The champion

by Charles Egbert Craddock

CHAPTER VI

The detective pondered seriously upon all these things as he sat there. He wondered that as yet the boy should have done nothing to indicate his partners in a crime so far beyond his own scope. More than all, he wondered how the little printer's devil should know or care anything about the insurance of the theatre, and what the question of the insurance had to do with his surreptitious entrance and the theft of the diamonds and other portable valuables.

The fire had been at first supposed to be the result of accident or of carelessness on the part of the theatre's employees, until Peter Bateman's story had suggested to the police the possibility that theft had necessitated that sequence of pillage, which is incendiarism. Thus the detective had believed that the theatre had been robbed by some gang of thieves, of whom Ned was but the humble tool, and then fired to conceal the traces of the more profitable crime. Now this conclusion was shaken,—and again and again he asked himself in perplexity and doubt what the question of the insurance could have had to do with the crime.

The more he thought of it the more he was convinced that this was to be a singular and difficult case. Properly worked up it would reflect much credit on the officer who should finally bring it to a successful issue. Once in the course of his varied speculations on the subject he came very close indeed to the truth; he canvassed the possibility that the theatre was burned from motives of malice or revenge, for Gorham was a man who made and kept bitter enemies. But the fact that any fool must know that so large and valuable a property was always amply insured would, he thought, prevent antagonism or reprisal from taking that form, since the loss would fall most heavily upon the various companies who had assumed the risk,—vague, unimagined corporations, beyond the scope of malice or antagonism, foreign to the thought of an incendiary.

Still meditating aimlessly about the question of insurance, he began to wonder if Gorham were not actually a gainer rather than a loser by the fire. The theatre's furnishings were getting shabby and out of style; much of the scenery was old; the site had become, by reason of one of those swift expansions of the commercial section of the town, so common in our growing southwestern cities, more valuable by far than the building itself; the season had not been very prosperous,—too much legitimate drama to cope successfully with spectacular opposition. The smaller theatres drew the crowds, and light opera was the vogue. More than all, there was of record a rather heavy mortgage on the structure itself, which showed that the owner had needed money in considerable emergencies. Taken all in all, Gorham was doubtless in better financial case now, a richer man to-day than yesterday.

All at once the detective began to put two and two methodically together. Gorham, by reason of the heavy insurance, had profited by the burning of the theatre. The boy, who was known to have secretly entered the house, presumably for the purpose of theft, had unwittingly manifested a tumult of excited interest upon the sheer mention of the insurance of the building,—a matter usually absolutely alien to one of his age, his class, and his ignorance; when in a state of obviously alert suspicion he became aware that this incongruity had been observed, he grew so restive under surveillance, evidently recognizing its menace, that the officer, not wishing to make an arrest prematurely, was obliged to withdraw, and only shadow him from afar.

Insurance! Had the boy indeed done nothing to indicate the perpetrator of the crime!

The car was now passing the ruins of the theatre. The smoke, still curling slowly into the air, had a certain luminous quality, reflected from the dying embers. Red lanterns here and there marked the lines of the débris, where the brick walls had fallen across the sidewalks and street, blocking the way, and served as a warning to the benighted passer-by. One of these lanterns cast a dull flush upon the gilded mask of Folly high on the frescoed wall, still grotesquely leering down upon the melancholy scene. As the lurid glare gradually faded in the distance, the detective, his conclusion reached at last, silently nodded his head, decisively, aggressively.

For this astute person had come to believe that Gorham had himself fired his own theatre!

He believed the boy, entering for the purpose of theft and concealed among the scenery, had accidentally gained a knowledge of the manager's crime,—else why should a lad of his years, a mere child, feel an interest in so remote a subject as the details of the insurance of the building? He doubtless went or was sent there with the object of stealing, nefarious enough! but burning the building could work an advantage to no one but the owner, who would get the big insurance money! Thus the detective deduced that Gorham himself had committed the crime which in double-dealing, joining with the "star," the manager of the theatrical company, and the insurance companies, he now pretended to cause to be investigated by the police.