Stamped in Gold/Chapter 4
CHAPTER IV.
CORRELLY'S STORY.
PETER CORRELLY came back from a visit to the hospital where Wilbur Smith was lying.
“A gunshot wound in the right shoulder, two legs broken, a small fracture of the skull, concussion and a few bruises about the body,” he reported. “The body bruises are not important, the shoulder wound is healing, and the only thing that troubles the doctor is the fracture. As it is a skull fracture it may be pretty serious.”
“Has he recovered consciousness?” asked Sharpe, twisting his hands nervously on the blotting pad.
Peter Correlly nodded.
He was a tall, sallow young man with a perpetual stoop. His carriage suggested weariness, his apparent thinness deceived many good judges into the belief that he suffered from ill health. He was neither weak nor was he thin. He had the appearance of being chronically tired, but that only concerned the deluded people who were deceived by him. He was alert enough when he brought Madame Récamier to justice and exposed certain very foolish-looking society leaders who were “disciples” of that wicked old faker. That she took a name honored in history to advertise her séances was not the least of her sins. He traced Eddie Polsoo eight thousand miles after Eddie got away with Mrs. Stethmann's bank balance by a series of twists, and Eddie never complained of Peter's lethargy.
“I told you the whole of the story, Correlly,” said the chief, “and you know very nearly as much as Smith does. I'm telling you because you are the man to take this case in hand. The possibility of running the gang to earth is now an imperative necessity. This crowd, whatever it is, has come right up against us and thrown out a challenge which at all costs we must take up. That they waylay, half murder, and rob an officer in broad daylight, argues a power and an organization greater than even poor Wilbur Smith imagined.”
Peter nodded. “I suppose I'll have to take it up,” he said in his disconsolate voice, and Sharpe gave him a quick glance.
“There are a lot of things about you, Correlly, that I don't understand,” he said with acerbity. “I don't understand why a man of your ability and training should come into the secret service, anyway; but once he is in it I should have thought that he would have taken an intelligent interest in his work. Show some enthusiasm, man!”
Peter stifled an obvious yawn. “I am in this service,” he explained, “because it pays me money. That's all there is to it, chief. It is not respectable to go poking your nose into other gentlemen's business, and it isn't the sort of thing that one would do in cold blood or for the fun of the thing. Yes, I suppose I'll have to take up this case; Mr. Smith won't be around for a couple of weeks—if he's ever around at all,” he added lugubriously.
“Cheerful devil!” said his exasperated superior. “Get out and get busy!” and Peter Correlly slouched from the room, his hands in his pockets, and came to Wilbur Smith's office, where he found a convenient chair, fell into it, and went to sleep. People walked into the office, saw him, and tiptoed out again, and it was left to the irate Sharpe to discover him and rouse him with a vigorous shaking.
“Say, what is this, Correlly?” said the chief sternly. “I think you are carrying this Weary Willie business a little too far. You're supposed to be out tracking down men who have attempted to murder a brother officer.”
Peter blinked and stretched himself.
“Quite right, chief,” he said calmly, “but I have been up three consecutive nights in connection with this business, and I guess I'm a little tired.”
“In connection with this business?” asked Sharpe, surprised. “But you were only cabled in to it to-day?”
“I've been on to it for over a week,” said Peter, yawning. “If I hadn't been so infernally sleepy I should have been here in time to warn Smith. Anyway”—he looked at his watch—“there's nothing doing for another quarter of an hour, and then I'm going to interview a gentleman on the subject of miracles.”
Sharpe closed the door of the office. “Now, son,” he said, “just tell me all you know.”
“I know very little,” confessed Peter, shaking his head sadly. “You see, I'm on the case from another angle than Smith's. I've also seen these bills with The Golden Hades stamped on the back. It happened about six months ago,” he said. “I was looking for Tony Meppelli, who stabbed a man at a picnic, and disappeared. It was necessary that I should live in a poor part of the town, and I rented a room and found that I had, as a fellow boarder, a girl who works at a factory and also does a lot of spare-time work with her fellow workers. She's a genuine Uplifter, though she's got hardly two cents to rub against each other. No, she isn't pretty or interesting or anything except just a very serious, genuine kind of girl with a cheerful view of life—which is a most surprising thing to me, because, if there is anything in life that makes for cheerfulness”
“Leave out the philosophy,” said the chief, “and come to the facts.”
“This girl's name was Madison,” Peter continued. “Whether she was named after Madison Square or Madison Square was named after her I did not discover. She was going out to some sort of party which the Uplifters were giving to the poor children of the neighborhood. She had hardly taken a dozen paces from the house when a man turned toward her out of the darkness. Naturally, she was used to that kind of thing and was able to take care of herself, and she was preparing to say a few unfriendly words when he slipped a big packet into her hand, and with the words: 'May the gods be propitious!' disappeared into the night. It was quite dark, and she did not see his face. All she could say was that he spoke with a very cultivated voice and was apparently a well-educated man. I happened to be coming down the stairs as she came in, and she related these circumstances, and I thought that she had been handed a brick or a bomb.
“On my suggestion she carried the parcel into my room or studio—I was there in the role of a poor but promising artist. I unwrapped the package on my bed, and to my amazement discovered that it was made up of four fat packages of bills, each for a thousand dollars. I looked at the girl and she looked at me, and then I had another look at the money.
“The first thing I saw when I detached a bill from the package was that on the back was stamped a neat little figure of an idol, as I thought, which had been dusted over with printers' gold dust and had been done in a rather amateurish fashion, since the edges were smudged and blurred.”
“And it was real money?” asked the chief.
“Real money,” said Peter. “I don't see much of it, but I see enough to know the good stuff when it comes my way. The girl, of course, was delighted. She was one of those simple creatures who believe in miracles. It appears that she had a great scheme at the back of her mind to build a big rest home in the country for working girls. The optimism of the untrained mind,” said Mr. Correlly, “is in itself a most”
“Don't moralize, Correlly,” growled Sharpe. “Get on to the story.”
“Anyway, she thought this gift had sailed from Heaven to the East River. She settled right down to decide whether the dormitories should be tinted pink or blue. At any rate, she carried the money away to her room, and I went out into the street, where there was room to scratch my head and think. I intended returning early that night, but to the distractions of the evening was added the unexpected arrival of Tony Meppelli on the scene. He was full of fire water and high spirits. I have observed that drink has this quality in common with enthusiasm that it”
“Never mind about drink,” said Sharpe. “Go on with the story.”
“Well, we got Tony to sleep after a great deal of rocking,” said the unabashed Peter, “and my job being over, I went back to my lodgings, gathered my possessions, and made a graceful retirement, intending to sleep that night in comfort. It was nearly one o'clock when I got home, and to my surprise I saw there was a light in the landlady's parlor. That suited me all right, because I had to settle my bill. When I opened the door, however, I was immediately invited in by the Uplifter girl, who was evidently sitting up waiting for me. She then told me that I had hardly left the house before a car drove up to the door, and an elderly man had alighted, carrying a black bag. 'And who do you think it was?' she asked in triumph, 'It was the president of the Tenth national Bank! He told me he had been roused from his bed by the gentleman who gave me the money, who was afraid I might lose it, and he had come to take the money right off to the bank and give me a receipt for it. Here is his card.'
“She showed me the cardboard with the name of the sure-enough president of the sure-enough Tenth National Bank, and on the back of it was written a receipt for one hundred and twenty thousand dollars.”
Peter paused.
“Well?” asked Sharpe.
“Well,” drawled Peter, “that's the last she ever heard of her money and the first and last time she ever saw that particular president of the Tenth National.”
“In fact, he wasn't president at all?” suggested Sharpe.
“That's about it,” replied Peter.
Sharpe bent his brows in thought.
“It is all very curious. Why give her the money at all if they are going to take it away? Did you form a theory?”
“I never have theories,” said Peter. “They hamper my work. All I wanted were a few facts, and I did not get one until about a week ago”
He stopped and asked abruptly: “Do you know a man named Fatty Storr?”
The chief nodded. “Yes, I know Fatty,” he said. “He's an Englishman—a lanky, cadaverous-looking man; even a worse looker than you, Peter. He's a chronic circulator of bad money. I haven't seem him lately.”
“They call him Fatty,” said Peter without any trace of a smile, “because he is thin. You haven't seem him lately because he has been in serious trouble, and even a more serious jail in New Orleans. A week ago Fatty was seen on the street looking very bright and beautiful. His gay and gallant attire was convincing evidence that he was out on a strictly business proposition. He was seen to stop outside a store, extract a note from his hip, fold it, and place it nonchalantly in his waistcoat pocket. He was then seen“”
“Who saw him?” demanded Sharpe.
“I saw him,” said the other calmly, “because I was watching him. That is invariably the best way to see people.”
“Then why didn't you say so?” growled Sharpe.
“He walked in the store, made a small purchase, and tendered a hundred-dollar bill. Either there was some delay in the bill being changed, or else Fatty detected some movement which he interpreted as being hostile to himself, but at any rate he left the shop hurriedly and walked quickly away. Turning his head, he saw me and stopped walking.”
“Was he waiting for you?” asked the chief.
Peter shook his head. “When I say he stopped walking,” he said, “I mean he started running, and Fatty sure can go. I lost him for a little while in a labyrinth of small streets and alleys, but eventually I picked him up. He protested his respectability and came back to the store. Fatty didn't want to go in, being of a modest and retiring nature, but I persuaded him.
“'See here,' he said, 'if you saw me go into this store I might as well own up.'
“We found the manager of the store and the bill Fatty had passed. I took it in my hand,” said Peter slowly, “and turning it over I saw—The Golden Hades!
“'This is the man,' said the storekeeper; 'he went out without waiting for his change. Has he stolen the money?'
“Is that a phony bill?' I asked.
“'No, sir,' said the storekeeper. 'That bill's good enough, so far as I can see.'”
“For the Lord's sake,” said Sharpe in despair, “what is the story?”
“That is just what I'm trying to find out,” said Peter. “The man who was genuinely astonished was Fatty. I thought he would have swooned when he found that he had been trying to pass real money. I brought him in, but before I did he was hysterical and was wailing about the hundreds of thousands of dollars that he had given to a small boy.”
“Then you've been on this job ever since?” asked Sharpe in surprise.
“That's about the size of it,” replied Correlly. “You see, Fatty wouldn't talk. He was mad to get out and find the boy to whom he gave the notes. There is no doubt whatever that he did pass the notes on when he saw I was chasing him, being under the impression that they were all phony. I was bringing him up to-day to see Smith. In fact, he ought to be in the office now.”
“Go and see,” said Sharpe. “If he's here bring him in. I presume he is the gentleman you are interviewing on the subject of miracles?”
Peter nodded. “Have you heard of anything more miraculous than a Fatty Storr working hard to pass good money?” he asked.
Fatty certainly belied his name. He was a gaunt, untidy-looking man, whose finery had run to seed in the few days of his incarceration. A low forehead, from which his mouse-colored hair was brushed back, libeled his undoubted intelligence. He sat with an officer on each side, and when Peter came into the room where he was waiting he looked up with a scowl.
“Look here,” he blustered, “you've kept me long enough in this blasted place. You ain't got any right to do it. See? I'm a British subject, I am, and I'm writing to the English ambassador about the way you've treated me, you skinny perisher!”
“Oh, Fatty,” said Peter reproachfully, “what abuse when I'm saving your miserable life! Come along to see the chief and just pour your young heart out, for he is a family man and has children of his own.”
Fatty sniffed and shuffled along before his custodian.
“Here is the specimen, chief,” said Peter.
Sharpe favored the prisoner with the nod of old acquaintance.
“You will observe the insufficient frontal development,” said Peter, “the indentation of the temporals and the brachycephalic character of the skull. From the occiput”
“We'll postpone the anthropological lecture for a later time, if you don't mind,” said Sharpe. “Now, boy, let's have a little truth from you. We've caught you with the goods.”
“What do you mean?” demanded the prisoner fiercely. “What goods did you catch me with? Good money, wasn't it? You can't pinch me for passing good money.”
“We can pinch you for being in possession of money, good, bad, or indifferent,” said the chief, “if we're not satisfied that you came by it honestly.”
“And knowing you,” added Peter, “we realize that you are constitutionally incapable of getting money by the sweat of your brow, unless you perspire when you run away with it.”
“Now come, Fatty,” said the chief, “you've got to spill it, unless you're going to be implicated in murder.”
“In murder!” cried the startled man.
“That's about the size of it,” said Sharpe. “There is a murder in that money.”
“You're kidding me,” said the prisoner uneasily.
“Not a bit,” broke in the irrepressible Peter. “No, Fatty, the chief is giving it to you straight. There's one, two, and possibly more murders attached to that money, although I didn't know it when I pulled you in. Now there's no question of kidding you to give us all the information you have; you've got to know that we must have that information. You're a sensible man, Fatty, and you've been through the mill. You know that neither the chief nor I would put one over on you, using the murder argument.”
“What do you want to know?” asked the man after a moment's consideration.
“We want to know first of all how the money came into your possession, and what happened to it when I was chasing you.”
Fatty looked from face to face suspiciously. He was a shrewd enough fellow and his wits, sharpened by years of strenuous encounters with the police, were keen to the point of intuition.
“All right,” he said at last, “I'll tell you all I know. But I'm not going to give anybody away—that is, anybody in my way of business.”
The chief nodded. “If you mean that I'm going to ask you where you get your phony money from, you can set your mind at rest. I am not.”
“That's all,” said the man, relieved; “then I can tell you. First of all, I've got to say that I get it from a man in a certain town. He supplies it to me in wads of about two hundred bills. When I want money I send him a letter and he meets me by night at some place outside of New York where there aren't too many cops and where I'm not known. I've got to explain this to you, chief, because otherwise there's nothing to the story. Well, I arranged for this gentleman to meet me about a week ago—in fact, the day before I was pinched. Our arrangement is this: I send him the real money, and, passing me by, carelesslike, he slips the phony stuff into my hands. We've got another arrangement also. If there's anybody hanging about at the place where we've arranged to meet, we continue walking up the street or avenue or wherever it is, always keeping north. We make that arrangement so that we don't miss each other.
“Well, this night I turned up, but in the place where I should have met my pal there was a cop! Of course I walked on, following the street to the north. I must have walked about a mile, but did not see him. My idea is,” said Fatty, “that there were too many people about. I never saw so many guys loafing round at that time of night in my life,” he added disgustedly; “but at last I shook them off and came to a deserted stretch of the road where nobody was in sight—only a blank wall; and there I stopped. You see, I thought that possibly this friend of mine was shadowing me. I waited about five minutes, keeping my eyes skinned for the police, and suddenly I heard a noise on the other side of the wall. It was a sort of twanging noise, and then something fell at my feet.”
He paused impressively.
“What was it?” asked Peter.
“It was an arrow—a short, stumpy sort of arrow—the kind of thing you see at the Museum of Natural History. I picked it up, as I say, and then I saw there was a package tied to the end of it. I broke the string and walked to the nearest lamp to see what was in it. Then I saw the money.”
“It was all money, then, eh?” said Peter, and the man nodded.
“I thought it was phony money, and that my pal was hiding on the other side of the wall. That was all I cared about. So I walked on and turned the corner, just in time to see two men beating each other up.”
“This is the interesting part, I think,” said Peter slowly. “Somehow I thought you would see two men beating each other up.”
“I didn't want to get into any of that kind of trouble, so I crossed the street”
“Like the Pharisee of old?”
“Don't interrupt, Correlly, please,” said the impatient chief. “Go on, Fatty.”
“Well, then I heard my name called, and who do you think it was that called me??” asked Fatty.
“It was your friend, the phony merchant, of course,” said Peter, nodding his head. “He is a man named Cathcart.”
A look of apprehension came into Fatty's eyes.
“Don't worry, I know it was Cathcart because he was picked up half dead by the police the following morning in Jersey City, and how he got there the gentlemen who had hammered him know best. Well, what did you do?”
“I beat it,” said the other laconically. “It wasn't no quarrel of mine, and I didn't want to mix myself up with the affair.”
“That disposes of one thing,” said Sharpe. “Now what did you do with the money?”
“I gave it to a boy. I'm telling you the truth. I overtook him and he was carrying a big satchel slung over his shoulder, like a mail bag. I pushed the stuff into the bag and told him to take it to his father. If I die this minute, that's the truth!”
“Would you know the boy again?”
“Sure I'd know the boy again,” said the crook contemptuously. “Do you think I go about with my eyes shut?”
Sharpe looked at his subordinate. “Well, Correlly, what do you think?” he asked. “Do you accept this man's story?”
Peter nodded. “I think so,” he said slowly, “but I warn you, Fatty, that it may be death to you to go around New York without an escort.”
The man looked uncomfortable.
“You're trying to get a rise out of me,” he said.
Peter shook his head. He walked to the door and opened it, and called to the officers who had charge of the man.
“Take him back,” he said, “and let him go just as soon he wants. Maybe you'd better wait till night. If you take my advice you'll get out of New York just as quickly as you can.”
A slow, cunning smile dawned on the face of the man.
“I get you,” he said sarcastically, “but I'm just going to hang around New York till I get my hundred dollars back.”
“Imprudent man!” was Peter's only comment as he closed the door behind the lank figure.
“Now,” said the chief, “what are you going to do about it, Peter?”
“I'm going to wait for the next act in this surprising drama,” said Peter, “and”
The next act began at that moment. The telephone bell rang and the chief took off the receiver.
“Who?” he asked, his eyebrows going up to the skies, Then, after a pause: “When was this? Where? Didn't the manager know her?” And then: “I'll send a man right away.”
He hung up the receiver cautiously and looked at Peter.
“Do you know Miss José Bertram?” he asked.
“The banker's daughter,” said Peter. “Yes, I know her, so far as the lowly may know any of the four hundred. Why do you ask?”
“Because,” said the chief deliberately, “she is being detained by the private detective at Rayburns' Store.”
“What!” said the astounded Peter. “Great heavens! They do not usually detain people like that. What was the charge?”
“The charge,” said Sharpe, “was of attempting to pass a counterfeit hundred-dollar bill.”