The Victorian Villains Megapack (53 page)

Barney grinned, and the Governor again became almost apoplectic.

He snorted scornfully at the detective’s explanation about this Jerry “What-do-you-call-him—the Clam.” Pooh! Did they expect him to believe
that
? Conville was a confounded, hair-brained busybody—He dwindled off, exhausted.

At that moment there came a sharp rap upon the door, and an officer in roundsman’s uniform entered.

“Gentleman called at the precinct house and reported a jewelry theft in this suite. Said the th
ief had been caught and locked up in a closet, so I thought I’d drop over and see how things stood.”

He looked inquiringly at McAllister, significantly at the Governor-General, and then caught sight of Barney.

“Hello, Conville!” he exclaimed. “You on the case? Well, then I’ll drop out. Got your man, I see!” He glanced again at the dishevelled scion of nobility before him.

“Everythin’s all right,” answered the detective with a chuckle. “I guess they was fakin’ you round at the house. By the way, I want you to meet a friend of mine—Roundsman McCarthy, let me present you to his Nibs—the Governor-General.”

The Governor glared immobile, his stony eyes shifting from the now red and stammering roundsman to Conville’s beaming countenance, and back again.

“Gentlemen,” he remarked sternly, “do you prefer Scotch or rye? You will find cigars on the sideboard. The drinks, as you Yankees say, are upon
me
!”

“By the way,” he added to McCarthy, as McAllister filled the glasses, “would you be so obliging as to describe the individual who so thoughtfully notified you in regard to the loss of the jew
elry?”

“Rather stout, well-dressed man, fat face, gray eyes,” answered McCarthy, lighting a cigar. “Looked somethin’ like this gentleman here,” indicating the clubman. “Spoke with a kind of English accent. Nice appearin’ feller, all right.”

“By George! Wilkins!” ejaculated McAllister.

“Damn!” exploded Uncle Basil.

“The nerve of him!” muttered Barney.

THE GOLDEN TOUCH, by Arthur Train

Taken from
McAllister and His Double
(1905).

I

McAllister, with his friend Wai
nwright,
was lounging before the fire in the big room, having a little private Story Teller’s Night of their own. It was in the early autumn, and neither of the clubmen were really settled in town as yet, the former having run down from the Berkshires only for a few days, and the latter having just landed from the Cedric. The sight of Tomlinson, who appeared tentatively in the distance and then, receiving no encouragement, stalked slowly away, reminded Wainwright of something he had heard in Paris.

“I base my claim to your sympathetic credence, McAllister, upon the impregnable rock of universally accepted fact that Tomlinson is a highfalutin ass. I see that you agree. Very good, then; I proceed. In the first place, you must know that our anemic friend decided last spring that the state of his health required a trip to Paris. He therefore went—alone. The reason is obvious. Who should
he fall in with at the Hotel Continental but a gentleman named Buncomb—Colonel C. T. P. Buncomb, a person with a bullet-hole in the middle of his forehead, who claimed to belong to a most exclusive Southern family in Savannah. Incidentally he’d been in command of a Georgia regiment in the Civil War and had been knocked in the head at Gettysburg—one of those big, flabby fellows with white hair. If all Tomlinson says about his capacity to chew Black Strap and absorb rum is accurate, I reckon the Colonel was right up to weight and could qualify as an F. F. V. He knew everybody and everything in Paris; passed up our friend right along the Faubourg Saint Germain; and introduced him to a lot of duchesses and countesses—that is, Tomlinson
says
they were. Can’t you see ’em, swaggerin’ down the Champs-Élysées arm in arm? In addition, he took our mournful acquaintance to all the
cafés chantants
and students’ balls, and gave him sure things on the races. Oh, that Colonel must have been a regular doodle-bug!

“In due course Tomlinson gathered that his new friend was a mining expert taking a short vacation and just blowing in an extra half million or so. He believed it. You see, he had never met any of them at the Waldorf at home. He was also introduced to a young man in the same line of busine
ss, named Larry Summerdale, who seemed to have plenty of money, and was likewise
au fait
with the aristocracy.

“Well, one night, after they had been to the Bal Boullier and had had a little supper at the Jockey Club, the Colonel became a trifle more confidential than usual, and let drop that their friend Summerdale had a brother employed as private secretary by a copper king who owned a wonderful mine out in Arizona called The Silver Bow. The stock in this concern had originally been sold at five dollars a share, but recently a rich vein had been struck and the stock had quadrupled in value. No one knew of this except the officers of the company, who, of course, were anxious to buy up all they could find. They had located most of it easily enough, but there were two or three lots that had thus far eluded them. Among these was the largest single block of stock in existence, owned by the son of the original discoverer of the prospect. He had two thousand shares, and was blissfully ignorant of the fact that they were worth forty thousand dollars. Just where this chap was no one seemed to know, but his name was Edwin H. Blake, and he was supposed to be in Paris. It appeared that the Colonel and Larry were watching out for Blake with the charitable idea of relieving him of his stock at five, and selling it for twent
y in the States.

“Next day, if you’ll believe it, the Colonel didn’t remember a thing; became quite angry at Tomlinson’s supposing he’d take advantage of any person in the way suggested; explained that he must have been drinking, and begged him to forget everything that might have been said. Of course, Tomlinson dropped the subject, but after that the Colonel and he rather drifted apart. Then quite by accident, two or three weeks later, our friend stumbled on Blake himself—met him right on the race-track, through a Frenchman named Depau.

“Now our innocent friend had been sort of lonely ever since he’d lost sight of Buncomb, and this Blake turned out to be an awfully good sort. Tomlinson naturally inquired if he’d ever met the Colonel or Larry Summerdale, but he never had, and finally they took an apartment together.”

“He must have been pleased when Tomlinson told him about the value of his stock,” remarked McAllister, lighting another cigar.

“I’m comin’ to that,” replied Wainwright. “It seems that Tomlinson so far forgot his early New England traditions as to covet that stock himself. Shockin’, wasn’t it?

“One day, when they were lunching at the Trois Freres, our friend hinted that he was interested in mining
stock. Blake laughed, and replied that if Tomlinson owned as much as he did of the stuff he wouldn’t want to see another share as long as he lived, and added that he was loaded up with a lot of worthless stock—two thousand shares—in an old prospect in Arizona that he had inherited from his father, and wasn’t worth the paper the certificate was printed on. The leery Tomlinson admitted having heard of the mine, but gave it as his impression that it had possibilities.

“Then he had a sudden headache, and went out and cabled to The Silver Bow offices at the
World
building here in New York to find out what the company would pay for the stock. In an hour or two he got an answer stating that they were prepared to give twenty dollars a share for not less than two thousand shares. Good, eh?

“Well, next day he led the conversation round again to mining stocks, and finally offered to buy Blake’s holdings for five dollars a share. When the latter hesitated, Tomlinson was so afraid he’d lose the stock that he almost raised his bid to fifteen; but Blake only laughed, and said that he had no intention of robbing one of his friends, and that the old stuff really wasn’t worth a cent. Tomlinson became quite indignant, suggested that perhaps he knew more about that particular mine than even Blake did, and finally overcame the latter’s scruples and pe
rsuaded him to sell. Then Tomlinson disposed of some bonds by cable, and that evening gave Blake a draft for fifty thousand francs in exchange for his two thousand share certificate in The Silver Bow of Arizona. He told me it had a picture of a miner with a pick-ax and a mule standing against the rising sun on it. Sort of allegorical, don’t you think?

“Blake continued to protest that our friend was being cheated, and offered to buy it back at any time; but Tomlinson’s one idea was to get to New York as fast as possible. He had cabled that the stock was on the way, and that very night he slid out of Paris and caught the Norddeutscher Lloyd at Cherbourg. I inferred that he occupied the bridal chamber on the way back all by himself.

“The instant they landed he jumped in a cab and started for the
World
building; but when he got there he couldn’t find any Silver Bow Mining Company. It had evaporated. It had been there right enough—for ten days—the ten days Tomlinson calculated that it had taken Blake to sell him the stock. But no one knew where it had gone or what had become of it.

“Well, of course,” kept on Wainwright, “he nearly went crazy; cabled the police in Paris and had ’em all arrested, including Colonel Buncomb; and took the
next steamer back. He says they had the trial in a little police court in the Palais de Justice. Buncomb had hired Maître Labori to defend him. Everybody kept their hats on, and apparently they all shouted at once. The Judge was the only one that kept his mouth shut at all. Tomlinson told his story through an interpreter, and charged Buncomb, Summerdale, and Blake with conspiracy to defraud.

“When the Colonel realized what it was all about he jumped into the middle of the room, pushed his silk hat back of his ears, flapped his coat-tails, and sailed into ’em in good old Southern style. I tell you he must have made the eagle scream. He was a Colonel in the Confederate Army, he was—the Thirtieth Georgia. The whole thing was a miserable French scheme to blackmail him. He’d appeal to the American Ambassador. He’d see if a parcel of French soup-makers and a police judge could interfere with the Constitution of the United States. Every once in a while he’d yell ‘
Conspuez
’ or ‘
À bas
’ and sort of froth at the mouth. He made a great big impression. Then Maître Labori got in
his
licks. He said Tomlinson was a wolf in sheep’s clothing—a rascal—a ‘vilain m’sieur,’ whatever that is.

“Finally he inquired, with a very unpleasant smile, if Buncomb had ever asked him to buy any stock?

“Tomlinson ha
d to say ‘No.’

“Did Larry Summerdale?

“‘No.’

“Didn’t Blake tell him the stock was worthless?

“‘Yes.’

“How did he know the stock wasn’t worth what he paid for it?

“‘Well, he didn’t absolutely.’

“The Labori said something with a long rattling ‘r’ in it like a snake, and turned with a gesture of extreme contempt to the Judge. He remarked that one glance of comparison between Colonel Buncomb and Tomlinson would show which was the gentleman and which was the rogue. Then the first thing our friend knew the court had adjourned—they had all been turned out—discharged—acquitted. But the thing that most disgusted Tomlinson was that as he was coming away he saw the whole push, the Colonel and Larry and Blake, all piling into a big Panhard autocar. They passed him going about eighty miles an hour. You see, Tomlinson had paid for that car, and he’d always wanted one to run himself. The last he heard of ’em they were tearing up the Riviera.”

“And what did Tomlinson do then?” asked McAllister.

“There was nothing he could do in Paris, so he came home on a ten-day bo
at and went to visit his uncle up at Methuen, Mass. Gay place, Methuen! Saturday night you can ride down to Lawrence on the electric car for a nickel and hear the band play in front of the gas works. But the simple life has done him good.”

II

One evening, several months later, McAllister and a party of friends dropped into Rector’s after the theatre for a caviare sandwich before turning in. The hostelry, as usual, was in a blaze of light and crowded, but after waiting for a few moments they were given a table just vacated by a party of four. McAllister, having given their order, noticed a couple seated directly in his line of vision who instantly challenged his attention. The girl was ordinary—slender, dark-haired, sharp-featured, and clad in a scarlet costume trimmed with ermine—obviously an actress or vaudeville “artist.” It was her companion, however, that caused McAllister to readjust his monocle. Curious! Where had he seen that face? It was that of a heavy man of approximately sixty, benign, smooth-shaven, full-featured, and with an expanse of broad white forehead, the centre of which was marked in a curious fashion
by a deep dent like a hole made by dropping a marble into soft putty. It gave him the appearance of having had a third eye, now extinct. It fascinated McAllister. He was sure he had met the old fellow somewhere—he couldn’t just place where. But that hole in the forehead—yes, he was certain! Listening abstractedly to his friends’ conversation, the clubman studied his neighbor, becoming each moment more convinced that at some time in the past they had been thrown together. Presently the pair arose, and the man helped the woman into her ermine coat. The hole in his forehead kept falling in and out of shadow, as McAllister, his eyes fastened upon it like some bird charmed by a reptile, watched the head waiter bow them ostentatiously out.

“Fellows!” exclaimed McAllister, “look at those people just going out; do you know who they are?”

“Why, that’s Yvette Vibbert, the comedienne,” said Rogers. “She’s at Hammerstein’s. I don’t know her escort. By George! That’s a queer thing on his forehead.”

McAllister beckoned the head waiter to him.

“Alphonse, who’s the gentleman with Mademoiselle Vibbert?”

Alphonse smiled.

“Zat is Monsieur Herbert.” He pronounced it Erbaire.

“Well,
who’s Monsieur Erbaire?”

Alphonse elevated his eyebrows, shrugged his shoulders, protruded his lips, and extended the palms of his hands.

“Alphonse says,” remarked McAllister, turning to the group around the table, “Alphonse says that you can search
him
.”

III

McAllister had speculated for a day or two upon the probable identity of the man with the hole in his forehead, and then had finally given it up as a bad job. One didn’t like to dig up the past too carefully, anyhow. You never could tell exactly what you might exhume.

The next Sunday afternoon, while running his eyes carelessly over the “personals,” his notice was attracted to the following:

Business Opportunities.—Advertiser wants party with four thousand dollars ready cash; can make twelve thousand dollars in five weeks; no scheme, strictly legitimate business transaction; will bear thorough investigation; must act immediately; no brokers; principals only.

Herbert, 319 Herald.

The name sounded familiar. But he didn’t know any Herbert. Then there hovered
in the penumbra of his consciousness for a moment the ghost of a scarlet dress, an ermine hat. Ah, yes! Herbert was the man with the hole in his forehead that night at Rector’s, that Alphonse didn’t know. But where had he known that man? He raised his eyes and caught a glimpse of Tomlinson, the saturnine Tomlinson, sitting by a window. Of course! Buncomb—Colonel C. T. P. Buncomb—Tomlinson’s high-rolling friend of the Champs-Élysées—turned up in New York as Mr. Herbert—a man who’d triple your money in five weeks! The chain was complete. If he kept his wits about him he might increase the reputation achieved at Blair’s. It would require
finesse
, to be sure, but his experience with Conville had given him confidence. Here was a chance to do a little more detective work on his own account. He replied to the advertisement, inviting an interview. The “Colonel” would probably call, try some old swindling game, McAllister would lure him on, and at the proper moment call in the police. It looked easy sailing.