The Fourth King Read online

  at least, with the rainy sky, it was just beginning to be dark when Roslyn Van Etten hurriedly called me up and asked me not to leave the house till she arrived. She arrived twenty minutes later. A number of things had transpired in her own affairs that day. It seems that her father, Jacob Van Etten, had been suddenly called to Honolulu, and had taken the Pacific Flyer that noontime, to be gone for at least three weeks. Being left alone with one old servant who could be counted upon to hold his tongue, the golden opportunity was presented to Roslyn to make her own investigations as she originally had wished to do. She asked me if I would rather continue with the trip as we had agreed, or change my plans and take a temporary two-weeks’ position in her father’s plant out at Seventy-Ninth Street at a salary of thirty dollars per week, according to some arrangements she had made with the plant manager over the telephone. She said that if this appealed to me it would be preferable to her; that she herself would make the trip to Toronto and under an assumed name manage to meet at least a few of the people whom Lionel had known, and who might accidentally shed some light on the supposed hidden thing in his life. And as for her escapade, as she smilingly called it, her father would come back from Honolulu none the wiser.”

  “And you at once gave up the idea?” said Folwell.

  She nodded. “For several reasons. One, I have long wanted an opportunity to get away from Eaves’s place, and here was at last a chance to get a position, temporary, to be sure, but which might be made permanent at the end of the two weeks. In addition, it paid five dollars more per week than Eaves had paid. Again, he had given me my two weeks’ vacation money in advance, in accordance with his promise when I first came with him that I would receive a vacation with pay at the end of six months. Thirdly, Roslyn Van Etten would not hear of any other arrangement, but that I should retain the forty dollars cash she had given me, returning only the ticket which was unredeemable if not used. As for a vacation, I really needed none, Jason. Swimming, and gymnasium at the Butler House, air and walks and sleep have done their best to keep me in good condition. On such a trip it was certain that I would spend more than I could estimate. To give it up meant a hundred dollars in my pocket. And so I turned over to Roslyn Van Etten the triangle-trip ticket which would carry her around to Toronto by boat and train, but failed to persuade her to take back her forty dollars. With her one little handbag packed at her feet, we talked until the taxicab Mr. Eaves had ‘phoned for came at a quarter to five, and thus it came about that it was Roslyn who boarded the City of Duluth with the ticket she had bought for me in my name, and I who remained at home with a letter from her arranging for me to start in to-day at the offices of her father’s plant.

  “That is the whole story,” she said sorrowfully. “I bought no paper last night, for I met a girl I knew at school working in the Van Etten plant, and she induced me to come home and spend the night with her. She lived in a typical little German home where the only paper that graced the house was the Staats-Zeitung. In fact, I never knew till this morning about the murder of Mr. Eaves in the Temple of Commerce Building, and neither did I know until I read in the selfsame paper, dated the night before, that I, Avery Reardon, had been drowned from the outgoing City of Duluth. Mother would have collapsed from the shock if she had been in Chicago. Thank God she went away. I telephoned her by long distance, and then tried to get you at the offices, but there was no response.”

  She paused.

  “There’s the whole story, Jason. I had a short consultation this morning with the manager at the plant, who let me off early so that I could go to the police. I went, of course, and told them that the girl who took my place on that City of Duluth was Roslyn Van Etten, merely explaining that I had transferred my ticket to her after she had changed her mind about my doing some personal work there for her. They took me over to McKinnon’s morgue on Wacker Drive to look at her. It was poor Roslyn Van Etten all right, Jason, her yellow-gold hair all stringy, her china-blue eyes staring upward from the cold marble slab till it gave me the shivers. Back we went to the detective bureau. There an official — Inspector McIlroy, his name was — talked to me in front of several other plain-clothes men. His questioning seemed to show that he felt my business connection with the National Industrial Securities Company, and the fact that Eaves, its proprietor, had been murdered the same night that my substitute had met her death, indicated some malignant and dangerous influence at work. After some cross-talking between them, they made me agree to tell no one — to talk to no reporter — for seventy-two hours, so that no one could know anything other than that Avery Reardon was the one whose body had been found floating. In other words, they want that length of time to work on the case in quiet, along whatever theories they have or think they have.”

  “So the police are working on the case, actually sleuthing, after all?” commented Folwell dryly. He laughed a dubious little laugh. “And the inference is that they, too, think she may have been murdered?”

  Avery shook her head. “Not altogether. They merely talked as though there were something mysterious in the case. The Scotsman, Mr. McIlroy, again and again referred to the ‘greatest common divisor’ that they might hope to find in these two cases and a certain three others. That Roslyn Van Etten boarded the boat is known, however, but what took place after that is a mystery.”

  “As to McIlroy’s ‘greatest common divisor,’ as you call it,” Folwell offered, “I have already proferred him a factor — at any rate — that will cancel out of all the alleged murders. But he’s presumably not over-interested in it. And here it is: Each death took place on a rainy night. There’s a divisor — a small one at any rate.” He paused. “About Roslyn Van Etten’s movements? How do they know them so accurately?”

  “Very simply,” the girl replied, “through the conveniently complex system of the railroads, the boats, and the Government, for printing triangle-tour tickets. The long, cumbersome ticket is printed in five sections, each joined together, but perforated so that it can be detached from the rest. Each section is signed in ink by the buyer, and carries his or her address and city. Section number one is a tiny coupon, bearing the words ‘Auditor’s Check.’ Section number two is the boat passage from Chicago to Sault Ste. Marie, on the City of Duluth, including meals and berth. Number three is the rail passage from Sault Ste. Marie to Toronto, Canada, number four the short-line rail passage from Toronto to Buffalo, and number five is the Buffalo-Chicago passage via the Lake Shore Railroad.”

  She paused and then went on. “The tiny coupons numbered ‘one’ were collected at the turnstile of the Goodrich docks and forwarded to the offices of the Lake Shore Railway. The coupons numbered ‘two’ were detached by the assistant purser of the boat at the top of the gangplank, who handed back to the passenger in return a berth check and dining-table chair number. The balance of the ticket was the passenger’s receipt that he had paid his fare. The auditor’s coupon of Roslyn’s ticket was located easily at the Lake Shore Railroad offices, and her Chicago-Sault Ste. Marie coupon was among the coupons taken in on the boat and detached, as indicated by the replies to the wireless queries sent. This does not prove whether she lived to eat her supper, or how she met her death once on the boat. At six o’clock these days it is very dark. All that is certain is that she fell, or was pushed, somewhere or sometime, from the boat as it steamed into the outer lake, her body being slowly carried in by the leisurely river suckage and, due to the reversal of flow in the river on account of the Drainage Canal, so on down the river where it was found next day, her metal hand-bag clenched in her hand with the balance of the ticket returned by the purser’s assistant folded up in it, her money untouched.”

  “But it was a terrible thing,” Folwell declared grimly, “for the papers to state that the body had been identified as that of Avery Reardon, when the so-called identification was merely a deduction based on the ticket sections handed in at the docks and ship, and carried in her purse. It gave me the shock of my career. But it is truly news-paperish.” He sm
iled wearily. “But I have you back now — and that’s all that matters in the world!” Nothing was said for a few moments, and then Folwell told the girl of the recent developments regarding the confession he had signed and the unpleasant occurrence that had just taken place at the home of Lionel Pettibone.

  “And so,” he said, summing it all up, “I stand, face to face, with the following situation: My own signed confession is in the hands of a young scoundrel. I cannot get it back by any appeals to his decency, or by any explanasions whatsoever. That is as sure as the existence of the moon in the sky. As for the telephone repairman possibility, the suspected Al Penroy is at large, and I have confessed to the theft. If I went to the police at this late date, and told why I signed that confession, it would mean little of material help beyond throwing you under suspicion, too. Now Franz Schierling has offered me two thousand dollars cash for my rights in our rotogravure disk. That two thousand dollars is but a tenth of what my one half rights will be worth in a few years. On the other hand, it’s almost the amount — lacking five hundred dollars, which I can beg, borrow or steal, somehow! — necessary to get that confession away from Pettibone, close his mouth and keep the finger of suspicion away from you. In simpler language, I’m going to sell out at once — in the next two hours, while Schierling still has the cash in hand.” His face fell forlornly. “Good-bye — two long years of brainwork. It’s back to the mills for me, I’m thinking.”

  CHAPTER XII

  HOUND’S REWARD

  THE girl looked at Folwell sadly, as he sat dejectedly gazing out of the window. “Jason, rather than have you part with your invention, I would go on the witness stand and tell the truth — tell the jury that I, too, had the combinations to that double safe — be a suspect in the case.” She laid a hand on his arm. “Don’t part with your rights in the thing, Jason. You have worked too hard to get them. Don’t do it.”

  He shook his head. “No, I have made up my mind, since Lionel has definitely made the offer. Twice I have been cheated out of that paper, first by Eaves’s death and second by Lionel’s backing out, and this time I am going to flirt with chance no longer. I am going to sell out my half of the rotogravure disk, and rip that confounded paper into a thousand bits, and start all over anew.” He closed his lips into a hard line.

  For several long minutes the girl talked with him, but he was stubborn, obdurate, with that peculiar set resolution that comes to one after a long, tantalizing experience of being close to a desired object. At last she appeared reluctantly, at least for the time being, to give up, for, pulling her hat on her head, she told him that she must go back to her new position.

  He accompanied her downstairs to the door, and standing in the outer vestibule, spoke to her a further minute before she left.

  “Good-bye,” he said, with a mirthless smile. I’m going to make a confession now. The other day I got an idea in my head. It consisted of fixing up our marriage by making money off the rotogravure disk, and buying back your mother’s worthless Airplane Stabilizer shares through an agent, thus solving all our difficulties. That’s gone up in smoke now, and it’s start all over again for me. Even you are denied to me.”

  She clasped his hand tightly in her tiny one. “No, you are wrong. Something will come out some way, Jason, and I feel that it will solve all our complications. Remember — I love you. That you can always rely on.” And she was gone.

  Turning back into the house, he stepped to the telephone in the hallway, and, looking in the classified directory, rang up Franz Schierling, not at the house number given in the latter’s letter, but at his bench in the American rotogravure plant. Soon Schierling’s slightly accented German voice was on the wire. Folwell spoke:

  “Franz, this is Jason Folwell. I got your letter to-day. Now, I’m in a position where I need money badly, but your offer of $2,000 isn’t very big. However, unless I actually find a pile of gold coin lying around somewhere, I’m coming over to your place by to-night at six o’clock to close with you. If you’ll have the cash or cheque ready, I’ll be there barring, as I say, the possible chance that I come into a stray heap of money. Is that satisfactory?”

  “By all means,” came Schierling’s voice, with the barest trifle of elation detectable in it. “I will haf the money, Jason. I am sorry to break partnership, but I think it iss better, if we can, that one man haf all the ownership of the disk.”

  “I suppose,” acquiesced Folwell bitterly. “Well, chances are, if I don’t find any money in the street, that you’ll see me to-night. I’ll come to South Washtenaw Avenue. Good-bye.”

  Upstairs in his room, he stood by the window thinking. The sudden realization that his rights in the rotogravure disk were to slip from him for ever within perhaps six hours, started his mind to floundering through the bog of his difficulties once more. He found himself wondering, and puzzled as to why it had not occurred to him before, whether any record existed of the actual numbers and issues of the stolen bonds, and whether these numbers would serve as a clue to whether they were sold in Chicago. This would give some indication of the identity of the seller and thus might lead to the thief. But, on the other hand, would not Eaves himself have followed up such a clue had he possessed the necessary data? As for Folwell, he did not know in the least whether any record was kept in Chicago of all stock and bond transactions so far as the number of the certificates went, but there were ways by which he could find this out. One thing was certain. Records or no records of sales, if the stolen bonds had been sold in another city, tracing them down to the person who disposed of them would be like hunting a needle in the haystack. But, undaunted, chin set resolutely forward, he clapped his hat on his head, climbed into his fall overcoat, and left the house for the Central Detective Bureau on the southern edge of the downtown district.

  Twenty minutes later, at two o’clock in the afternoon, he was ascending once more the steps of the detective headquarters on 11th and State. To his surprise he found no difficulty at all in being admitted to McIlroy in his upstairs office, and that gentleman appeared to be as surprised as his visitor. His thin Scotch lips broke into a grim smile as he surveyed Folwell, and he leaned back in his swivel chair, tilting his blue cap back over his grey head.

  “And what brings you around here, Folwell? I thought you’d seen enough of this place for a while.”

  “I’ve seen enough of it,” grunted Folwell, “as a suspect in a bond theft, at any rate.”

  “Soospect!” snorted McIlroy. “Soospects who sign confessions don’t usually — ”

  “Inspector McIlroy, as I said before, there were reasons why I signed that paper, and I tell you again I signed it purely for circumstances that you know nothing of. Now, I’m still hoping somehow that I can clear myself before I part with all I have in the world, to make restitution for something I never stole. For that reason I’ve come over to talk to you on one point, and then if that produces nothing to ask you to let me speak with the two detectives whom Eaves called in the office the morning he discovered his bonds were stolen.”

  “What is your point?” queried the detective official suspiciously.

  “It concerns one Al Penroy, whom the papers described as an ex-convict and safe specialist, who was located in Chicago working for the Chicago Telephone Company as a troubleman and repairman.”

  “Go on. I know the man. He’s not working for the ‘phone company now.”

  “No,” said the younger man, “I think not! The papers told how he escaped your men by jumping on a street car. All right. Now about his possible connection with the Eaves theft.” He paused. “Since last Saturday or even before, according to the statement of a fellow employee of mine, Miss Avery Reardon, the inner ‘phone — the one in Eaves’s private office — has failed to take incoming rings although it’s been all right on outgoing calls. Eaves called up and reported it. A repairman came Saturday around noon. It was probably his last trip for the day. Miss Reardon went downstairs to eat, but couldn’t get a seat, and after waiting a while
came upstairs. She found Johnny Repairman fumbling at the outer dial of the vault. He was embarrassed, made a few clumsy comments, and went on out with his kit of tools, saying he would be back. Now, what did he do while he was alone in that office? And why do your men let such characters as Al Penroy slip out of their hands? Figure it out as you will. Now, what do you think about it?”

  McIlroy scratched his chin reflectively. The rasp of his finger-nail over the stubble could be heard plainly in the silence. Suddenly he raised the receiver of the desk ‘phone.

  “Repairs department superintendent,” he said. “Hummel — I think I want.”

  A pause.

  “Repair superintendent? Hummel? Inspector McIlroy, detective headquarters. Who did you send out to the office of J. Hamilton Eaves — ” He turned to Folwell. “What number was that defective ‘phone?”

  “Central 9660.”

  “ — Central 9660 last Saturday to fix it? What sort of a man is he? Do you know anything about him? Also, what territory was this man who turned out to be Penroy from Joliet, working on?”

  He waited, humming a quaint little tune under his breath that bore in it the width of broad Scotch moors and wind over the heather. After an interminable time, so it seemed to his auditor, a long squeaking followed in the receiver. McIlroy hung up. He smiled curiously at Folwell, and shook his head.

  “No, my lad, there’s nothing in that. Forget it. Al Penroy, in the weeks he worked for the company, was on the Ravenswood branch only. As for the Central 9660 repair job, it was being handled by a lad who’s a nephew of the installation superintendent. Hummel vouches for him. Says he wouldn’t steal a dime from a millionaire.” He laughed unpleasantly.

  Folwell breathed in a long breath. Thus perished, in the twinkling of an eye, a hope; thus burst a tiny and beautifully iridescent bubble upon which he had built a dozen possibilities. He paused a moment.