“J. P. C.
“P. S. If I were you I'd stay off the beer in future.”
The up train? Why, that left at eight-forty-five! Surely it could not be that late! Emanuel got out his old silver watch, a legacy from a long-dead sire, and took one look at its two hands; and then in a quiver of haste, with no thought of breakfast or of his present state of unwashed untidiness, with no thought of anything except his precious clarinet, which he tucked under his coat, he let himself out of the door, leaving the key in the lock, and slipping through the deserted hallway he hastened down two flights of stairs; and taking a short cut that saved crossing the lobby, where inquisitive eyes might behold him in all his unkemptness and distress, he emerged from the side door of the Hotel Moderne.
Emanuel had proper cause to hurry. Never in all his years of service for the Commonwealth Bank had he failed to be on hand at eight o'clock to sort out the mail; and if his watch was to be believed here it was a quarter of nine! As he padded across the street on shaky legs a new apprehension that he had come away the day before without locking the combination of the vault smote him. Suppose—suppose something was wrong!
The street door of the Commonwealth stood open, and though the interior seemed deserted he realised, with a sinking of the heart, that someone had arrived before him. He darted inside, dropped the clarinet out of sight in a cuddy under his desk, and fairly threw himself at the vault.
The outer door was closed and locked, as it should be. Nevertheless, his hands shook so that he could hardly work the mechanism. Finally, the tumblers obeyed him, and he swung open the thick twin slabs, unlocked the inner door with the key which he carried along with other keys on his key ring—and then fetched a sigh of relief that was half a sob. Everything was as it should be—cash, paper money, books, files and securities. As he backed out of the vault the door of the president's office opened and Mr. Blair stood there in the opening, confronting him with an accusing glare.
“Young man,” said Mr. Blair, “you're late!”
“Yes, sir,” said Emanuel. “I'm very sorry, sir. I must have overslept.”
“So I judge!” Mr. Blair's accents were ominous. “So I judge, young man—but where?”
“W-where?” Emanuel, burning with shame, stammered the word.
“Yes, sir; that's what I said—where? Twenty minutes ago I telephoned to Mrs. Morrill's to find out what was keeping you from your duties, and they told me you hadn't been in all night—that your bed hadn't been slept in.”
“Yes, sir; I slept out.”
“I gathered as much.” Mr. Blair's long white chin whiskers quivered as Mr. Blair's condemning eyes comprehended the shrinking figure before him from head to foot—the rumpled hair; the bloodshot eyes; the wrinkled clothes; the soiled collar; the skewed necktie; the fluttering hands. “Look here, young man; have you been drinking?”
“No, sir—yes, sir; that is, I—I had a little beer last night,” owned Emanuel miserably.
“A little beer, huh?”
Mr. Blair, being popularly reputed to keep a private quart flask in his coat closet and at intervals to refresh himself therefrom behind the cover of the closet door, had a righteous contempt for wantons who publicly plied themselves with potables, whether of a malt, a spirituous or a vinous nature.
“A little beer, huh?” He put tons of menace into the repetition of the words. “Forever and a day traipsing off on vacations seems to breed bad habits in you, Moon. Now, look here! This is the first time this ever happened—so far as I know. I am inclined to excuse it this once. But see to it that it doesn't happen again—ever!”
“No, sir,” said Emanuel gratefully. “It won't.”
And it did not.
So shaken was Emanuel as to his nerves that three whole nights elapsed before he felt equal to practicing on his new clarinet. After that, though, in all his spare moments at the boarding house he played assiduously.
For the purposes of this narrative the passage of the ensuing fortnight is of no consequence. It passed, and that brings us to a Friday afternoon in mid-October. On the Friday afternoon in question the paymaster of the Great Western Crosstie Company deposited in the Commonwealth Bank, for overnight safeguarding, the funds to meet his semimonthly pay roll due to contractors, subcontractors, tow-boat owners and extra labourers, the total amounting to a goodly sum.
Next morning, when Herb Kivil opened the vault, he took one look and uttered one strangled cry. As Emanuel straightened up from the mail he was sorting, and as Mr. Blair stepped in off the street, out from between the iron doors staggered Herb Kivil, white as a sheet and making funny sounds with his mouth. The vault was empty—stripped of cash on hand; stripped of the Great Western Company's big deposit; stripped of every scrap of paper money; stripped of everything except the bank books and certain securities—in a word, stripped of between eighteen and nineteen thousand dollars, specie and currency. For the thief, whoever he might be, there was one thing to be said—he had an instinct for thoroughness in his make-up.
To say that the news, spreading with a most miraculous rapidity, made the town hum like a startled hive, is to state the case in the mildest of descriptive phrases. On the first alarm, the chief of police, accompanied by a good half of the day force, came at a dogtrot. Having severely questioned the frightened negro janitor, and examined all the doors and windows for those mysterious things known as clews, the chief gave it as his deliberate opinion that the robbery had been committed by some one who had means of access to the bank and its vault.
Inasmuch as there was about the place no evidence of forcible entry, and inasmuch as the face of the vault was not so much as scratched, and inasmuch, finally, as the combination was in perfect order, the population at large felt constrained to agree that Chief Henley had deduced aright. He took charge of the premises for the time being, Mr. Blair having already wired to a St. Louis detective agency beseeching the immediate presence and aid of an expert investigator.
It came out afterward that privily Mr. Blair suggested an immediate arrest, and gave to Henley the name of the person he desired to see taken into custody. But the chief, who was good-hearted—too good-hearted for his own good, some people thought—demurred. He stood in a deep and abiding awe of Mr. Blair. But he did not want to make any mistakes, he said. Anyhow, a big-city sleuth was due before night.. Would not Mr. Blair consent to wait until the detective had arrived and made his investigation? For his part, he would guarantee that the individual under suspicion did not get away. To his postponement of the decisive step Mr. Blair finally agreed.
On the afternoon train over the Short line the expert appeared, an inscrutable gentleman named Fogarty with a drooping red moustache and a brow heavily wrinkled. This Mr. Fogarty first conferred briefly with Mr. Blair and with Chief Henley. Then, accompanied by these two and trailed by a distracted group of directors of the bank, he made a careful survey of the premises from the cellar coal hole to the roof scuttle, uttering not a single word the while. His manner was portentous. Following this he asked for a word in private with the head of the rifled institution.
Leaving the others clustered in a group outside, he and Mr. Blair entered Mr. Blair's office. Mr. Fogarty closed the door and faced Mr. Blair.
“This here,” said Mr. Fogarty, “was what we call an inside job. Somebody here in this town—somebody who knew all there was to know about your bank—done it. Now, who do you suspicion?”
Lowering his voice, Mr. Blair told him, adding that only a deep sense of his obligations to himself and to his bank inspired him now to detail certain significant circumstances that had come to his personal attention within the past three weeks—or, to be exact, on a certain Wednesday morning in the latter part of September.
In his earlier movements Mr. Fogarty might have been deliberate; but once he made up his mind to a definite course of conduct he acted promptly. He came out of Mr. Blair's presence, walked straight up to Emanuel Moon, where Emanuel sat at his desk, and, putting his hand on Emanuel's shrinking shoulder, uttered the words:
“Young man, you're wanted! Put on your—”
Then Mr. Fogarty silently turned and beckoned to Chief Henley, invoking the latter's official co-operation and assistance.
Between the imported detective and the chief of police, Emanuel Moon, a silent, pitifully shrunken figure, walked round the corner to the City Hall, a crowd following along behind, and was locked up in a cell in the basement calaboose downstairs. Lingering about the hall after the suspect had been taken inside.
Divers citizens ventured the opinion that if the fellow wasn't guilty he certainly looked it. Well, so far as that goes, if a face as pale as putty and downcast eyes brimming with a numbed misery betokened guilt Emanuel had not a leg left to stand on.
However, looks alone are not commonly accepted as competent testimony under our laws, and Emanuel did not abide for very long as a prisoner. The Grand Jury declined to indict him on such dubious proof as the bank people and Mr. Fogarty could offer for its consideration. Undoubtedly the Grand Jury was inspired in its refusal by the attitude the Commonwealth's attorney maintained, an attitude in which the circuit judge concurred.
It was known that Mr. Blair went to Commonwealth's Attorney Flournoy, practically demanding that Emanuel be held for trial, and, failing in that quarter, visited Judge Priest with the same object in view. But perversely the judge would not agree with Mr. Blair that the evidence in hand justified such a course; would not on any account concede that Emanuel Moon was the only person, really, who might properly be suspected.
On that head he was as one with Prosecutor Flournoy. They held—these two—that possession of a costly musical instrument, regarding which the present owner would admit nothing except that it was a gift from an unknown friend, coupled with that individual's stubborn refusal to tell where he had spent a certain night and in whose company, did not constitute a fair presumption that he had made away with nearly nineteen thousand dollars.
“But look here, Judge Priest,” hotly argued Mr. Blair upon the occasion of his call upon His Honour, “it stands to reason Moon is the thief. Why, it couldn't have been anybody else! And I want the facts brought out.”
“Whut facts have you got, Hiram?” asked the judge.
“Moon knew the combination of the safe, didn't he? He carried the keys for the inside door of the safe, didn't he? And a key to the door of the building, too, didn't he?”
“Hiram,” countered Judge Priest, looking Mr. Blair straight in the eye, “ef you expect the authorities to go ahead on that kind of evidence I reckin we'd have to lock you up too.”
Mr. Blair started as though a physical blow had been aimed at his head.
“Why—why—— What do you mean by that, Judge?” he demanded, gripping the arms of his chair until his knuckles showed white through the skin.
“You carry the keys of the bank yourself, don't you? And you know the combination of the safe, don't you? And so does Herbie Kivil.”
“Do you mean to insinuate——”
“Hiram, I don't mean to insinuate nothin'. Insinuations don't make the best of evidence in court, though I will admit they sometimes count for a good deal outside of court. No, Hiram; I reckin you and your detective friend from St. Louis will have to dig up somethin' besides your personal beliefs before you kin expect the Grand Jury of this county to lay a charge aginst a man who's always enjoyed a fair standin' in this here community. That's all I've got to say to you on the subject.”
Taking the hint, Mr. Blair, red-faced and agitated, took his departure. After he was gone Judge Priest remained immersed in reflection for several hours.
So Emanuel went free. But he might almost as well have stayed in jail, for the smell of it seemed to cling to his garments—garments that grew shabbier as the weeks passed, for naturally he did not go back to the bank and just as naturally no one cared to offer employment to one who had been accused by his late employer of a crime. He fell behind with his board at Mrs. Morrill's. He walked the streets with drooping shoulders and face averted, shunning people and shunned by them. And, though he kept to his room in the evening, he no longer played on his clarinet. And the looting of the Commonwealth Bank's vault continued, as the Daily Evening News more than once remarked, to be “shrouded in impenetrable mystery.”
One evening at dusk, as Judge Priest was going home alone from the courthouse, on a back street he came face to face with Emanuel.
The younger man would have passed by him without speaking, but the old man thrust his broad shape directly in the little man's course.
“Son,” he said, putting a hand on the other's arm, “I want to have a little talk with you—ez a friend. Jest you furgit all about me bein' a judge. I wisht, ef you ain't got anythin' else to do, you'd come up to my house to-night after you've had your supper. Will you, son?”
Emanuel, his eyes filling up, said he would come, and he did; and in the judge's old sitting-room they spent half an hour together. Father Minor always said that when it came to hearing confessions the only opposition he had in town came from a nonprofessional, meaning by that Judge Priest. It was one of Father Minor's little jokes.
“And now, Judge Priest,” said Emanuel, at the latter end of the talk, “you know everything—why I wouldn't tell 'em how I got my new clarinet and where I spent that night. If I had to die for it I wouldn't bring suspicion on an innocent party. I haven't told anybody but you—you are the only one that knows.”
“You're shore this here friend of yourn—Caruthers—is an innocent party?” suggested the judge.
“Why, Judge, he's bound to be—he's just naturally bound to be. If he'd been a thief he'd have robbed the bank that night when I was asleep in his room at the hotel. I had the keys to the bank on me and he knew it.”
“Thai why didn't you come out and say so.”
“Because, as I just told you, it would be bringing suspicion on an innocent party. He holds a responsible position with that big New York firm I was telling you about and it might have got him into trouble. Besides”—and Emanuel hung his head—“besides, I hated so to have people know that I was ever under the influence of liquor. I'm a church member, Judge, as you know. I never drank—to excess—before that night, and I don't ever aim to touch another drop as long as I live. I'd almost as lief be called a drunkard as a thief. They're calling me a thief—I don't aim to have them calling me the other thing too.”
Judge Priest cloaked an involuntary smile behind a pudgy hand.
“Well, Emanuel,” he said, “jest to be on the safe side, did it ever occur to you to make inquiry amongst the merchants here as to whether a travelling gent named Caruthers sold goods to any of 'em?”
“No, Judge; I never thought of that.”
“Did you look up Gatling & Moore—I believe that's the name—in Bradstreet's or Dun's to see ef there was sech a firm?”
“Judge, I never thought of that either.”
“Son,” said the old man, “it sorter looks to me like you ain't been doin' much thinkin' lately.” Then his tone changed and became warmly consoling. “But I reckin ef I was the trouble you're in I wouldn't do much thinkin' neither. Son, you kin rest easy in your mind—I ain't a-goin' to betray your confidences. But ef you don't mind I aim to do a little inquirin' round on my own account. This here robbery interests me powerfully, someway. I've been frettin' a heap about it lately.
“And—oh, yes—there's another thing that I was purty nigh furgittin',” continued Judge Priest. “I ain't purposin' to pry into your personal affairs—but tell me, son, how are you off fur ready money these days?”
“Judge, to tell you the truth, I'm just about out of money,” confessed Emanuel desperately. “I owe Mrs. Morrill for three weeks' board now. I hate to keep putting her off—her being a widow lady and dependent for her living on what she takes in. I'd pack up and go somewhere else—to some other town—and try to get work, only I can't bear to go away with this cloud hanging over my good name. It would look like I was running away; and anyway I guess the tale would follow me.”
The judge dug into his right-hand trousers pocket. He exhumed a small wad of bills and began counting them off.
“Son,” he said, “I know you won't mind my makin' you a temporary loan to help you along till things git brighter with you. By the way, how would you like to go to work in the circuit clerk's office?”
“Me, Judge! Me?” Fresh-kindled hope blazed an instant in Emanuel Moon's voice; then the spark died.
“I reckon nobody would hire me,” he finished despondently.
“Don't you be so shore. Lishy Milam come to me only yistiddy sayin' he needed a reliable and experienced man to help him with his books, and askin' me ef I could suggest anybody. He ain't had a capable deputy sense little Clint Coombs died on him. I sort of figger that ef he gave you a job on my say-so it'd go a mighty long way toward convincin' this town that we both regarded you ez an honest citizen. I'll speak to 'Lishy Milam the very first thing in the mornin'—ef you're agreeable to the notion.”
“Judge,” exclaimed Emanuel, up on his feet, “I can't thank you—I can't tell you what this means—”
“Son, don't try,” bade the old judge. “Anyhow, that ain't whut I want to hear frum you now. Set down there agin and tell me all you kin remember about this here friend of yourn—Caruthers; where you met up with him and whut he said and how he said it, and the way he looked and walked and talked. And how much beer you drunk up that night and how much he drunk up, and how you felt when you woke up, and whut Hiram Blair said to you when you showed up at the bank—the whole thing all over agin from start to finish. I'm interested in this here Mr. Caruthers. It strikes me he must 'a' been a mighty likely feller.”
When Emanuel Moon walked out of Judge Priest's front door that night he was pumped dry. Also, for the first time in weeks, he walked with head erect and gaze straightforward.
In the morning, true to his promise, Judge Priest made recommendations to Circuit Clerk Milam. This done, he left the courthouse and, going down Legal Row, dropped in at the law office of Fairleigh & Fairleigh, to find young Jere Fairleigh, junior member of the firm, sitting by the grate fire in the front room.
“Jere,” asked Judge Priest, directly the young man had made him welcome, “whutever become of them three post-office robbers that hired you to defend 'em—still over in the Marshallville jail, ain't they?”
“Two of them are,” said young Fairleigh. “The one they call the Waco Baby got out on bail and skipped. But the other two—Frisco Slim and Montreal Red—are in jail over there awaiting trial at the next term of United States Court.”
Judge Priest smiled softly.
“Young man,” he said, “it certainly looks to me like you're climbin' mighty fast in your chosen profession. All your clients 'pear to have prominent cities named alter 'em. Tell me,” he went on, “whut kind of persons are the two that are still lingerin' in Marshallville?”
“Well,” said the young lawyer, “there's a world of difference between 'em. Frisco is the glum, morose kind; but Montreal Red—his real name is Mooney, he tells me, though he's got half a dozen other names—he's certainly a wise individual. Just associating with him in my capacity as his counsel has been a liberal education to me in the ways of the underworld. I firmly believe he knows every professional crook in the country.”
“Aha! I see,” said Judge Priest. “I figger Mister Montreal is the party I want to meet. I'm thinkin' of runnin' down to Marshallville on business right after dinner to-day. I reckin you wouldn't mind—in strict confidence—givin' me a little note of introduction to your client, tellin' him I seek his advice on a private matter, and sayin' that I kin be trusted?”
“I'll be mighty glad to,” said Fairleigh, Junior, reaching across his desk for pen and paper. “I'll write it right now. Turning detective, Judge?”
“Well, son,” conceded Judge Priest, “you mout call it that and not make sech an awful big mistake.”
“Sort of a Sherlock Holmes, eh?”
The judge made a gesture of modest disclaimer.
“No; I reckin Sherlock would be out of my class. By all accounts Sherlock knowed purty nigh ever'thing wuth knowin'. If he'd struck two different trails, both seemin'ly p'intin' in the same direction, he'd know right off which one of 'em to take. That's where he'd be one pawpaw above my tallest persimmon. Sometimes I git to thinkin' I'm a poor purblind old idiot that can't see a thing when it's shoved right up under my nose. No; I ain't aspirin' none to qualify ez a Sherlock. I'm only endeavourin' to walk ez an humble disciple in the hallowed footsteps of Old Cap Collier.”
“What do you know about Old Cap Collier?” demanded Fairleigh, astonished. “I thought I was the only grown man in town that still read nickel libraries—on the sly.”
“Boy,” said Judge Priest, “you and me have got a secret bond between us. Wasn't that there last one that come out a jim-dandy?—the one called Old Cap Collier and the Great Diamond Robbery.
“It was so,” stated Fairleigh. “I read it last night in bed.”
Three o'clock of that same day disclosed Judge Priest perched on the side of a bunk in a cell in the Marshallville jail, close up alongside a blocky person of unkempt appearance whom we, for convenience, may call Montreal Red, more especially as this happens to be the title to which he commonly answered within the fraternity of which he was a distinguished member.
They made a picture sitting there together—the old man, nursing his soft black hat between his hands, with the half light bringing out in relief his bald round skull, his chubby pink face and his tuft of white beard; the captive yeggman in his shirt sleeves, with no collar on and no shoes on, holding Mr. Fairleigh's note in his hand and, with the look upon his face of one who feels a just pride in his professional knowledge, hearkening while the Judge minutely described for him a certain individual. Before the Judge was done, Montreal Red interrupted him.
“Sufficiency, bo,” he said lightly; “you've said enough. I know the gun you're talkin' about without you goin' any farther—it's Shang Conklin, the Solitary Kid.”
“But this here gentleman went by the name of Caruthers!” demurred the Judge.
“Wot else did you figure he'd be doin'?” countered Montreal Red. “He might 'a' called himself Crowley, or Lord Copeleigh, or half a dozen other things. He might 'a' called himself the King of Bavaria—yes, and got away with it, too, because he's there with the swell front and the education. The Solitary Kid's got a different monniker for every day in the week and two for Sundays. It couldn't be nobody else but him; you've called the turn on him same as if you'd mugged him for the Gallery.”
“You know him personally, then?” asked Judge Priest.
“Who don't know him?” said Montreal Red. “Everybody that knows anybody knows Solitary. And I'll tell you why! You take 'most any ordinary gun and he's got just one regular line—he's a stick-up, or he's a moll buzzer, or a peterman, or a con man; or he belongs to the hard-boiled people, the same as me. But Shang he doubles in brass; it's B. and O. for him. Bein' there with the front, he's worked the wire; and before that he worked the bat. Knowin' all there is to know about the pasteboard papes, he'd done deep-sea fishin' in his time—playin' for rich guys on the big liners, you know.
“And when it comes to openin' boxes—bo, since old Jimmy Hope quit the game and sneezed in, I guess Shang Conklin's the wisest boxman that ever unbuttoned a combination crib with his bare hands. He's sure the real McCoy there—not no common yegg, you understand, with a steel drill and a gat in his kicks and a rubber bottle full of soup tied under his coat; but doin' the real fancy stuff, with nothin' to help him but the old ten fingers and the educated ear. And he never works with a mob neither. Any time you make Shang he'll be playin' the lone hand—providin' his own nut and goin' south with all the clean-up. No splittin' with anybody for Shang—it's against his business principles. That's why he's labelled the Solitary Kid.”
Most of this was as pure Greek to Judge Priest, who, I may say, knew no Greek, pure or otherwise. Suddenly aware of the bewilderment revealed in the countenance of his interviewer, Montreal Red checked up and took a new track.
“Say, bo, you ain't makin' me, are you? Well, then, maybe I'd better spiel it out slow. Know wot a peterman is?”
The judge shook his head.
“Well, you know wot a box is, don't you?”
“I'm skeered that I don't, though I believe I'm beginnin' to git a faint idea,” said Judge Priest.
As though deploring such ignorance Montreal Red shook his flame-coloured head.
“I'll frame it for you different—in sucker language,” he said.
And accordingly he did, most painstakingly.
“Now then,” he said at the end of five minutes of laborious translation, “do you get me?”
“I git you,” said Judge Priest. “And I'm mighty much obliged. Now, then, ef it ain't too much trouble, I'd like to git in touch with this here Mister Conklin, et cetery. Do you, by any chance, know his present whereabouts?”
Before replying to this the Montreal Red communed with himself for a brief space.
“Old-timer,” he said finally, “if I thought you was playin' in with the dicks I'd see you in Belgium before I tipped you off to anything. But this here mouthpiece of mine”—he indicated the note from young Mr. Fairleigh—“says you're on the level. I judge he wouldn't take my good fall-money and then cross me this way. I take it you ain't tryin' to slip one over on Shang? All right, then; I'll tell you where he is—he's in Atlanta, Georgia.”
“And whut is his address there?” pursued Judge Priest.
“The Federal prison—that's all,” said Montreal tied. He smiled softly. “If I don't beat this little case of mine I'm liable to meet him down there along toward spring, or maybe even sooner. The bulls nailed him at Chattanooga, Tennessee, about a month ago for a little national-bank job, and right quick he taken a plea and got off with a short bit in Uncle Sammy's big house. I was readin' about it in the papers. You wouldn't have no trouble findin' him at Atlanta—he'll be in to callers for the next five years.”
“Bein' an amateur Old Cap Collier certainly calls fur a lot of travellin' round,” murmured Judge Priest, half to himself, and he sighed a small sigh of resignation as he arose.
“Wot's that? I don't make you?” asked Montreal Red.
“Nothin',” said Judge Priest; “nothin' a-tall. I was jest thinkin' out loud; it's a sort of failin' of mine ez I git older. You said, didn't you, that these here sleepin' potions which you was mentionin' a minute ago are mostly administered in beer?”
“Mostly in beer,” said Montreal Red. “The little old knock-out seems to work best in the lather stuff. I don't know why, but it does.
“It's like this: You take the beer——”
“Oh, I wasn't figgerin' on usin' it myself,” explained Judge Priest hastily. “Much obliged to you all the same, young man.”
A night in a sleeping car brought Judge Priest to Atlanta. A ride in a trolley car brought him to the warden's office of a large reformatory institution beyond the suburbs of that progressive city. A ten-minute chat with the warden and the display of divers credentials brought him the privilege of an interview, in private, with a person who, having so many names to pick from, was yet at this time designated by a simple number. Even in convict garb, which is cut on chastely plain lines and which rarely fits perfectly the form of its wearer, this gentleman continued somehow to bespeak the accomplished metropolitan in his physical outlines and in his demeanour as well, maintaining himself, as you might say, jauntily.
In the first few moments of his meeting with Judge Priest there was about him a bearing of reserve—almost of outright suspicion. But half a dozen explanatory sentences from the judge served speedily to establish an atmosphere of mutual understanding. I believe I stated earlier in my tale that Judge Priest had a little knack for winning people's confidences. Perhaps I should also explain that at a suitable time in the introductory stages of the conversation he produced a line in the characteristic handwriting of Mr. Montreal Red. Being thereby still further enlightened as to the disinterestedness of the venerable stranger's motives, the Solitary Kid proved frankness itself. Preliminarily, though, he listened intently while Judge Priest recited in full a story that had mainly to do with the existing plight of Emanuel Moon.
“Now then, suh,” said Judge Priest at the conclusion of his narrative, “I've laid all the cyards that I hold on the table right in front of you. Ef I'm correct in my guess that you're the party of the second part in this here transaction. I don't need to go on, because you know a sight more about the rest of it than whut I do. The way I figger it, a decent, honest little man is in serious trouble, mainly on your account. Ef you're so minded I calculate that you kin help him without hurtin' yourself any. Now then, presumin' sech to be the case, is there anythin' you'd like to say to me—ez his friend?”
Conklin, alias Caruthers, alias Crowley, and so on, put a question of his own now:
“You say the president of that bank is the one that tried to fasten this job on Moon, eh? Well, then, before we go any further, suppose you tell me what that president looks like?”
Judge Priest sketched a quick word picture of Mr. Hiram Blair—accurate and fair, therefore not particularly complimentary.
“That's enough,” said the convict grimly; “that'll do. Why, the long-whiskered old dog! Now then, Judge—you said you were a judge, didn't you?—I'm going to spill a funny yam for you. Never mind what my reasons for coming through are. Maybe I want to get even with somebody that handed me a large disappointment. Maybe I don't want to see that little Moon suffer for something he didn't do. Figure it out for yourself afterward, but first listen to me.”
“I'm listenin', son,” said Judge Priest.
“Good!” said Conklin, lowering his voice cautiously, though he knew already they were alone in the warden's room.
“Up to a certain point you've got the thing figured out just as it came off. That day on the train going into Louisville I started to take the little man at cards. I was going to deal him the big mitt and then clean him for what he had; but when he told me he worked in a bank—a nice, fat little country bank—I switched the play, of course. I saw thousands of dollars where I'd seen lunch money before. Inside of an hour I knew everything there was to know about that bank—what he knew and what I could figure from what he told me. All I had to do was to turn the spigot once in a while and let him run on. And then, when he began to spill his cravings for a new clarinet, I almost laughed in his face. The whole thing looked like a pipe.
“The dope was working lovely when I hit that town of yours two weeks later. At the right minute I flashed the clarinet on him and made him forget to throw the combination of the vault. So far, so good. Then, when I got him where I wanted him—over in my room—I slipped the drops into his beer; not enough to hurt him but enough to start him pounding his ear right away. That was easy too—so easy I almost hated to do it.
“Then I waited until about two o'clock in the morning, him lying there all the time on my bed, dead to the world.. So I took his keys off him and dropped across the street without being seen by anybody—the main street of your town is nice and quiet after midnight—I'll say that much for it anyway—and walked into the bank the same as if I owned it—in fact, I did own it—and made myself at home. I opened up the vault and went through it, with a pocket flash to furnish light; and then after a little I locked her up again, good and tight, leaving everything just like I'd found it, and went back to the hotel and put the keys in the little man's pocket, and laid down alongside of him and took a nap myself. D'ye see my drift?”
“I reckin I don't altogether understand—yit,” said Judge Priest.
“You naturally wouldn't,” said Conklin with the air of a teacher instructing an attentive but very ignorant pupil. “Here's what happened: When I took a good look at the inside door of that vault and tried the tumblers of the outside door I knew I could open her any time I wanted to—in five minutes or less. Besides, I wouldn't need the keys any more, seeing as I could make impressions of 'em in wax, which I did as soon as I got back inside of my room at the hotel. So I was sure of having duplicates whenever I needed 'em.”
“I'm feared that I'm still in the dark,” said Judge Priest. “You see it's only here right recently that I took up your callin' in life—ez a study.”
“Well, figure it out for yourself,” said Conklin. “If I made my clean-up and my getaway that night it was a cinch that they'd connect up Moon with his strange friend from New York; even a hick bull would be wise enough to do that. And inside of twenty-four hours they'd be combing the country for a gun answering to my general plans and specifications. At the beginning I was willing to take that chance; but after I had a look at that combination I switched my play. Besides, there wasn't enough coin in the box that night to suit me. I always play for the big dough when I can, and I remembered what the little man told me about that lumber company—you know the one I mean: that big crosstie concern—depositing its pay roll every other Friday night. So why wouldn't I hold off?”
“I begin to see,” said Judge Priest. “You're makin' me see a number of things that've been pesterin' me fur three-four days now.”
“Wait till you get the final kick,” promised the convict. “That'll open your eyes some, I guess. Well, I skinned out next morning and I went elsewhere—never mind where, but it wasn't far away. Then on the night of the fifteenth—the third Friday in the month—I came back again, travelling incog., as they say on the other side of the duck pond; and about two o'clock in the morning I paid another call to your little old Commonwealth Bank and opened up the vault—outside door and inside door—in four minutes by my watch, without putting a mark on her. That's my specialty—nice, clean jobs, without damaging the box or making any litter for the janitor to sweep up in the morning. But I didn't clean her out that time either.”
“Ahem!” said Judge Priest doubtfully. “You didn't?”
“Oh, I didn't expect you to believe that right off,” stated Mr. Conklin, prolonging his climax. “The reason I didn't clean her out then was because she was already cleaned out; somebody had beat me to it and got away with everything worth having in that little old box. It was considerable of a disappointment to me—and a shock too.”
“It shorely must've been,” agreed the judge, almost sympathetically. “Mout I ask ef you've got any gineral notion who it was that—that deprived you of the fruits of your industry and your patience?”
“I don't have to have any general notion,” quoth Conklin et al., with bitterness creeping into his voice. “I know who it was—that is, I'm practically certain I know who it was. Because, while I was across the street in a doorway about half past one, waiting to make sure the neighbourhood was clear, I saw the gink I suspect come out of the bank and lock the door behind him, and go off up the street.
“I thought at the time it was funny—anybody being in that bank at that hour of the night; but mostly I was glad that I hadn't walked in on him while he was there. So I just laid low and let him get away with the entire proceeds—which was my mistake. I guess under the circumstances he'd have been glad enough to divide up with me. I might even have induced him to hand over the whole bunch to me—though, as a rule, when it can be avoided I don't believe in any strong-arm stuff. But, you see, I didn't know then what I found out about half an hour later. So I just stood still where I was, like a boob, and let him fade away out of my life. Yep, Judge, I'm reasonably sure I saw the party that copped the big roll that night. And I presume I'm the only person alive that did see him copping it.”
“Would you mind describin' him—ez nearly ez you kin?” asked Judge Priest; he seemed to have accepted the story as a truthful recital.
“I don't need to,” answered the Solitary Kid. “You did that yourself just a little bit ago. If you're going back home any time soon I suggest that you ask the old pappy-guy with the long white whiskers what he was doing coming out of his own bank at half past one o'clock on the morning of October the sixteenth, with a long overcoat on, and his hat pulled down over his eyes, and a heavy sackful of dough hid under his coat. I didn't exactly see the sack, but he had it, all right—I'll gamble on that. You needn't tell him where you got your information, but just ask him.”
“Son,” averred Judge Priest, “I shorely will do that very thing; in fact, I came mighty nigh practically doin' so several weeks ago when I didn't know nigh ez much ez I do now—thanks to you and much obliged.”
But Judge Priest was spared the trouble—for the time being, at least. What transpired later in a legal way in his courtroom has nothing whatever to do with this narration. It is true that he left Atlanta without loss of time, heading homeward as straight and as speedily as the steam cars could bear him.
Even so, he arrived too late to carry out his promise to the Solitary Kid. For that very day, while he was on his way back, in a city several hundred miles distant—in the city of Chicago, to be precise—the police saw fit to raid an establishment called vulgarly a bucket shop; and finding among the papers and books, which they coincidentally seized, entries tending to show that our Mr. Hiram Blair had, during the preceding months, gone short on wheat to a disastrous extent, the police inconsiderately betrayed those records of a prolonged and unfortunate speculation to one of the Chicago afternoon papers, which in turn wired its local correspondent down our way to call upon the gentleman and ask him pointblank how about it.
But the correspondent, who happened also to be the city staff of the Daily Evening News, a young man by the name of Rawlings, was unsuccessful in his attempts to see Mr. Blair, either at his place of business in the bank or at his residence. From what he was able to glean, the reporter divined that Mr. Blair had gone out of town suddenly. Putting two and two together the young man promptly reached the conclusion that Mr. Blair might possibly have had also some word from Chicago. Developments, rapidly ensuing, proved the youth correct in his hypothesis.
Two days later Mr. Blair was halted by a person in civilian garb, but wearing a badge of authority under his coat, as Mr. Blair was about to cross the boundary line near Buffalo into the adjacent Dominion of Canada. Mr. Blair insisted at first that it was not him. In truth it did not look like him. Somewhere en route he had lost his distinguished chin whiskers and his commanding manner, acquiring in lieu of these a name which did not in the least resemble Hiram Blair.
Nevertheless, being peremptorily, forcibly and over his protests detained—in fact, locked up—he was presently constrained to make a complete statement, amounting to a confession. Indeed, Mr. Blair went so far in his disclosures that the Daily Evening News, in an extra issued at high noon, carried across its front page, in box-car letters, a headline reading: Fugitive, in Durance Vile, Tells All!
Old Judge Priest was passing Mrs. Teenie Morrill's boarding house one night on his way home from Soule's drug store, where he had spent the evening in the congenial company of Mr. Soule, Sergeant Jimmy Bagby and Squire Roundtree. This was perhaps a week after his return from a flying trip to Atlanta, Georgia, the results of which, as the saying goes, still were locked within his breast.
As he came opposite Mrs. Morrill's front gate a blast of harmonious sound, floating out into the night, saluted his ears. He looked upward. Behind a front window on the top floor, with his upper lip overlapping the mouthpiece of a handsome clarinet and his fingers flitting upon the polished shaft of the instrument, sat little Emanuel Moon, now, by virtue of appointment, Deputy Circuit Clerk Emanuel Moon, playing The Last Rose of Summer with the fervour inspired of a happy heart, a rehabilitated reputation, a lucrative and honourable employment in the public service, and a newly acquired mastery of the melodic intricacies of the air in question—four things calculated, you will allow, to make anyone blithe of the spirit.
The old judge halted and smiled up at the window. Then, as he moved onward, he uttered the very word—a small coincidence, this—which I chose for the opening text of this chapter out of the life and the times of our town.
“Poor little ant!” said Judge Priest to himself; and then, as an afterthought: “But a dag-gone clever little feller!”