The Mammoth Book Of Roaring Twenties Whodunnits Part 36

But I was in no condition to enjoy all this grandeur. My knees trembled, my hands were clammy, my tongue clove to the roof of my mouth. I wore a close hat which completely hid my red hair, and certain changes had been made in my facial decorations.

On the first occasion the clerks at Fossberg's could not have had but the briefest glimpse of me; still there was a possibility of my face having been photographed on somebody's mind, and we were not taking any chances.

Two blocks below the store I halted in order to make sure that I was not arriving too soon. Mme Storey came to the car door as if to greet an acquaintance.

"All here," she said cheerfully. "Give us two minutes, then drive on, and go ahead with the program. Do not look about for us as you are entering the store."

"How about the two policemen on beat?" I asked.

"You can disregard them today."

When I drove up in front of Fossberg's in my fine car, the door opener hastened to help me out. As I stepped down I made believe to stumble, and allowed a little cry of pain to escape me.

"Oh, my ankle!"

The man caught hold of my arm to support me. "Will you get back in your car?" he asked.

"No, let him drive on," I said. "I will sit down in the store for a moment."

He helped me across the sidewalk. This trick was to draw him inside the store, you understand.

I was half paralyzed with fear. He must have felt how my arm was trembling; but I suppose he ascribed it to the pain I was suffering.

Inside the store, a clerk made haste to push up a chair, and I sank into it. In a glance I saw that the place was fairly well filled, and then things began to happen.

As the door opener left me to return to his post, he found himself facing Falseface, Tony, and young Farren, who had entered behind me, each with a gun in his hand. Instinctively the doorkeeper's hand went toward his pocket; but at a harsh command from Falseface, he thought better of it, and flung his hands above his head.

In a twinkling Tony had disarmed him. Behind them, in the s.p.a.ce between the two pairs of doors, Mme Storey was coolly bolting the outside doors, and pulling down the shades. To the gla.s.s of the door she affixed a little notice which had been prepared in readiness: "Closed on account of death in the family."

Stephens had been sent around through the apartment house to cut off the escape of anybody who might try to get out by the rear door of the store. This door opened into the lobby of the apartment house.

For the moment I remained sitting where I was. All fear left me, and I seemed to be able to see all round my head.

Mme Storey joined the three men, and the four of them spread out, and advanced across the store like skirmishers. When they came abreast of me, I fell into line with them.

A strange silence filled the place. Then Mme Storey ordered everybody, clerks and customers, over to the far side out of our way, and they scurried like rats at her bidding.

The human creature is not a pretty object when he is in the grip of terror. Over in the corner they struggled insanely to get behind each other.

Never will I forget the sight. There was one big woman squeaking in terror, and struggling with all her might. In spite of her struggles, one of the men clerks, who had her by the elbows, continued to hold her in front of him.

Another clerk, instead of following the crowd, silently dropped out of sight behind the counter on my left. I knew he had a gun back there, though it was loaded with blanks. I told Mme Storey about him.

"Well, if he sticks his head over the counter, blow it off," she said harshly, loud enough for him to hear.

n.o.body but me could hear the faint ring of laughter in her voice. She was enjoying herself.

A third clerk slipped out through the office at the back, but we were not concerned about him. Presently he reappeared, walking backward, stepping high, and holding his hands above his head. Stephens followed, covering him with his gun.

Mme Storey ordered Stephens to dislodge the man behind the counter. As Stephens looked around the counter, the clerk fired.

Low, terrified cries broke from the people across the store. My own heart failed me at the sound of the explosion, though I knew it was all a comedy.

Stephens did not return his fire, but flung himself upon the clerk, and dragged him out of his hiding place. At the back of the store there was a tall safe with the door standing open. Stephens flung his man inside, and closed the door.

Meanwhile Falseface, Tony, and I had made for the safes in the center of the store. Each of us was provided with big pockets inside the skirts of our coats. I had the combination of each of these four safes, but they were not called for since all stood open.

Dropping on our knees, we began to pour the contents of the trays into our pockets. Such a cascade of glittering necklaces, pins, bracelets and rings!

While I worked, I could see Mme Storey out of the tail of my eye, helping to cover the cowering crowd in the far corner. Without lowering her gun, she took a tiny cigar from the breast pocket of her neat jacket, and sticking it in her mouth, lit a match with her thumb nail. I think this display of coolness intimidated our victims as much as the guns.

It took us but a minute or two to empty the safes. We did not bother with the show case stuff.

Coming out from behind the counter we made for the rear door. Mme Storey and the other two men backed slowly toward us.

Then from the midst of the crowd they were covering somebody fired, and instantly pandemonium broke loose. Whipping out their guns involuntarily, Falseface and Tony returned the fire as fast as they could shoot.

n.o.body could be hurt, of course; but from the shrieks and yells which rose, you would have thought that every shot had found its mark. Somebody was shoved through a show case with a horrifying crash.

As we backed through the office, a loud pounding was heard on the street door. We had not a moment to lose. Somehow, we found ourselves in the lobby of the apartment house, and got the door closed.

It was quiet there. The door closed with a spring lock, and opened inward toward the store. There was no means of fastening it from the outside; but Stephens had brought a long, thin bar for the purpose. When this was laid obliquely across the door, caught inside the handle, the ends projected beyond the door frame; and those inside were unable to pull the door toward them.

I saw it was quiet in the lobby, and the way clear. The door from the street was locked, and Stephens, upon first entering, had bound and gagged the elevator attendant, and had thrown him in a little office alongside the entrance.

To be sure, the door of one of the rear apartments opened, and a white face showed for a moment, but we had nothing to fear from this direction. The door was quickly slammed again.

We crowded into the elevator. Stephens knew how to operate it. The last thing we saw, as we shot upward, was a crowd of people headed by a policeman turning in from the sidewalk toward the street door.

My knees weakened at the sight of the bluecoat. A policeman is such an obstinate fact to face.

On the top landing a couple of people were waiting for the elevator. They fell back in affright as we poured out. We ran up the final flight of stairs to the roof.

I should explain that this apartment house was one of a pair exactly alike, which occupied the whole block fronting on Broadway. All we had to do therefore was to run across the roof, and descend into the twin house, whose entrance was in the next cross street. The door from the roof was armed with a bolt on the inside, and this we shot as we pa.s.sed through.

In such a state of excitement, one's instinct was to run right down through the house; but Mme Storey would not permit it. She feared that the noise of our descent might alarm somebody below, and result in our being cut off.

She forced us to wait on the top landing for the elevator. Oh, but it was hard to wait with one's nerves jumping!

The elevator came at last. As we were getting in, we heard running feet on the roof, and fists began to pound on the door we had bolted. The negro elevator boy looked at us terrified, and hesitated.

Mme Storey, smiling, took out her gun, and affected to examine it. The boy's black face turned gray with terror, and he took us down in a hurry. Not a word was spoken.

We issued out of the house without any appearance of hurry. Our elegant limousine was waiting at the door with the engine running. The alarm had not yet penetrated into this street.

We could see people running down Broadway. Mme Storey was the last of us to get in the car.

As she pulled the door after her, the people running down Broadway stopped, and a crowd came pouring around the corner from the other direction. They were headed by a policeman with a gun in his hand. They were not in any too great a hurry, though.

They stopped to reconnoiter prudently. I was looking out of the rear window of the limousine. As the policeman raised his arm I dropped.

We roared away down the street. The policeman sent a couple of shots after us, while I made myself small. However, they went wide. We turned the corner on two wheels; turned another corner and slowed down.

We were safe. Away from the actual scene n.o.body would ever have suspected that handsome car with its dandy chauffeur of having taken part in a holdup.

When I realized that we were really safe, I suddenly dissolved in weakness. I seemed to lose all grip, all control of myself. Simultaneously perspiring and shivering in an agony of after-fear, I groaned to myself: Never again! Never again!

At Eighty-Sixth Street we turned east, and making our way through the park by the transverse road, abandoned the car in Yorkville, and scattered. As Mme Storey and I made our way decorously down Madison Avenue, all that had happened seemed like a dream. However, the weight of jewelry b.u.mping against my knees reminded me that it was no vision.

My mistress went into a drug store to telephone. With a grin in my direction, she left the door of the booth open a crack, and I heard this astonishing conversation: "Is this Fossberg's jewelry store? . . . This is the lady who just held you up . . . Held you up, I said: Can't you understand English? I just wanted to tell you, in case you had overlooked it, that one of your clerks is shut up in the big safe at the back of the store . . . Better let him out before he suffocates . . . Oh, that's all right. Don't mention it. Goodbye."

X.

By two o'clock the first brief accounts of the affair were on the streets. The late afternoon editions carried the complete story. And it was a story!

As a feature we had no compet.i.tion that day. Jake the Canva.s.ser had certainly delivered the goods. Mme Storey and I read the newspapers, chuckling.

It appeared that the chief source of information was a customer who happened to be in the store at the time. The clerks, as before, were too fl.u.s.tered to give a coherent account of what had happened.

I shall not give the newspaper story in full since I have already described what happened. The best part of the story was that it was true, except for certain artistic details added by the narrator. As when he said he heard the bandits address their leader as "d.u.c.h.ess".

There was a clever touch! The soubriquet stuck, of course; we never appeared in the newspapers after that but Mme Storey was termed the d.u.c.h.ess, or the d.u.c.h.ess-Bandit.

What a marvelous thing is publicity! Only start it once, and it rolls up like a s...o...b..ll. Every day some new story of the d.u.c.h.ess's exploits appeared.

People claimed to have seen her here, there, everywhere. Moreover, the newspapers all carried indignant editorials asking what was the matter with the police that such things were allowed to go on. That was good publicity, too.

In that first story every possible detail concerning Mme Storey was played up; her elegant appearance, her extraordinary coolness, the humorous remarks that she addressed to her trembling victims. The fact that it was our second descent on the place was not omitted.

Fantastic were the accounts of the loot we had secured. It appeared that so far as the more valuable part of the stock was concerned, Fossberg's was completely cleaned out. In point of magnitude it was the greatest jewel robbery that had ever taken place in New York.

Two policemen added their quota to the story. Officer James Crear said: "I was on fixed post at the corner of Broadway and Street about ten thirty this morning, when a fellow ran over to me, and said there was something wrong in Fossberg's jewelry store on the corner. Said he heard shooting and yelling inside as he pa.s.sed by. So I ran over there, and I found the store closed, and a notice on the door reading: 'Closed on account of death in the family.'

"I thought this was funny, because I had seen folks going in and out just a few minutes before. I could hear a racket inside, and I rapped on the door with my stick. Pretty soon it was opened by one of the clerks, who was so scared he couldn't tell a straight story. But I understood there had been a hold-up, and the bandits were making their way out through the apartment house lobby in the rear of the store.

"I ran around outside to the door of the apartment house. It was locked. I forced it, and inside I found the elevator boy tied up and gagged. He told me the gang had gone up in the elevator. I ran up the stairs after them. They went over the roof, and down through the adjoining apartment house. They bolted the roof door after them, and I lost more time forcing it. When I got down to the street they were out of sight."

Officer William Rohrback said: "I was patrolling the west side of Broadway at Street, when I heard Officer Crear rap for a.s.sistance. I was two blocks away from his post. When I got there I found a crowd milling around Fossberg's jewelry store. I was told that a hold-up had taken place and that the bandits had gone upstairs in the apartment house, and with the help of Officer Regan, who had also run up, we put a watch at every exit from the house.

"The janitor came up and told me there was a way over the roof into the adjoining house, so, leaving the others on watch, I ran around into the next street. When I turned the corner, I saw a woman getting into a limousine car. It was such an elegant looking outfit I hesitated; but when it started down the street at forty miles an hour or better, I fired three shots in the air. The car failed to stop."

The "customer" in Fossberg's who supplied the real story to the reporter had this to say about the d.u.c.h.ess: "She was a woman of about forty-five, but well preserved. Must have been a beauty in her youth. In figure still as slender and active as a young woman. She looked more like one of those fashionable dames than a bandit; and more like Park Avenue than Upper Broadway; the real thing. She had the hardest boiled face I ever saw on a woman. I mean by that, she meant business. A desperate character. I wouldn't have thought of opposing her.

"As she was standing squarely in front of me all the time we were herded over at the side of the store, I had plenty of time to size her up. She looked at us as if we were dirt under her feet. The most striking features about her were her eyes, the pupils of which closed up to mere slits, like a cat's eyes in daylight. It gave her a terrible look."

You see how cleverly he blended fact and fiction.

An amusing outcome of the affair was, that two days later a committee of West Side merchants waited upon Mme Storey in her office, and did their best to persuade her to take the job of running down the d.u.c.h.ess. My mistress smilingly declined.

But I am getting a little ahead of my story. On the night of the hold-up we telephoned ahead to the Boule' Miche' asking for a private room. Such detailed descriptions of all of us had been published, it was no longer prudent to appear in the general room. We entered by a side door, and were taken upstairs by a private stairway.

In the "Diamond Room", as they called it, we held a sort of reception, which lasted half the night. Everybody "in the know" that is to say, every shady character who frequented the place, came up to congratulate us. Our fame was great in the underworld; the d.u.c.h.ess had thrown the Bobbed-Hair Bandit in the shade.

When Jake the Canva.s.ser came to us that night, what an exchange of compliments took place! For once Jake lost his cagey air; enthusiasm carried him away. He held Mme Storey's hand in both of his, and gazed in her face like a lover.

"Finest thing I ever heard of!" he said. "Finest thing I ever heard of! You're the queen of them all!"

"I had A-I support," she said, including us all in her glance.

"Are you satisfied with the way we handled it?" asked Jake. "Of course, there'll be a lot of new stuff in the morning papers."

"More than satisfied!" said my mistress. "The man who got up that story was a genius!"

"Of course, we put our best man on it," said Jake. "I may say he is a well-known literary guy, who just does this on the side. But at that, he couldn't have done a thing if you hadn't given him the stuff to work on. Say, that notice, 'Closed on account of death in the family,' and the little cigar, and that trick of lighting a match with your thumbnail while you kept the crowd covered; that was better than anything he could invent."

"Oh, I don't know," she said, not to be outdone: "that name he hung on me, 'the d.u.c.h.ess', that was a masterstroke. To a professional person a good name is more than half the battle. And that touch about the cat's eyes; it couldn't have been bettered. I hope your people are pleased with the way we pulled the thing off."

"I haven't had any communication with them yet," said Jake, "but I know they must be. In fact, the affair reflects credit on both sides. It shows that we were just waiting for each other; you feel that, don't you?"

"I'll never make a move without consulting you," she said.

Later, Jake contrived to get all outsiders out of the room, so that he could talk business with my mistress.

"Have you any notion what the stuff is worth?" he asked eagerly.

In respect to this matter, Mme Storey intended to string Jake along as far as she could, of course.

"Not yet," she told him. "I've got good people working for me, and the stuff is all in their hands. But there's so d.a.m.n much of it it'll take a while for the market to absorb it. They have paid me twenty-five thousand on account. I brought yours."

It was paid, over in twenty-five crisp hundred dollar bills. I may say that this money was not marked. In dealing with men so astute as Jake and his employers, it would have been too risky. But we had the numbers of the bills, of course, and hoped to be able to trace them by that means.

Jake put away the money.

"Well, how about our next grandstand play?" he said, rubbing his hands.

"Oh, give us a chance," laughed Mme Storey.

"Oh, there's no desire to overwork you," said Jake, in his oily way; "no, indeed! But we mustn't miss the psychological moment, either. This thing that we've started will run along for a week or ten days without any help from us. They'll all be workin' to hand us publicity. But when she begins to slack off, that's the time we've got to strike again, and strike hard in a new quarter. And we've got to be ready."

In my mistress's eyes I could read the determination: Not if I can help myself! But Jake could not see that. For all her cool and careless airs, Mme Storey was fully aware of the terrible risks we ran in staging these affairs, and she had no intention of attempting fate any oftener than was absolutely necessary.

"Well, it's no harm to talk over what we're going to do," she said carelessly. "I'm always open to suggestions."

With the lines we had out, we hoped to have Jake and the men who were back of him lodged behind the bars before another such affair could be made ready. But in this, as you will see, we were disappointed.

XI.

In order to avoid repet.i.tion, I will combine the gist of several of Madge Caswell's reports into one.