CHAPTER I
The position of confidential family adviser is not without its drawbacks, and it was with a certain reluctance that I told the office boy to show Mrs. Magnus in. For Mrs. Magnus was that bête noire of the lawyer—a woman recently widowed, utterly without business experience, and yet with a firm belief in her ability to manage her husband's estate. If Mrs. Magnus chose to ruin herself there was, of course, no reason why I should worry, but it is annoying to have a person constantly asking for advice and as constantly disregarding it. I never really understood why Mrs. Magnus asked for advice at all.
She was a woman of about fifty, thin and nervous, with a curious habit of compressing her lips into a tight knot, under the impression, I suppose, that the result indicated strength of character. Peter Magnus had married her when he was only an obscure clerk in the great commission house which he was afterward to own, and she was a school teacher or governess, or something of that sort. Perhaps she was a little ahead of him intellectually at the start, but he had broadened and developed, while she had narrowed and dried up, but she never lost the illusion of her mental supremacy, nor the idea that she had, in some dim way, married beneath her.
There were no children, and for the past ten years the old Magnus house on Twenty-third Street had been for her a kind of hermitage from which she seldom issued. Great business blocks sprang up on either side of it, but she would never permit her husband to sell it and move farther uptown.
For Magnus, on the other hand, the house became in time merely a sort of way station between the busy terminals of his life. I dare say he grew indifferent to his wife. That however, has nothing to do with this story.
Mrs. Magnus usually entered my office as one intrenched in conscious strength, but this morning it was evident that something had occurred to disturb her calm assurance. Her lips seemed more shrunken than ever; there were little lines of worry about her eyes, and dark circles under them, and as she dropped into the chair I placed for her, I saw that her hands were trembling. As I sat down in my own chair and swung around to face her, the conviction struck through me that she was badly frightened.
"Mr. Lester," she began, after a moment in which she was visibly struggling for self-control, "I want fifty thousand dollars in currency."
"Why—why, of course," I stammered, trying to accept the demand as quite an ordinary one. "When?"
"By eight o'clock to-night."
"Very well," I said. "But I suppose you know that, to secure the money so quickly, some of your securities will have to be sacrificed. It's a bear market."
"I don't care—sacrifice them. Only I must have that sum to-night."
"Very well," I said again. "But I hope you will tell me, if you can, what the money is for, Mrs. Magnus. Perhaps my advice—"
"No, it won't," she broke in. "This isn't a case for advice. There's nothing else for me to do. I've been fighting it and fighting it—but—"
She ended with a little gesture of helplessness and resignation.
"Perhaps we might borrow the money," I suggested, "until a better market—"
"No," she broke in again, "you know I won't borrow. So don't talk about it."
It was one of the fundamental tenets of this woman's financial creed that on no account was money to be borrowed.
"Very well," I said a third time; "I will get the money. I will look over the market and decide how it would best be done. Have you any suggestions to make?"
"No," she answered; "I leave it all to you."
This was almost more astonishing than the demand for the money had been. Mrs. Magnus was clearly upset.
"I shall probably have to send some papers up to you this afternoon for your signature," I added.
"I shall be at home. And remember I must have the money without fail."
"I will bring it to you myself. I think you said eight o'clock?"
"Yes—not later than that."
"I will have it there by that time," I assured her.
She started to rise, then sank back in her chair and looked at me.
Yes, she was frightened.
"Mr. Lester," she said, her voice suddenly hoarse and broken, "I think
I will tell you—what I can. I—I have no one else."
For the first time in my life I found myself pitying her. It was true—she had no one else.
"Don't think that I've been gambling or speculating or anything of that sort," she went on. "I have hesitated a long time before asking for this money—I don't enjoy giving away fifty thousand dollars."
"Giving it away?" I repeated. Certainly she was not the woman to enjoy doing that!
"Yes—giving it away! But—I must have peace! Another such night as last night—"
A sudden pallor spread across her face, and she touched her handkerchief hastily to lips and eyes.
"My—my husband wishes it," she added, almost in a whisper.
I don't know what there was about that sentence that sent a little shiver along my spine. Perhaps it was the tense of the verb. Perhaps it was the voice in which the words were uttered. Perhaps it was the haggard glance which accompanied them. Whatever the cause, I found that some of my client's panic was communicating itself to me.
"You mean he indicated his wish before he died?" I asked.
She shook her head.
"Or left a note of it, perhaps?"
"Yes," she said, "he has left a note of it," and she opened the bag she carried on her arm. "Here it is."
I took the sheet of paper she held out to me. It bore these words, written in the crabbed and somewhat uncertain hand which had belonged to Peter Magnus:
MY DEAR WIFE: It is my wish that you leave at once on this desk the sum of fifty thousand dollars in currency.
"On this desk?" I repeated, reading the words over again.
"On his desk at home," she explained.
"Then what is to become of it?"
"I don't know."
"But surely—" I said, bewildered. "Look here, Mrs. Magnus, you aren't telling me everything. Where did you find this?"
"On his desk."
"When?"
"Three nights ago."
"You mean it had been lying there unnoticed ever since his death?"
"No," she answered hoarsely. "It had not been lying there unnoticed.
It was written that night."
I could only stare at her—at her trembling lips, at her bloodshot eyes, at her livid face.
"Then it's an imposture of some sort," I said at last.
"It is not an imposture," she answered, more hoarsely than ever. "My husband wrote those words."
"Nonsense!" I retorted impatiently. "Somebody's trying to impose on you, Mrs. Magnus. Leave this with me, and I'll get to the bottom of it."
"I tell you," she repeated, rising to her feet in her earnestness, "my husband wrote those words three nights ago."
"How do you know he did?" I questioned, in some amusement.
"Because I saw him do it!" she answered, and fell back into her chair again, her hands fumbling feebly at her bag.
She was evidently on the verge of collapse, and I hastened to get her a glass of water, but when I returned with it, she had her smelling bottle to her nose and was almost herself again. She waved the glass away impatiently.
"I shall be all right in a moment," she murmured, and I sat down again and watched her, wondering if there had ever been any insanity in Mrs. Magnus' family.
I suppose my thought must have been reflected in my face, for Mrs.
Magnus flushed angrily as she caught my eye.
"No, I'm not mad," she said "though I feared last night that I would be. What I have told you is perfectly true. I saw my husband write that note three nights ago—it is not the only one. He can have no peace until that money is paid—neither can I. You must not fail me."
"I will not," I assured her. "I will bring it to you myself."
"Thank you," she said, and arose to go. "I shall want you to be present to-night."
"I shall be glad to help you in any way I can."
"Thank you," she said again, and I opened the door for her and watched her for a moment as she crossed the outer office. Then I closed the door and went back to my desk.
The note was lying where I had dropped it, and I picked it up and examined it again. Then I got out some samples of Magnus' writing and compared them with the note, but so far as I could tell the hands were the same. Besides, she had said she had seen her husband write it.
This gave me pause. How could she have seen him? How had he appeared to her? Perhaps she had written it herself, in her sleep, under some sort of self-hypnosis—but, in that case, would the handwriting have been her husband's? Or did hypnosis involve that, too? I ended by turning to the phone and calling for 3100 Spring. That, as you may know, is for 300 Mulberry Street; and 300 Mulberry Street is the drab building in which the police system of New York has its headquarters—or did have until the other day.
"Is Jim Godfrey there?" I asked.
"I'll see; hold the line."
A moment later I heard Godfrey's voice ask: "Hello? What is it?"
"It's Lester, Godfrey," I said. "I wish you would run over to the office and see me this morning."
"All right," he replied; "I'll be over right away."
I hung up the receiver with a sigh of relief. If anybody could see through the puzzle, I knew that Godfrey could. I had met him first in connection with the Holladay case, when he had deserted the force temporarily to accept a place as star reporter on the yellowest of the dailies; but he had resigned that position in a moment of pique, and the department had promptly gobbled him up again.
Fifteen minutes later his card was brought in to me, and I had him shown in at once.
"How are you, Lester?" he said, and I can't tell you what a tonic there was in the grip of his hand. "What's wrong this morning?"
"You know Mrs. Magnus?" I asked.
"Widow of Peter? Yes; I've heard of her."
"Somebody's trying to do her out of fifty thousand dollars," I said, and tossed the note across to him. "What do you make of that?"
"Tell me about it," he said, and studied it carefully, while I repeated the story Mrs. Magnus had told me.
"And now what do you make of it?" I asked again.
"I think the answer's blackmail," he said quietly.
"But that note?"
"A fake."
"And the story?"
"Also a fake."
"You mean she didn't see him write it?"
"Look here, Lester," demanded Godfrey impatiently, "you don't mean to say that you believe any such rot?"
"No," I answered; "I don't see how I can believe it—and yet, what did she tell it for?"
"She had to tell something."
"That's just it," I objected; "she didn't."
"Well, then, she wanted to tell something to throw you off the track.
That was the best thing she could think of."
"Why should she want to throw me off the track?"
"There are some women who would rather have a ghost in the family than a scandal. I don't suppose you know that Magnus had another wife living over in Jersey?"
"Another wife?"
"Oh, of course not a wife really—your Mrs. Magnus has the prior claim. But I fancy Number Two has asked to be provided for."
I sat silent for a moment, casting this over in my mind.
"It's just like a fool woman," I said at last, "to try to throw dust in the eyes of the one man who might have helped her. Heaven help a woman who won't tell the truth to her lawyer! I suppose there's nothing to do but turn over the money?"
"Of course not. Mrs. Magnus can afford it, and if it will give her peace of mind, why—"
"All right," I said. "And thank you, Godfrey, for telling me. I was imagining that either Mrs. Magnus was crazy or that some one was trying to bunco her. This is different. If she wants to lie to me, why, let her."
"You'll take it up to her yourself?"
"Yes. I promised to have it at the house at eight o'clock to-night."
I fancied that Godfrey's eyes paused on mine for the merest instant as though he was about to say something more, but he merely nodded and said good-by and was off.
And I turned to the task of deciding which of Mrs. Magnus' securities I should sell in order to get the best out of the market. But more than once in the course of the afternoon a vague uneasiness seized me. For, after all, Godfrey's explanation did not account for Mrs. Magnus' strained and frightened manner. If the story she had told me was a lie, she was certainly a consummate actress. I had never credited her with any ability in that direction.
A consummate forger, too!
The thought stung me upright. Of course, if her story was a lie, she herself had written the note. Had Godfrey thought of that? Or was it Godfrey who was trying to throw dust in my eyes?