The Hunter and Other Stories Part 2

"You can," the fat man insisted, "especially if you're willing to let it go for half of what it's worth, like you are. Maybe n.o.body else could, but you can. Everybody knows you're crazy, and anything you do won't surprise them."

Newbrith held his seat, stubbornly looking at the floor.

The fat man piped, "Bill!"

The brutish man shuffled toward the sofa.

Newbrith cursed into his mustache, got up, and followed the waddling mountain into the hall.

There was silence in the drawing-room. Bill and Tom held the door. The servants sat along their wall, variously regarding one another, the men at the door, and the four on the other side of the room. Mrs. Newbrith fidgeted in her chair, looking regretfully at the fragments of her vial, and picked at her magenta frock with round-tipped fingers that were pinkly striped with the marks of rings not long removed. Her husband rested wearily beside her, a cigar smoldering in his pale mouth. Their daughter sat a little away from them, looking stony defiance from face to face. Hugh Trate, back in his corner, had lighted a cigarette, and sat staring through smoke at his outstretched crossed legs. His face, every line of his pose, affected an introspective preoccupation with his own affairs that was flawed by an unmistakable air of sulkiness.

Twenty minutes later the elder Newbrith rejoined his family. His face was purple again. His hair was rumpled. The right corner of his mustache had vanished completely. The fat man, stopping beside his a.s.sociates at the door, was forcing a thick black pistol into a tight pocket.

"You!" the old man barked at Trate before sitting on his sofa again. "You're hired!"

"Very well, sir," the young man said with so little enthusiasm that the words seemed almost an acceptance of defeat.

The fat man departed. The red-faced man grinned at Hugh and called to him with large friendliness, "I hope you ain't going to be too hard on us, young fellow."

The brutish man glowered and snarled, "I'm gonna smack that punk yet!"

After that there was silence again in the gold and white room, though the occasional sound of a closing door, of striding, waddling, dragging foot-falls, came from other parts of the house, and once a telephone bell rang thinly. Hugh Trate lit another cigarette, and did not restore the box of safety matches to his pocket.

Presently Mrs. Newbrith coughed. Old Newbrith cleared his throat. A vague stuffiness came into the room.

Trate leaned forward until his mouth was not far from the white head of the old man on the sofa. "Sit still, sir," the young detective whispered through immobile lips. "I've just set fire to the sofa."

Old Newbrith left the burning sofa with a promptness that caught his legs unprepared, scrambled out into the middle of the floor on hands and knees. His torn mustache quivered and fluttered and tossed in gusts of bellowed turmoil. "Help! Fire! d.a.m.n your idiocy! Michael! Battey! Water! Fire! You young idiot! Michael! Battey! It's arson, that's what it is!" were some of the things he could be understood to shout, and the things that were understood were but a fraction of the things he shouted.

Tumult-after a moment of paralysis at the spectacle of the master of the house of Newbrith yammering on all fours-took the drawing-room. Mrs. Newbrith screamed. The line between servants and served disappeared as the larger group came to the smaller's a.s.sistance. Flames leaped into view, red tongues licking the arm of the sofa, quick red fingers catching at drapes, yellow smoke like blonde ghosts' hair growing out of brocaded upholstery.

A thin youth in a chauffeur's livery started for the door, crying, "Water! We've got to have water!"

Stolid Tom waved him back with a pair of automatic pistols produced expertly from the bosom of his ill-fitting garments. "Go back to your bonfire, my lad," he ordered with friendly firmness, while the brute called Bill slid a limber dark blackjack from a hip pocket and moved toward the chauffeur. The chauffeur hurriedly retreated into the group fighting the fire.

The younger Newbrith and a servant had twisted a thick rug over the sofa's arm and back, and were patting it sharply with their hands. Two servants had torn down the burning drape, trampling it into shredded black harmlessness under their feet. The elder Newbrith beat a smoldering cushion against the top of a table, sparks riding away on escaping feathers. While the old man beat he talked, but nothing could be made of his words. Mrs. Newbrith was laughing with noisy hysteria beside him. Around these princ.i.p.als the others were grouped: servants unable to find a place to serve, Brenda Newbrith looking at Hugh Trate as if undecided how she should look at him, and the young man himself frowning at the charred corpse of his fire with undisguised resentment.

"What in the world's the matter now?" the fat man asked from the door.

"The young fellow's been cutting up," Tom explained. "He touched off a box of matches and stuck 'em under a pillow in a corner of the sofa. Seemed like a harmless kind of joke, so I left him alone."

The brutish man raised a transformed face, almost without brutality in its eager hopefulness. "Now you'll leave me sock him, Joe," he pleaded.

But the fat man shook his head.

Mrs. Newbrith stopped laughing to cough. The elder Newbrith was coughing, his eyes red, tears on his wrinkled cheeks. A cushion case was limp and empty in his fingers: it had burst under his violent handling and its contents had puffed out to scatter in the air, thickening in an atmosphere already heavy with the smoke and stench of burnt hair and fabric.

"Can't we open a window for a second?" the younger Newbrith called through this cloud. "Just enough to clear the air?"

"Now you oughtn't to ask me a thing like that," fat Joe complained petulantly. "You ought to have sense enough to know we can't do a thing like that."

Old Newbrith spread his empty cushion cover out with both hands and began to wave it in the air, fanning a relatively clear s.p.a.ce in front of him. Servants seized rugs and followed his example. Smoke swirled away, thinning toward the ceiling. White curls of fleece eddied about, were wafted to distant parts of the room. The three men at the door watched without comment.

"I'm afraid this young man is going to make a nuisance of himself," the fat man squeaked after a little while. "You'll have to do something with him, Tom."

"Aw, leave the young fellow alone," said Tom. "He's all-"

A white feather, fluttering lazily down, came to hang for a moment against the tip of Tom's red nose. He dabbed at it with the back of one of the hands that held his pistols. The feather floated up in the air-current generated by the hand's motion, but immediately returned to the nose-tip again. Tom's hand dabbed at it once more and his face puffed out redly. The feather eluded his hand, nestling between nose and upper lip. His face became grotesquely inflated. He sneezed furiously. The gun in the dabbing hand roared. Old Newbrith's empty cushion case was whisked out of his hands. A hole like a smooth dime appeared in the blind down across a window behind him.

"Tch! Tch!" exclaimed the fat man. "You ought to be carefuller, Tom. You might hurt somebody that way."

Tom sneezed again, but with precautions now, holding his pistols down, holding his forefingers stiffly away from the triggers. He sneezed a third time, rubbed his nose with the back of a hand, put his weapons out of sight under his coat, and brought out a handkerchief.

"I might of for a fact," he admitted good naturedly, blowing his nose and wiping his eyes. "Remember that time Snohomish Whitey gunned that bank messenger without meaning to, all on account of being ticklish and having a b.u.t.ton bust off his undershirt and slide down on the inside?"

"Yes," fat Joe remembered, "but Snohomish was always kind of flighty."

"You can say what you want about Snohomish," the brutish man said, rubbing his chin reflectively with the blackjack, "but he packs a good wallop in his left, and don't think he don't. That time me and him went round and round in the jungle at Sac he made me like it, even if I did take him, and don't think he didn't."

"That's right enough," the fat man admitted, "but still and all, I never take much stock in a man that can't take a draw on your cigarette without getting it all wet. Well, don't let these folks do any more cutting up on you," and he waddled away.

Hugh Trate, surrounded by disapproval, sat and stared at the floor for fifteen minutes. Then his face began to redden slowly. When it was quite red he lifted it and looked into the elder Newbrith's bitter eyes.

"Do you think I started it because I was chilly?" he asked angrily. "Wouldn't it have smoked these crooks out? Wouldn't it have brought firemen, police?"

The old man glared at him. "Don't you think it's bad enough to be robbed without being cremated? Do you think the insurance company would have paid me a nickel for the house? Do you-?"

A downstairs crash rattled windows, shook the room, put weapons in the hands of men at the door. Feet thumped on distant steps, scurried overhead, stamped in the hall. The door opened far enough to admit a pale hatchet-face.

"Ben," it addressed the cheerful man, "Big Fat wants you. We been ranked!"

Two shots close together sounded below. Ben, recently Tom, hurried out after the hatchet-face, leaving the brutish Bill alone to guard the prisoners. He glowered threateningly at them with his little red-brown eyes, crouching beside the door, blackjack in one hand, battered revolver in the other.

Another shot thundered. Something broke with a splintering sound in the rear of the house. A distant man yelled throatily, "Put the slug to him!" In another part of the building a man laughed. Heavy feet were on the stairs, in the hall.

Bill spun to the door as the door came in. Gunpowder burned diagonally upward in a dull flash. Metal b.u.t.tons glistened against blue cloth around, under, over Bill. His blackjack arched through the air, twisted end over end, and thudded on the floor.

A sallow plump man in blue civilian clothes came into the room, stepping over the policemen struggling with Bill on the floor. His hands were in his jacket pockets and he nodded to Newbrith senior without removing his hat.

"Detective-sergeant McClurg," he introduced himself. "We nabbed six or seven of 'em, all of 'em, I guess. What's it all about?"

"Robbery, that's what it's all about!" Newbrith stormed. "They seized the house at daybreak. All day they've held us here, prisoners in our own home! I've been forced to withdraw my bank balances, to sell stocks and bonds and everything that could be sold quickly. I've been forced to make myself ridiculous by demanding currency for everything, by sending G.o.d knows what kind of messengers for it. I've been forced to borrow money from men I despise! I might just as well live in a wilderness as in a city that keeps me poor with its taxes for all the protection I've got. I haven't-"

"We can't guess what's happening," the detective-sergeant said. "We came as soon as Pentner gave us the rap."

"Pentner?" It was a despairing scream. The old man's eyes rolled frenziedly at the bright round hole in the curtained window that concealed his neighbor's residence. "That d.a.m.ned scoundrel! I hope he waits for me to thank him for his impudence in meddling in my business! I'd rather lose everything I've got in the world than be beholden to that-"

The detective-sergeant's plumpness shook with an inner mirth. "You don't have to let that bother you," he interrupted the old man's tirade. "He won't like it so much either! He phoned in saying you had taken a shot at him while he was standing in his room brushing his hair. He said he always expected something like that would happen, because he knew you were crazy as a pet cuckoo and ought to have been locked up long ago. He said that, since you had missed him, he was glad you had cut loose at him, because now the city would have to put you away where you belonged."

"So you see," came the triumph of Brenda Newbrith's voice, "Mr. Trate is clever, and he did show you!"

"Eh?" was the most her grandfather could achieve.

"You know very well," she declared, "that if he hadn't set fire to the sofa you wouldn't have burst the cushion, and the feathers wouldn't have tickled that man's nose, and he wouldn't have sneezed, and his gun wouldn't have gone off, and the bullet wouldn't have frightened Mr. Pentner into thinking you were trying to kill him, and he wouldn't have phoned the police, and they wouldn't have come here to rescue us. That stands to reason. Well, then, how can you say that Mr. Trate's cleverness didn't do it?"

Detective-sergeant McClurg's plumpness shook again. Old Newbrith snorted and fumbled for words that wouldn't come. The younger Newbrith murmured something about the house that Jack built.

The young man who had been clever turned a bit red and had a moment of trouble with his breathing, but the bland smile his face wore was the smile of one who wears honestly won laurels easily, neither over-valuing nor under-valuing them.

"I think it's wonderful," the girl a.s.sured him, "to be able to make plans that go through successfully no matter how much everybody tries to spoil them from the very beginning."

n.o.body could find a reply to that-if one were possible.

THE DIAMOND WAGER.

I always knew West was eccentric.

Ever since the days of our youth, in various universities-for we seemed destined to follow each other about the globe-I had known Alexander West to be a person of the most bizarre, though not unattractive, personality: At Heidelberg, where he renounced water as a beverage; at Pisa, where he affected a one-piece garment for months; at the Sorbonne, where he consorted with the most notorious characters, boasting an acquaintance with Le Grand Raoul, an unspeakable ruffian of La Villette.

And in later life, when we met in Constantinople, where West was American minister, I found that his idiosyncrasies were common topics in the diplomatic corps. In the then Turkish capital I naturally dined with West at the Legation, and except for his pointed beard and Prussian mustache being somewhat more gray, I found him the same tall, courtly figure, with a keen brown eye and the hands of generations, an aristocrat.

But his eccentricities were then of more refined fantasy. No more baths in snow, no more beer orgies, no more Libyan negroes opening the door, no more strange diets. At the Legation, West specialized in rugs and gems. He had a museum in carpets. He had even abandoned his old practice of having the valet call him every morning at eight o'clock with a gramophone record.

I left the Legation thinking West had reformed. "Rugs and precious stones," I reflected; "that's such a ba.n.a.l combination for West." Although I did recall that he had told me he was doing something strange with a boat on the Bosporus; but I neglected to inquire about the details. It was something in connection with work, as he had said, "Everybody has a pleasure boat; I have a work boat, where I can be alone." But that is all I retained concerning this freak of his mind.

It was some years later, however, when West had retired from diplomacy, that he turned up in my Paris apartment, a little grayer, straight and keen as usual, but with his beard a trifle less pointed-and, let's say, a trifle less distinguished-looking. He looked more the successful business man than the traditional diplomat. It was a cold, bl.u.s.tery night, so I bade West sit down by my fire and tell me of his adventures; for I knew he had not been idle since leaving Constantinople.

"No, I am not doing anything," he answered, after a pause, in reply to my question as to his present activities. "Just resting and laughing to myself over a little prank I played on a friend."

"Oho!" I declared; "so you're going in for pranks now."

He laughed heartily. I could hardly see West as a practical joker. That was one thing out of his line. As he held his long, thin hands together, I noticed an exceptionally fine diamond ring on his left hand. It was of an unusual l.u.s.ter, deep set in gold, flush with the cutting. His quick eye caught me looking at this ornament. As I recall, West had never affected jewelry of any kind.

"Oh, yes, you are wondering about this," he said, gazing into the crystal. "Fine yellow diamond; not so rare, but unusual, set in gold, which they are not wearing any longer. A little present." He repeated blandly, after a pause, "A little present for stealing."

"For stealing?" I inquired, astonished. I could hardly believe West would steal. He would not play practical jokes and he would not steal.

"Yes," he drawled, leaning back away from the fire. "I had to steal about four million francs-that is, four million francs' worth of jewels." He noted the effect on me, and went on in a matter-of-fact way: "Yes, I stole it, stole it all. Got the police all upset; got stories in the newspapers. They referred to me as a super-thief, a master criminal, a malefactor, a crook, and an organized gang. But I proved my case. I lifted four million from a Paris jeweler, walked around town with it, gave my victim an uncomfortable night, and walked in his store the next day between rows of wise gentlemen, gave him back his paltry four million, and collected my bet, which is this ring you see here."

West paused and chuckled softly to himself, still apparently getting the utmost out of this late escapade in burglary. Of course, I remembered only recently seeing in the newspapers how some clever gentleman cracksman had succeeded in a fantastic robbery in the Rue de la Paix, Paris, but I had not read the details.

I was genuinely curious. This was, indeed, West in his true character. But to go in for deliberate and probably dangerous burglary was something which I considered required a little friendly counsel on my part. West antic.i.p.ated my difficulty in broaching the subject.

"Don't worry, old man. I pinched the stuff from a good friend of ours, really a pal, so if I had been caught it would have been fixed up, except I would have lost my bet."

He looked at the yellow diamond.

"But don't you realize what would have happened if you had been caught?" I asked. "Prank or not, your name would have been aired in the newspapers-a former American minister guilty of grand larceny; an arrest; a day or so in jail; sensation; talk, ruinous gossip!"

He only laughed the more. He held up an arresting hand. "Please don't call me an amateur. I did the most professional job that the Rue de la Paix has seen in years."

I believe he was really proud of this burglary.

West gazed reflectively into the fire. "But I wouldn't do it again-not for a dozen rings." He watched the firelight dance in the pure crystal of the stone on his finger. "Poor old Berthier, he was wild! He came to see me the night I lifted his diamonds, four million francs' worth, mind you, and they were in my pocket at the time. He asked me to accompany him to the store and go over the scene.

"He said perhaps I might prove cleverer than detectives, whom he was satisfied were a lot of idiots. I told him I would come over the next day, because, according to the terms of our wager, I was to keep the jewels for more than twenty-four hours. I returned the next day, and handed them to him in his upstairs office. The poor wretch that I took them from was downstairs busy reconstructing the 'crime' with those astute gentlemen, the detectives, and I've no doubt that they would eventually have caught me, for you don't get away with robbery in France. They catch you in the end. Fortunately I made the terms of my wager to fit the conditions."

West leaned back and blinked satisfyingly at the ceiling, tapping his fingertips together. "Poor old Berthier," he mused. "He was wild."

As soon as West had mentioned that his victim was a mutual friend, I had thought of Berthier. Moreover, Berthier's was one of those establishments in which a four-million-franc purchase or a theft of the same size might not seem so unusual. West interrupted my thoughts concerning Berthier.

"I made Berthier promise that he would not dismiss any employee. That also was in the terms of our wager because I dealt directly with Armand the head salesman and a trusted employee. It was Armand who delivered the stones." West leaned nearer, his brown eyes squinting at me as if in defense of any reprehension I might impute to him. "You see, I did it, not so much as a wager, but to teach Berthier a lesson. Berthier is responsible for his store, he is the princ.i.p.al shareholder, the administration is his own, it was he and it was his negligence in not rigidly enforcing more elementary principles of safety that made the theft possible." He turned the yellow diamond around on his finger. "This thing is nothing, compared to the value of the lesson he learned."

West stroked his stubby beard. He chuckled. "It did cost me some of my beard. A hotel suite, an old trunk, a real Russian prince, a fake Egyptian prince, a would-be princess, a first-cla.s.s reservation to Egypt, a convenient bathroom, running water and soapsuds. Poor old Armand, who brought the gems-he and his armed a.s.sistants-they must have almost fainted when, after waiting probably a good half hour, all they found in exchange for a four-million-franc necklace was a cheap bearskin coat, a broad brimmed hat, and some old clothes."

I must admit that I was growing curious. It was about a week ago when I had seen this sensational story in the newspapers. I knew West had come to tell me about it, as he had so often related to me his various escapades, and I was getting restive. Moreover, I knew Berthier well, and I could readily imagine the state of his mind on the day of the missing diamonds.

I had a bottle of 1848 cognac brought up, and we both settled down to the inner warmth of this most friendly of elixirs.

II.

"You see," West began, with this habitual phrase of his, "I had always been a good customer of Berthier's. I have bought trinkets from Berthier's both in New York and Paris since I was a boy. And in getting around as I did in various diplomatic posts, I naturally sent Berthier many wealthy clients. I got him the work on two very important crown jewel commissions; I sent him princes and magnates; and of course he always wanted to make me a present, knowing well that the idea of a commission was out of the question.

"One day not long ago I was in Berthier's with a friend who was buying some sapphires and platinum and a lot of that atrocious modern jewelry for his new wife. Berthier offered me this yellow diamond then as a present, for I had always admired it, but never felt quite able to buy it, and knowing at the same time that even if I did buy it he would have marked the price so low as to be embarra.s.sing.

"However, we compromised by dining together that night in Ciro's; and there he pointed out to me the various personalities of that international crowd who wear genuine stones. 'I can't understand,' Berthier said, after a comprehensive observation of the clientele, 'how all these women are not robbed even more regularly than they are. Even we jewelers, with all our protective systems, are not safe from burglary.'

"Berthier then went on to tell me of some miserable wretch who, only the day before, had smashed a show window down the street and filched several big stones. 'A messy job,' he commented, and he informed me that the police soon apprehended this window burglar.

"He continued, with smug a.s.surance: 'It's pretty hard for a street burglar to get away with anything these days. It's the other kind,' he added, 'the plausible kind, the apparently rich customer, the clever, ingenious stranger, with whom we cannot cope.'"

When West mentioned this "clever, ingenious stranger," I had a mental picture of him stepping into just such a role for his robbery of Berthier's; but I made no comment, and let him go on with his story.

"You see, I had always contended the same thing. I had always held that jewelers and bankers show only primitive intelligence in arranging their protective schemes, dealing always with the hypothetical street robbery, the second story man, the gun runner, while they invariably go on for years unprotected against these plausible gentlemen who, in the long run, are the worst offenders. They get millions where the common thief gets thousands.

"I might have been a bit vexed at Berthier's c.o.c.ksureness," West continued by way of explanation, "but you see, I am a shareholder in a bank that was once beautifully swindled, so I let Berthier have it straight from the shoulder.

"'You fellows deserve to be robbed,' I said to Berthier. 'You fall for such obvious gags.'

"Berthier protested. I asked him about the little job they put over on the Paris house of Kerstners Freres. He shrugged his shoulders. It seems that a nice gentleman who said he was a Swiss," West explained, "wanted to match an emerald pendant that he had, in order to make up a set of earrings. Kerstners had difficulty in matching the emerald which the nice Swiss gentleman had ordered them to purchase at any price.