“I am a lawyer, Jenkins, one of those lawyers who overlooks nothing, who plans on everything. Every move in my campaign has been planned out, has been gone over carefully. Others may act haphazardly, but not Charles Colby. I plan in advance. You have an envelope, Jenkins? An envelope with seals and a number that you were to give to me… Ah, yes. Thank you.”
He took the envelope, blinked his eyes at it, then, somehow acting as though his great nose was more to be trusted than his eyes, he thrust it under the beak and smelled it. His nostrils twitched, his pale tongue licked his lips, and his small eyes sparkled.
“Ah, yes, yes indeed,” he crooned to himself, letting his fingers caress the envelope.
“What time will suit you on this safe?” he asked, after a bit. “We can handle the job any time between nine-thirty and midnight.”
I shrugged my shoulders. “Make it about midnight. That’s as good as any.”
He nodded. “I’ll be here with a machine. Now, Jenkins, you are about to have a novel experience. You are dealing with the master minds of crookdom. If you follow instructions and do not seek to double-cross it will be well. But remember that we will know your every move, your innermost thoughts. I will not seek to defend the ethics of what I am doing, but I will tell the whole world that I’m doing it up brown. What I do I do well. You’ll be caught if you try to slip over a thing. Just open this safe and then ask no questions, that’s your job. I’ve planned…”
I interrupted his song of self-praise. When he got to chanting that he seemed as though he’d be good for an hour. He intoned it as though he was taking part in some long-winded ceremony.
“Be here at twelve then,” I snapped and got up.
He took out a gaudy, perfumed handkerchief, wiped the moisture from beneath his pale eyes, twitched his nose, bowed, and was gone.
So he was a master mind of crookdom, and he wasn’t going to let me know the safe I was to open, know where it was, or anything about it, eh? I chuckled at that. It was a good thing I’d spotted that safe, too. Otherwise I’d have had to let this shyster see me working with the radio outfit, and I didn’t advertise my methods to the underworld at large. He’d sure be surprised when he saw me walk up to that safe as a perfect stranger, jiggle the dials and open it. I’d written down the combination, and I knew it as though it had been my own safe.
I gave him half an hour to get well away, and then went out to look up Stanley Brundage. From all of the activities that were being engaged in about his will, I’d have said that Stanley Brundage, whoever he might be, was a poor life insurance risk.
Investigation showed that they wouldn’t need to do any dirty work there. Brundage was a real estate operator, and he was slipping away fast. He had some obscure, wasting disease, and the end was merely a matter of days. He had a daughter by a former marriage, and a wife who was to be divorced, but had, as yet, only secured an interlocutory decree. The estate would consist of a goodly lump of property, property that was worth fighting for and over.
I could see the whole situation. L. A. Daniels had drawn a will, a will which Brundage had written himself at the suggestion and under the direction of the lawyer. R C. Rupert had been one of the witnesses to that will, and Daniels had been the other. That will probably left everything to the daughter, at any rate cut off the divorced wife without a penny.
The game was to forge a will which would be good enough to get by without either subscribing witness being alive. This forged will cut off the daughter and left everything to the divorced wife. The question of where that will was found and how it was produced would be determining factors in the event of a fight. They would get at the lawyer’s safe, switch wills, destroy the genuine and leave the forgery.
I’d reasoned that far the night before, but now I saw the murder program — if I could give it that name — a little more clearly. Rupert could die at any time. They just wanted him out of the way. Daniels, however, was different. Upon his death a search of his safe would be made, and the wills he was keeping would probably be returned to the persons who had made them. If Daniels were to die before Brundage passed away and the Brundage will should be returned and found to be a forgery… That would never do. They would wait for Brundage to die, and then would almost immediately murder Daniels. Then the executor of Daniels’ estate would find the Brundage will in the safe, and everything would seem to be regular.
Of course. I might have slipped a bit here and there on a detail, but that would be pretty near the general scheme of the thing, and I wouldn’t have missed it much one way or another. That lawyer with the plastered hair, the red tie and the watery eyes was like an open book to me. I’ve met his kind before.
Because they’d lied to me on those Chadwick papers, I d have told the whole outfit to go jump in a lake, only I wanted to get more of a line on that fat crook who sat so quietly in the Chinese den, his icy eyes gleaming unblinkingly through the semi-darkness. That man was a master crook. He was one to be respected and perhaps feared, but he had the missing Chadwick papers, and I wanted those papers.
I thought things over until I felt certain that I’d gone through the entire situation as well as could be expected, and then I rolled in and got an afternoon’s sleep.
Midnight. The clock on the Court House boomed forth the twelve deep strokes.
As the last deep chime died away there was a knock at the door. I opened it. There were two visitors. Charles Colby, the lawyer with the perfumed hair, and the girl I knew as Maude Enders; the girl with the mole on her left hand. The girl was nervous, white, shaking. The lawyer smiling, debonair, urbane.
They greeted me and entered. In his right hand the lawyer was carrying a blindfold, a mask without eye-holes, one of the most foolproof and quickly adjusted blindfolds there is, one of the type used in lodge work for blindfolding the candidate before the dirty work commences. Evidently he believed in being prepared, this lawyer.
He smirked and smiled.
“Right on time, Mr. Jenkins. You see I keep my appointments. Right on the dot in spite of a busy day, a very busy day.”
That seemed to be a conversational lead. He stopped expectantly as though he waited for me to say something. I hated to disappoint him.
“So you’ve been busy?”
“Indeed yes. I’ve been retained by the relatives of R. C. Rupert, the man who was murdered yesterday. They want me to assist the county authorities in locating and prosecuting the murderer. Already I’ve uncovered one clue, one very live clue. I find that the man and woman who occupy the flat above Rupert’s saw a young woman rushing frantically down the stairs about the time of the murder. This woman had come from Rupert’s flat, and seemed to be actually running away. The elevator was out of order at the time and she had to use the stairs. They had never seen her before, but they had a good look at her face, and they could recognize her if they saw her again.
“There were many things that made me think the murder had been pulled off by a woman, even before I got this evidence. I have told these two people to tell no one of their information or knowledge concerning this phase of the case until I tell them to. In the meantime I shall endeavor to locate the woman, and I think I can put my hand on her.
“You’ve read of the murder, of course, Jenkins.”
I nodded, and looked over at the woman with the mole on her hand. She was as pale as death, swaying in the chair. I thought she’d even faint.
So that was the lay of the land. Not only had the fat crook used this jane to commit a murder, but he’d even planted witnesses that could identify her, and got this shyster lawyer to spill just enough information to let the girl know they could hang a murder charge on her whenever they got good and ready. Whoever this girl with the mole was, she wanted to watch her step. Her neck was in the noose now, and there’d be no turning back. I had wondered at the temerity of this lawyer in allowing himself to get tangled up in this safe business where too many people knew his identity. Now I commenced to understand. I was a crook and my word would be valueless. They had a murder charge they could get the girl on any time. Colby, of course, was not the real name of the lawyer. I had taken the precaution of verifying that. There was no Charles Colby listed in the telephone book; but, Colby or not, he could be identified readily. That beak and those eyes were identification tags that couldn’t be overlooked. However, he had nothing to fear.