"About the 'masquerading,' as you call it, at the hotels. I think some of that performance was just that and no more — a touch of melodramatic theatricalism put on for its own sake and to gratify the whimsical humor of 'Samuel Smith,' who, I imagine, is a bit of a farceur in his way. Of course he had a serious purpose also. His plan — which he carried out exactly in every detail except the final disappearance with the million — called for the transference of the treasure from one vault to the other in a single night and by himself alone, after the plain departure of the six lesser crooks."
"This involved not only a number of hours of very hard work for him but also the running of the greatest degree of risk that had been taken. He planned, in the event of his being caught at any stage of the proceedings, except when he was actually handling the valuables, to be able to make all attempts at positive identification so ridiculous that no court would have held him on the evidence submitted."
"He would have some thirty-odd reputable witnesses to swear that he was in seven places doing the same things at the same times — and so discredit any police testimony about his actions at any other time. If the one was impossible — the other would or might appear equally so. Or, at any rate, the chance was worth the effort — the chances plus the pure whimsical humor of it."
"There you have the whole story."
"Do you mean to say that you are going to stop there, that that is all there is to it? Fiddle! It isn't a bit as exciting as I thought it was going to be. You've taken all the romance out of it. I want to know what became of 'Samuel Smith' and his six doubles or would you call it sextuples? What he did when he found you had opened those boxes instead of his — how he finally got away — and a whole lot of other things," expostulated Mary Peiperson, pouting at her husband and the somnolent Carranaugh.
"Sorry, Sweetheart, but I've told you all I know."
"And there isn't any dramatic ending?"
"Guess not. 'Them's the bare uninteresting facts' in a nutshell — unless you want to call an interchange of ads. dramatic."
"Ads.? What ads.?"
"One I wrote and one in reply from 'Samuel Smith'."
"That sounds a little encouraging."
"Thanks for the wild applause. I can quote them both from memory. Mine, published in all the large papers of the Northwest, ran:
To the Seven Who Were One and the One Who Was Seven, Greeting.
Thanks for your contribution to the deserving charity that begins at the home of
"And he replied in the same papers: C. and P.
You are welcome, since I was unable to contribute to the still more deserving charity nearer home that I had intended to benefit. Sorry not to be able to offer my congratulations in person but the first law of nature forbids. Possibly we shall meet at some later date. Tables have a way of turning. Au revoir.
The Man Who Was Seven."
The Summons
by Henry Altimus
I
It was Elsa Lloyd's first experience with death as a nurse at St. Luke's. She was the youngest graduate at the hospital, slender and frail, with blue eyes that betrayed the strain she had been under despite her brave effort to appear self-possessed. The older nurses had been extremely helpful, not at all resentful that she had been chosen for so important a case, but she had pursued her duties to the very end courageously and competently without requiring any assistance. It was nearly over now. Scofield Carrington was dead, his body was soon to be removed to his home, and she was studying the carefully kept chart of her patient preparatory to turning it over to the head nurse.
She was seated at a little table in the floor office, the chart before her, using this brief respite after the trying experience of the preceding night to collect herself, when the bell rang softly and the indicator clicked over her head.
Elsa Lloyd did not look up. As Carrington's private nurse she was expected to answer only his summons. But presently she was aware that a floor nurse had entered in answer to the bell and, pausing a moment before the indicator, had come up close to her.
"It's 42 calling," said the nurse. "Isn't that Carrington?"
Elsa Lloyd came to her feet quickly, her eyes lifting to the indicator, a little tinge of color coming to her cheeks.
"Yes," she said weakly.
Her lips fell apart, her hand caught the back of the chair from which she had just risen, her eyes still fixed on the little plate showing the numerals "42" on the indicator. Her tired brain could not grapple with the strange situation. Carrington had passed away in the early hours of the morning, and only half an hour before she had left his room, her duties over. And now — the bell.
She turned at last, question in her eyes.
"Perhaps it's Dr. Stockbridge," the nurse ventured.
"He's in the operating room," said Elsa quickly.
"Or some one else." And, seeing the weariness in the young girl's face, she added: "Shall I answer for you?"
"Thank you. I'll go."
She hurried down the long, silent corridor. She paused at the door, hesitated, then knocked lightly.
There was no response.
Her hand lowered to the knob. She turned it and the door yielded.
There was no one in the room. Everything was exactly as she had left it half an hour before: the drawn shades, through which the morning sunlight filtered pale and warm; the stillness of death; and, in the far corner of the huge room, the bed with its rigid, silent occupant.
Elsa's first impulse was to turn and escape, but she checked herself, waited, her back to the door, while the rapid beating of her heart subsided.
Presently she moved toward the bed, slowly, her feet scarcely lifting from the floor.
Nothing had been altered, not a wrinkle in the sheet that covered the dead man's body had been changed. She looked down into his face, observed the strong features, immobile in death, the thin lips firmly locked, the square chin thrust forward, defiant, challenging even now.
Scofield Carrington had not wanted to die. The great financier, who had feared nothing, had not feared death. But he had not been ready to go. He had wanted to hold off the hand of death only a little while longer, but it had come relentlessly. And his features still showed the marks of the dead man's struggle, the unhappiness of his last moments, which had come without the fulfillment of his cherished hope.
Elsa's eyes lifted to the bell that hung from the back of the bed, corded wire with a button at the end, the pressure of which had summoned her so often in the past few weeks to the side of her patient — had summoned her even now to his side. Some hand had touched it within the last few minutes. Whose?
She lingered a while, baffled, immobile in the presence of the inexplicable circumstance.
"It must be some mistake," she said at last.
She spoke aloud, to reassure herself and to reassure any one who might hear her.
Somehow she felt a vague presence in the room.
She dared not look about her, and, having spoken, she turned and hurried out of the room.
The nurse was waiting for her at the office door. She noted the pallor in Elsa's face, the agitation which her strained features did not conceal. Elsa took the hand she extended, leaning heavily on it.
"Some one has been and gone," she said in a soothing voice. "You're unstrung. You ought to—"
She stopped abruptly.
Their eyes met and they stood close, neither daring to turn. For the indicator had clicked again!
It was the elder nurse who first summoned the courage to look, and when their eyes met again Elsa knew what she.had seen.