Sing Sing Nights Read online

  A profound quiet filled the room. One by one those around the table raised their eyes from the overturned paper-moth wings which had been so cleverly affixed to a real moth. It was MacTavish who broke the silence:

  “So that’s why Ushi murdered the professor? Ushi was nothing else but a Japanese spy who saw a chance to get that chart of our latest preparations for the defence of the Canal. Or else he learned in some way that Silvester had brought back from Panama more than a mere specimen of moth, and took a desperate chance of getting it back to his own country and reaping a huge money prize from the military authorities there?”

  Casperson shook his head. “It might seem so, Mac. But you must recall that never before have Japan and Uncle Sam been linked in closer friendship. Your opinion is the one that Cawthorne, knowing only that Silvester had brought back such a thing from Panama but never dreaming how or where it was hidden, jumped at: namely, that Ushi Yatsura tried to get it. Cawthorne is an international rogue and could probably name the great value of that chart to the nation that would have most use for it. But, Mac, tell me why Ushi should necessarily have known anything about Silvester’s secret mental workings, after all?” He looked about the room for a moment. “And this supposition about Ushi leads me to the big surprise of all — the queerest development in the whole Silvester murder case. And here it is:

  “For several months I have been engaged with a man named Arthur Sennet — the one whose initials served to coincide with those of Aloysius Silvester — on a unique advertising device for which the prize offered was ten thousand dollars. That advertising device is connected with a huge rubber company in Akron, Ohio — a company which makes a hundred or more products, ranging from finger cots at five cents to automobile tyres at a hundred dollars.”

  “Arthur Sennet and I studied every one of those products intensively when we were about to launch our device, for we had to know them from A to Z. For that reason the words, ‘Find Ushi — he knows,’ found printed on the strip of tissue paper at the foot of the dead man, have rung strangely familiar in my ears. ‘Find Ushi — he knows.’ I have racked my brain trying to fathom why those letters, left printed by the professor with his box of rubber type used for making specimen cards — the momentous clue to the murderer — should awaken any thought in my subconscious mind.

  “The corporation for which Sennet and I worked out our commercial mystery novel was founded by one man, a pioneer in the industry, and over half of its stock is still owned by that man. Every product they turn out, no matter how small a thing it may be, bears a brand containing this man’s name. Every one of the thousands of rubber heels they turn out every day bears on the bottom, in raised letters, a slogan which, as in all other products, contains the founder’s name.

  “You will recall that Ushi’s quarrel with Silvester centred about the Jap’s spilling a bottle of ink on the Persian rug leading into the upstairs laboratory, and the professor’s threat to make the Jap pay for it out of his wages. If a rubber heel bearing upraised letters were pressed to this ink-soaked portion, and later came in contact with the bottom of a narrow strip of tissue paper in such a way that only a portion of its slogan was printed, then —

  “But why should I offer hypotheses? I claim outright that this is exactly what happened. Someone came up those stairs, shot Silvester from behind, stepped in to look at his victim’s face as the victim sat dazed, and then turned and fled from the place now that the deed was done.

  I think I can prove that that rubber-heel slogan came in contact with the ink-moistened part of the rug, and then imprinted itself on one of the blank strips of tissue paper lying on the floor with the overturned box of rubber type, where MacTavish picked it up later.

  “The ink — writing ink, please, not stamping ink — gave a reversed impression on the side where it struck, but, soaking through the light tissue, gave a straight left-to-right reading of that reversed impression. And MacTavish and I, I’ll admit, reasoned the whole operation backward.”

  Taking a piece of chalk from his pocket, Casperson wrote the following letters on the mahogany table:

  FIND

  USHI

  HE

  KNOWS

  He paused, chalk in hand, till all had seen the message. Then he added to what he had written, taking as he worked. “Certain letters got lost in the shuffle,” he explained; “due either to their having accumulated some detritus from the intervening floor space, or more likely due to their having failed to get inked on the very irregular spot of ink in the Persian rug and its transference more rapidly along certain fibres than other fibres. I refer particularly to the letters L, E, Y, and S, in the top line, the letters C, O, and N in the second line, and letters E and L, in the third line. The whole fifth and sixth lines were lost, if for no other reason than what impression we did get came at the bottom of the strip, and there was no room for lines five and six.” The diagram now read:

  F I N D L E Y S

  C U S H I O N

  H E E L

  K N O W S

  N E I T H E R

  J O L T N O R J A R

  Casperson flung down the chalk. “Thus,” he said wearily, “passes Ushi from the mystery of Ernst Court.”

  CHAPTER XXI

  THE MAN AT THE DOOR

  THE profound silence during Casperson’s outlining of the connection — or better, non-connection — of Ushi with the message was finally broken by MacTavish. “Then the problem,” he said, with a grim smile, “is to find among the millions of people in Chicago the hundred thousands or so who wear Findley’s rubber heels, and then in turn arrest the whole mass, and then — ”

  “No,” Casperson interrupted, “the problem is not so hopeless as that. You remember — don’t you? — Cawthorne’s story told to Moonface that he grew up together with Silvester and the brother who had been swindled, in a little town. You will not lose sight of the fact that since we know definitely the white card was sent by Silvester, that his writing was so eccentric, so erratic, so absolutely crazy that — ” He broke off and asked: “Mac, what do you know of forgers in general? Is the ability to forge a name coupled with the ability to write a graceful hand?”

  MacTavish shook his head. “Not at all, for some peculiar reason. Some forgers I have seen couldn’t write a legible hand of their own — yet they could easily duplicate any signature shown them.”

  Casperson turned to the others again. “I wish I could make you all see this card which Silvester wrote. The handwriting was — well — super-freakish, to say the least. The ‘t’s’ bore each a double cross rather than the usual single one: the ‘y’ tail was tied into a strange, unnatural knot of some sort; the periods and dots over the ‘i’s’ were actually little triangles; and the ‘e’s’! — they consisted of an abnormal distortion of the Greek ‘epsilon.’ And so, by what strange workings of fate, I wonder, was that card with the freak handwriting, that card which was never written by any but one man in the world, shoved under the nose of his penniless brother, who — ”

  A knock on the door interrupted him. Eldredge called, “Come in!” and Brayley appeared. “Telephone message for Mr. Casperson from a Mr. Sennet, who says to tell Mr. Casperson that a telegram has just arrived, and that they have won the big prize in some advertising contest.”

  “Thank you,” said Casperson, while into the eyes of the girl came a light of joy. “And wait, Brayley, please. Brayley,” he said, “you are an Englishman. I’ll wager that you grew up in one of those hundreds of quaint little English country towns with grass-paved streets, green hedges, and with a tiny ancient church that chimes at sundown. And what did you think, Brayley — what did you do — when a blue-coated messenger boy last night showed you a white card which he wanted to get into the ball room to deliver, when you recognised that writing as no other than that of the erratic brother who swindled you cruelly years ago? Can you prove by the servants in the basement that, while Mose, the negro footman, was taking your place at the inner door you were down with them ove
rseeing the preparations for the refreshments? Or were you hurrying over in a raincoat to Ernst Court, where you rushed up the stairs of the number given on the card, looked in the big room, and saw sitting at the counter a man with a tumorous growth on his left hand? You knew then for sure, Brayley, that the threads of your life and his had crossed once more. But, Brayley, did you know that your rubber heel left its message behind?” He pointed down at the butler’s shoes, where new rubber heels were plainly visible. “Come, Brayley, is it a Findley cushion heel that you’re wearing? And can you bring up the servants to account for your whereabouts?”

  The butler turned pale. He leaned against the door, weak, trembling. “Oh, God!” he sobbed, “it — it — it was me. Yes — yes — I saw blood. I went mad when I looked in that room and saw the left hand. I — I killed him — shot him when I knew for a certainty that it was him — Stanley — who swindled me out of my share of the pater’s estate and made me a poor man for the rest of my life.” He tottered forward into the library and collapsed into a chair, his staring face, fringed with its grey hair, low on his chest.

  CHAPTER XXII

  BUT WHO WAS THE THIEF?

  A HALF-HOUR later Rufus Eldredge, Shirley, Malcolm, and Casperson sat silently in the library. Outside the click of a taxicab door heralded the departure of MacTavish and the shaking Brayley. As the vehicle drove away, Malcolm spoke:

  “Poor old Brayley; I’m sorry for him. What will they do to him, Casperson?”

  “It will be hard to get a jury to convict him, all the circumstances of the case considered,” was Casperson’s reply.

  “But this doesn’t solve the mystery of the theft of the necklace,” Rufus Eldredge said bitterly. “Who was the traitor, the thief, after all?”

  Shirley stood up resolutely, as if she had come to a momentous decision. She turned to the door. “Father, Malcolm, Wilk, will you come with me?” Wondering, they all arose and followed her from the room, upstairs along the richly-carpeted stairway, into the darkened ballroom, and across the polished floor into the conservatory. There she snapped on the shaded lights, and, walking straight to a secluded part of the great room, stopped in front of a big rubber plant that stood in a green wooden tub. Immediately she began prying up the earth at its base with her dainty fingers. Of a sudden she dislodged something which, though soiled and damp, gleamed under the electrics of the ceiling.

  She held it up and turned to face her father.

  “Here is the necklace you are looking for,’” she said. “I would have had to tell the truth, for Wilk was suspected and always would have been. And I have been fighting the horrible facts all day,” She turned impulsively to Casperson. “Oh, Wilk, you could not rid yourself of the idea that you must have money before you could make me your wife. And, oh, I didn’t want that. But you were adamant. And in desperation I thought of the necklace — the jewels that my mother had said a dozen times should belong to me when she died. But there was — father; I believe that he would take everything away from me if I defied him — every jewel; he had threatened to do so many times — and I hid the thing here last night after my dance with Jack Hennly, never knowing that already you had been called away.”

  She placed the necklace in her father’s hand. “I am the thief,” she said; “the thief who stole what was hers by moral right and should have been by legal right. But take it back.” She looked at Casperson again, and her eyes filled with tears. “Wilk,” she sobbed, “take me away, please — no matter where.”

  On the face of Rufus Eldredge was a grim smile — one of pathos rather than victory; his voice trembled a bit as he spoke, holding forth the string of brilliants. “Wait, kidlets,” he said kindly. “Wait — both of you. Don’t be rash. Aren’t you going to take your necklace with you to start housekeeping on? and — and — won’t you even carry along your daddy’s blessing?”

  CHAPTER XXIII

  AND THE CLOCK SAID ONE!

  A LONG silence followed McCaigh’s story of the giant moth. Each man gazed curiously toward Shanahan, almost tensely. The first die had now been cast in a gentlemen’s game for life, but the lone auditor was quite unconscious of the weight which was to attach itself to his decision. He spoke.

  “Well, by gony, Misther McCaigh, but that there story wur some story! It — it — ” He wrinkled up his brows as though the exact depths of true literary criticism were beyond his intellect. “Yez had me figuring’ har-rd in me mind, as ye spun it, as to who cud ‘ave taken the necklace. ‘Twas a game ye played with me — yez put ahl your car-rds on the table and yet ye had one up your sleeve all the time. Begorry, did I wonder, the more ye went on, how does ye writer fellers make the hull t’ing wor-rk out jis’ like a machine — every big wheel workin’ in wid all th’ other little wheels. ’tis crazy I w’ud go did I ever thry and write a story.”

  McCaigh smiled at this naive compliment to his constructive accomplishments, at least, if not his art.

  Eastwood too smiled, although his was a wan smile — one quite unlike that hard devil-may-care smile of the Iron Man.

  “That was an ingenious piece of plot construction. McCaigh,” he said quietly; “as good as any of your longer things which I’ve seen in book form. I do protest vehemently against your American technique of making all your villains Englishmen, but outside of that minor point I liked your story immensely. I admire, too, your adroit psychology, for you baffled us all, I think we agree, by providing motives and characters for the actual theft of the necklace, participes criminis, so to speak — and yet we who are presumably familiar with life and its motives could not guess.” He shook his head. “We who are familiar with life — ”

  Krenwicz laughed a harsh laugh. “Life? Why should we three be discussing such abstruse subjects as life? There is left to us but three times five hours — no, two times.” He looked at the mission clock, ticking away on the stone wall. “One o’clock in the morning, gentlemen. I move we proceed with the contest.” He looked inquiringly toward the Irishman. “And now, Shanahan, who is next? Whom next do you wish to listen to?”

  “To you, Misther Krenwicz,” said the death guard quickly. “I have seen your play — ’tis playin’ t’ packed houses yet at th’ New Amsterdam teayter — an’ I liked th’ love — ” — the big Irishman blushed rose-red — ”I liked th’ love in it. I’ll warrant it’ll be a swate an’ strange love story that you’ll be putting’ in your yarn.”

  “I thank you, Shanahan,” returned Krenwicz dryly, “for your appreciation of what poor abilities I may possess in the depiction of tender sentiment — whether this be compliment or criticism of my work. Like McCaigh Over there. I think I too shall select Bagdad on the Lakes — Chicago — London of the West he calls it, for the site of my yarn, and will leave to Eastwood the real London! How well I remember Chicago — and particularly the vigorous quality of the journalism which prevails there, journalism unlike that of our effete and mechanised New York variety where a ‘leg man’ secures the facts of a news-story, ‘phones it in, and a ‘re-write man’ writes it up. For in Chicago, more than in all places, a journalist was expected by his own ingenuity, tenacity and pluck to force a latent news-story literally to unfold itself — to develop it, in other words. And when he had done so, he crystallised it himself, and not vicariously either, in words and phrases hammered out by his own brain and fingers. And that is journalism, as I see it, the most fascinating profession in the world.” The speaker appeared lost a moment, like a man groping forth in space for the gossamer thread of a spider-web; and then suddenly he turned to McCaigh. “What, McCaigh, was the final outcome of the new Chinese monarchy, that has supplanted the unstable republic over there? You, the Iron Man, seem to have been the only one of us who has had the fortitude to read the papers during these last dark days.”

  “The monarchy has been ratified by the last world power,” said McCaigh coolly, “and peace, tranquillity and prosperity appear at last to have descended on China.”

  “I see,” nodded Krenwicz slowly
. “That, then, can supply me with still a further thread.” He stared off into space. “Well, as long as I am chosen for the next honours — to play Scheherezade to Shanahan! — I’ll smoke while I’m spinning. Toss me over those cigarettes.” McCaigh tossed them over. Krenwicz lighted one and puffed upon it. “Suppose then I call my little extemporaneous mystery story ‘The Strange Adventure of the Twelve Coins of Confucius’; and I will ask you all to step with me, as invisible comrades, into the city room of a large newspaper in Chicago, where you will meet young Mr. Jason Barton who, unknown to himself, occupies a somewhat unstable position on the editorial staff of the Chicago Dispatch, but whose ticklish position I hope, before I finish, to change either for better or worse. And that, too, through the politics of China herself!” Whereupon he began to relate, in a crisp, dramatic manner:

  THE STRANGE ADVENTURE OF THE TWELVE COINS OF CONFUCIUS

  CHAPTER XXIV

  IN WHICH MR. BARTON OF THE “DISPATCH” RECEIVES A DIFFICULT ASSIGNMENT

  “BARTON, as soon as you’ve beautified your handsome self sufficiently, please step into my office!” The crisp words, teeming with ill-concealed irony, caused six reporters on the early editorial shift of the Chicago Evening Dispatch to glance up from their machines, their faces glaring with the light of sympathetic indignation.

  Jason Barton, the seventh man, standing in front of the cracked mirror before which he was smoothing down a mop of rumpled brown hair that over-topped a pair of steel-grey eyes, looked startled over his shoulder. The hands of the big wooden clock ticking away at the end of the Dispatch city room pointed to fourteen minutes of eight. The bright morning sun flooding the long room showed most of the desks still arranged in precise, almost geometrical, order; the worn wooden floor, scrubbed and rubbed almost to whiteness by the scrub-women in the night; one whole row of typewriters neatly covered with their rubber shrouds; and the ground-glass cage at the further end which housed the ogre of the Dispatch — that font of perpetual sarcasm — Frangenac, city editor!