’s dead. You means Mrs. Schneider, across the hall. Her man watches. Dere boarder also. You like a elegant skirt for der poor vimens. Such a----”

Thames opened the door, and they left the clothing man in the middle of his sentence. In the dark hall Sydney made his way cautiously. Colton, cane lightly touching the heels of the man ahead, followed unhesitatingly. The journey up the rickety steps was torture to Colton. To his doubly acute ears and sense of smell the odours, the squalling of half-starved babies were terrible, but his brain automatically counted the steps so that he would have not the slightest difficulty in finding his way back to the automobile.

“Schneider first,” whispered Colton, as Thames stopped in the fourth-floor hall.

In the dim light Thames saw that they were standing between two doors.

“I don’t know which it is, but I’ll take a chance.” He knocked on the one at his left.

The one behind immediately popped open.

“Mrs. Bowden’s gone away,” shrilly proclaimed a tottery old woman, bobbing her head.

“Could you give us her address?” asked Colton, doffing his hat and bowing politely.

“Laws!” The woman’s fluttering hand set her spectacles farther askew, in a hurried effort to straighten them. “She’s gone to spend the day with her sister in Brooklyn. Them boys of mine pestered her till she’s near sick. And she bein’ so delicat’ an’ out late last night washin’ dishes at the church sociable.”

“Are you Mrs. Schneider?”

The darkness hid the smile the reference to the “boys” had caused.

“I’m her. Be you the Associated Charities? Mis’ Bowden said she’d asked fer help. She came here two weeks ago, after losin’ her job in the department store on account of her weak lungs. She had to take in odd day’s work. Asthma, _she_ calls it, but I ain’t fooled on consumption. Two of my----”

“And you helped her by pretending you were ill?” interrupted Colton.

“I was sick fer two days.” The woman hastened to set him right. “But she was so powerful glad to earn a few cents fer her asthma snuff, not that it is asthma. My sister’s brother----”

“Of course she left the key with you until her return?” Colton left the sister’s brother in mid-air.

“Yes; but----” There was just a shade of suspicion in the voice.

“As agents of the Associated Charities we must make an examination of the room, to prove that she is really in need of financial help,” assured Colton gravely. “We can wait until she returns, of course, but this is the last application day for this month.”

“Laws! I’ll get it right away.” She darted back into the room with surprising agility, and returned a moment later with an iron key tied to a broken-tined fork.

“There’s no need of bothering you, Mrs. Schneider,” declared Colton earnestly, as Thames took the key.

“Laws! Soon’s I get these pataters on I’ll be right with you. My boys had to go down to their bank----” The rest of the sentence was lost, for as she turned to the stove Colton had jerked Thames from the door.

“Quick!” he whispered. In an instant the key was in the lock, and the door was open. Colton pushed his way in, his cane touching the scarred, tumbled bed and the one broken chair. “Where’s the trunk?” he queried, cane feeling around.

“No sign of one, nor a case.”

“Damn!” snapped Colton. “The bureau drawers! See what your eyes find.”

Thames had the top drawer open almost before he had finished. He whistled in amazement. “Nothing but an empty pill-box, with no druggist’s label, three quills with the feathers cut off, and a tuft of cotton. What the----”

“Those are what I want! Put them in your pocket!” The tenseness went out of his voice; it became politely ingratiating, for his keen ears had heard the woman coming. “There is no doubt that Mrs. Bowden is in need of our assistance, Mrs. Schneider,” he said smoothly. “Er--is that some of her asthma snuff in the top bureau-drawer?”

She ran past him, and bobbed her head over the open drawer. “Yes, sir; there is a little sprinkled over the bottom. You got mighty powerful eyes, mister.” She nodded vigorously at the blind man. He had not been within five feet of the bureau. “She’s dead set on it bein’ asthma, but my sister’s brother was----”

“Do you know anything against Mrs. Bowden’s character?” Again the sister’s brother was left dangling.

“Laws, no. She’s that frightened she’s afraid of her own shadow. I’m the on’y one in the house she took to, an’ even me she kept at a distance.” Another vigorous nod. “An’ so modest! Laws, she wouldn’t ha’ come into the halls half dressed, like some of the other women does. An’ clean! Laws! She lugged all her clo’es over to her sister’s in Brooklyn to-day, to be washed in their Thirtieth Century Washer; not that I----”

“Ah, thank you, but we have four other calls to make.” And, bowing gravely, Colton backed from the room, and hurried toward the head of the stairs, followed by Thames and the shrill-voiced encomiums of the woman.

They took their places in the car silently, and it was not until they had left the noise of the avenue for the quiet of the side-streets that Colton spoke.

“What do you think of it, Sydney?” asked the problemist gravely.

“I’m completely at sea,” confessed Thames, with a shake of his head. “It looked awfully bad for Norris when we arrived at the bank. Then that South American boat business. How did you know she had received a message?” he asked suddenly.

“Didn’t. But I knew Miss Richmond, or rather Mrs. Norris. Common sense would have told any one that could be the only reason for her presence at the dock. Jamison and his kind don’t use common sense. They use the old policeman’s formula; arrest the logical suspect and then convict him. With persons like Norris and his wife, each half doubting, half suspecting, either would have confessed to save the other. It was an ideal arrest, from the police view-point.”

“Then you seemed to involve the two watchmen and the two men from the protective agency. Jamison will have a whole waggon-load.”

“He’ll take no one,” answered Colton. “I know him. He’ll spend the rest of the day trying to find out what I was talking about. Then he’ll telephone to head-quarters, and they’ll send men to find out who sent the message to Miss Richmond, and to locate Mrs. Bowden.”

“There’s the woman, Thorn!” Thames spoke nervously, excitedly. “She took a dress-suit case, presumably full of clothes, to her ‘sister’ in Brooklyn. The bonds----”

“You forget that the agency men saw her come out of the room empty-handed; they even searched her, and one put her on the trolley.” Colton smiled curiously. “This was wholly a man’s job, Sydney. The work of the rarest kind of criminal; a detailist. This crime, while perfectly simple, is, I think, unique in its attention to details. That’s why it interests me.”

“Simple!” ejaculated Thames. “Simple? You speak as though you knew the guilty man.”

“I do. Perfectly. I knew last night.”

“Last night? The----”

“The robbery was committed early to-day. Exactly.”

“Why--why----” Helpless amazement was in Sydney Thames’s voice. “Why don’t you arrest him? Why all this----”

“Simply because I would be laughed at. I haven’t the proof--yet. The usual criminal stumbles on his opportunity, and seizes it in a haphazard fashion. The rare criminal, the detailist, attends to every detail; works his problem out with the shrewdness and forethought of a captain of finance, plans a coup months ahead. Then he creates the opportunity. You must understand, Sydney, that half a million is worth a few months’ work.”

“But suspicion points only to Miss Richmond, Norris, and this Mrs. Bowden.”

“Suspicion points to every one,” corrected the problemist. “Doesn’t it seem suspicious that President Montrose should call in the police when he would naturally take all steps in his power to avoid publicity? Doesn’t the very eagerness of the central-office men to arrest Norris and his wife seem queer? Isn’t there a bit of suspicion in Simpson’s confession that he delayed the Stillson estate until Norris was compelled to work after hours on them? Doesn’t Miss Richmond’s story that she was carrying her suit home to save work for a delivery boy seem highly improbable and unwomanlike? How about Norris telling his wife of the bonds? An unbusinesslike proceeding in the case of half a million’s worth of negotiable bonds, truly. Didn’t the two men who answered the early-morning alarm seem a bit too sure that nothing was wrong? Weren’t the two watchmen in the conspiracy to pretend that Mrs. Schneider was ill, so that a woman whom they had known but two weeks could gain access to the bank? Doesn’t the finding of an unlabelled pill-box, three featherless quills, and surgeon’s cotton in the otherwise empty room of a woman dying with tuberculosis strike you as strange? As a further detail in this crime of details, doesn’t my confession that I knew the criminal before the crime was committed seem a trifle like guilty knowledge?” He smiled broadly.

“Great Scott, Thorn!” Sydney Thames’s voice trailed off in a whistle of pure bewilderment. “You’ve involved every one.”

“Oh, no.” Colton snapped his cigarette into the street. “Not every one. An unfortunate vaudeville actor will appear on the scene as soon as I get the list on which I left Shrimp busily at work.”

III.

In the absolute darkness of the shade-drawn library Thornley Colton softly whistled a syncopated version of Mendelssohn’s “Spring Song” as his deft fingers filled an empty goose-quill with a fine white powder from an improvised paper funnel. He plugged the open end with a small wad of cotton; then his wonderfully sharp ears caught the rustle of the double portières.

“Oh, Sydney,” he called, “have you heard anything from the bank this morning?”

Thames entered the darkness unhesitatingly, for his constant practice of judging distance and figuring steps for Colton had made him almost as much at home in the darkness as the blind man himself.

“No,” he answered shortly. Then, with the frank criticism of long friendship: “It’s a crime, Thorn, for you to be idle while that girl is being dogged, and harassed, and----”

“I thought she sang remarkably well last night for a person under such a strain,” interrupted Colton musingly.

“It was wonderful, wonderful!” Sydney Thames spoke with the breathless enthusiasm a beautiful girl always aroused in his woman-hungry heart.

“Here, here!” protested the problemist laughingly. “Remember that she is another man’s wife!”

“Great heavens, Thorn! How can you laugh?” cried Thames resentfully. “Think of those two dogs of detectives, questioning, bulldozing, shadowing! Why, they didn’t let Miss Richmond get away from the bank until late in the afternoon, then Jamison insisted on going with her. His partner hung around the bank till it closed----”

“Trying to discover the use of powdered sulphur,” smiled Colton. “I thought he would. Any one but a central-office man would have gone to a drug store, as I suggested.”

“Two other head-quarters men hauled that frail old Mrs. Schneider and the two watchmen to police head-quarters, and put them through the third degree.”

“And a half-dozen more were on the trail of Mrs. Bowden, while we were enjoying the opera and an alleged cabaret show afterward, for which this dark room is the penalty. Too much light yesterday gave me a frightful headache.”

The sudden ringing of the telephone in the darkness made Thames jump, and Colton’s cane, which was never away from him, felt the movement.

“Answer it, Sydney,” he requested.

The secretary’s hands had not the sureness of his feet, and he had to fumble a moment. When he had given the customary salutation and had listened a moment he gasped:

“It’s Simpson, Thorn. His wife is missing! He wants you.” He extended the phone in the darkness, but Thornley Colton made no move to take it.

“Tell him I’ll be down to the bank in an hour or so. I’ll see him then.” Colton spoke idly.

Sydney repeated the message. Followed a silence. “He’s frantic, Thorn!” Thames’s voice shook with excitement. “When he got home last night she was gone. The doorman at his apartment house said that she had gone out in the morning, for a short walk, he supposed. Simpson was so excited about the robbery he did not telephone her during the day, as he had promised. He spent half the night searching, and tried a dozen times to get you. She is deaf and dumb, Thorn. Think of it! Deaf and dumb, and lost!” It only needed a woman in trouble to shatter Sydney Thames’s nerves.

“Tell him that I’m trying to figure out that robbery. Tell him also that I never let one case interfere with another. I’m not a detective. There’s nothing interesting about a missing woman. Hundreds of ’em every day. I find my pleasure in interesting problems, not in police work.” Colton’s voice was sharp, curt, utterly devoid of sympathy.

Sydney knew that tone, as he knew the man who used it. He repeated part of the message, added gentle-voiced apologies, and hung up the receiver with a sigh.

“That was heartless, Thorn! Think of that woman, deaf and dumb, lost in this----”

“Sometimes, Sydney, that susceptible heart of yours becomes wearisome.” Colton spoke a bit sharply. “A moment ago you were protesting because I was here instead of running around after the man who stole the half-million in bonds from the Berkley Trust Company.”

“But Mrs. Norris is not helpless----” And for fifteen minutes he argued, while Colton smiled imperturbably in the darkness, and filled two other quills with the white powder, and plugged the ends with tufts of cotton.

Suddenly Thames stopped, for Colton had picked up the telephone and was giving a number.

“Hello, Shrimp!” he called, when the connection had been made. “Everything all right? Fine business. Three hours, eh? Good! Be on time, and obey orders. Good-bye!”

“Where’s The Fee?” demanded Sydney. “I haven’t seen him since yesterday.”

“Emulating the example of his worthy hero, Nick Carter. Shrimp is a real detective now.” Colton returned the crystalless watch to his pocket, picked up the three quills, and arose. “Come on, Sydney. We’ll walk over to the bank.”

“Walk?” ejaculated Thames, for he knew the blind man’s aversion to walking when he could ride. “Where’s the machine?”

“John and the machine are helping Shrimp in his detective work,” explained Colton. And in the twenty minutes’ walk to the Berkley Trust Company he absolutely refused to answer questions, but kept up a continuous conversation on trivial topics, that was maddening to the nervous secretary.

The effect of the previous day’s badgering, questioning, and threats of the central-office men could be seen as one entered the bank. The aged cashier’s hands trembled as he tried to count a sheaf of new bills. Book-keepers in the rear wrote figures and erased them. Thompson, head of the trust and estate clerks, in his little ante-room cage, was in a pitiable state of nerves. The typewriter’s chair by President Montrose’s desk was vacant, because the lady stenographer was at home under the care of a doctor. The fifty years of staid, conservative calm that had characterized the Berkley Trust Company during its long and useful life had been hit by a five-hundred-thousand-dollar storm.

The group in the vaultlike office of Second Secretary Norris was little better. President Montrose could hardly control his trembling hand to stroke his Vandyke; Norris’s eyes showed the sleeplessness of the night before; Miss Richmond was calm with the calmness that means coming nervous collapse; her mother was crying softly; Simpson seemed positively haggard, and Sydney Thames murmured words of sympathy for the man who had two troubles. Jamison and the other central-office man could not make their sneers wholly sceptical. The protective-agency men were plainly puzzled.

“I see you are all on hand.” There was no smile in Colton’s voice now, or on his lips; he was deadly calm, coldly earnest. “You didn’t think it necessary to send for the two watchmen?”

“We got men watchin’ them,” put in the surly Jamison.

“Thanks!” came curtly from Colton. “Sit down at this table, all of you. I want to tell you a story.”

“We didn’t come to hear----”

Simpson interrupted the detective: “For God’s sake, make it short, Mr. Colton! My wife----”

“I’ll look into that later.” Colton’s cane assured him that the chairs were around the long table, and his finger-tips felt the face of his watch in his pocket.

“Will you?” Simpson’s voice was almost sarcastically eager, his heavy-lidded eyes narrowed. Thames could not blame the man’s natural resentment for Colton’s offhandedness.

Silently they took seats. Colton sat facing the closed door; across the table was Simpson and Norris. Miss Richmond and her mother were at the end. The four detectives were on either side of the problemist.

“This is a story of a criminal who was born a criminal; who couldn’t be honest if he tried,” began Colton, in his quietly expressive voice. One hand lay idly on the table before him, the other on his knees, fingers holding the slim, hollow cane. “He wasn’t just born crooked. He started petty thieving before he was out of short trousers. He was the rare criminal that works years as an honest man to pave the way for criminality. He had brains. He could have been a wonderful success as an honest man. But he couldn’t be straight. The criminal instinct was there. He was waiting for the proper time. But the coarser side of his nature refused to be held in leash. He needed money. And with the inherent craft of his kind he began to plan the robbery of the Berkley Trust Company. It wasn’t so hard, because, being an old, conservative institution, in which men had grown gray, the personal side entered as it cannot in the modern, up-to-date institutions where men come and go. Instead of elaborate safeguards the simple protection of proven honesty entered largely into the protection of the bank’s valuables. And where there is simple honesty there is always vulnerability.

“This criminal had found the vulnerable spot years before the robbery was actually planned; when the time came for its consummation luck came to his aid, as it often does.” He paused. On the outside door came a knock, so faint that only his wonderfully sharp ears heard it. “There was no possibility of suspicion attaching itself to him, for he had planned an elaborate programme to foist suspicion on others. And this robbery was but one of a series, for the method his shrewd brain had devised was capable of endless combinations. In a few years the Berkley Trust losses would have mounted to millions!”

His fist crashed down on the heavy table. The door opened. Between the sober-faced Shrimp and the expressionless Irish chauffeur was a sunken-eyed, tottering creature, unshaven----

“_There’s your wife, Simpson!_” In the silence Colton’s voice came like the crack of a pistol.

“My God, Thorn, it’s a _man_!” In Sydney Thames’s tone was agony that the sensitive blind man whom he loved could have made such a mistake.

“Yes, a man! _Sit still, Simpson!_” With a movement as quick as light itself Colton’s fingers had dropped the slim cane that had given its warning, and held a blue-steel automatic. “Or rather what was once a man.” His tone rang with deadly menace. “Charlie de Roque, vaudeville actor, the youngest and best female impersonator on the stage; Mrs. Bowden, the consumptive who played so well on the sympathies of the three simple-minded souls at sixteen-hundred Third Avenue; Mrs. Simpson, the deaf-and-dumb little girl who was going to make Simpson lead a better life.”

“You lie!” The shambling shadow of a man screamed it as he tried to jerk away from the chauffeur. “They told me they were going to take me to a sanatorium. I don’t know what you’re talking about. They’ve kept me----” His whole body racked with sobs.

“Would you tell the truth for these?” The automatic did not waver a fraction of an inch as Colton’s unoccupied hand threw down on the table three cotton-plugged quills.

“Merciful God! _Yes!_” With insane strength he broke away from the big Irishman and darted to the table. His twitching fingers snatched a quill, pulled the cotton from the end, threw his head back----

“Enough of these damn’ theatrics!” Simpson snarled it viciously, but he did not move. “By Heaven, Colton, you can’t railroad me to save Norris and his wife with the fool ravings of a cocaine snuffler!” His face was purple, the veins in his forehead seemed ready to burst. “Mrs. Bowden!” He scoffed. “How did she get the bonds? Where are they? Find ’em!” he laughed triumphantly at Colton across the table, and the two central-office men who now stood over him.

“Here yuh are, Mr. Colton.” It was Shrimp, staggering under the weight of a big bucket of dirty water. He set it down beside the problemist’s chair.

“The bonds are here, Simpson!” Colton’s hand plunged into the water, and came up with a dripping, shiny black object. “There’s the first package, in an all-rubber ice bag!”

“You devil!” Simpson’s rage made his voice a scream.

“Take your prisoner, policemen.” Colton could not refrain from adding that last scornful word to the two detectives who had not seen until a blind man had shown them.

IV.