“Just — a — what jewels are these?”
“The loot that your organization collected and which came into my hands when I captured your lieutenant in Ceylon.”
Sterne’s eyes narrowed as he scrutinized the face of the agent of the Criminal Intelligence Department. He knew that Smith was far removed from a fool and he tried to read the thoughts of the man who smoked his cigarette so calmly in the face of death or dishonor.
“I had hoped to use the jewels,” continued Smith, “to bait a very beautiful trap for you in Calcutta.”
“You have them here?”
Smith’s eyelids quivered ever so little. It might have been smoke and it might have been nervousness. He was playing to a subtle audience and the least bit of overacting would be fatal.
“Is it a bargain?” he asked. “Will you accept the jewels?”
“I have made no promise but I will inspect your dispatch box,” replied Sterne, indicating with his pistol a leather-covered box of considerable size which lay upon the floor. “If the jewels are there they are mine without the trouble of making a bargain.”
“Permit me to open the box,” offered Smith, extracting a small key from his pocket and bending forward rather eagerly.
“Sit back!” snapped Sterne. “Throw me the key.”
Smith tossed over the key and shrugged his shoulders resignedly while Sterne glanced from the dispatch box to Higgins and hesitated.
“Open the box for the gentleman, Higgins, like a good boy,” interposed Smith with what might possibly have been a gleam of hope in his eyes.
“Shoot him if he gets off his seat,” said Sterne, shoving a spare pistol across to Higgins. “Smith, for some reason, you want anybody but me to open that box and that is just the reason I shall open it myself.”
“Go to the devil!” growled Smith.
Sterne smiled in amusement as he dragged the box in front of his feet upon the floor. He unbuckled the leather cover and threw it back, exposing the top of the steel box within. Smith bent forward a trifle as if to watch the opening of the box. In reality it brought him a few inches nearer to Higgins and allowed his body to assume an attitude that would permit a spring.
“No false move!” warned Sterne, looking up and feeling the gun beside him on the seat.
Higgins stood up as Sterne inserted the key and could not resist glimpsing the operation out of the tail of his eye. Mainly, however, he watched Smith and kept his gun well forward.
“Look out for the Jack-in-the-box when you lift the cover,” warned Smith with a chuckle. “My trap may be better than yours.”
It was a subtle speech and a most audacious one. Sterne grunted contemptuously, turned the key and lifted the steel cover. There was exposed the usual upper tray containing papers, pens, pencils and other odds and ends.
“Gracious me! The ugly face didn’t jump out!” jibed Smith.
“Hold your tongue!” snarled Sterne.
On either side of the tray were two brass lifters that sank in slots, flush with the tray, when not being used for raising it. Sterne inserted two fingers of each hand under these brass loops and lifted. They rose freely for a good two inches and then came a violent clang from within the box while the loops shot downward, crushing the fingers to the bone and holding them fast against the heavy box.
“Shoot!” screamed Sterne.
With the clang and the scream Smith’s body catapulted toward Higgins while his long right arm sent his clenched fist straight at the solar plexus of the man with the gun. It was a desperate attempt and might have ended in disaster had not Langa Doonh bounded through the door at that very moment and struck up the pistol so that the bullet went six inches over Smith’s head. The next instant the blow landed and Higgins crumpled into a senseless heap upon the floor.
After collecting the various guns Smith turned his attention to Sterne, whose forehead was streaming with perspiration from pain and fury. Unconcernedly he pressed a concealed spring in the box and released the man’s fingers.
“Nice little trap, wasn’t it?” he commented. “Better than yours, eh what?”
“Sahib,” said Langa Doonh, “boy very sorry to get tied up. Only could work loose just now. Sahib angry?”
“Not at all,” replied Smith, busily engaged in handcuffing the sullen Sterne and the senseless Higgins.
“Sahib like clean shirt?”
“Uh-huh,” said Smith, “might as well.”
The Extra Dozen Eggs
by J. B. Hawley
I
“I am absurd enough to believe that in nine cases out of ten I can determine the innocence or guilt of a man accused of a crime by looking into his face. I have looked into Gerald Grayson’s face and I do not believe that his was the hand that poured poison into Robert Marsh’s wine. From his eyes, innocence shines as clearly as the sunlight shines through that window.”
My friend Mountfort made the foregoing statement with an air almost of defiance. My impulse was to laugh at him, but knowing how sensitive he was to ridicule, I refrained. Instead I adopted a somewhat judicial attitude.
“But considering the evidence,” I asked, “do you think you can convince an unimaginative jury of your young client’s innocence?”
Mountfort answered me with a gesture of irritation.
“Hang the evidence!” he exclaimed bitterly.
“It is more likely to hang your client than to be hung,” I retorted. “Consider it. Robert Marsh died suddenly in his home on the morning of March 29. An autopsy showed that his death was due to poison taken into his system in a glass of wine. There are four witnesses to testify that on the evening preceding his death he was at the home of Graham Cumberland and with him drank a glass of wine that was poured from an almost empty decanter by the accused. These men will further testify that the wine was served by Grayson, first to his host and then to Marsh and that he, himself, did not take any. Cumberland is alive and well today, which does away with the supposition that the wine was poisoned before Grayson poured it. Therefore we are left with only one conclusion, which is that between the time when Grayson had served Cumberland and his pouring the wine for Marsh he slipped the poison into the latter’s glass.”
My friend rose and stood in front of me, an expression of amused tolerance on his face.
“You state your case, Tom,” he said “with all the precision and bias of a district attorney. Nevertheless I tell you that Grayson is innocent. And I am going to prove him so or I shall never stand before the Bar of Justice again.”
He caught up his hat and stick and with only a nod to say good-by left the room. From my window I saw his absurdly thin figure go flying down the street looking for all the world like that of some modern Don Quixote.
And as I turned back to my desk I reflected that probably no knight errant had ever set forth on a more futile quest than Mountfort was pursuing in his search for evidence to prove that Gerald Grayson was innocent of the murder of Robert Marsh. Yet it was like my friend to take up the cudgels for a man in as hopeless straits as his present client. It seemed to me, at times, that it was impossible for him to vitally interest himself in a case of any kind unless all the circumstances and evidence were against him at the very outset. In my heart I wished him good fortune, while believing that in this instance good fortune could not come to him.
Indeed, there seemed no other explanation of Marsh’s death than that which I had just stated to Mountfort. There was no doubt that he had died of poison administered in a glass of wine. There was no doubt that the wine had been poured for him by Gerald Grayson. Could there be any doubt that the poison was mixed with the wine by the same person who poured it? And Grayson’s motive for this terrible deed? It was known to every man and woman in the town. He loved and was loved and the woman was Marsh’s only daughter, who was prevented from marrying him by her father’s prejudices against him.