FAIR WARNING: In more than a half-century of reading mystery fiction, I can point to no author who has confused me as frequently and comprehensively as Harry Stephen Keeler (1890–1967), whose zany, complex intrigue-farces are almost a genre to themselves. The prolific author produced scores of short stories and more than fifty novels, several of which were more than one hundred thousand words in length. It was common for him to interweave previously published stories into what passed for plot.
His “plots” were achieved by fishing through a large file cabinet that he filled with newspaper clippings that interested him and pulling out a handful at random, interweaving them into a story, using such eccentric devices as wacky wills, hitherto unknown religious tenets, insane (and nonexistent) laws, and, most commonly, coincidences that defy credulity. For all their lack of rationality and cohesion, Keeler’s books had a wide and devoted following in the 1920s and ’30s, but, as the books became more and more bizarre, his readership eroded and then all but vanished entirely, his many later novels being published only in Spain and Portugal. Keeler’s wife of more than forty years, Hazel Goodwin, collaborated with him on dozens of books, often sharing a byline.
Thieves’ Nights, Keeler’s only short story collection, features Bayard DeLancey, King of Thieves, “whom lesser thieves feel honored to have known.”
“The Very Raffles-Like Episode of Castor and Pollux, Diamonds De Luxe” was originally published in Keeler’s Thieves’ Nights (New York, Dutton, 1929).
I FIRST MET DELANCEY in London. The circumstances of that acquaintance hardly matter, except that I had about the best references that a crook could have. When he went over to Paris, I went back to New York with an understanding between us that I was to serve as the New York end of any big deal, and he had my address, and a code system by which we could communicate.
That he was mixed up in the Simon and Company robbery which he had broached to me at one time on Piccadilly, and that he had been successful, furthermore, was clearly proven by the interesting account I clipped from a New York paper on the second day of July. It read:
Protégé of Lord Albert Avistane Arrested in Paris.
(By cable) Paris: July 1. Bayard DeLancey, a protégé of Lord Albert Avistane of England, educated at Oxford by the nobleman, was arrested here today in connection with last night’s robbery of Simon et Cie, 14 Rue Royale, in which two of the most well-known diamonds in the world were stolen.
The stones, known as Castor and Pollux to the trade, are similarly cut and weigh eight carats apiece. The total value of the two, considered by English experts to be well over £12,000, is due to the fact that one is a green, and the other a red diamond. Although certain circumstances point to DeLancey’s complicity in the crime, the jewels were found neither in his possession nor at his rooms, and since sufficient definite proof in other directions is lacking, the authorities expect to be compelled to release him within a few days.
A few of the people who are known to have been with him the morning after the robbery are under surveillance, and it is hoped that the stones may ultimately be recovered from one or another of them.
Clever old DeLancey! It looked indeed as though that well-worked-out scheme he had outlined on Piccadilly had come to a successful conclusion.
As for myself, I had, of course, promised to be of assistance to DeLancey merely in getting the two stones into the hands of old Ranseer at his farm near Morristown, New Jersey, after which the split would be forthcoming and would be divided up according to our respective risks in the proceeding. This was the method which we had outlined when DeLancey first heard that I was personally acquainted with old Ranseer, the wealthy recluse who bought stolen rare jewels at nearly their face value.
Had the clipping itself, however, been insufficient evidence that DeLancey had scored one on the French police, his letter, which reached me a week and a half later, made everything clear.
The communication, which was, of course, in cipher, when translated ran as follows:
Gay Paree, July 4.
L. J.
—— Str.
New York.
Dear old Baltimore Rat:
Was it in the New York papers? Must have been. Pulled it off as slick as the proverbial whistle. The blooming beggars kept me locked up three days, though. But they were shy on proof—and besides, they were too late.
Rat, there is to be another man in our proposed crew. Never mind where I picked him up. I firmly believe he is the only man in Europe who will be able to get those gems across the pond. His name is Von Berghem. He called at my rooms the morning after the coup. I passed the stones to him, each one wrapped in a little cotton package, and tied with silk thread.
Now, Rat, he’s bound for New York, taking the trip across England in easy stages as befits a gentleman traveling for his health, and according to our plans should embark on an ancient tub named the Princess Dorothy, which leaves Liverpool on July 6th, and arrives at New York nine days later. Immediately upon landing, he will call at your rooms.
As we have already arranged in London, you will have two of your friend Ranseer’s carrier pigeons (the nesting birds, by all means) in a dark covered basket. Secure one stone to each pigeon so that if anything should go wrong, you could liberate them instantly through the window. With their known ability to cover as much as 500 miles, at a speed of 30 miles an hour, they would be able to reach the vicinity of Morristown in less than two hours, even taking into consideration darkness. At least, so my own map of your United States indicates.
As soon as things blow over, yours truly, DeLancey, will slide on toward your famous old N’Yawk, after which—heigh-ho, boy—the much-talked of white lights of America and ease for a time.
A last word as to Von Berghem. He wears glasses, has gray hair, and carries a mole on his left cheek. He will be accompanied by his fifteen-year-old son, as sharp a little rascal as ever spotted a Scotland Yard man fifty yards away.
Yours jubilantly,
DeL.
So Von Berghem, I reflected curiously, seemed to be the only man in Europe who could get those two sparklers across the pond?
Surely, I thought troubledly, if he had to get them out of Europe before the eyes of the police, and get them into the States before the eyes of the customs authorities, he would have to be sharp indeed, especially in view of the fact that a hue and cry had already been raised.
Everything was in readiness, though. The pigeons were cheeping in their covered basket. On the mantel were two small leather leg bags ready for the loot. I looked at my watch and found that it was after nine o’clock.
Strange that Von Berghem had not arrived. I had called the steamship offices by telephone at six o’clock and had learned that the Princess Dorothy had docked an hour before.
Then I fell to wondering why he had encumbered himself with his son. Unquestionably, he must have realized that in dealings such as ours, every extra man, constituting a possible weak link, meant just so much more chance of failure.
The clock struck ten.
Where had DeLancey found this fellow—this Von Berghem? I found myself asking myself. Was he sure of him? Did he understand the game as we did?
Everything that DeLancey did was always more or less mystifying. He seemed to know the name of every crook between the equator and the poles, and to understand just what part of an undertaking should logically be assigned to anyone. Without doubt he must have known what he was doing this time.
So Von Berghem, I told myself, was the only man that DeLancey believed capable of——
The clock struck ten-thirty.
I heard the slam of a taxicab door down on the street below.
A second later the bell of my New York apartment tinkled sharply.
I hurried to the front door and opened it quietly. In the outer hall stood a tall man wearing glasses. He had gray hair—and a mole on his left cheek. At his side was a boy of about sixteen.
“This is Rat,” I whispered.
“Von Berghem,” he answered, and stepped inside with the boy, while I closed the door behind them.
I passed down the narrow inner hall and threw open the library door. “In here,” I said, and snapped on the lights. “How did you make out?”
Von Berghem seemed to be ill. The whiteness of his face and his halting gait, as he leaned heavily on the shoulder of his son, signified either sickness or——
Failure! Ah—that must be it, I told myself. My heart seemed to stop beating. Von Berghem must have been unsuccessful in his mission.
He sank heavily into a chair that the boy brought forth for him. The latter dropped down on a small footstool, nearby, and remained silent.
In the interval, I studied Von Berghem and perceived for the first time the horrible expression on his face. His eyes had the same haunting look that I had once seen on the face of a maniac in the state insane asylum in Wyoming, where I originally came from.
“Met with considerable trouble,” he stated laconically, after a pause.
“Tell me about it,” I said, half sympathetically and half suspiciously. His gaze, which had been roving aimlessly around the room, he directed toward me again. Then he commenced to talk.
“I called on DeLancey the morning after the robbery. He gave the two gems into my keeping at once. The lad was with me. He’s a coming thief, is the lad. We took a cab at once for the station. Three hours afterward, DeLancey was nabbed.
“The lad and I boarded a train that morning for Calais. We reached there at one o’clock in the afternoon and spent the rest of the day in a hostel. From the hostel we made the boat safely that evening and got into Dover at midnight. So far, everything ran without a hitch. We stayed at a hostel in Dover till morning.
“No use to bore you telling you of our crawling progress across England. Only three hundred miles, but we spent four days covering it. Of course, we were just a gentleman and his son traveling for pleasure.
“But things began to liven up for us. We had hoped by this time that we were not being looked for after all, but apparently we were wrong. As we got off the train in the station at Liverpool, on the evening of July 5th, the lad, little lynx that he is, spots a man in a brown suit, carelessly watching all the passengers. He nudges me quickly.
“Now comes luck itself. A crazy emigrant, farther down the platform, pulls out a gun and commences shooting through the roof. Hell and confusion break loose. During the big rush of people that takes place, the lad notices a little door leading out to a side street. ‘Quick, Daddy,’ he says, ‘we’ll slip out this way.’
“Outside, he flags a cabby in a jiffy and we drive to a little dirty hostel on a side street, where we spend the night wondering whether the man in the brown suit was looking for us or for someone else.
“However, we’re on our guard now. We don’t feel quite so easy. Next morning we make the pier and board the Princess Dorothy, which boat, I may add, is one of the few going out of Liverpool that do not touch at Queenstown or any other point but New York, once she casts off from the Liverpool landing stage. Yes, friend Rat, every detail was figured out long in advance by DeLancey himself.
“As soon as we get aboard, I lie down in the stateroom and let the lad remain on deck. I’m not a well man, friend Rat, and traveling under the conditions and handicaps that we traveled under is hard on me. The following is the boy’s account.
“As he says: No sooner had the ship pulled out from the landing stage and was headed about for the open water, than a motor car comes rushing pell-mell up to the wharf. Out jump four men—and one of ’em is our friend in the brown suit. The lad whips out the binoculars and watches their lips. ‘Damn—too late—radio—’ is what our brown-suited near-acquaintance appears to say.
“Well, in spite of the fact that, like all boats, we’re equipped with wireless, nothing happens to us on board. But at no time do I forget the existence of the Atlantic Cable. What I figure is that they’re trying to lull us into a false sense of security. At any rate, all the way across I take my meals in the stateroom and the lad prowls around deck trying to pick up some information. But, as I said before, everything’s as peaceful as the grave.
“It’s a mighty long nine days for us, friend Rat, but late in the afternoon of the fifteenth, we find we’re within one hour of the Battery—and we realize now that things are very doubtful for us.
“As we step from the gangplank together, each of us suddenly finds a hand on our shoulder. In front of us stand three men, two of ’em fly-bulls with stars—the third a customs inspector. ‘You’re Von Berghem,’ says one of ’em. ‘Want you both to step in this little house at the end of the pier for a couple of hours. When we get done there won’t be any further bother to you of a customs inspection, for the inspector himself here is going to help us out.’ He laughed unpleasantly. ‘Yep—we got a warrant,’ adds the other in answer to my unspoken question.
“Well, my friend, I, Von Berghem, know my limitations. I didn’t take the trouble to deny anything. Smilingly, I admitted that I was Von Berghem and that this was my son. Then I asked them what they intended to do. ‘Just want to look you and your boy and your two suit-cases over,’ admits one of them.
“In that little inspection house they locked the door. They drew down the shades and turned on the lights. They commanded us both to strip. When we had done this, they made us stand stark naked up against the wall. They began by examining our mouths, taking good care to look under our tongues. Then they combed out our hair with a fine-tooth comb. After a full fifteen minutes, in which they satisfied themselves that the jewels were not concealed on our bodies, they turned out the lights, and wheeled over some kind of a vertical metal standard that held a huge, powerful X-ray tube that could be moved up and down, and swung to left and right. The boy here is a little radio bug and can describe it and explain it far better than I. At any rate, standing us naked in turn in front of the tube, they slid it slowly up and down, from a point in our bodies about level with the esophagus and downward, literally peering through our very bodies with what I heard them refer to among themselves as a fluoroscope, which they handed back and forth from hand to hand. Of course I know enough about the X-rays and elementary physics to understand that they hoped to find a deep black opaque shadow that is always made, as I understand, by the crystalline carbon we call a diamond; they hoped to find such a shadow in our stomachs, or alimentary tracts, and had they done so, they could have watched its movement downward and corroborated matters for themselves. But, to cut a long story short, friend Rat, our alimentary tracts gave no opacities at all, outside of our bones which were fixed shadows and which they checked up on by moving the tube or the fluoroscope. For, you see, we made no errors of trying to swallow any big diamonds such as Castor or Pollux, if for no other reason than that your friend DeLancey had read all about this new customs instrument in the London Illustrated News, and had mentioned to us laughingly that if he ever tried to carry stolen jewels across the ocean himself, swallowing them was the last thing on earth he’d do.
“So as I say, after satisfying themselves unequivocally that the jewels were not in our hair or our mouths, on our bodies or in our bodies, they turned on the lights once more and started on our luggage. ‘This is an outrage,’ I grumbled.
“They dumped out the clothing in our suit-cases and placed it in one pile, together with that which we had been forced to discard. Then they commenced with our underclothing, which they examined seam by seam, button by button, square inch by square inch. Following that, our garters, our socks, our suspenders, were subjected to the same rigid examination.
“As fast as they finished with an article of clothing, they tossed it over to us and allowed whichever one of us was the owner to don it. In that way, we dressed, garment by garment, always protesting stoutly at the outrage.
“In the same manner they went through our neckties, most of which they ripped open; our shirts, collars, and vests followed next.
“When they came to our outer suits, not content with an exacting scrutiny, they brought out hammers and hammered every inch. Our shoes—look for yourself, friend Rat—are without heels; they tore them off, layer by layer. Our felt hats underwent similar treatment, for they removed the linings, replacing them later, loose.
“Our suit-cases were examined at buckle and seam, rivet and strap. At every place of possible concealment—every place which involved, say, a thickness greater than the diameter of Castor or Pollux—they pounded vigorously with their hammers, using enough force to smash steel balls, let alone brittle diamonds. And for every place that was thin, they gave a few vicious poundings for good measure.
“Friend Rat, we were in there three and a half hours, and had we had trunks, we might have been there yet. They left nothing unturned. Everything, though, has to come to an end. In disgust, they finally threw away their hammers. ‘That lead from Liverpool’s a phony one,’ said one of the three to the two others. ‘You’re free, Von Berghem and son,’ his companion added. ‘It’s a cinch you’ve not got the proceeds of the Simon Company’s burglary at Paris. You and your boy can go.’
“This was about two hours ago. We have had no supper, for we took a taxicab and, with the exception of a couple of breakdowns on the way, came straight here in order to tell you of the situation in which we found ourselves.”
I was crestfallen, disappointed, at the story I had heard. And I told Von Berghem so frankly.
“It’s a shame,” I commented bitterly. “DeLancey stakes his liberty on a bit of dangerous and clever work—and then sends a bungler across with the proceeds. Of course, man, they’ve got ’em by this time. It doesn’t matter where in the stateroom you hid ’em—the woodwork, the carpet, the mattress—they’ve found ’em now. Well—we’ll have to put it down as a failure—that’s all.”
He heard me through before he uttered a word. Then, dropping his glasses in his coat pocket, he answered me sharply.
“Failure? Who has said anything of failure? You do me a great injustice, friend Rat. Are your pigeons all in readiness? All right. Von Berghem never fails. Look!”
He pressed his hands to his face. For a moment I thought he was going to weep, for he made strange clawing motions with his fingers. Then he lowered his hands.
I sprang to my feet, suppressing a cry with difficulty. Where his eyes had been were now black, sightless sockets. On each of his palms lay a fragile, painted, porcelain shell—and in the hollow of each shell was a tiny cotton packet, tied with silk thread.