The Washington Square Enigma Read online

  “Well, the guy that petered that strong box in Evingston,” Rafferty announced wearily, “has been dead f’r over forty-eight hours. An’ the secret of your Vanderhuyden purple rock is lyin’ over on th’ table — on one of them there nickels!”

  CHAPTER XVI

  RAFFERTY SPEAKS

  “SO THE secret lies on one of those nickels?” Morningstar repeated incredulously. “I don’t get it yet. But go ahead, Rafferty. I’m waiting. Who was this fellow who cashed in?” He dropped down on the edge of the quilt-covered bed.

  The little man seated himself on the edge of a chair near the wall. Harling took up a seat on the floor, his knees clasped in his hands.

  “Don’t suppose it makes much difference,” Rafferty stated, “w’ere me an’ Buck Wilkins — Johnny Wilkins — gets acquainted. Mebbe it was in the Pen. Mebbe it wasn’t. But it was Johnny hisself that pulled that stunt in Evingston — and w’en he done it, he had typhoid fever and didn’t know it. And that’s w’at caused him to cash in his checks night before last in th’ Wesley Horspital — in one o’ the wards — under the name of Ferdinand Jones.

  “Yes,” he went on, “w’en I gets a message from Wesley Horspital night afore last signed just ‘your fr’en’’ all wiggly-like, I beats it down there in a hurry; I suspects it’s Johnny, him not havin’ been in his room over Hogan’s saloon — at least I calls it a saloon — on Seventy-Seventh Street f’r over two weeks ‘r so. And Johnny it was — skinny, lantern-jawed and dyin’ of the typhoid.”

  “And this Wilkins told you he was the one that did the Evanston job?” asked Morningstar, interested. “Was that job really a put-up job with Bond — or was it a real stunt, pulled off on your friend Wilkins’ own hook?”

  Rafferty shook his head dolefully: “Nope, it was cooked up by this Evingston feller in his liberry with Johnny hisself. Bond owned the prop’ty and lease o’ Hogan’s beer-swigglin’ parlor w’ere Johnny hung out — and he knowed that Johnny only recently had come out of the Joliet State Hotel on a safe-crackin’ rap. An’ it seems that w’en he wanted a guy to do a certain job w’at was done, he thought of Johnny Wilkins, who hung out in Hogan’s joint and tenement, w’ere he collects his rent every month.”

  “So Wilkins told you this?” put in Harling curiously from his position on the floor. “If so, may I ask what the inducement was that was held out?”

  Rafferty looked in his direction: “Don’t know as I ought to answer your questions, my fr’en’, seein’ as you’re the guy that brought Evenin’star down on me.” Then he grinned and shrugged his shoulders. “Don’t matter, though, now.” He glanced toward Morningstar. “This Bond wanted Johnny to pull off a genuine safe-blowin’ stunt in his house on account of a ruby w’at the lawyers and the Probate Court was a-goin’ to take away from him. Johnny was to do a job w’at would fool all the dicks, and return the ruby to Bond at a meetin’ later. An’ the prize w’at was held out to him, gents, was a good one. Hogan’s lease expires in sixty days. Bond offered to set Johnny up in business in Hogan’s place, kick Hogan out and put Johnny on easy street. An’ Hogan would give heaven and earth to have the chance of a new five-year lease on his joint w’at’s coinin’ money, hand over fist, from the foundry hunkies. For he per-vides mov’ble seats f’r as many as wanta crowd into his joint. Each guy has to buy a sandwich, for one cent — a sandwich w’at’s made o’ two sody crackers, a fibre o’ ham and a wart off a pickle. An’ in that way, Hogan’s ain’t a saloon. It’s — it’s a rest’ant. But Hogan’s makin’ more coin than any saloon ever made in the old days when, b’God, saloons was saloons — an’ not rest’ants. Pah!” Rafferty evidently did not believe in verbal camouflages. “W’y,” he began indignantly, “Hogan — ”

  “All right for Hogan,” interrupted Morningstar a little impatiently, “that explains the inducement all right. A good saloon lease — now that we’ve got beer and whiskey back — is worth a fortune just the same as it ever was. But now, another question, Rafferty: Did Wilkins tell you where he was to meet Bond after the excitement blew over; where he was to return the ruby that he took from the safe?”

  The little man nodded: “Bond told ‘im the number of a vacant house he owned — on Washington Square, I think — a house that was soon to be tore down for a big hotel. He give Johnny a key an’ told him he’d slip in there every day at three bells, so’s they could meet and exchange the stone and the lease. An’ Johnny was to fill the date just as soon after the pete-makin’ as he could with safety.”

  “But this typhoid,” put in Morningstar, “how does that enter into the thing?”

  “Simple enough,” replied Rafferty. “Johnny was wobbly on his pins the night he done the trick — sick all over — an’ full o’ chills an’ fever. He woke up the morning after he done the job, all shaky an’ weak an’ sick, knowin’ for a certainty that something pretty bad was the matter of him. He beat it to the Wesley Horspital lickety split. An’ they says to him there ‘Typhoid. Pile into bed this instant or you’re a dead man!’”

  “And he told you what he did with the Vanderhuyden ruby?” asked Morningstar, eagerly. “Was the ruby itself really in the safe? I know of something else that was in it, anyway.”

  ‘O’ course the stone was in the crib,” Rafferty snorted. “That was the whole trick of the scheme. Bond was goin’ to pass that there purple rock around to everyone in th’ liberry, lock it in the safe in front o’ ‘em all, and sleep with one o’ his friends. In that way, th’ bulls an’ th’ courts couldn’t never prove that that rock wasn’t actually stole. But you ask w’at else was in the strong box. Johnny told me in the horspital that, accordin’ to Bond, the safe was goin’ to hold nothin’ but the ruby. But Johnny found somethin’ else in there with it — a paper package what, when it was tore open at the corner, showed the nicest bundle o’ little, crispy fives you ever peeped at.” Rafferty’s face took on a twisted look of pain. “An’ Johnny never even knowed he’d lifted a bunch o’ phonies. That was one on yours truly, for sure.” He paused: “Say, my fr’en’, I been spoutin’ to you. Tell me how them there fives did get in that safe — them phonies?”

  “If you were a regular reader of the Chicago Press,” said Morningstar with a smile, “you’d have learned that one of the guests, a Signor Mazzoli, has since been suspected of being an old counterfeiter, Silvestro Ruggieri. It seems now, that as Bond was locking up the ruby before the guests, this Mazzoli asked his host to take charge of a sealed package until morning. Of course Bond couldn’t do a confounded thing, under the circumstance, even though he knew absolutely that that safe was going to be cracked that night. And then comes along an Italian who claims that Mazzoli was to deliver over a packet of three hundred phonies to him the next day.”

  Rafferty nodded his head: “That’s them, all right, all right. Three hundred of ‘em, exactly, and all of ‘em queer. Oh, Lord! And Rafferty had to get ‘em!” He paused: “Let’s see; where was I?”

  “You were relating what Johnny Wilkins told you in the hospital,” said Harling from his position on the floor. “I dare say you were just going to state what Johnny told you about his actions after he fled from the Evanston grounds. The papers said that the footsteps seemed to lead in the direction of Calvary Cemetery, between Chicago and Evanston. Didn’t he even have a car for a getaway?”

  “Car — hell!” sputtered Rafferty. “Park a car on some dark side street — in Evingston? — an’ have some Evingston town marshal jump out of it when Johnny gets back to it? No, this here was a foot job. Johnny carried his junk in a violin case. And depended on the L-roads — like any honest, self-respectin’ musician!”

  “But his feet took him to Calvary Cemetery, though?” asked Morningstar, frowningly.

  “Yes,” Rafferty answered, “for that’s w’ere Johnny headed for after the blast. He stayed off the roads and streets, and cut for the safest place for the time bein’ — the big graveyard. So now for the stunt that’s put us all three here, nice an’ amiable-like in this room — m
e in hot water an’ th’ ruby itself still hid. Johnny drawed me over real clost w’en he told me this; an’ then and there I learns the whereabouts of a purple rock worth a hundred grand!”

  CHAPTER XVII

  THE BAD LUCK OF THE LUCKY ONE

  BOTH Harling and Morningstar pricked up their ears. Rafferty pulled out a big, red bandanna handkerchief and mopped his forehead, to which the perspiration had sprung in copious beads. Then he continued:

  “Says Johnny to me, so weak-like I can hardly hear: ‘Petie, I skips across the graveyard after the blast. I gets cold feet thinkin’ o’ carryin’ that valooble ruby around with me up to the city. So I stops and pushes it under the turf at the foot o’ one of them there little w’ite posts what’s scattered over the graveyard; there’s thousands of them, Petie, markin’ the numbers o’ th’ lots.’

  “Says I to Johnny: ‘But Johnny, you remember the number of that there post, don’t you, Johnny?’

  “Says Johnny to me, shakin’ his head, weak-like: ‘Naw, Petie, I can’t remember no thin’. Seems to me I been sick in this horspital f’r years an’ years an’ years. I can’t seem to figger what night it was I turned that trick. I forget th’ number o’ th’ house on Washington Square w’ere I was to meet Old Man Bond. I forget the number o’ that there lot marker; but, Petie, I was wise enough to not take no chances on forgettin’ that. Come closer to me, Petie.’

  “So I comes closer. Says Johnny to me, then: ‘Petie, w’en I buries that ruby, I has an idea o’ double-crossin’ Old Man Bond out o’ it or else holdin’ him up for more than that Hogan saloon lease. Anyway, I decides that that there ruby is goin’ to stay w’ere it is f’r a few weeks. I didn’t have no paper nor pencil nor nothin’, Petie; but I had one of them there twelve-star nickels I been carryin’ for several years f’r a good luck piece. It’s a nickel what come out through a bonehead play in the United States Mint. So, in th’ moonlight, I takes out o’ my kit — w’at was a violin case — a rat-tail file, and, with the tip of it, scratches the number of that there lot marker deep on th’ face of the dame on the nickel. Then I beats it across Cavalry, an’ stashes my kit in a bundle o’ weeds near the south fence. At two bells in the mornin’ I slips into my room over Hogan’s, all shakin’ with chills and fever. The nickel an’ th’ package o’ money I stashes over in th’ corner of the room, under a little, home-made trapdoor what lies beneath the rag rug. There you’ll find ‘em, Petie, between th’ floor o’ the room and the ceiling of Hogan’s wine room — th’ wine room w’at’s back o’ the big beer-guzzlin’ chamber — below. I got a through ticket to the fourth dimension, you goddam’d ignoramus you! You don’t even know w’at that is, but it’s a place where I can see all th’ beer you ain’t drunk yet, an’ the wimmen you ain’t slept with yet. Oh — yes. I’m wise to the whisperin’ of the croaker an’ th’ lady pill passers — so I’m passin’ on the dope to you.’”

  Rafferty stopped abruptly. Over his face crept a look of genuine distress as he pictured the scene enacted in the hospital. Then he collected himself with a jerk, and went on: “Johnny shuffles off at nine in the evenin’, unconscious tord th’ last. I stays at his bedside till th’ end; then left with a secret that was worth a fortune to me. My pal was gone, but he’d passed in his checks like a good pal should — by slidin’ along his stack o’ blues to th’ loser. He — ”

  “But, Rafferty,” put in Morningstar, in his tense interest leaning forward on the bed, “how did this nickel ever get out of your possession before you learned the number that was scratched on it? If you accidentally passed it after you recovered it, your memory must be pretty short if you couldn’t remember the number it held.”

  Rafferty gave a short, grim laugh: “Well, that was one of th’ times in Rafferty’s life when he wasn’t ‘Lucky Rafferty,’ as the guys call him. After Johnny passes out, I beats it back to Hogan’s place and slips upstairs to Johnny’s room, where I lets myself in with th’ key what the horspital people give me from Johnny’s duds. I finds th’ little, movable square of wood under the rag rug, all right, an’, gropin’ down inside, I feels the packet lyin’ right w’ere he said it was. Some distance from the packet was a little hole in the ceiling o’ the room below us; an’ peekin’ down between the lathes, I could see underneath me a table in Hogan’s rear room where a guy an’ a dame had just been drinkin’. While I’m liftin’ out that packet, I see ‘em get up and mosey out. But dam’ my lousy luck! The nickel must ‘a’ been lyin’ on top of the packet, f’r when I lifts it up I hears a tinkle, I hears something roll; then plop goes the nickel through th’ hole in the ceilin’. A second later, as I glues my eye to that hole, I sees th’ coin lyin’ on the sticky table beneath me.

  “Believe me, I beats it out of that room an’ downstairs to Hogan’s wine room, and finds only th’ waiter, readin’ a late newspaper with th’ late extries in it. I grabs him by th’ collar an’ hollers f’r my nickel what fell through the ceiling, but the guy only laughs at me. The idiot thinks it was a tip that the guy an’ dame left behind ‘em. Believe me, I shakes him till his teeth plays a jig; then I lams him in the ear, I’m so sore. With that he jerks out all his money — but no nickel; an’ he whimpers: ‘I bought a race-track paper with your nickel from that newsboy.’ I lugs him over to the window. Pointin’ down the street, he shows me the very newsboy standin’ under a street light, countin’ his papers. I does a marathon after th’ kid an’ my nickel. Newsboy, after I offers him two-bits for th’ nickel he got from th’ waiter in the side entrance o’ Hogan’s place, pulls out all the change in his pocket. Nothin’ but pennies an’ dimes. Tells me he gave the nickel to an old gent in changing a dime, an’ that the old gent had boarded a street car about a minute before. It was good-bye, nickel, all right. Rafferty was playin’ in some luck!”

  “But what got you to advertise for all the twelve-star nickels in Chicago?” asked Morningstar quickly. “I can see where your one best bet was to offer five dollars apiece in order to get them in a hurry; likewise why you wouldn’t fill mail orders from out of town. But Rafferty, you had only three hundred of those crisp fives, and how’d you know but that three thousand of those nickels might come in? What’s your answer to that?”

  CHAPTER XVIII

  “JUST IN TIME”

  THE little man puffed up a trifle at Morningstar’s pointed question.

  “Well,” he said pompously, “I went to school once, an’ I can still figger. Early nex’ mornin’ I goes out to Cavalry Cemetery, an’ one look is enough. Millions an’ billions, it seems, o’ them there little w’ite posts with black numbers painted on ‘em. I goes back to town, an’ calls up th’ Treasury Department, w’ere I gets a feller on the wire that tells me all about them twelve-star nickels, an’ that there’s ten thousand of ‘em in circulation yet. I gets to figgerin’ with a stub of a pencil, and makes some int’restin’ calc’lations. Leavin’ th’ pop’lation of the U. S. be a hunert an’ twenty million, but subtractin’ twenty million for them as ain’t cap’ble o’ gettin’ holt o’ no money — see? — kids — an’ people w’at lives in nut-houses — and is in stir — an’ people w’at lives in the backlands o’ Arkansaw; an’ then figgerin’ three million gazaboes in Chi proper — I don’t gotta worry about th’ suburbs — th’ whole fi’ million as is supposed to roost in this town, if I works fast — it just figgers out that there’s about three hunert o’ them nickels floatin’ around this burg. It’s a hunch, says I to myself. It’s a red-hot hunch. I’m the guy they call ‘Lucky Rafferty.’ I’m the guy that once ran two-bits up to eight hundred bucks in a crap game, by pyramidin’ an’ — ”

  “And then dumped,” suggested Morningstar.

  “Yes,” admitted Rafferty reluctantly; then added, with the pronounced self-confidence of the superstitious gambler: “But that was because somebody in the room crossed his fingers. But if it come to investin’ fifteen hundred bucks in crisp fives that never cost me nothing, in order to hook on to a stone worth a hundred grand — well, say
, Lucky Rafferty is always willin’ to flirt with chance. So I guess that’s about all. Last night the guy down at th’ Daily News office helps me to cook up a nice little, smooth-readin’ ad, an’, startin’ at one o’clock today, th’ nickels begins comin’ in pretty swift, from kids, old men, girls and women what had passed th’ good word along to others.” He shrugged a shoulder. Then he flicked his thumb toward the ring of nickels on the table, including the one coin he had been examining when they interrupted him with their visit; this coin stood alone and prominent in the center of the semicircle. “There’s th’ one I was lookin’ for,” he added with a sigh. “Might as well tell you because you’ll find out for yourselves w’en you step over there. It come in today from a street-car conductor what brought in three together.”

  Harling and Morningstar rose and stepped over to the lamplighted wooden table. Harling, gazing over the red-haired man’s shoulder, could see the shiny, deep, irregular cut that had been made by the rat-tail file of the man alluded to as Johnny Wilkins. The information, valuable and precious as it was, read, simply and concisely:

  “67N”

  Morningstar looked up at length from his inspection of the coin. “Well, Rafferty,” he announced, in a mollified tone, “you’re not going to be forgotten on the matter of the reward in this case. I assure you of that. But other people need you for an important witness. So the first thing you’ll have to do is to go with me to the Federal Bureau. After they’ve heard your story you’ll be dining on lobster salad and ice cream. But remember, my boy, that, by advice of counsel, you’re to keep mum for the time being on the subject of where the ruby is. You’ll have to tell your story to them just as you got it from Johnny Wilkins. Between your turning over the balance of the bills, your statement as to where you got them, and the original number, and our later testimony as to actually finding the ruby at the point shown on this nickel, Johnny Wilkins’ story will be proven, fact by fact. And with the corroboration of Wilkins’ story, Mazzoli will be convicted of counterfeiting, sure as shooting. There’ll be a complete chain against him. They’ll probably lock you up for a few days — but if you let slip where the ruby is hidden, before you get the high sign from me, they’ll recover it themselves and neither you nor I will have a smell of the reward. So put on your hat, Rafferty. I guess you see where your bread is buttered.”