The Black Mask Magazine (Vol. 1 No. 5 - August 1920) Read online

  The Black Mask Magazine (Vol. 1, No. 5 — August 1920)

  The Man Who Was SevenChapter I

  Chapter II

  Chapter III

  Chapter IV

  Chapter V

  Chapter VI

  Chapter VII

  Chapter VIII

  Chapter IX

  Chapter X

  Chapter XI

  The SummonsI

  II

  III

  IV

  V

  The Abandoned HouseI

  II

  III

  IV

  The Face that Stared Back at Blaisdell

  I

  II

  III

  More Deadly than the ViperI

  II

  III

  IV

  Jim Dickinson's Head

  I

  II

  The Triple Murder in Mulberry BendI

  II

  III

  IV

  The Valley Where Dead Men LiveI

  II

  III

  IV

  V

  The Strange Story of Martin ColbyI

  II

  III

  Where the Span SplitsI

  II

  III

  IV

  After MidnightI

  II

  III

  IV

  V

  VI

  VII

  VIII

  Brothers-of-the-CoastI

  II

  III

  IV

  * * *

  The Black Mask Magazine (Vol. 1, No. 5 — August 1920)

  by F. M. Osborne (editor)

  The Man Who Was Seven

  (A Complete Novelette)

  by J. Frederic Thorne

  Chapter I

  A man cannot be in two places at the same time.

  That is a law of physics — isn't it?

  But how about the other law, of evidence, and your own senses? If you saw and heard a man in that impossible situation or condition, which would you believe, the law or your own eyes and ears?

  "But the thing is impossible!"

  So? Then how about this:

  On one of those fine Italian spring mornings that pass for summer in the Puget Sound country, there entered the Savoy Hotel, Seattle, a man who ordinarily would not call for specific description, but who, for the sake of this argument, we need to identify particularly.

  He stood out from the world about five feet eleven inches, weighed approximately one hundred and sixty to one hundred and seventy pounds, was apparently in his late thirties or early forties, wore a neatly trimmed brown mustache and beard of the cut known as Vandyke, spectacles with large, rimless, egg-shaped lenses, a soft black broad-brimmed hat, blue serge suit with double-breasted coat, black tie, low tan shoes, carried a light-weight gray overcoat, a black Gladstone bag and a sole-leather suitcase. He walked with a slight but noticeable limp of the left leg.

  Relinquishing coat and bags to a bellboy, the newcomer nodded pleasantly to the clerk and registered, in a distinctly legible hand, the name "Samuel Smith," without address. This done, he set his watch by that of the clerk — it was just 10:02 a. m. — received his key and followed the bell-boy to room 314. Tipping the boy generously but not lavishly, he asked that the hotel valet and public stenographer be sent to him. To the one he gave a suit of clothes for pressing; to the other he dictated two short letters. Returning to the lobby, he bought a dollar's worth of cigars, asked to be directed to the Totem National Bank, glanced at his watch and, commenting audibly upon the time, 10:48, walked out into the crowd on Second Avenue.

  Nothing remarkable or unusual about that, nothing that does not occur, in a general way, in a thousand hotels all over the land every day in the year?

  True. But wait a moment. The case is not stated yet.

  On that same fine Italian spring morning of the same day, in this same city of Seattle, Washington, there entered the Butler Hotel, a man who ordinarily would not call for specific description, but who, for the sake of this argument, we need to identify particularly.

  He stood out from the world about five feet eleven inches, weighed approximately one hundred and sixty to one hundred and seventy pounds, was apparently in his late thirties or early forties, wore a neatly trimmed brown mustache and beard of the cut known as Vandyke, spectacles with large egg-shaped lenses, black tie, low tan shoes, blue serge suit with double-breasted coat, a soft black broad-brimmed hat, carried a light weight gray overcoat, a black Gladstone bag and sole-leather suitcase. He walked with a slight but noticeable limp of the left leg.

  Relinquishing coat and bags to a bellboy, the newcomer nodded pleasantly to the clerk and registered, in a distinctly legible hand, the name "Samuel Smith," without address. This done, he set his watch by that of the clerk — it was just 10:02 A. M. — received his key and followed the bell-boy to room 264. Tipping the boy generously but not lavishly, he asked that the hotel valet and public stenographer be sent to him. To the one he gave a suit of clothes for pressing; to the other dictated two short letters. Returning to the lobby, he bought a dollar's worth of cigars, asked to be directed to the Totem National Bank, glanced at his watch and commented audibly upon the time, 10:48, and walked out into the crowded street.

  That makes it just a little more unusual — eh, what? But don't be impatient or jump at conclusions. There is more to come.

  On one of those fine Italian spring mornings that pass for summer in the Puget Sound country there entered the Rainier Grand Hotel, Seattle, a man who ordinarily—

  Well, there's no use going through it all again in the style of "One dark and stormy night in the Carpathian mountains a robber band gathered about their chief—"

  To clinch the matter, a man of exactly the same appearance as described above entered, at the same hour and minute, signed the same name in the same handwriting, did exactly the same things, made the same remarks, and left at the same minute, not only the Savoy and Butler, but also the Rainier Grand, Washington, Lincoln, Seattle and Frye Hotels.

  Hotel clerks are observing people, as men go, and each of them, of all seven hotels, not only stated the facts as here set down but swore to them, with many additional and confirmatory details you have not been bothered with.

  Talk about your alibis! Most men are content with proving that they were at some one other place at a given time, but here was a man — if the singular pronoun be correct — who was in seven different places at the same time, with some thirty-odd reputable witnesses able to testify to the fact, if it was a fact.

  That sort of thing isn't an alibi — it is the fourth dimension.

  Chapter II

  You never would have taken Jim Carranaugh for a detective. He was too obvious. Entirely too big. Too big by a number of inches, both ways.

  To be sure, he could and had, by strenuous starvation, trained down to two hundred and eighty pounds; also, he had reached four hundred and one. Some place between these two extremes might be called normal, if Jim could be called a normal human at any time. Four inches and a half above six feet and almost an equal distance around his equator makes a fairly sizable man, so it is no wonder he attracted and held attention wherever he went.

  But for all his size, Carranaugh was nimble of hand and foot as well as of wit, and could catch a car or a culprit as readily as the p
oint of a joke. His command of polyglot American was the marvel and joy of his friends. The English language could not be broken into too small or too irregular pieces to escape his power of mimicry. Had he not been the able detective he was, he would have made a rare character actor; had he not been so good an actor he might not have been so efficient an officer of the law.

  Chapter III

  The Totem National Bank of Seattle occupies a one-story building of its own just off Pioneer Square in the older part of the city, close to the wholesale and commission firms, warehouses and shipping interests that form the bulk of its depositors.

  Westward to the present shore or wharfline is all made ground. The lower layers of this are, or were, sawdust and slabs from the sawmills that were one of the earliest industries of the little town that was to become a great city. To this substratum was added the refuse of the growing community, until finally the casual and indeterminate merged into the planned and ordered earth-and-stone fill upon which paved streets and huge buildings rest.

  The outer and western edge of this district still is, however, in more or less of its earlier formative state, piled and planked over for much of the area between Western Avenue and Elliott Bay. Beneath these streets and their wooden structures, the rising and falling tides slosh about and the industrious toredo lunches on fir and spruce with creosote dressing.

  On a certain summer Monday morning the steamship Bertha arrived at her dock in Seattle, bringing from Alaska via Skagway a shipment of $200,000 in gold — bars, nuggets and dust — consigned to the Totem National Bank. As was sometimes the custom in those days, this gold was displayed heaped up in the bank's windows to satisfy the curiosity, whet the avaricious appetite and inspire the confidence of passersby.

  This comfortable fortune was exhibited during banking hours on Tuesday and Wednesday under the jealous eyes of two guards stationed within the bank and two others at either side of the window on the street outside. There really was no danger of robbery. The heap of gold weighed over a thousand pounds and the window was heavily and closely barred inside and out. The guards were nearly as much a part of the peep-show as the gold, the additional and necessary touch to give it the proper importance in the public eye. At night the gold was transferred from the window to the bank vault, with due ceremony, lapsing there to its proper measure of importance in a bank that reckoned its resources by the million.

  So much for the stage setting. Now for the first scene of the comedy-drama.

  Chapter IV

  Perhaps it had better be called prologue, since it happened nearly a week before the arrival and display of the gold — to be exact, on the very day that the Bertha cleared from Skagway. At that time it attracted no greater attention than any other of the many routine transactions of the Totem National, being merely the leasing of a safe-deposit box, one of the largest, such as generally is used for the safe keeping of large books or other bulky records of value.

  The lessor gave his name as Seth C. Seeley; address, temporary, Hotel Savoy, Seattle; permanent. Bankers' Trust Company, New York; business, dealer in securities.. In less than an hour after receiving his card of identification and key Seeley returned with a large parcel heavily wrapped and corded, apparently of considerable weight and of a size that just fitted into and filled the box. Remarking pettishly that the Totem National should be prepared to supply its customers with more adequate accommodations, Seeley grumblingly hired the two adjoining boxes of the same size as the first and in turn filled them with similar parcels. These, like the first, he carried and put in place with his own hands, despite their evident weight, roughly declining all assistance proffered by the banks employees.

  Thursday morning of that week Daniels, first assistant cashier of the Totem National, unlocked the vault to withdraw the cash necessary for the day's business and to superintend the removal of the $200,000 gold to its place in the limelight. He took one step within the battleship-armored doorway, gasped, and took two steps backward, yelling for help.

  There were two entirely sufficient causes for the first assistant cashier's excitement. The most apparent was the body of a man lying sprawled on the vault floor, very evidently and most completely dead. The second, to Daniels' trained eyes, the almost equally obvious fact that the vault had been looted — of the $200,000 in gold and he did not know how much more.

  For reasons that all bankers will understand and sympathize with, but toward which newspaper men hold very different attitudes, the officials of the Totem National made every effort and used every means at their command to keep all news of the robbery from the public, to such good effect that no suspicion of any of the happenings here related reached the newspapers until the whole incident was history. The body of the dead man added annoying complications to this hushing-up process, but the power of money is great even when it lies fallow in banks, so no insinuation of bribe tendering or acceptance is intended here.

  Far be it from me to even remotely suggest that a banker would give or a policeman take money for the suppression of the truth. The police were only too willing to keep the whole thing quiet until they should have arrested the thief and murderer, which consummation, they assured the bank, would be a matter of only hours or days, as is the optimistic, not to say egotistic way of policemen the world over.

  Whatever the views on publicity held by the board of directors of the Totem National, they were not disposed to take their loss philosophically or inactively. While they assured Chief Stein, of the Seattle police, that they had every confidence in his zeal and ability to both capture the thief or thieves and recover the stolen valuables, they also availed themselves of the additional services of the Pinkertons and the Government secret service men, the latter being interested by reason of the fact that part of the loot taken was some thousands of dollars' worth of revenue and excise stamps temporarily in the care of the bank while in transit to other points of distribution.

  As this indicates, the $200,000 worth of gold was not all of the treasure that was missing, the total figure reaching to over the million mark when, the careful check of the vault's contents had been made. This sum was made up, in addition to the gold brought by the Bertha, of gold coin, bank notes and easily negotiable securities. Silver specie, bills of small denomination, and papers of problematical value to the thieves were found scattered about the floor of the vault around and under the dead body, discarded as contemptuously as this now insensate and useless clay.

  The body was that of a man about five feet eleven inches in height, weight one hundred and sixty to one hundred and seventy pounds, in his late thirties or early forties, with neatly trimmed brown mustache and Vandyke beard. It was dressed in a suit of blue serge, double-breasted coat, tan shoes. On the floor near by lay a lightweight gray overcoat, a broad brimmed black soft hat, the broken pieces of what had been spectacles with large, rimless, egg-shaped lenses, a black Gladstone bag and a sole-leather suitcase.

  The last named was empty, but the bag was partially filled with pajamas, shirts, collars and the usual toilet accessories of a man particular about his appearance. In the pockets of the clothes there was found nothing by which to identify the dead man except a card-case stamped with and containing cards engraved with the name, "Samuel Smith," and receipted bills made out in the same name and all bearing the same date, that of the previous day, from seven Seattle hotels.

  But the foregoing might apply in a general way to the body of any dead man under normal circumstances. What took this body out of the ordinary was not only its inexplicable presence in the locked and guarded vault but also the fact that from the back there protruded the handle of a large hunting knife — one of the elkhorn variety never carried except by chechahco hunters. The long blade was buried in the body just below and to the right of the left shoulder-blade, between it and the spine, and had been driven in with such a forceful blow that the haft made an indentation in the flesh about the wound.

  An inquiry, conducted quietly and circumspectly out of regard for
the tender feelings of the Totem National, developed the fact that a man answering to this description and the name of Samuel Smith had stopped at each and all of the hotels indicated by the bills, that he had settled his accounts and departed the day before, Wednesday, for a destination unknown to any of the clerks, leaving no forwarding address. But the policeman in plain clothes who reported on this feature of the case was not gifted with imagination above "carrying a message to Garcia," and so he did only what he was told to do and asked only what he had been told to ask, thus he overlooked the coincidence in the times of arrival and departure of the said Smith, which later was developed.

  The Chief of Police and the city detectives working under him on the case were unanimous in their opinion of the dead man's part in the problem. There was not the slightest doubt, Chief Stein declared, and the others echoed, that the man must have been one of the gang that turned the trick, and that he had been murdered by his confederates during a quarrel over the division of the spoils.

  The suitcase, they pointed out, unquestionably had been provided for carrying away this Smith's share of the proceeds of the robbery, and its emptiness was conclusive evidence that he, in turn, had been cheated of that share and stabbed when he attempted to protest. To them, the police, the dead man simply was one crook the less to require their attention — and good riddance. Nor, to them, did he even provide one of their dearly beloved clues.

  The government officers were not interested at all in the death or murder, except for its possible value as an indication of the gang's identity, presupposing that there was a gang that had turned the trick. The man's face and description were not on file at any police headquarters in the country and cabled inquiry abroad did not serve to identify him as a known or suspected criminal.