The Paternoster Ruby Part 1

The Paternoster Ruby.

by Charles Edmonds Walk.

CHAPTER I

THE SHERIDAN PARK MYSTERY

With a screaming of brakes, the elevated train on which I happened to be jerked to a stop, and pa.s.sengers intending to disembark were catapulted toward the doorways--a convenience supplied gratis by all elevated roads, which, I have observed, is generally overlooked by their patrons. I crammed the morning paper into my overcoat pocket, fell in with the outrushing current of humanity, and was straightway swept upon the platform, pinched through the revolving gates, and hustled down the covered iron stairway to the street. Here the current broke up and diffused, like the current of a river where it empties into the sea.

This was the first wave of the daily townward tide--clerks, shop-girls, and stenographers, for the most part intent upon bread and b.u.t.ter _in futuro_. The jostling and crowding was like an old story to me; I went through the ordeal each morning with an indifference and abstraction born of long custom.

The time of the year was January, the year itself 1892. A clear, cold air with just enough frost in it to stir sluggish blood, induced one to walk briskly. It was still too early in the day for the usual down-town crowd, and I proceeded as fast as I wanted to, allowing my thoughts to dwell undisturbed on the big news topic of the day, which I had just been reading. And so I did, as I strode along, with the concern of one whose interest is remote, yet in a way affected.

So the great wheat corner was broken at last! The coterie of operators headed by Alfred Fluette had discovered to their dismay that the shorts were anything but "short," for all day yesterday the precious grain had been pouring into the market in a golden flood. Grain-laden vessels were speeding from Argentine, where no wheat was supposed to be; trains were hurrying in from the far Northwest; and even the millers of the land had awakened to the fact that there was more profit in emptying their bins and selling for a dollar and sixty cents a bushel the wheat that had cost them seventy-six cents, than there was in grinding it into flour.

It was another pirate of the pit who had brought disaster to the bulls--no other than that old fox, Felix Page, himself a manipulator of successful big deals, and feared perhaps more than any other figure on the Board of Trade.

But his spectacular smashing of the memorable corner has pa.s.sed into history. While Fluette's brokers were buying and sending the price soaring--skyrocketing is more descriptive, though--Felix Page was selling in quant.i.ties that bewildered and, since it was Page, alarmed the bulls.

Insurance on the lakes had ceased with the advent of winter; the granaries of the world were supposed to be sc.r.a.ped clean; so it seemed that he must be rushing headlong to certain destruction. Still, seeing that it was Felix Page who was doing most of the selling, Fluette's crowd was nervous.

And the sequel, in all conscience, warranted their anxiety. For more than a week Felix Page's iron-prowed ships had been crushing and smashing their way through the ice, opening a way for other ships; yesterday they had steamed into port with their precious cargoes, demoralizing the bull clique with a deluge of golden grain.

Page settled; he had sold five million bushels, and he delivered the goods. This was the opening fissure. Fluette was soon overwhelmed, and today he and his crowd would be holding a melancholy wake over the corpse.

This, however, is not a story of stupendous battles in the arena of Commerce. I have merely gone behind my proper starting-point by a matter of ten minutes or so--no more--to lay before you one of those inexplicable coincidences which, when they are flung at us, shake us from our self-possession. The stage was already set for me; serenely unsuspecting, I was headed straight toward it.

Police headquarters was my destination, and I had no sooner stepped across the threshold than I was told that the Captain was wanting to see me at once. So I went direct to his private office, where he was deep in conference with a party of four men, who, in spite of a general air of gloom which seemed to envelop them, looked like a quartet of prosperous brokers. It occurred to me that they might have been struck by the stick of the spent rocket.

As the Captain abruptly broke off an earnest speech to wheel his chair round and address me, the four men stared at me with a curious, unwavering interest.

Fancy how I was staggered by the first words. My chief thrust a card in my direction, on which was pencilled a street number.

"Go to this address at once, Swift," said he. "It looks like murder--old Page."

"Page!" I almost shouted. "You can't mean Felix Page!"

"What's the matter with you? Know anything about it?"

My stupefaction was p.r.o.nounced enough to excite his wonder. I a.s.sure you, we are not often astonished at the Central Office.

I caught my breath and shook my head. Of course, I knew nothing about it. But it was something besides the amazing, unexpected intelligence of Felix Page's death that struck me right between the eyes. With the mention of his name, my mind cut one of those unaccountable capers which everybody has at some time in his life experienced.

The names of Felix Page and Alfred Fluette had been before me in one way or another for days; I had followed the remarkable wheat deal with about the same degree of interest that animated everybody else who was not immediately concerned; but not until this moment had it impressed me that I knew something respecting Page which had not appeared in the papers in connection with the corner. What was it?

But I could not remember. This was the scurvy trick my mind was playing.

I stood there staring at the others, and they sat staring at me. A question was halted provokingly upon the very tip of my tongue, which, despite a most earnest whipping of memory, remained obstinately elusive.

Felix Page! What particular, unusual circ.u.mstance was a.s.sociated in my mind with that name? Why should it come to flout me at this juncture without revealing itself?

My ineffectual effort to remember was cut short by my chief. He scowled, manifestly in perplexity at the way the news had affected me.

"These gentlemen," he said, with a gesture indicating the funereal quartet, "were more or less a.s.sociated with Mr. Page; he don't seem to have had any close friends; but they can tell me nothing. Whatever line you pick up, you must find the end of it at the scene of the crime--the house. The address is on that card.

"Here 's all I know about it: It must have happened sometime during the night; the report came in from Sheridan Park station about daylight.

Three men from there, Patrolmen Callahan and O'Brien and a plain-clothes man named Stodger, are at the house holding two suspects until somebody shows up from the Central Office. Stodger 's in a stew; can't seem to make head nor tail of what's happened.

"You hurry, Swift," he curtly concluded; "this is too important a matter to waste time over."

So it was. I saluted and hastily left him.

My brain was still in a whirl; my musings and the blunt, surprising announcement had come too close together for me to regard the supposed crime with unshaken equanimity. Then, too, I was still vainly striving to drag from memory's hiding-place the tantalizing circ.u.mstance which I somehow felt was pregnant with possibilities in the light of the financier's death. What on earth was it? I thought of everything else I had ever heard or read about the man.

But I was young--not only in the service, but in years as well--and this was one of my first hard rubs with that heartless old pedagogue, Experience.

Felix Page had enjoyed--I use the word advisedly--a widespread reputation for eccentricity. The word, I held a secret conviction, was merely a polite euphemism to cover his unscrupulous nature. Many acts of his were condoned, or even laughed at, which would have been nothing short of outrageous if performed by another. He had been widely exploited as a "character"; in reality he had been a merciless old skinflint, with a supreme disregard for the rights or pleasures of others.

Still, it is not to be denied that his eccentricity did reveal itself in certain ways. After business hours he retired to a forlorn old mansion, where he lived alone, without kindred (if he had any) or servants, save for an ancient dame who came of mornings to prepare his breakfasts, and to discharge, under his nagging supervision, the few domestic duties necessary to meet his requirements.

Something like a half-hour after leaving the Central Office, I arrived at the Page place. Stodger, a short, fat, good-natured chap, was awaiting my arrival--evidently with some impatience, for he was stamping to and fro before the gate for warmth. As soon as he learned my business he conducted me up to the house.

On the way he gave me a hasty account of the crime, concerning which he frankly and whimsically confessed to be very much at sea.

A description of the house and grounds is in order. The location was all that could be desired, and would have been an ideal place of residence if rehabilitated from its sorry condition of neglect. The house faced the north end of Sheridan Park, a glimpse of whose lagoons could be caught here and there among the leafless trees. It sat well back from the wide boulevard, and, surrounded as it was by fine old elms and beeches and maples, it reminded me of some antiquated English country home, such as I have seen in pictures.

There were any number of chimney cl.u.s.ters; but the general air of the place was extremely cold and forbidding. Notwithstanding it was mid-winter and that an inch or more of snow lay on the ground, there was not a wisp of smoke above any of the chimneys to indicate the welcome presence of a fire below.

A high iron fence extending along the front of the property was divided by a carriage entrance and a smaller gate for pedestrians. The former, barring the way to a weed- and gra.s.s-grown drive, was hermetically sealed by rust; while the other was just as permanently fixed open by the acc.u.mulation of earth and gravel about its lower part. Two parallel rows of ragged, untrimmed privet designated the tortuous way of the drive to the unused _porte-cochere_.

"Nasty case," Stodger was imparting, in queer staccato sentences.

"Shouldn't have much difficulty, though; responsibility lies between two men. Here all last night. n.o.body else. Callahan and O'Brien holdin'

'em. One 's Page's private secretary; fellow named Burke--Alexander Stilwell Burke. Peach of a monicker, ain't it? Has all three sections on his cards.

"The other 's a young lawyer chap; calls himself Royal Maillot. I can't pry out of either of 'em what _he_ was doing here."

"And n.o.body else, you say?" I asked when he paused.

"Nope--so _they_ say. Either one of 'em might have done it. They 're down on each other for something; glare at each other like--like--you know--cat and dog."

"Go on."

"Well, this fellow Burke--Alexander Stilwell--he comes to our shack some time after two this A. M. Told the desk-sergeant old Page 'd been croaked; wouldn't say anything more. Dippy? Say! Acted like somebody 'd slipped him a round o' knockout-drops. Sure thing, he did. Would n't budge till old Grimes sent me back with him. I 'm only a license inspector, too. This is what I--h'm-m--I b.u.t.ted into. Dev'lish cold, ain't it?"

He had opened the front door and ushered me into a deep, wide hall. A broad stairway, with carved oak bal.u.s.ters, rose on one side to a landing which formed a sort of balcony over the rear end of the hall, and thence continued up to the second story.

With his concluding words, Stodger pointed up to the landing, through whose bal.u.s.ters I could see a hand and a part of a motionless human form stretched out at full length upon the floor.

"Felix Page--b'r-r--dead as a door-nail," Stodger now added. "Slugged over the head with a heavy iron candlestick; find it lying there by him.