The Voice on the Telephone

by Arthur Somers Roche

 

Again the Gray Ghost Becomes
the Hunted Culprit As Pelham
and Jerry Handle a New Case.

The Voice on the Telephone

BY
ARTHUR SOMERS ROCHE

“JACKASSES are queer creatures,” announced Jerry Tryon. Jimmy Pelham, the consulting partner of the head of the Tryon Detective Agency, looked quizzically across the table.

“You are acquainted with the habits of the animal you mention, Jerry?” Pelham asked mischievously.

“Enough,” said Jerry loudly, “to know that you can't tell 'em by their ears. You can't always tell 'em by their bray. Sometimes they put on pants and boiled shirts, and get into restaurants like this, and try to listen to conversations not meant for them.”

His voice rose with each syllable. A gentleman at an adjoining table flushed. For a moment he tried to meet the fiery glance of the ex-lieutenant of police. Then he looked quickly away.

Pelham grinned. The eavesdropper, rebuked by Jerry's innuendo, signaled his waiter and asked for his check.

“After all, Jerry,” Pelham said chidingly when the recipient of Jerry's rebuke had departed, “you're a famous man.”

“Famous! There ain't a chance in the world of you and me ever getting famous with the Gray Ghost at large,” growled Jerry. “Anyhow, I hate nosy folks.”

Pelham chuckled. “Imagine a detective making that remark.”

“Well, we're nosy in the line of business,” said Jerry defensively.

“And in another minute we'll be deep in the discussion of business,” said Pelham. “And digestion is ruined by too much thought.”

But not until they had finished their dinner and were parting, on a nearby corner, did Jerry again refer to anything bearing even remotely upon business. Then his bushy brows wrinkled. “Suppose that nosy guy was somebody sent by the Gray Ghost,” he suggested.

Pelham shook his head. “The Gray Ghost knows that you and I don't discuss business in public, Jerry.”

Jerry shrugged his thick shoulders. “Guess you're right, Mr. Pelham. That fellow kinda got my goat, I guess.”

Pelham slapped his coadjutor on the back. “Go home and sleep off that grouch, Jerry,” he laughingly advised.

He was still smiling as he let himself into his apartment. Good old Jerry!

Presently, in dressing gown and slippers, and seated in a deep armchair, he stared at the fire which Dickenson, his man of all work, had lighted against his return.

As he thought of that archcriminal who defied society and preyed upon it, his lips hardened and his eyes matched the glow of the flames in the fireplace.

But worry would get him nowhere. He dropped his cigarette upon an ash receiver, and. leaning back farther in his comfortable chair, closed his eyes.

****

DICKENSON awakened him. “Hate to wake you, boss,” said the former Maine guide, “but Mr. Tryon's on the telephone—long distance—and says he must talk to you.”

Pelham crossed the room and was speaking into the phone. Dickenson heard his tones of mild surprise change to excitement. There was a rapid-fire exchange of questions and answers, and then Pelham hung up. He turned to Dickenson.

“You heard what I've been saying?” “Mr. Tryon's out in the country near Portchester, on the Gray Ghost's trail, and wants you,” replied Dickenson.

“Get the roadster and bring it around while I'm dressing,” ordered Pelham.

“I'm going with you,” stated Dickenson. There was a flat finality in his tone.

Pelham chuckled, “You bet your life you are,” he agreed. “Hustle!”

When Dickenson returned, at the wheel of a speedy-looking two-passenger car, Pelham was waiting impatiently on the sidewalk outside his apartment house.

Pelham climbed into the seat beside Dickenson. “Shoot over to Riverside drive,” he said. “Tryon is waiting for us somewhere between White Plains and Portchester; we'll make it quicker that way.”

Dickenson slipped in the clutch, and the machine started. There was little conversation during the next forty-five minutes. Once Dickenson asked, “Why did Mr. Tryon start off on a stunt like this without telling you that he was going?” he demanded.

“Said he was afraid that he was on a blind lead, and didn't want to bother me needlessly,” explained Pelham.

Dickenson frowned. “Don't sound sensible to me,” he argued. “And it don't seem any too sane him telling you not to bring any one with you.”

Kings could not have bought the services of Slim Dickenson unless he liked them. He was more than a servant: he was an intimate friend, and even at times a highly valued counselor. So Pelham did not rebuke, even in his thought, the comment of Dickenson. As a matter of fact, he agreed silently that Jerry was a bit reckless. They did not speak again until after they had passed White Plains. Then Pelham ordered Dickenson to slow down.

“I don't know Just where Mr. Tryon will meet us. Keep your eyes open for a car drawn up alongside the road. Just beyond a cross street and around a curve.”

“Right,” said Dickenson. And half a mile beyond, rounding a curve, he threw out the clutch and applied the brakes, swerving in toward the high bank that bordered the road.

****

PELHAM was out of the car and approaching the shadowy bulk of another machine almost before the wheels ceased moving. A dark figure detached itself from the gloom and approached him. “Mr. Pelham?” It was Jerry.

“Jerry?” Pelham replied.

“What's the big idea?” asked Jerry.

“What do you mean?” Pelham felt a sinking sensation in the pit of his stomach.

“Mean? I mean, now that we're here, why are we here?” demanded Jerry. “You were so mysterious over the phone——”

“I was? You mean you were! Waking me up and telling me that you had followed the Gray Ghost out here and didn't want me to bring any one——”

“Why, that's what you told me when you called me up,” cried Jerry.

Pelham stared at him. “I haven't phoned you tonight, Jerry,” he declared.

“Quit kidding! I talked with you,” said Jerry.

“Of course; when you telephoned me to come out here,” retorted Pelham.

“I didn't telephone you,” protested Jerry.

“And I didn't telephone you,” said Pelham.

“But I ought to know your voice,” argued Jerry.

“And I certainly thought that I knew yours,” snapped his partner.

Perplexed, bewildered, they stared at each other. Jerry, less acute than the younger man, reacted to the situation more slowly than Pelham.

So, when the big touring car, its brakes shrieking, stopped in the road beside them, and one of its occupants leaning out of the car, asked “Pelham there? Tryon there?” Jerry Tryon answered in the affirmative before Pelham could stop him. And from the touring car came instantly flashes of flame and the loud reports of revolvers.

Pelham grasped Jerry and dragged him behind Jerry's car. Slim Dickenson it was who turned the tide of battle.

The attackers paid no attention to Pelham's car, and at sound and flash of the first shot, Dickenson leaped into that machine. Shielded by crouching down in the seat, he opened fire on the touring car. He was a crack shot, and the flashes of the bandit's revolvers afforded him an excellent view of their figures. He fired twice and shrieks of pain apprised him of the success of his aim.

After his second shot the firing from the car ceased.

Dickenson darted across the road: with the silent tread that years of stalking animals had bred in him, he raced down the road and opened fire at the rear of the touring car. From the cries of the bandits it was easy to learn that the trappers now considered themselves the trapped. Dickenson's maneuver made them believe that they were surrounded. They gave up the battle at once. Pelham and Tryon, firing from behind Tryon's car, could not tell whether or not their shots had been as accurate as those of Dickenson. They know only that the battle ended as suddenly as it had begun.

It was Dickenson's desire to pursue the fleeing foe, but by the time that the three men had taken stock, so to speak, and found that none of them had been injured, the murder car, racing through the night with its lights dimmed, was beyond pursuit. It might have turned on any one of a dozen cross-roads.

“The Gray Ghost is changing his tactics,” commented Tryon. “We've said that we were safe from this sort of thing; shows how much we know about the Gray Ghost.”

Pelham shook his head in bewilderment. “It doesn't seem like his work,” he replied.

He turned to Dickenson. “Drive my car in; I'll ride with Mr. Tryon.”

****

TWO doors from the apartment house in which Jimmy Pelham lived was the store of Bennett & Darius, well known furriers. Their building, only four stories high, was a remodeled residence, like all the other buildings on Pelham's block. There was a back yard in the rear, separated by fences from other back yards. Directly across from the rear of the furriers' building was the rear of a house that for the past six months had been vacant its owner planned to remodel it into stores and offices, but lack of capital had prevented him from doing so as yet. So that, when, a few days ago, he had been approached by a representative of the Novelty Patent and Exploitation Company, and that representative offered him a substantial rental, accompanying the offer with a check, he accepted the terms. The novelty company required the place for only six weeks, while they carried out an advertising and demonstrating plan.

The policeman on the beat that included the street south of Jimmy Pelham's street was surprised to see four great trucks back up to the curb before the vacant building at about 10 o'clock on the evening of the battle on the White Plains road. The trucks appeared about a quarter of an hour after Tryon's vocal impersonator had summoned Pelham away from home.

The policeman, making inquiries, was shown permits from the proper city authorities, allowing the novelty company to unload trucks at night. it was a busy street in the daytime and this hour for the transaction of this sort of business was eminently suitable. The policeman watched the drivers and helpers unload a few great boxes and then sauntered on his way.

The night was moonless. The watchman of the furriers' building occasionally smoked a pipe in the yard behind his building. Tonight was one of those occasions. He had Just completed knocking the dottle from the bowl when something struck him. He lost consciousness and did not regain it for hours; when he did so he found himself neatly gagged and bound. The first clerk to arrive in the rooming released him, but he could tell nothing of his assailants. But the work of these assailants spoke for itself. The contents of the furriers' building had been removed almost entirely. The precious furs had been carried across the yard into the building so recently rented by the novelty company. Thence the furs had been transferred to the trucks outside.

****

REPRESENTATIVES of Bennett & Darius retained Pelham on the case. Furs dropped in the yard during the hasty transfer led him to investigate the vacant building opposite. That building, save for scores of empty boxes, was bare. inquiry of the owner disclosed the name of his tenant. But when the operatives of the Tryon agency went to the address given by that tenant the man was not there, never had been there. An investigation of the check which he had tendered in payment of his rent disclosed the information that the account on which the check had been drawn was closed out. The bank gave an address; the drawer of the check did not reside there.

“Now, do you believe that it was the Gray Ghost who planned that attack on us last night?” asked Tryon late in the afternoon.

“I guess you're right, Jerry,” admitted Pelham.

“Guess ain't the word,” said Tryon triumphantly. “The Gray Ghost knows that you are a wakeful cuss, You could easily look out your back window and see signs of life in the yards. Other people saw those signs of life, but thought nothing of it. But you'd investigate, so the Gray Ghost gets you out of the way. While he's at it he decides he might as well bump you off. Why not make a clean sweep of it, he asks himself. So he gets me out in the country. What about it?”

“There isn't any answer, Jerry,” said Pelham.

Nor was there any answer that Pelham could give to the weeping members of the ruined firm of Bennett & Darius.

The afternoon papers wasted no time in coming to the conclusion that the robbery was the Gray Ghost's handiwork. And when reporters asked Slim Dickenson, who received the men of the press, in the absence of Pelham, how it was that his employer had not noticed the strange activities only a few rods from his rear windows, Slim resented the tones of the questioners. It seemed to him that they jeered. So he blurted out the tale of the ruse whereby the Gray Ghost's great opponents had been lured away.

Slim had meant to defend his beloved employer from cynical aspersions. He failed lamentably. The morning newspapers not merely jeered at Pelham and Tryon; they sneered.

Pelham was not extraordinarily sensitive. Nevertheless, on the following day he felt averse to meeting people whom he knew.

He lunched at his club. But his fellow members, even as they congratulated him on his escape from death two nights ago, were unable to hide their mirth at the manner in which he had been outwitted.

He dined alone at a shabby little restaurant, where he knew he would meet no acquaintances. He would not, though misery loves company, permit Jerry to accompany him. He said that he wanted to study the situation by himself. But, long before he had eaten dinner, be confessed to himself that this was merely an excuse.

**** *

AFTER dinner he strolled aimlessly uptown, into the theatrical district. To kill the evening he entered a vaudeville house.

Bored though he was, he sat through the program. And finally there came upon the stage an entertainer who was billed outside the theater as “an added attraction.” And at the moment of his entrance Pelham lost his boredom. For the man happened to be the gentleman who two nights ago had been so extremely interested at the restaurant in the speech of Pelham and Tryon. And on that billboard outside the theater, beneath the name of “Samuel Bozell, the world's greatest ventriloquist,” had been the line of invitation: “Come in and hear him imitate your voice.”

Eagerly from the first moment of recognition Pelham watched the man's act. It began with the usual banalities between Bozell and the dummy figure which he held upon his knee. But it ended with his offer to imitate the voice of any one in the audience. Half a dozen people accepted his challenge. Immediately he would utter the words that had just left their mouths with an uncanny simulation of their voices.

Slim Dickenson was reading a book entitled “Memoirs of the Wickedest Court in Europe,” by a “well known nobleman,” when his employer burst into the apartment.

“Slim,” began Pelham, “didn't you tell me the other day that an old friend of yours, a Maine guide like yourself, was doing an act in vaudeville?”

“Sure did,” replied Slim. “Lem Higgins, from my own town of Juno. He's playing at the Castle this week. Comes on the stage all rigged up in the fanciest huntin' clothes ever I see and begins imitating the voices and sound of animals and birds. Shows how to call a moose. Has a real moose there that he's trained. Sure, I know him. Why?”

“I went to the Mirror vaudeville house tonight. A ventriloquist was on the bill. Two nights ago Tryon rebuked the man for trying to listen to our conversation in a restaurant.”

“A ventriloquist, eh?” said Slim. “And a little later some one with a voice just like Tryon's calls you up on the phone——”

“Slim, you're the quickest man I know. It doesn't sound crazy to you?” asked Pelham.

“There ain't anything sounds foolish to me if it has to do with the Gray Ghost,” Slim declared. “But what about Lem Higgins?”

“Go to see him tonight, if you know where he lives. He must know Bozell—that's the ventriloquist. Get him to introduce you to Bozell. After that—well, I leave it to you.”

****

LEM HIGGINS had finished his act by the time that Slim arrived at the Castle Theater, but the stage door keeper obligingly informed the questioner that Mr. Higgins could probably be found at the Headliners' Club, that modestly named association of variety artists. The stage door keeper was correct. Lem Higgins was finishing a late supper when his old friend sent in his name. He came out to the hall, slapped his visitor on the back and almost dragged him into the dining room and to his table. But Slim resisted Higgins' insistent desire to make Slim known to vaudeville's elite.

“There's only one guy in the world that you can introduce me to, Lem,” he told the guide-actor. “Do you know a ventriloquist named Samuel Dozell? He's playing at the Mirror this week. “

Higgins eyes his friend curiously. “Now, what interest have you in Sam Bozell?” he asked. “Your boss send you?”

“What do you mean by that?” demanded Slim.

Higgins' weatherbeaten face took on a shrewd expression.

“Well, Mr. Pelham's a detective and Bozell's a crook. That ain't putting two and two together; it's easier than that; it's adding one and one. “

Dickenson stared at his old friend. “Lem, you didn't use to be the gabbiest guide in Maine.”

“I can keep my mouth shut now, if that's what you mean,” grinned Higgins.

“I believe you,” said Slim. “You just forget after I've left that I ever mentioned Bozell. Now, tell me what you know about him.”

“It ain't much,” said Higgins. “But he has a reputation all over the circuit of being crooked. Gives bad checks, trims his friends, you know. And lately he blossomed out with a new car chauffeur and everything. Now you can't do that sort of thing on the salary you get in the four-a-day houses. He must have some phony game.”

Slim whistled. “I want to meet him,” he said.

“That'll be easy,” stated Higgins.

It was easy. On the following day Higgins introduced his friend to the ventriloquist. Slim—he called him Mr. Jonas Perkins—was a state of Maine man like Higgins. Higgins' success had made Mr. Perkins desirous of investing some of the capital that he had laid away in a few good vaudeville acts. He was especially interested in building up Bozell's act until it became a complete evening's entertainment. He had good suggestions, too, as to how this could be accomplished.

It took less than an hour to convince Bozell, always on the lookout for easy money, that Mr. Jonas Perkins was the most gullible backwoodsman that ever breathed. Even the low cunning that Mr. Perkins showed in demanding that Bozell put up ah equal amount in financing the new production did not change the ventriloquist's estimate of the mentality of his new acquaintance. He agreed to put up the equal share demanded by Mr. Perkins, and to prove his ability to do so he ostentatiously showed the new “angel” his bank book.

Slim took a mental note of the name of the bank. Next day Pelham was permitted by the bank officials to examine the account of Samuel Bozell. He discovered that Bozell had deposited checks recently which had not been earned in the practice of his profession. Those checks were traced to another bank. Pelham discovered the address of the J. H. Johnson who had drawn them.

****

THE house wherein J. H. Johnson resided was watched by two operatives of the Tryon agency. They were accompanied by the owner of the vacant house behind the establishment of Bennett & Darius. From the recesses of a taxicab the landlord saw entering the watched house a man whom he immediately identified as the agent of the novelty company to whom he had rented his premises. At 8 o'clock that night Bozell, under the third-degree examination to which Pelham and Jerry Tryon quite unwarrantably submitted him, broke down. He admitted that he had been engaged in several criminal transactions with a group of men whose names he gave to the detectives. He said that he had imitated the voices of Pelham and Tryon over the telephone. He said that he had not yet received his share of the proceeds of the fur robbery, stating that the furs were in the building now watched by Tryon's operatives, that there had not yet been time to dispose of the stolen property. But he also said—and no amount of cross-examination could make him change his statement—that he had never met the Gray Ghost, and did not believe him to be the master hand behind the group with which Bozell was associated.

“You see,” said Tryon, after the man had been led away, “they'll tell anything except where to find the Gray Ghost.”

Pelham shook his head. “Bozell is scared to death; he'd surrender his own mother to the gallows. He doesn't know.”

“Mean to say that the Gray Ghost's followers can be in on half a dozen jobs and not know they're working for him?” grunted Tryon incredulously.

Pelham sighed wearily. “I don't know exactly what I do mean, Jerry. Let's go.”

They motored to the house which J. H. Johnson had entered a couple of hours ago. Outside, in shadows across the street, were the operatives who had seen him enter. They were reinforced by a dozen other men in plain clothes, but these were members of the police department, acting temporarily under Pelham's orders. The surrounding streets were also guarded.

At a muttered order a group of detectives followed Pelham and Tryon up the stoop. Pelham rang the bell. He rang it again. He waited three minutes, and then gave a command for the door to be battered in. He led his followers into the house, with Jerry Tryon struggling at his elbow for the lead, fearful that his beloved younger partner might suffer injury.

Just beyond the threshold, at the foot of a flight of stairs, he paused. The silence of the place was uncanny. The noise of the assault on the door had aroused the neighborhood; it should have aroused the inmates of this house.

Perhaps they waited at the top of the stairs, ready to kill.... In that case he must be the first to face them. And so he bounded up the stairs. And at the landing he paused. The strangest sight that had ever—in his knocking around with Jerry Tryon, in his experiences in the war—met his eyes confronted him now.

For the door to a large room was open; electric lights burned brilliantly in a chandelier. And in that room, beneath those lights, lay the bound and gagged bodies of fifteen men!

****

HE strode into the room, Jerry and the plain clothes men behind him. There, upon a table in the center of the room, propped against a book so that it would attract the attention of the first arrival, was an envelope. it was addressed to Pelham. He picked it up. tore it open and read the note inside.

“My dear Mr. Pelham,” he read. “I am an artist, not a bungling thief. I cannot see how you could imagine that I would be guilty of leaving so clear a trail. And yet, according to the newspapers, you believe that I, who deal only in money and jewelry, would annoy myself with so clumsy a booty as furs. You will find the property of Messrs. Bennett & Darius in the rooms upstairs.

“I resent your stupid assumption that I, who never fail in anything I undertake, should have attempted your death without success. But even more strongly I resent the inefficient scoundrels who have impersonated me, who have dared to attempt to use my methods. And so I am delivering them to you. it would not do for you to capture them. You will understand that it is necessary that I make the vermin of the underworld understand that my name is not lightly to be used.

“And please be assured, my dear Mr. Pelham, that when I decide that you are dangerous to me, and should be removed, you will he removed.”

It was signed “Peter Ballantyne,” the nom de guerre of the Gray Ghost. But threatening as was the tone of the epistle, Pelham laughed triumphantly as he turned to Tryon. The Gray Ghost was still at large and yet he grinned.

“I knew all along it wasn't a Gray Ghost job,” he cried.

Tryon was amused at this exhibition of vanity on the part of his coadjutor.

“Well,” he said, pointing at the prisoners upon the floor, “that's a Gray Ghost job.”

“And a good one, too,” said Pelham.

He frowned as a thought came to him. If the Gray Ghost had happened to turn his talents to the detection instead of the commission of crime, he would have been without a rival. Still, he was without a rival now.

Dispiritedly he joined Tryon in searching for, and finding, the method of egress, through a skylight across the roofs and down another skylight, of the Gray Ghost's followers.

Would he always be a little too late? Somewhere, now, the Gray Ghost laughed at him. But he laughs best who laughs last He could wait for that last laugh.

(Copyright, 1923)