Sundry Accounts

by Irvin S. Cobb

The bait in the trap of the average blackmailing plant is a woman—a young woman, good-looking, well groomed and smart. It is with her that the quarry is compromisingly entangled. But against women confederates Chappy Marr had a strong prejudice. They were such uncertain quantities; you never could depend upon them. They were emotional, temperamental; they let their sentimental attachments run away with their judgment; they fell in love, which was bad; they talked too much, which was worse; they were fickle-minded and jealous; they were given to falling out with male pals, and they had been known to carry a jealous grudge to the point of turning informer. So he set his inventions to the task of evolving a blackmailing snare which might be set and sprung, and afterwards dismantled and hidden away without the intervention of the female knave of the species in any of its stages. Trust him—smooth as lubricating oil, a veritable human graphite—to turn the trick. He turned it.

The upshot was a lovely thing, almost foolproof and practically cop-proof. To be sure, a woman figured in it, but her part was that of the chosen prey, not the part of an accessory and accomplice. The greater simplicity of the device was attested by the fact that for its mounting, from beginning to end, only three active performers were needed. The chief rôle he would play. For his main supporting cast he needed two men, and knew moreover exactly where to find them. Of these two only one would show ever upon the stage. The other would bide out of sight behind the scenes, doing his share of the work, unsuspected, from under cover.

For the part which he intended her to take in his production—the part of dupe—Mrs. Justus Propbridge was, as one might say, made to order. Consider her qualifications: young, pretty, impressionable, vain and inexperienced; the second wife of a man who even in these times of suddenly inflated fortunes was reckoned to be rich; newly come out of the boundless West, bringing a bounding social ambition with her; spending money freely and having plenty more at command to spend when the present supply was gone; her name appearing frequently in those newspapers and those weekly and monthly magazines catering particularly to the so-called smart set, which is so called, one gathers, because it is not a set and is not particularly smart.

Young Mrs. Propbridge figured that her name was becoming tolerably well known along the Gold Coast of the North Atlantic Seaboard. It was too. For example, there was at least one person entirely unknown to her who kept a close tally of her comings and her goings, of her social activities, of her mode of daily life. This person was Vincent Marr. Thanks to the freedom with which a certain type of journal discusses the private and the public affairs of those men and women most commonly mentioned in its columns, he presently had in his mind a very clear picture of this lady, and he followed her movements, as reflected in print, with care and fidelity; it was as though he had a deep personal interest in her. For a matter of fact, he did; he had a very personal interest in her. He had been doing this for months; in his trade, as in many others, patience was not only a virtue but a necessity. For example, he knew that her determined and persistent but somewhat crudely engineered campaigning to establish herself in what New York calls—with a big S—Society was the subject in some quarters of a somewhat thinly veiled derision; he knew that her husband was rather an elemental, not to say a primitive creature, but genuine and aboveboard and generous, as elemental beings are likely to be. Marr figured him to be of the jealous type. He hoped he was; it might simplify matters tremendously.

On a certain summer morning a paragraph appeared in at least three daily papers to the effect that Mr. and Mrs. Justus Propbridge had gone down to Gulf Stream City, on the Maryland coast; they would be at the Churchill-Fontenay there for a week or ten days. It was at his breakfast that Marr read this information. At noon, having in the meantime done a considerable amount of telephoning, he was on his way to the seaside too. Mentally he was shaking hands with himself in a warmly congratulatory way. Gulf Stream City was a place seemingly designed, both by Nature and by man, for the serving of his purposes.

Residing there were persons of his own kidney and persuasion, on whom he might count for at least one detail of invaluable coöperation. For a certain act of his piece, a short but highly important one, he also must have a borrowed stage setting and a supernumerary actor or so.

Immediately upon his arrival he sought out certain dependable individuals and put them through a rough rehearsal. This he did before he claimed the room he had engaged by wire at the Hotel Crofter. The Hotel Crofter snuggled its lesser bulk under an imposing flank of the supposedly exclusive and admittedly expensive Churchill-Fontenay. From its verandas one might command a view of the main entrance of the greater hotel.

It was on a Tuesday that the Propbridges reached Gulf Stream City. It was on Wednesday afternoon that the husband received a telegram, signed with the name of a business associate, calling him to Toledo for a conference—so the wire stated—upon an urgent complication newly arisen. Mr. Propbridge, as all the world knew, was one of the heaviest stockholders and a member of the board of the Sonnesbein-Propbridge Tire Company, which, as the world likewise knew, had had tremendous dealings in contracts with the Government and now was having trouble closing up the loose ends of its wartime activities.

He packed a bag and caught a night train West. On the following morning, which would be Thursday, Mrs. Propbridge took a stroll on Gulf Stream City's famous boardwalk. It was rather a lonely stroll. She had no particular objective. It was too early in the day for a full display of vivid costumes among the bathers on the beach. She encountered no one she knew.