Rich Crooks/Chapter 5
V
IT chanced that some years before I had been in Utah, in various parts of Utah, and had not taken the trouble to introduce myself to anybody—that is, by the name which was perhaps known to some of the people there, even then.
I was patiently waiting until the police of San Francisco had—as they eventually did do—assured themselves that I had had nothing to do with a certain little affair in which numerous liars conspired together to get me out of the way, legally. There had been enough perjured witnesses to hang a saint.
I may mention, though it has nothing to do with this story, that, at last impatient, I returned quietly to San Francisco, made a midnight call upon the ring-leader of the frame-up and impressed on him that I was weary of waiting for his conscience to get the better of his prejudice against me. I suggested that he confess the next morning. He did. So it was that during the time I had been in Utah under the name of Smith or some such nonentity, I had minded-my own business and got into trouble.
It came about through a woman, Mrs Ellis. Her husband was in prison and for some reason or other she wanted him out. I was staying quietly in her home, paying board and rent. I liked her because she asked no questions. She was a little, blond, gray-eyed woman and told me some things about herself—not with the idea of arousing sympathy, but because it is the nature of her sex to talk.
Among other things, she loved this husband, Steve Ellis, who was in prison. She said that he was innocent—most wives do say that sort of thing about their convicted husbands. She said the trouble had originated over a copper-mine claim and that Daniel Cornwall—one of many “copper kings” of the West—had railroaded Steve Ellis because he wouldn't do some of the Cornwall dirty work.
I asked questions in one direction and another and as I loafed a good deal over poker tables I had plenty of chance to hear all manner of reports. As nearly as I could tell, Daniel Cornwall was a scoundrel and Steve Ellis was dangerous man with numerous friends. I heard that Ellis had formerly been a gunman in Cornwall's employ. I heard many things, and some of them were no doubt true.
Mrs. Ellis maintained, however, that he was innocent. She said that Steve had told her that if she, or any of his friends, could get hold of a little black box in Cornwall's private safe, Cornwall himself would pull wires and bribe officials to get him out. Mrs. Ellis said that Steve was a “good man in his way,” but it seemed that he was always in trouble through no fault of his own.
“Why,” she said, “his own child scarcely knows him!”
The child was in a boarding-school where Mrs Ellis, by dint of scrimping and gathering money from the Lord knows where, kept her under the illusion that a girl's life would be easier and happier if secluded and educated.
I had had nothing in particular to do and, having assured myself that Daniel Cornwall was a mean rich old devil, and looking the ground over carefully, I took certain precautions by way of disguise and paid him a visit. As nearly as he could tell I looked like a rough miner. The ends of a mustache poked from beyond my mask. My clothes were of the sort a miner would be likely to wear when he thought he was passing for a city fellow. It was necessary, of course, to dispose of a servant or two before I reached him. I made the visit late in the evening and I tied the servants comfortably in a corner and left them there to meditate.
Daniel Cornwall was a bachelor, so his establishment was easily raided. I found him in bed. I got him out and made him open the safe. Not finding what I wanted, I induced him to put on his clothes and go with me to his office. I succeeded in convincing him that he would be shot if he tried to give an alarm and also that something of the kind would happen if he looked around at me during the time I had the mask off—for obviously I could not go parading through even nearly deserted streets at 11 P.M. with a mask on.
I have found that rich men are easily bluffed by threats of violence. Anyway, we went to his office and he opened the safe there. He nearly dropped when he saw me remove the little black steel box. He offered money—he offered almost everything imaginable.
I took the key away from him and opened the box. I read enough of the papers to see what they were about. Walsh at that time was attorney general, or something of the kind.
In a kind of disgust I threw the key toward an open window. It went out. I replaced the papers and slammed the lid down, not noticing that a corner of one of the papers had stuck out.
“I'll never get that box open,” he cried. “It's a special lock”
“You won't need to open it for some time,” I told him. “This is what I came after, but there is a good chance that you may get it back.”
He had thought that I was looking into the box in the hope of finding money or jewels, and he was tremendously wrought up when he saw that I intended to carry it off.
I let him bite on a handkerchief stuffed into his mouth and tied his arms and legs to a chair.
Then I went out and into a cheap rooming-house where I had changed clothes earlier in the evening. It was one of those houses that did not have running water, but a pitcher and large bowl for washing purposes was in the room. I put the bowl near the window so as to carry out the odor of smoke and burned a few little things I wanted to get rid of, my mustache among them.
The next day a messenger delivered a package to Mrs. Ellis. It came “from one of Steve's friends,” so a scrap of paper with it said.”
She was a wise woman and did not take me into her confidence; that is, she said nothing about the “open sesame” having mysteriously arrived. Maybe she wondered what it contained, but there was no way of getting into it without going to a locksmith, and it was a solid little affair. Besides, for her purpose she did not need to get into it. She must have notified Cornwall that he had better use his influence or it would be turned over to Walsh, who would be glad to use his influence.
The same scrap of paper that told her it was “from one of Steve's friends” advised her to take the matter up with Walsh in case Cornwall did not show sufficient interest. I had realized—perhaps a little too late—that Walsh would probably think she had cheated him if she did call this attention to the box, for I had tampered a little with the contents.
USUALLY I spent my evenings down in Commercial Alley, over a poker table, just idly playing and having a little secret sport in making tin-horns wonder why their plans went awry. One hot, sultry night I left early, went home and, having a down-stairs bedroom, left the hall door open to get a little more air.
I shot the man who threw the glare of a dark lantern into my face from the doorway. I had an impression that there were two men—that is, I was sure I heard the rush and clatter of a man running. It wasn't the one I shot at. He was buried, after being identified as a shyster lawyer. Perhaps he thought it better to go direct after loot than more safely to take it second-hand from his larcenous clients.
Mrs. Ellis vaguely told me and the police that the thieves must have been after “some papers.” She kept her own counsel as far as I knew, and I asked no questions. I left Salt Lake almost at once, since I did not care for the attention that was coming my way, though, of course, the coroner did not hold me in the least responsible. I went back to San Francisco.
I did not know what had happened in the case after I left, for I was kept rather busy with personal affairs of my own.
But now the Cornwall brothers, after having told me about Steve Ellis, sat up as if jerked by wires when I inquired—
“What ever became of Mrs. Ellis?”
For a moment or two, bony, loose-jointed Daniel looked as if I had hit him with a club, and the emaciated Joseph upset his glasses from off his nose in a quick dash to adjust them so as to peer the harder at me.
“Mrs. Ellis!” Daniel exclaimed with a suddenness that had a suggestion of alarm in it.
“How did you know—” the other Cornwall began and broke off chokingly.
“Any time a man is vengeful, you can make sure there is a woman's shadow on him,” I said smoothly, as if unaware that I had plucked at a veil they did not care to have disturbed.
“But how did you know?” Daniel insisted with a sort of tentative suspicion, taking up his brother's question.
“Ten chances to a half of one, always, that it's a wife. If not a wife, then the daughter”
“Daughter!”
Joseph's voice was excitedly high-pitched.
“Daughter,” I repeated, nodding.
Daniel was staring at me. He did not know what to think.
I became aware that Joseph Cornwall, trembling from uplifted arms to his knees, was standing and was almost speechless in his emotion.
“I tell you Steve Ellis is a mean scoundrel!” he shouted hoarsely. “A brute, sir! He killed his wife as surely as a man ever killed anything! I adopted Cora Ellis, sir. Made her my heir. If he bothers her he ought to be shot down like a dog, and I would like to do it!”
He ended with a fit of coughing. The man was grotesquely pitiful. He looked about as dangerous as a sparrow. His emotion was far too great for his body. He shook from weakness. I looked at him for a long time. If that was acting it was extremely good acting, but I was not convinced.
“Joseph is tender-hearted,” Daniel put in as if explaining something. I wondered what he thought he was explaining in such a tone of half-apology.
“You didn't want me to do it,” Joseph almost flared.
“And see what it's got us into!”
“You know that has nothing to do with it. Steve Ellis hates me. Always has hated me.”
“Never shown any love for me, either,” Daniel replied. “But you—you tried to keep her from marryin' him. Wanted to marry her yourself.”
There was much in his voice that sounded like a taunt.
“I know he was jealous of me,” the grotesque Joseph said defensively.
“!” his brother answered with mean scorn. “If he killed her it wasn't 'cause he was jealous of you. He was jealous of that tin-horn gambler that was living with her while he was in the pen!”
Daniel added a curse of his own against that “tin-horn gambler.”
I inquired softly if Daniel had had trouble with that fellow.
It seemed that he had. He was rather vague and excited, but I gathered from his remarks that he had guessed the aforesaid tin-horn gambler had had something to do with a good deal of the trouble that came upon him about that time. He seemed to think—in spite of the intimation that Steve Ellis had had reason for hating the tin-horn—that the fellow had been a friend of Steve's.
I asked how Steve Ellis had brought about the death of his wife, but both of them were uncommunicative. They had questions of their own. I persisted. Daniel looked expectantly at his brother, and Joseph said that Ellis was sent up on circumstantial evidence. The woman was found dead less than twenty hours after he had been released from prison—her skull fractured. Now Steve Ellis was being again released—he had been released. Circumstantial evidence and all that, Joseph Cornwall explained exasperatedly, angrily, was the justification for letting him out.
Daniel watched me closely and was silent.
I remarked that it was strange, exceedingly strange.
Then Daniel spoke.
“That Walsh—governor—he's letting him out!”
I understood something then of how it had come about.
I said bluntly and with meaning that I might care to have a word or two with Steve Ellis when he arrived in New York.
Daniel Cornwall continued to eye me a little broodingly, but Joseph was full of gratitude.
As Daniel was pushing open the sliding doors I caught sight of Quiller, looking quite haggard and anxious, waiting at the foot of the stairs.
At the door I glanced back over the shoulder of the nervous Joseph, who was aimlessly talkative, agitatedly polite. I saw Quiller gripping the arm of Daniel Cornwall. I heard his excited whisper as, without looking toward me, he pointed. His eyes were on the dazed face of Daniel. I caught the words—
“the man that killed Taggart!”
The door closed behind me and somewhat reflectively I went on my way. Taggart had been the name of the shyster lawyer who had—considering the ways and morals of his sort—taken a step toward honesty in turning burglar. His regeneration might eventually have been complete had he not awakened me. I had always thought there had been two of them that night, and the man with Taggart might have, in the tenseness of that moment when the stream of light fell on my face, got such a vivid glimpse of me as to recognize me on sight years later. Perhaps it was my face that had troubled his dreams.