MRS3 The Velvet Hand (10 page)

"Oh, simple forgery," said Hélie, a little disappointed.

"Forgery, but not at all simple," said Mme Storey, smiling. "In the first place, the forgery was good enough to puzzle the greatest expert in the country. I doubt if we could convict her on the forged signatures alone. Fortunately, there is plenty of collateral evidence. Little by little she evolved the details of the most ingenious swindle I have ever come upon. Masterly in its completeness!"

"Do give us the details!" begged Hélie.

"All these years, remember, she was studying her employer. He was a man of rich personality; very downright in his likes and dislikes; full of quirks and oddities of character—all of which she traded upon. He was not a philanthropist in the ordinary sense: he left that to his wife; but he had a notion that he owed it to the community which had made him rich, to use his riches as far as he could in developing and marketing new ideas. To a new proposition he always lent a willing ear.

"He had to protect himself, of course. He could not see every Tom, Dick, and Harry who called upon him. He required that all propositions should be submitted by letter, and the preliminary investigations were always conducted by correspondence. Then, if he was sufficiently interested, he would see the promoter and let him talk. He was very shrewd. He was not often deceived. He made money out of most of his advances.

"Clara, in the course of time, came to have full charge of his correspondence. She opened his letters and brought to him such of them as she deemed worthy of his attention. Important letters she answered at his dictation, and unimportant letters she answered on her own account. She subsequently sent all his letters and copies of his answers to the office boy to be filed. Now do you begin to see her scheme?"

Hélie shook his head.

"From among the propositions that were made him by mail, Clara chose a few of the choicest and investigated them on her own account, always by mail, of course, and always in his name. All this correspondence was sent with the rest to be filed in his file."

"Why did she do that?" asked Hélie.

"You will see presently.... The employer, whom we may call Mr. X, never kept any great sum in cash lying idle. When he was ready to invest in a new enterprise, it was his custom to give his note for the required amount in exchange for stock. When Clara was ready to invest she did the same—only it was a forged note that she issued for her stock. Mr. X's paper was good in any bank in the country, and it was always some known man, you see, who discounted these notes at his own bank. When the forged notes fell due, Clara simply renewed them with fresh forgeries. One of them ran for as long as five years.

"Such was her scheme. Every possible contingency had been provided for. It was practically watertight. I may say that it was only through an accident that suspicion was finally aroused.

"It was Mr. X's custom to hold the stocks purchased in this way until such time as the new concern was on a paying basis. Then he'd sell out in order to have funds for the next promising new thing. Clara did the same, of course, only when
she
sold out she'd salt down the proceeds. There was one transaction in which she invested $125,000 by means of a forged note, and in three years she sold out for $250,000 in hard cash. That was her largest single operation."

"But why didn't she pay the note then and pocket the profit?" asked Hélie.

"Ah, why didn't she?" said Mme Storey. "If she had, I wouldn't be telling you the story. That would have been too slow for her. Sometimes there were no profits. She was not as shrewd as Mr. X. No, she never had any notion of putting anything back. The goal of her hopes rested in Mr. X's death. Did I mention that he was old? Once he was dead there was no way in which his executors could tell the forged notes from his other liabilities. When they proceeded to trace them back, there would be the correspondence intact in the files. Now you see why it was there. Mr. X's bookkeeping was of the most casual sort. In fact, he kept no books further than a loose-leaf notebook in which was entered a general balance sheet of his affairs."

"Then how
did
they find out?" asked Hélie. "Among the mass of correspondence, how could you pick out the letters
she
wrote?"

"She could imitate her employer's signature to perfection," said Mme Storey, "but she could not imitate his racy epistolary style, for that was the natural expression of his temperament. Her letters are somewhat dry in tone. Such was
her
temperament. It was easy to pick them out once you possessed that key."

"You are wonderful," said Hélie. Apparently he thought the story was finished.

"Wait!" said Mme Storey. "This is only Part One.... For years everything ran along smoothly according to Clara's plans, and at last she secured the sum she had set her heart upon. Then she began to get impatient. She had waited so many years. Youth was slipping away. An old woman could hardly hope to usurp the fashionable throne. To tell the truth, Mr. X was too slow in dying. True, his doctor had warned him his blood pressure was too high and that he must be careful. Unfortunately for Clara, he
was
careful; he avoided excesses and excitements of all kinds. There seemed to be no good reason why he should not live ten years longer. It was inevitable that Clara should begin to cast around in her mind—such a clever mind!—for the means to——"

"What, murder now?" cried Hélie, pleasantly aghast.

My eyes were dragged back to the Princesse. She, with unchanged mask, was delicately picking at
riz de veau
with her fork, and conveying morsels to her mouth with good appetite. She put down her fork, settled a bracelet on her left arm, and screwing up her eyes a little, looked out of the window. With something a little less than courtesy (for Mme Storey was still speaking), she said to me with her affected precision:

"How ugly the houses opposite! In America it's all front, isn't it?"

What sang-froid! What incredible effrontery! I could only stare, incapable of making any answer whatever. She didn't require any answer. She returned to the
riz de veau
, showing her excellent white teeth. Hélie never noticed because he was hanging on Mme Storey's words.

"That's what one comes to," said Mme Storey, going on with her tale. "She didn't have it in her mind when she started."

"How do you know?" asked Hélie.

"Because she took no steps in that direction until the time I speak of.... I expect she didn't call it murder," she added very drily, "but only hastening nature a little."

"How did she do it?" asked Hélie.

"That baffled me for a while," said Mme Storey. "It was the invaluable library card that supplied a hint. Among the court memoirs and novels of high society, she had on one occasion drawn Henderson,
On Arterio-Sclerosis
, a standard medical work. The date, which was just after she had made her biggest haul that I told you of, was highly significant. I got a copy of it, and projecting myself into Clara's state of mind as I imagined it, I sat down to read it. I came to one sentence which must have been like a bell ringing in Clara's mind. The book said: 'Of course, to a person in this condition anything in the nature of a heart stimulant would be excessively dangerous.' 'A heart stimulant!' I could imagine Clara saying to herself; 'a
powerful
heart stimulant!' That was what I had to administer to my mother all those weary years! What meant life to that old body would be death to this one!'"

"What a fiend!" murmured Hélie.

"Hm!" said Mme Storey, keeping her eyes down. "... I needn't detail the ingenious method by which she obtained a copy of the old prescription. By a lucky chance I was able to secure the letter she wrote for it under an assumed name. She got it, of course, and had it made up. She carried the phial around in her handbag awaiting an opportunity to administer the contents.

"That came one rainy day when Mr. X, instead of going out to lunch, had his boy telephone to a restaurant for light refreshments to be sent in. A bottle of ginger ale and two chicken sandwiches, white meat only. Such was his modest order. The office boy carried it into his employer's private office and placed it on the table just within the door. I should explain to you that Mr. X had a latch on the door of his private office so that even his employees were obliged to knock before entering.

"As the boy left the room he heard Mr. X say: 'I'm thirsty.' Clara must have immediately risen to fetch him his refreshments. Mr. X was a man of sedentary habit, and they were all accustomed to wait on him hand and foot. Clara did not bring the tray to his desk as it stood, but opened the bottle and poured out a glass of the ginger ale. While she was doing this their backs were turned to each other. How simple it was to empty the contents of her phial into the glass! She carried him the glass and the plate of sandwiches. One wonders if her hand shook. He was evidently thirstier than he was hungry, for he did not begin to eat right away.

"About fifteen minutes later—Clara all that time sitting at the flap of his desk taking dictation so demurely!—he began to feel very ill, and put down the sandwich, out of which he had taken but a single bite. He sent Clara to telephone to his doctor. The telephone was in the outer office. She did not telephone, of course. She merely waited outside long enough to let him suppose that she had.

"Shortly after that the stroke fell. The kindly old man had cracked his last joke. He slid down out of his chair to the floor without making any sound that could be heard outside. His face became tormented and blackened. Clara, the little mouse who had served him so well for twelve years, she made no sound either. I cannot tell you what went through her strange mind during those moments, but I can tell you what she did. She took the notebook out of his breast pocket, removed the leaves that contained his balance sheet, and inserted fresh leaves that she had already prepared. Since Mr. X had warning of the stroke, it is probable that death was not instantaneous. Unable to stir hand or foot, perhaps he was watching her...."

"
Mon Dieu
! what a scene!" murmured Hélie, genuinely moved.

"At the water cooler she washed out the glass from which he had drunk," Mme Storey went on. "What other things she did I cannot tell you. But forty-five minutes elapsed after the time he drank the ginger ale before she raised the alarm. Perhaps she was just sitting around waiting for him to die...."

"What a monster!" breathed Hélie.

"Well—that is my case," said Mme Storey.

I do not know if she looked at the Princesse when she said it, because I could not bear to look at either of them. No sound came from the Princesse.

"You have her safe under lock and key?" said Hélie.

"Not yet," said Mme Storey softly.

"Why do you delay? You have proved your case!"

"It is only within the hour that I have completed it."

"When did the murder take place?"

"Eight months ago."

"Eight months ago?
Mon Dieu
! Can you find her now? Where has she been all this time?"

"She went to Paris," said Mme Storey. "That was her ambition: to become a queen of Paris. And she actually realized it; at least, she became the most talked-of woman in Paris for a brief period."

I doubt if Hélie heard any but the first words. "Paris!" he stammered. "...
Paris
!" He suddenly jumped up, knocking his chair over backward. He stared at his wife with his blue eyes protruding from his head. His lips moved, but no further sounds came out.

I turned away my head. After all, he was a mere boy. He was a scoundrel, but surely he did not deserve quite this. It was he who was being punished and not the real criminal.

"Sit down, Hélie," the Princesse drawled. "You're making an exhibition of yourself."

He found his voice. "Is it you? Is it you?" he demanded hoarsely. "Is
that
where the money came from?"

"Certainly it was I," she answered coolly. "Why else should Mme Storey stage this little comedy?"

We all stared at her in a stupefied fashion.

She turned the sapphire bracelet on her pretty forearm. "It was I," she repeated in the unconcerned voice. Merciful heaven! One fancied one heard a ring of
pride
in it. "I will add an item that seems to be omitted from Mme Storey's array of testimony. It was in Hafker's drug store, Newark, that I filled the prescription."

"Oh, you monster! You monster!" cried Hélie, waving his hands before his face. In my heart I echoed his cry.

"Monster, what is that?" she said with curling lip. For the moment she dropped the affected speech. "You are merely theatrical. In your heart for the first time you respect me—you all respect me," she added, glancing around the table. "Well—I'm satisfied."

Nobody spoke.

The Princesse pushed away her plate and, drawing a silver box of cigarettes toward her, helped herself and lighted up. She resumed her precise drawl.

"Really, it was enormously kind of you to feed us so well first," she said, blowing a cloud of smoke. "Send for the police."

"They're already waiting," said Mme Storey.

THE END

The Viper
was originally published in
The Argosy All-Story Weekly
, 12 Apr 1924

After the arrest of the Princesse de Rochechouart, Mme Storey prepared to resume her interrupted vacation. She raised me to the seventh heaven of delight by suggesting that I accompany her back to Paris "as a reward for good work." I had had but a three days' tantalizing taste of that delicious city before I had been obliged to hasten back to America in connection with the Rochechouart case. At a week's notice we engaged accommodations on the
Gigantic
, the queen of all liners. The grand rush eastward across the Atlantic was now about over for the season, and we were able to obtain whatever we wanted. Two rooms en suite on D deck with a bathroom, at a price which took my prudent breath away. What a joy it was to study the plan of that amazing ship. I could almost say that I was familiar with every turn of her innumerable corridors before I ever went aboard.