"Somebody did catch you, then, in compromising att.i.tudes--you admit that?"
"You twist my words to give them a false meaning!" she exclaimed. "You are trying to trap me into saying something that would put me in a wrong light. I can explain--why, the whole thing is so simple when you understand."
"Suppose you do explain, then. Get me right, Mrs. Propbridge--I"m all for you in this affair. I want to give you the best of it from every standpoint."
So she explained, her words pouring forth in a torrent. She told him in such details as she recalled the entire history of her meeting with the vanished Mr. Murrill--how a doctored telegram sent her husband away and left her alone, how Murrill had accosted her, and why and what followed--all of it she told him, withholding nothing.
He waited until she was through. Then he sped a bolt, watching her closely, for upon the way she took it much, from his viewpoint, depended.
"Well," he said, "if that"s the way this thing happened and if you"ve told your husband about it"--he dragged his words just a trifle--"why should you be so worried, even if these pictures should reach him?"
Her look told him the shot had struck home. Inwardly he rejoiced, knowing, before she answered, what her answer would be.
"But I didn"t tell him," she confessed, stricken with a new cause for concern. "I--I forgot to tell him."
"Oh, you forgot to tell him?" he repeated. Now suddenly he became a cross-examiner, snapping his questions at her, catching her up sharply in her replies. "And you say you never saw this Mr. Murrill--as you call him--before in all your life?"
"No."
"And you"ve never seen the mysterious stranger since?"
"There was nothing mysterious about him, I tell you. He was merely interesting."
"Anyhow, you"ve never seen him since?"
"No."
"Nor had any word from him other than that telephone talk you say you had with him?"
"No."
"Did you ever make any inquiries with a view to finding out whether there was such a person as this Mrs. Beeman Watrous?"
"No; why should I?"
"That"s a question for you to decide. Did you think to look in the papers to see whether General Dunlap had really been taken ill on a motor trip?"
"No."
"Yet he"s a well-known person. Surely you expected the papers would mention his illness?"
"It never occurred to me to look. I tell you there was nothing wrong about it. Why do you try to trip me up so?"
"Excuse me, I"m only trying to help you out of what looks like a pretty bad mess. But I"ve got to get the straight of it. Let me run over the points in your story: No sooner do you land in Gulf Stream City than your husband gets a faked-up telegram and goes away? And you are left all alone? And you go for a walk all by yourself? And a man you never laid eyes on before comes up to you and tells you that you look a lot like a friend of his, a certain very rich widow, Mrs. Watrous--somebody, though, that I for one never heard of, and I know the Social Register from cover to cover, and know something about Wilmington too. And on the strength of your imaginary resemblance to an imaginary somebody he introduced himself to you? And then you let him walk with you? And you let him whisper pleasant things in your ear? Two of those pictures that you"ve got in your hand prove that. And you let him take you into one of the most notorious blind tigers on the beach? And you sit there with him in this dump--this place with a shady reputation--"
"I"ve explained to you how that happened. We didn"t stay there. We came right out."
"Let me go on, please. And you let him buy you wine there?"
"I"ve told you about that part, too--how the bottles and the gla.s.ses were already on the table when we sat down."
"I"m merely going by what the photographs tell, Mrs. Propbridge. I"m merely saying to you what a smart divorce lawyer would say to you if ever he got you on the witness stand; only he"d be trying to convict you by your own words and I"m trying to give you every chance to clear yourself. And then after that you go and sit with him--this perfect stranger--in a lonely place alongside a deserted bath house and n.o.body else in sight?"
"There were people bathing right in front of us all the time."
"Were there? Well, take a look at Photograph Number Five and see if it shows any bathers in sight. And he slips his arm around you and draws you to him?"
"I explained to you how that happened," protested the badgered, desperate woman. "No matter what the circ.u.mstances seem to be, I did nothing wrong, I tell you."
"All right, just as you say. Remember, I"m taking your side of it; I"m trying to be your friend. But here"s the important thing for you to consider: With those pictures laid before them would any jury on earth believe your side of it? Would they believe you had no hand in sending your husband that faked-up telegram? Would they believe it wasn"t a trick to get him away so you could keep an appointment with this man?
Would any judge believe you? Would your friends believe you? Or would they all say that they never heard such a transparent c.o.c.k-and-bull story in their lives?"
"Oh, oh!" she cried chokingly, and put her face in her hands. Then she threw up her head and stared at him out of her miserable eyes. "Where did those pictures come from? You say you believe in me, that you are willing to help me. Then tell me where they came from and who took them?
And how did you manage to get hold of them?"
His baitings had carried her exactly to the desired place--the turning point, they call it in the vernacular of the confidence sharp. The rest should be easy.
"Mrs. Propbridge," he said, "you"ve been pretty frank with me. I"ll be equally frank with you. Those pictures were brought to our office by the man who took them. I have his name and address, but am not at liberty to tell them to anyone. I don"t know what his motives were in taking them; we did not ask him that either. We can"t afford to question the motives of people who bring us these exclusive tips. We pay a fancy price for them and that lets us out. Besides, these photographs seemed to speak for themselves. So we paid him the price he asked for the use of them.
Destroying these copies wouldn"t help you any. That man still has the plates; he could print them over again. The only hope you"ve got is to get hold of those plates. And I"m afraid he"ll ask a big price for them."
"How big a price?"
"That I couldn"t say without seeing him. Knowing the sort of person he is, my guess is that he"d expect you to hand him over a good-sized chunk of money to begin with--as a proof of your intentions to do business with him. You"d have to pay him in cash; he"d be too wise to take a check. And then he might want so much apiece for each plate or he might insist on your paying him a lump sum for the whole lot. You see, what he evidently expects to do is to sell them to your husband, and he"d expect you at least to meet the price your husband would have to pay. Any way you look at it he"s got you at his mercy--and, as I see it, you"ll probably have to come to his terms if you want to keep this thing a secret."
"Where is this man? You keep saying you want to serve me--can"t you bring him to me?"
"I"m afraid he wouldn"t come. If he"s engaged in a shady business--if he"s cooked up a deliberate scheme to trap you--he won"t come near you.
That"s my guess. But if you are willing to trust me to act as your representative maybe the whole thing might be arranged and no one except us ever be the wiser for it."
Mrs. Propbridge being an average woman did what the average woman, thus cruelly circ.u.mstanced and sorely frightened and half frantic and lacking advice from honest folk, would do. She paid and she paid and she kept on paying. First off, it appeared the paper had to be recompensed for its initial outlay and for various vaguely explained incidental expenses which it had incurred in connection with the affair. Then, through Townsend, the unknown princ.i.p.al demanded that a larger sum should be handed over as an evidence of good faith on her part before he would consider further negotiations. This, though, turned out to be only the beginning of the extortion processes.
When, on this pretext and that, she had been mulcted of nearly fourteen thousand dollars, when her personal bank account had been exhausted, when most of her jewelry was secretly in p.a.w.n, when still she had not yet been given the telltale plates, but daily was being tortured by threats of exposure unless she surrendered yet more money, poor badgered beleaguered little Mrs. Propbridge, being an honest and a straightforward woman, took the course she should have taken at the outset. She went to her husband and she told him the truth. And he believed her.
He did not stop with believing her; he bestirred himself. He had money; he had the strength and the authority which money gives. He had something else--he had that powerful, intangible thing which among police officials and in the inner politics of city governments is variously known as a pull and a drag. Straightway he invoked it.
Of a sudden Chappy Marr was aware that he had made a grievous mistake.
He had calculated to garner for himself a fat roll of the Propbridge currency; had counted upon enjoying a continuing source of income for so long as the wife continued to hand over hush money. Deduct the cuts which went to Zach Traynor, alias Townsend, for playing the part of the magazine editor, and to Cheesy Mike Zaugbaum, that camera wizard of newspaper staff work turned crook"s helper--Zaugbaum it was who had worked the trick of the photographs--and still the major share of the spoils due him ought, first and last, to run into five gratifying figures. On this he confidently had figured. He had not reckoned into the equation the possibility of invoking against him the Propbridge pull backed by the full force of this double-fisted, vengeful millionaire"s rage. Indeed he never supposed that there might be any such pull. And here, practically without warning, he found his influence arrayed against an infinitely stronger influence, so that his counted for considerably less than nothing at all.
Still, there was a warning. He got away to Toronto. Traynor made Chicago and went into temporary seclusion there. Cheesy Zaugbaum lacked the luck of these two. As soon as Mrs. Propbridge had described the ingratiating Mr. Murrill and the obliging Mr. Townsend to M. J. Brock, head of the Brock private-detective agency, that astute but commonplace-appearing gentleman knew whom she meant. Knowing so much, it was not hard for him to add one to one and get three. He deduced who the third member of the triumvirate must be. Mr. Brock owed his preeminence in his trade to one outstanding faculty--he was an honest man who could think like a thief.
Three hours after he concluded his first interview with the lady one of his operatives walked up behind Cheesy and tapped him on the shoulder and inquired of him whether he would go along nice and quiet for a talk with the boss or was inclined to make a fuss about it. In either event, so Cheesy was a.s.sured, he, could have his wish gratified. And Cheesy, who had the heart of a rabbit--a rabbit feeding on other folks" cabbage, but a timorous, nibbling bunny for all that--Cheesy, he went.
In Toronto Marr peaked and pined. He probably was safe enough for so long as he bided there; there had been no newspaper publicity, and he felt reasonably sure that openly, at least, the aid of regular police departments would not be set in motion against him; so he put the thoughts of arrest and extradition and such like unpleasant contingencies out of his mind. But li"l" old N"York was his proper abiding place. The smell of its streets had a lure for him which no other city"s streets had. His crowd was there--the folk who spoke his tongue and played his game. And there the gudgeons on which his sort fed schooled the thickest and carried the most savory fat on their bones as they skittered over the asphaltum shoals of the Main Stem.
For a month, emulating Uncle Remus" Brer Fox, he lay low, resisting the gnawing discontent that kept screening delectable visions of Broadway and the Upper Forties and Seventh Avenue before his homesick eyes. It was a real nostalgia from which he suffered. He endured it, though, with what patience he might lest a worse thing befall. And at the end of that month he went back to the big town; an overpowering temptation was the reason for his going. There had arisen a chance for a large turnover and a quick get-away again, with an attractively large sum to stay him and comfort him after he resumed his enforced exile. An emissary from the Gulwing mob ran up to Toronto and dangled the lure before his eyes.
Harbored in New York at the present moment was a beautiful prospect--a supremely credulous cattleman from the Far West, who had been playing the curb market. A crooks" tipster who was a clerk in a bucket shop downtown had for a price pa.s.sed the word to the Gulwings, and the Gulwings--Sig and Alf--were intentful to strip the speculative Westerner before the curb took from him the delectable core of his bank roll. But the Gulwing organization, complete as it is in most essential details, lacked in its personnel for the moment a person of address to undertake the steering and the convincing--to worm a way into the good graces of the prospective quarry; to find out approximately about how much in dollars and cents he might reasonably be expected to yield, and then to stand by in the pose of a pretended fellow investor and fellow loser, while the cleaning up of the plunger was done by the competent but crude-mannered Messrs. Sigmund and Alfred Gulwing and their a.s.sociates.
For the important role of the convincer Marr was suited above all others. It was represented to him that he could slip back to town and, all the while keeping well under cover, rib up the customer to go, as the trade term has it, and then withdraw again to the Dominion. A price was fixed, based on a sliding scale, and Marr returned to New York.