A dull black automatic menaced a sinister, leering face.
The hand that held the gun shook.
The audience sat forward in its seats, tense.
Dorothy Devine, glorious Dorothy, had the center of the stage. The moment was hers.
For two acts and part of the third she had caused her audience alternately to roll in the aisles and flood their handkerchiefs. The play was a clever combination of pathos, melodrama, and comedy, with the latter element prevailing. It was the first time the sensational dramatic actress had attempted an essentially comic role, but in it she wowed her public limp.
In the first act she had portrayed a schoolgirl, in the second a glamorous woman of the world, but now she was a little frail old lady. At the moment she had put off her pose of a grande dame and in tattered garments had gained access to the office of a night club, whose proprietor was in possession of a secret that could compromise her granddaughter.
The set was the office of the night club. The proprietor and the little old lady faced each other across a table. The man’s face was dark, sneering.
It was a moment of pure melodrama. Would the little old lady be able to conquer the fear of the thing in her hand and exact justice?
Dorothy Devine was superb.
The Saturday night audience froze in breathless expectancy.
In the third row on the center aisle, the Madame, that dynamic figure who was as much an enigma to the police as to the underworld where she was looked upon as nothing short of a criminal genius, sat forward in her seat. The slim, well-kept fingers that were equally at home with a tea cup, a jimmy, or a Tommy-gun, or could, when clenched, put a good lightweight to sleep, were twined in her lap.
The Madame seldom attended the theatre. The reason was simple. Inside her smartly cropped red-blonde head functioned the brain that had evolved all the super criminal coups that had mystified the New York police for the past thirteen months. With such a mind it was impossible not to solve instantly the course of even the most complicated dramatic plot, and the play ceased to interest her.
So when that enigmatic figure who was known to both the police and the underworld only as the Madame did select a show, it was always a light farce whose lines sparkled with wit and humor.
Tonight she had chosen “Love Runs Hot,” the screaming comedy hit featuring Dorothy Devine, sensation of the current dramatic season. Miss Devine’s talented interpretation of her first comic role had twice during the first two acts caused the Madame to smile. And that in itself was an accomplishment, for no one had ever seen her laugh.
Tonight was something of a celebration—it marked the end of the Madame’s meteoric gangland career. On the following Monday she would dismantle Le Parfum Shoppe, in whose back office had been cased the famous Granite Bank heist, Faire Long’s fantastic shake-down, the Hotel Kid’s gem haul at the Normandy, all of which had been but a prelude to the unaccountable suicide of the Big Shot, boss double-crosser of the underworld, which the Madame alone knew was not really a suicide at all. She knew because it was a perfectly planned and executed revenge—a revenge that had drawn her from nobody knew where to become the master of every criminal art from the technique of the dip, the cloaker, the cold-card artist, the stick-up guy to the pinnacle of gangland aristocracy—the peterman. And her revenge accomplished, she would leave as she had come—a mystery.
She could do this because the Madame had been smart. She had never participated in any of the jobs she planned, nor had she ever accepted a share of the loot. Her play was the head work and a build up of confidence that would enable her eventually to rub out the Big Shot. This had been done, and in so doing the Madame had allied herself to no faction, although her restless mind was equally facile at solving problems of the police or the underworld. And she had done both without losing caste or double-crossing either.
Both sides respected, feared, and trusted her implicitly, and agreed that the Madame was a wow.
“Love Runs Hot” amused her tremendously. She admired the polished technique of Dorothy Devine, for among her other accomplishments the Madame could be a consummate actress if the occasion demanded.
Dorothy Devine, as popular with society as she was with the members of her own profession, rose to the heights in her final scene. She was the little old lady with the blunt automatic in her fear-stricken hand. She feared the gun as she feared the rat she faced.
Would she use it?
The audience shivered with apprehension.
And in the end she did not. She bluffed the menacing underworld figure with a bit of shrewd bravado that would have done credit to the great Madame herself, saved her granddaughter, and was back in her comic character again as the curtain went down to a rolling roar of laughter and applause.
Again Dorothy Devine had triumphed. Society and Broadway rose to acclaim her.
But as the Madame left her seat with the lithe grace and sureness of action that characterized her every movement, the actress was playing out a real-life drama in her dressing-room.
Backed against her make-up shelf, Dorothy Devine stood at bay, her bosom rising and falling, her lips compressed into a thin crimson line. In the hand that had held the stage gun with such evident reluctance a business-like automatic nestled. The hand grasped the rod as though it were accustomed to it, and the hand did not tremble.
It pointed at two men who had forced their way, a moment before, into the star’s dressing quarters.
“Get out!” the actress snarled.
The men looked at each other knowingly and laughed.
They were faultlessly dressed, but about them both was a furtive look. The taller had a scar across his cheek that might have been made by a burst of shrapnel except that it was a furrow dug by the pointed fingernail of an enraged woman. The other was smaller, with eyes that never remained fixed on one thing for more than a split second.
“Get out, I tell you!”
Dorothy Devine’s voice was rising shrilly.
“Take it easy.” The man with the scar waved a well-manicured hand languidly. “Take it easy, kid.”
“Leave me alone!” Dorothy almost screamed. “Why can’t you leave me——”
As the man with the scar dropped his hand she sprang for the door, thrusting herself madly between them. But as her hand grasped the knob they closed in from either side, seized her wrists, and tore her away. In another instant she had been thrust into a chair.
The man with the scar bent over her, wrenched the gun away and tossed it on a chaise-longue across the room.
“Now, listen to what we have to say, kid.” His tone was menacing. “And you better make up your mind right now that you’re going to do what we want.”
There was something at once pleading and yet hopeless in the look the actress shot up at him, and past him to the man with the shifty eyes who had slouched to the door and stood leaning against it, gnawing at his lip.
“Oh, can’t you leave me alone?” she begged. “I’ve paid your dirty blackmail until you’ve practically bled me dry. Now, won’t you leave me alone?”
But even as she spoke she realized that with these two pleading would do no good. They were out for the last penny.
The man with the scar allayed her fears with words for an instant, however.
“It’s not money we want this time,” he said easily, glancing down at his polished nails. “And I resent your use of that word blackmail. It has an ugly sound.”
“But that’s exactly what it is,” she protested vehemently. “You—you——”
The man with the scar held up his hand.
“Please, please!” He bowed mockingly. “Do not over-excite yourself, Miss Devine—Molly Delaney Mulford Dorothy Devine.”
The actress shrank away at the string of names as though she had been smacked in the mouth.
The man drew a perfumed handkerchief from his sleeve and flicked it across his nails to renew the lustre.
“Let us realize that this is a purely business transaction,” he resumed. “We perform a service for you for which you have thus far paid us. You infer that your supply of ready funds is low.” He shrugged. “We do not wish to press you. Hence we will continue to perform the same service for you, but in return you must perform one for us.”
Dorothy Devine’s hands clenched in her lap.
“You blood-suckers—you parasites!” she cried. “Just because you know something about me——”
“Exactly!” The man with the scar cut her short. “Just because we happen to know that when you were appearing in a tent show on some dizzy merry-go-round circuit in the Middle West you spent six months in one of the local jugs—for—well, we are able to perform a very valuable service for you. We prevent that information from reaching the ears of your swell and very elegant society friends, and we naturally expect a small payment for the service. If we allowed it to be known that the gorgeous Dorothy Devine was really Molly Delaney Mulford——”
He spread his hands.
The actress half rose from her chair.
“You beasts! You know perfectly well that I was framed. That my husband and I had not been paid in weeks—nor had any of the other members of the troupe. You know that the manager of the show had been trying to get his hands on me and was furious because I laughed at him. And you know that when Jack Mulford needed an emergency operation I took from the manager’s box only what was rightly ours. But in spite of it my husband died.”
Her face sank into her hands.
“That is what you say, kid.”
The actress sprang to her feet and faced him.
“Yes, that’s what I say—and it’s true. And it’s true that the manager testified that we had been paid and that I’d stolen the money from his box—and the rest of the troupe backed him up because they were afraid if they didn’t they’d never see their own pay—and it’s true that I spent six months in jail for it.” She shook her fist under his nose. “And how do you happen to know all this? Because you were in the same jail because you’re the cheapest and poorest pair of jewel thieves at present living off the lowest form of crookedness there is—blackmail!”
The man with the scar smiled, a thin-lipped cruel smile.
“That is what you say,” he murmured, “but would your Park Avenue friends who so eagerly seek you as a dinner guest, or would the Lacey-Smythes whose car is waiting outside the stage door to carry you out to their Long Island estate for the week-end—would they believe it?” He shook his head. “I think not. Hence we will continue to perform our little service and you will continue to pay our modest fee.”
Dorothy Devine dropped back into her chair with a beaten look.
“But I tell you I have no money. You know that as well as I do.”
“My dear Miss Devine”—the man’s tone was sardonic—“who said anything about money? All we ask is that you perform a small service for us in return.”
The man at the door nodded in agreement.
“Well?” the girl asked helplessly.
The man with the scar leaned closer.
“Merely this. Listen carefully. You are to be the week-end guest of the Lacey-Smythes. Mrs. Lacey-Smythe’s pearls are famous. We have read about them in the papers often.” He tapped a folded paper that protruded from his pocket. “In fact, an article on the party she is giving tonight and at which you are to be a guest, contains another description of her five-hundred-grand necklace.”
He tapped the tips of his fingers together and glanced down at the actress speculatively.
“We have had our eyes on those pearls for a long time,” he continued. “To tell you the truth, we have cased the job thoroughly and we expect within twenty-four hours to be in possession of them.”
The actress was on her feet again.
“No, no—not Mrs. Lacey-Smythe! You’re not going to rob her!”
“But that’s exactly what we are going to do—and you’re going to help us.”
He waved aside her stammered protests, and his voice grew hard.
“If you wish to keep them as your friends—if you wish them not to know that they are entertaining a jailbird—you will do as we say. After all it is really nothing. As I said before, we have cased the job thoroughly except that we have been unable to locate the wall safe where Mrs. Lacey-Smythe places her jewels when she retires.”
Dorothy Devine waited, knowing that she was trapped, yet searching her brain for a way out.
“Now all that you have to do,” the man with the scar continued, “is to ask your hostess’s permission to put some of your own jewels in her safe. On some pretext or other see her when she puts them in. After you have gone to your room to retire for the night a servant will rap at your door to inquire if you wish anything.” He bowed. “I will be the servant and you will tell me the location of the safe. Then you may sleep peacefully knowing that neither of us will trouble you again.”
He grinned with his lips alone.
“It will be worth it to be rid of us that easily, won’t it? For you may rest assured that with the proceeds of this job we will be on the downy for the rest of our lives. Remember——”
“No, no!” The actress covered her ears with her hands and tried to brush past him. “I will not do it.”
The man with the scar seized her arm.
“Let me go!” she pleaded. “Let me go! I am late as it is.”
“In just a moment, kid. I merely wish to remind you what will happen to society’s darling if it becomes known that she was once a jailbird—but I see that you know.”
He released her arm.
“When I rap at your door I shall expect you to give me the information we desire.”
With a mock show of politeness he escorted her into the corridor.
“Good-evening, Miss Devine, and have a nice time at the party.”
He turned to his companion when the stage door had banged behind the departing actress.
“She’s made up her mind to give us the air,” he said. “But she’ll change it. I know her better than she knows herself.”
And he was right.
On Monday morning the Madame sat at the fragile Louis Quatorze desk in the little office behind Le Parfume Shoppe. Her close-fitting grey frock, carefully calculated to blend harmoniously with the softly shaded hangings and old French furniture of the room, served to enhance her young blonde beauty. She looked exactly what she pretended to be—a smart perfumer offering a stock of imported wares for those to whom price was the only criterion of quality.
Her head was bent forward and supported by her hands. Her blue-grey eyes, luminous and a bit misty at the thought that today Le Parfume Shoppe would be closed for good, were desultorily scanning the headlines of the first edition of the Evening Gazette, one of the more lurid afternoon tabloids spread out on the desk before her.
Suddenly the eyes grew hard and metallic as they caught a headline sprawled across the third page:
GEM THIEVES CRACK SOCIETY SAFE
Lacey-Smythes’ Country House Looted of Famous Pearls
By Jane Bradley
Some time before dawn Sunday a thief, or thieves, slipped through the cordon of guards in and around the palatial Long Island country house of the wealthy and socially prominent Charles H. D. Lacey-Smythe, gagged the popular hostess and trussed her securely in her bed, broke into the concealed wall safe in her boudoir, and made away with her internationally-known necklace of matched pearls valued at half a million dollars.
The Lacey-Smythes’ week-end guests, who included the Reginalt Van Astorbilt, Jrs., the incomparable Dorothy Devine, and “Pony” Dibble, the high-goal polo star, were thrown into a fever of excitement when Mrs. Lacey-Smythe’s maid came screaming into the library as they were assembling for a late breakfast. She said that she had gone to her mistress’s room with her morning chocolate and found her tied to the bed with her jaws firmly bound with adhesive tape.
Guards supplied by a private detective agency to protect the jewels worn by the guests at a large party held in the house the night before were immediately summoned and the maid’s story proved to be true.
The only information Mrs. Lacey-Smythe could supply the police was that when she awakened she found herself unable to move. She exhibited all the symptoms of a person recovering from the effects of chloroform, however, and as the odor of that drug was still discernable in the bedroom the police believe that Mrs. Lacey-Smythe was chloroformed into unconsciousness, bound and gagged, and then the robbery effected.
The antiquated wall safe had been cracked in fairly expert fashion, and the police believe it must have been the work of semi-professionals at least. They are carefully checking the movements of all known gem thieves.
Mrs. Lacey-Smythe is at a loss as to how whoever did the job learned the location of the safe, as it was concealed behind a secret panel whose whereabouts was known only to her husband and herself.
The pearls were the only articles of value the safe contained except for trinkets of sentimental value belonging to one of the guests, which had been entrusted to the hostess for safekeeping.
The guards supplied by the private agency are unable to explain how the thief, or thieves, were able to pass through their cordon and gain access to the bedroom. The window was opened, however, and it is supposed that a ladder was used, although no marks of any kind were discovered in the flower-beds beneath.
The only possible clue was a blood-stain on the end of one of the splinters protruding from the broken panel. Under microscopic examination this splinter revealed particles of rubber and it is thought that one of the robbers probably ran the splinter into his rubber-gloved thumb in the course of his operations.
“Find the man with a splinter hole in his thumb and the robbery is solved,” the inspector in charge of detectives said in a special interview granted newspapermen late last night.
The Madame thrust the paper aside impatiently.
“ ‘The guards supplied by the detective agency,’ indeed!” she snorted. “ ‘At a loss to explain how the thieves were able to pass through their cordon and gain access to the bedroom!’ ”
She twisted the paper and flung it into the waste-basket.
“It should be obvious to even the most ignorant policeman that the—ah—petermen—never even passed through the cordon. It was an inside job. While they’re waiting for someone to tell them to check up on the servants, and especially the extra ones hired for the party, the—ah—gentlemen who cleaned the pete—are getting farther and farther away, and so are the pearls, unless they’ve already gone through the—ah—fence.”
She shrugged her slender shoulders.
“But what is the matter with me? Force of habit, probably. Here I am through with any and every—ah—racket and I must start uncasing jobs I read about in the papers.”
She shook her head disapprovingly.
“Come, come, Madame! Enough of this! You must get about the permanent closing of the shoppe and then, as your acquaintances in the underworld so aptly put it—take it on the hot. Now the first thing to do, obviously, is to call——”
She reached for the gilded telephone on her desk.
But her hand was destined not to touch it at that moment, for from the shoppe came the low whine of a buzzer.
Like a striking snake the Madame whipped around in her chair as a heavily-veiled figure slunk furtively through the door that led in from the street.
As the figure moved uncertainly past the glass cases with their load of exotic bottles that lined the walls, casting quick, hunted glances over its shoulder, the Madame’s agile mind classified its impression of the visitor—woman, young, body trained in dancing or some other kindred profession. The latter gave her the clue she wanted and nodding her head imperceptibly she made a shrewd guess as to the woman’s identity.
The woman came hesitatingly toward the door of the inner office, her feet making no sound on the thick carpet of the floor.
Suddenly the woman stiffened, and stifled a shriek with her black-gloved hand.
From the street came a loud report.
The Madame’s nonchalant pose did not change. She had seen the heavy truck sweep past the door and had recognized the sound for what it was—a backfire. And to her already complete classification of her visitor the Madame added—in mortal terror of someone. But she was too shrewd to confuse her mind with suppositions as to the cause for the fear. That was the secret of the Madame’s success, she reasoned only from facts.
The woman came through the inner door and paused, undecided, beside the desk.
The Madame waited.
The visitor’s first words would answer one question, that of her identity, the Madame was sure. The heavy black veil hid her features completely and it was necessary that she speak to give the Madame her cue.
And it was as the Madame expected.
“You are the—the person known as the Madame?” the woman asked haltingly.
The Madame’s guess as to the woman’s identity proved correct as her answer showed.
“Yes, Miss Devine,” she said with a gracious inclination of the head. “Won’t you sit down?”
The visitor took a quick step backward, surprise and fear in the movement.
“But—but how did you know it was I?”
“It is my business to know such things, Miss Devine. But do sit down.” She indicated the slim-legged chair beside her desk. “I enjoyed your performance so much on Saturday night.”
The Madame’s visitor took the chair and thrust up her veil.
It was Dorothy Devine.
“Thank you,” she said from polite force of habit. “I am glad that you enjoyed my efforts. But it is a wonder that I was able to play any show at all. You see, I had—I had unwelcome callers and they frightened me nearly crazy.”
The actress hesitated.
“And you are still terrified of them,” the Madame supplied in a low, soothing tone. “Your entrance a moment ago showed that only too plainly. And if I may hazard a guess, it is of these same unwelcome callers that you have come to see me.”
Dorothy Devine nodded.
The Madame’s eyelids drew together, half filming the grey-blue eyes and turning the blue to a glinting, metallic grey; her lips compressed; her nostrils distended like a keen-nosed hunting dog that gets the first breath of scent. It was always that way with the Madame when she scented a problem against which she could pit her matchless mind. This savored of action, intrigue, complications. The ethics of the problem did not interest the Madame—whether it was a question of the weak menaced by the strong, or the lesser dog seeking to wrest its due from the greater—it was only the problem that counted.
She leaned forward.
“I am interested, Miss Devine.” The words dropped from her lips like tense, brittle bits of steel. “Please be perfectly frank and perhaps I may be able to help you.”
The actress moved uneasily in her chair, hesitated, and appeared finally to make up her mind.
“I have been told—er—Madame, that you have never violated a confidence.”
The Madame acknowledged the compliment perfunctorily, eager for the actress to speak.
“Please tell me what is troubling you, Miss Devine.”
Dorothy Devine rested an arm on the edge of the desk and looked the Madame in the eyes, every trace of the stage business gone.
“Blackmail!” she whispered.
“Ah!”
“And if it will not bore you, Madame, I will begin at the beginning and tell you everything.”
She did.
The Madame listened intently to the harrowing recital which began with the actress’s debut in the tent show, continued through her marriage, the death of her husband, the frame-up that sent her to jail and began the blackmail, and led finally to her interview with the man with the scar and his companion in the dressing-room.
“I swore to myself I would not do it, Madame!” Dorothy cried in a shaken voice. “But when the time came I did.” She looked up pleadingly. “Oh, if you could only understand how I have struggled for recognition—the recognition of the people that counted—not only the people of the theatre, but of society. And when I once got it I could not let it go—I could not!”
Her head dropped tiredly on her arm.
The Madame reached out a hand and stroked the shaking shoulders.
“I understand,” she said gently.
The actress raised her head.
“They promised that if I would do this one thing they would leave me alone for good. I should have known better. They are nothing but cheap crooks—scavengers. They wait for things to fall into their hands, that is why they are not well known to the police. They will only go after sure things. They read about my success in the papers and left a petty racket to come to New York and make me pay. They read about the Lacey-Smythe pearls in the paper, cased the job, and found it was simply too easy, the owners depending chiefly for protection on the fact that the safe was concealed. Once they learned its location there was nothing to it. The private guards did not count.”
She paused for breath.
“But what have they done now?” the Madame asked.
“They came to me this morning, directly I had returned from Long Island. They said that they would not be able to make satisfactory arrangements with the fence for a few days and demanded money to tide them over. They showed me Mrs. Lacey-Smythe’s pearls, and laughed in my face. But what could I do?”
Dorothy Devine spread her hands helplessly.
“They have bled me dry, Madame. My work is suffering, and so——”
“And so,” the Madame cut in, with a trace of amused irony, “you decided to set a thief to catch a thief.”
She waved the actress’s protest aside.
“And not such a bad idea at that, Miss Devine.”
The Madame sat back, smoothed her tawny hair reflectively, and gazed into space.
After what seemed an interminable period to the actress, the silence was broken.
“You wish to be permanently rid of these two men.” The Madame was thinking aloud. “And in so doing you must not, to their knowledge, appear, otherwise your secret would become known. That is to be avoided at all costs. Violence I will not tolerate, so”—she lapsed for a moment into the vernacular of the underworld at which she was adept—“burning them down is out.”
She swung around quickly on the waiting woman.
“You say these men first put the finger on you when they were with you in the same can?”
“Yes.”
“Have they ever, to your knowledge, done time since?”
“Yes. Both of them. Three times, once for working a cheap con game on a farmer, once for a stick-up, and once for concealed weapons. Oh, I know their histories well.”
“Fine!” the Madame interrupted. “All felonies. Have you an understudy who could take your part—say for a week, if necessary?”
The actress showed her surprise.
“Y-es,” she answered.
“Good. How long have the men given you to produce the money?”
“Until tomorrow morning.”
The Madame drummed for a moment upon the polished top of the desk.
“Tell me, Miss Devine, is there a service entrance in the rear of your apartment building—I mean, one which you could slip out of without being seen?”
The rapid-fire of questions had completely tied the actress’s mental faculties in a knot.
“Why—why, I believe so,” she stammered.
“Good. Now, Miss Devine, go back to your apartment and answer neither doorbell or telephone until I call. You will know my call because the phone will ring three times and stop. Approximately three minutes later it will ring again three times and again stop. You will answer it when it rings once more after a three-minute interval. It will be I and I will tell you what to do next.”
Before the actress could express her thanks she found herself being ushered gently but firmly toward the outer door.
“Follow my instructions implicitly—and, by the way, stop at the theatre on your way home and pick up your make-up box. And now, please excuse me, for I shall be very busy.”
A moment later the door closed behind her and the actress found herself alone in the street.
The Madame returned to her desk, sat down and thumbed rapidly through the telephone book. Finding the number she sought, she reached for the telephone and gave it to the operator.
In a moment she was connected with her party.
“A-1 Realty Corporation?” she asked. “I am interested in renting a furnished apartment—somewhere in the West 90’s, near the Drive….Yes….Just a moment, while I note the address”—she scribbled rapidly on a pad—“I will call to inspect it this afternoon, and if it suits I wish to occupy it immediately. Good-bye.”
She hung up and once more consulted the pages of the telephone directory, found her number and gave it to the operator.
“Evening Gazette? I wish to speak to Jane Bradley, please…thank you…Miss Bradley?…I have never had the pleasure of your acquaintance, but I want to tell you how much I enjoyed your story of the Lacey-Smythe robbery”—she laughed softly, although the expression of her face did not change—“you are speaking to the person known as the Madame, possibly…oh, you have heard of me…I wondered, Miss Bradley, if you would care to be instrumental in the capture of the two persons responsible for the Lacey-Smythe robbery?…Splendid…could you call at Le Parfume Shoppe immediately?” She gave the address. “And it is understood that until you have seen me you are to say nothing about this call…good…I will be waiting for you…Good-bye.”
The Madame replaced the receiver on its hook.
Inside of half an hour Jane Bradley, police reporter for the Gazette, burst into the inner office of Le Parfume Shoppe. She was young, competent, and inclined toward beauty. But efficiently-cynical newspaper woman that she was, she was obviously awed at first in the presence of the famous Madame.
She was soon at her ease, however, and listened with increasing wonder as the Madame talked. In five minutes she was convinced.
“I’ll do it!” she exclaimed excitedly. “We can just make the next edition of this afternoon’s paper. And I’ll get ‘Big Dan’ Murray for the other part. He’s a young dick trying to get along. You’ll like him.”
“Good, Miss Bradley. Now listen——”
For five minutes more the Madame spoke, rapidly but without using a superfluous word, while the reporter took notes. When she finished, the girl sprang to her feet.
“I’ll rush right over and shove it in as is, Madame!” she cried, on her way to the door. “The rest of your directions will be carried out to the letter. I’ll wait in the city room for a call from you. And thanks awfully, Madame, you don’t know what this beat will mean to me. Cheerio.”
Less than an hour later the Madame was inspecting a furnished apartment at 493 West 97th Street. It was in a brownstone house, the first two floors, to be exact, and had been occupied for years by a somewhat eccentric widow. The furnishings were old and a bit antiquated, but it seemed to suit the Madame and she leased it on the spot, stipulating, however, that she be allowed to occupy it immediately. The permission was readily granted by the agent, who did not recognize the identity of his prospective tenant.
“And now I wish to telephone,” she remarked as she folded the receipt and slipped it into her bag.
“You may do so from this apartment, if you wish,” the agent suggested. “The telephone has been kept in service. It is in the library, and there is also an extension in the master bedroom on the second floor. Nothing has been touched here since the death of the owner.”
“Thank you.”
The agent complimented himself on a smooth piece of work and left.
The Madame hurried to the phone, took a watch from her bag and placed it beside the instrument, raised the receiver and gave the number. It was repeated by the operator, then came the faint purr that indicated that the bell at the other end of the wire was ringing. There was a pause, another purr, a pause, and a third purr. Halfway through it she hung up, glancing at the dial of the watch as she did so. Three minutes later she called again and the process was repeated.
At the end of another three-minute interval she again called the same number. Dorothy Devine’s voice answered almost immediately.
The Madame’s directions were brief and to the point. At their conclusion the actress repeated what was expected of her so there could be no slip.
“Good,” the Madame replied, “and don’t forget the address.”
The Madame had yet one more call to make, and this time when the receiver had clicked back upon its hook she rubbed her hands.
“If I do say it, Madame,” she remarked affably, “this is as fine a job of casing as you have ever done. The trap is set, now all we have to do is wait for the prey to smell the bait. It will be one grand job—if it works.”
It was ten o’clock that evening. Behind the drawn curtains of the library at 493 West 97th Street a fire glowed comfortably in the open grate. In its flickering light, for there was no other source of illumination, the ancient furniture cast grotesque moving shadows upon the dingy walls.
In a wing-chair, beside the fire sat a little frail old lady, looking, in her stiff silk dress with lace at the neck and wrists, as though she had stepped direct from a century-old painting. The lace cap on her head was scarcely whiter than the hair beneath and served to throw the transparent, wrinkled face under it into shadow.
From time to time the little old lady turned half around in her chair and glanced apprehensively to where the seeking fingers of ruddy light from the fireplace fell upon a squat, bulky object against the opposite wall that reflected the soft rays in sharp, alien glimmerings.
It was a small safe, obviously new.
And as the little old lady in the chair sat watching it a door at the far end of the room opened and a maid as old and bent and fragile as herself entered bearing a tray. Her uniform would have brought a snicker to the modern variety of servant, but it blended in perfectly with its present surroundings.
The maid came forward with the tiny, fumbling steps of the very aged, and placed the tray on a low table beside her mistress.
“Your tea and toast, Ma’am, and a newspaper with an article about the diamonds,” she quavered.
Handing a folded copy of the last edition of the Gazette to her mistress, she pointed to the headlines:
LACEY-SMYTHE GEM ROBBERY BAFFLES POLICE
All Clues Fail
By Jane Bradley
For an instant their eyes met with a twinkle, as though they shared an amusing secret.
“The first part of the article is about that horrible business on Long Island. It’s the last few paragraphs”—the maid indicated them with a pointing finger—“that’s about the diamonds, Ma’am.”
While the ancient maid poured the tea from an old-fashioned pot the little old lady read:
The ease with which the Lacey-Smythe pearls were stolen reveals a shocking condition which is prevalent throughout greater New York, where many thousands of dollars’ worth of gems are nightly placed behind even less trustworthy safeguards.
Many instances of such carelessness could be cited, but probably the most flagrant of these is the case of the famous Musgrave diamonds.
The Musgrave diamonds, a necklace of twenty flawless stones totaling several hundreds of carats in weight, have long been kept by their owner, Mrs. Elvira P. Musgrave, in a secret compartment of a secretary in the library of her residence at 493 West 97th Street.
This necklace, while not as well known as some of the more historic collections resting in the guarded vaults of the larger jewelers’ shops, is nevertheless of tremendous real and sentimental value to Mrs. Musgrave, as the stones were collected in all parts of the world by her late husband.
It is hoped that the many thousand owners of valuable jewelry will be warned by the Lacey-Smythe robbery and see that their gems are consigned to any one of the conventional places of safety, the best, of course, being a safe deposit box, in a bank.
“That article should be a warning to you, Ma’am,” the maid remarked. “At any rate, I took the liberty of renting that safe for the diamonds. It can be returned when it has served its purpose and the fee is very reasonable. Your tea, Ma’am.”
She handed the steaming beverage to her mistress.
“And a cup for yourself.”
“Thanks, Ma’am.”
They drank, nibbling at their toast, and talked in subdued tones.
The great clock in the hall struck eleven.
“It is time for bed, Ma’am,” the maid suggested.
But her mistress demurred.
“Just a few minutes more.”
The clock struck the half-hour, and as it did so, from somewhere in the rear of the house came the muffled clangor of the doorbell.
The two women looked at each other knowingly.
The maid arose and left the room. The sound of her tottering footsteps receded down the hall and gave place to a murmur of voices. Then the fumbling footsteps returned, followed by the tramp of heavier feet, and the maid ushered two men into the library.
They wore derby hats pushed on the backs of their heads, in their teeth were clenched fat black cigars. The taller had his right thumb stuck in the armhole of his vest, disclosing a shiny badge. When he dropped it to his pocket there was a glimpse of grimy adhesive tape.
“Police officers to see you, Ma’am,” the maid announced, her voice quivering.
The taller of the two stepped forward into the light. Across his cheek stretched a livid scar. Behind him, his companion stood shifting his feet uneasily, his eyes traveling furtively about the room, never remaining fixed on one place for more than a split second.
“You are Mrs. Elvira P. Musgrave?” the man with the scar demanded.
The little old lady nodded.
“Well, we’re detectives from the station house around the corner,” he announced, displaying the shield on his vest by a backward flip of his coat.
Behind him his companion duplicated the action.
“The sergeant sent us around about this,” the man with the scar went on, drawing a copy of the Gazette from his pocket and pointing to the paragraph that mentioned the Musgrave diamonds. “Have you seen it?”
Again the little old lady in the chair nodded.
“Well, the sergeant thought those were too valuable jewels to be kept simply in an old desk without any kind of protection—too many burglars about, you know. So he sent us over to keep an eye out for your diamonds until morning, when he suggests you hire a safety deposit box in a bank and put them in it. We’re to wait until they’re safe.”
“That is very kind indeed of you, gentlemen,” the little old lady answered. “Won’t you sit down?”
She indicated the stiff horsehair sofa on the opposite side of the fire, and as the two men sank down upon its creaky springs her maid assisted her to move her own chair so that her face was in shadow. Then the ancient maid crossed to the sofa where the men sat blinking in the direction of the flames.
Without a change of expression she plucked the fat cigars from their mouths and tossed them into the fire. Then she removed an iron hat from each head and slammed it down on its owner’s knees.
“Priscilla!” the horrified mistress exclaimed. “These gentlemen have come to protect the Musgrave diamonds until we can place them in the bank in the morning. You are forgetting yourself. Bring fresh tea and toast.”
The maid shuffled over to the table and began placing the cups back on the tray.
The man with the scar leaned forward.
“Tell me, Mrs. Musgrave, is that story in the paper about your diamonds true? So often they are exaggerated, you know.”
“Oh, yes, indeed, sir,” the little old lady twittered.
The man with the scar turned and surveyed the room until his eyes came to a tall old-fashioned desk in the corner.
“And is that the secretary in which the jewels are kept?” he asked.
“Were kept,” she corrected him. “As soon as my maid read that article in the paper she telephoned a concern that rents safes and had one delivered immediately. There it is”—she pointed—“and the diamonds are in it. But I shall certainly take your advice and have them placed in the bank in the morning.”
Both men followed the direction of her pointing finger and their mouths dropped open. The shifty-eyed one blinked rapidly and the man with the scar looked as though he might have swallowed his teeth.
But the little old lady appeared not to notice.
“Would you like to hear about the Musgrave diamonds?” she asked, folding her hands serenely in her lap.
The men nodded dumbly.
The maid picked up her tray and left the room.
When she returned her mistress was still rambling on. The men sat uneasily on the edge of the sofa. She served tea and toast to them while her mistress continued her chatty monologue.
Outside in the hall the clock struck midnight.
Still the little old lady rambled on.
When the clock finally chimed one, the maid approached her mistress.
“You must go to bed now,” she insisted sternly. “It’s long past your bedtime as it is.”
An expression of relief crossed the faces of the men.
The little old lady arose with reluctance.
“But these gentlemen——” she protested.
“Don’t mind about us, Mrs. Musgrave,” the man with the scar hastened to assure her. “We’ll make ourselves comfortable here until morning—sergeant’s orders.”
The little old lady turned to her maid.
“Perhaps the gentlemen would like something to drink, Priscilla.”
The maid disappeared and returned shortly with a tray containing whisky, soda, and glasses. As she handed it to the man with the scar she noticed a patch of adhesive tape on the ball of his right thumb, and stifled a chuckle.
The little old lady bid her callers good-night, and, assisted by her maid, slowly climbed the stairs to the second floor.
Just as dawn was breaking the man with the scar straightened from a cramped kneeling position before the safe in the library of 493 West 97th Street.
“Damned lucky we thought to bring our tools and a slug of soup,” he muttered to the man with the shifty eyes. “Now throw that wet rug over this here box while I give it a shot.”
He wrapped a pair of wires, leading from a cup-like contrivance attached to the iron door, around the handle of the safe and carried the two loose ends to a distance while his companion covered the box with a heavy wet rug.
“Quick now—everything set?” he snapped, drawing a flashlight battery from his pocket. “I hear a truck.”
The man with the shifty eyes glanced around the closed doors.
“Okay.”
The truck, a heavy one, apparently filled with milk cans, rumbled past.
The man with the scar scratched the ends of the wire on the exposed poles of the battery.
There was a dull thud, lost in the rumble of the truck, and the door of the safe swung open.
At the same moment the door from the hall burst inward and two men, followed by an eager-eyed girl, pushed in to the library.
“There they are, Dan!” the girl cried shrilly. “Get ’em, big boy!”
It was obvious that these men were dicks. There was no mistaking it by the way they went for their guns.
“Big Dan” Murray was in the lead.
For a moment the man with the scar and his companion stood paralyzed.
“Put ’em up!” Murray bellowed.
As he spoke the door leading from the rear of the house opened and the maid, followed by her mistress, and both with negligée hastily thrown over their old-fashioned night attire, stepped into the library.
The man with the scar saw his chance.
With a sardonic laugh he leaped for the rear door, the man with the shifty eyes half a jump behind.
The two detectives withheld their fire, fearful that a stray shot might take effect on the women.
The little old lady cowered against the wall as the robbers rushed toward them.
But the maid stood her ground. In fact, she took a half step forward and waited flat-footed.
A collision seemed inevitable. The dicks were in pursuit, fearful of finding the maid a complete wreck when they should reach her.
But instead of going down in front of the charge, the unexpected happened.
Shifting with unlooked-for agility the maid’s right fist lashed out, landing smack against the oncoming jaw. The blow seemed to travel only a matter of inches, but the man with the scar went down as though he had suddenly encountered a Mack truck head-on.
The fall of his companion slowed up the man with the shifty eyes for an instant, and in that instant a knife gleamed in his hand. It glimmered upward in a flashing arc directly above the maid’s head.
The dicks were thundering up, but obvious that they would be too late. The maid was doomed.
But she waited unperturbed for the descent of the blade.
It started.
The maid’s right hand flicked out, snaked under the man’s upper arm and her fingers twined about his wrist. Her left hand covered her right, an old jiu-jitsu trick. She pressed forward.
The man’s feet rose in the air and he did a backward spin. There was a sharp snap. He screamed in agony and fell in a limp huddle at the detectives’ feet.
“Pushed too hard,” the maid remarked laconically, dusting off her hands. “Broke his arm I’m afraid.”
Before the astonished detectives could speak she put an arm about her half-fainting mistress’s waist and supported her from the room.
“Well, I’ll be—I certainly will be——” Big Dan Murray stammered as he snapped the cuffs on the two prostrate robbers and jerked them to their feet.
He turned to the girl who had followed them upon their unceremonious entrance.
“Your tip sure was the goods, Gazette,” he chuckled.
“But are these babies the ones?” she asked anxiously. It was Jane Bradley.
Murray pointed to the piece of adhesive tape that decorated the thumb of the man with the scar.
“We’ll probably find a hole made by a certain splinter under that tape,” he remarked. “And by the way,” he turned to the other dick, “just have a look and see what they’ve got on ’em.”
The man stepped forward and went through their pockets.
With a grunt of satisfaction he stepped back, holding something out in his hand.
“The Lacey-Smythe pearls!” Murray exclaimed. “Well, I’ll be damned!”
He turned swiftly on the girl reporter.
“I beg your pardon, Gazette, but tell me—how did you know this was coming off? I sure appreciate the tip-off, but I feel dumb having to be taught my business by a girl reporter.”
Jane Bradley smiled wisely.
“We—I had a hunch that if I planted that phoney about the Musgrave diamonds in the paper it would draw something. This apartment was all a set-up.”
“But the two old dames, Gazette, who are they?”
The girl laughed outright.
“Just a pair of—of actresses we hired for the evening. But what I want to know is this—how long will these babies go up for? I understand they have three previous convictions to their credit—three felonies.”
Dan Murray grinned.
“Well, I should say that by the time we get through pinning safe cracking, carrying concealed weapons, attempted assault with a deadly weapon, and several other things on them neither one will come out of the big house until they carry them out feet first. Does that satisfy you?”
“Perfectly. And now I think I’ll go upstairs and pay off the—actresses.”
Murray detained her a moment more.
“I suppose you want us to suppress the report of this arrest for—how long?”
The girl looked at her watch.
“It’s seven now. Could you hold it till nine? My story’s written and set ready to go. All I can expect is a first edition scoop anyway.”
“Gladly, Gazette, we certainly owe that much to you.”
“You’re an old dear.”
The girl turned and dashed from the room.
Upstairs she encountered the two “old ladies” removing wigs and make-up.
“I want to congratulate you on the finest performance of your career, Miss Devine,” the maid was saying.
Dorothy Devine scrubbed at her face with a sheet of tissue.
“If you should consider turning to the theatre, Madame,” she laughed, “I can assure you of the lead in any one of three plays that I know of. You were marvelous.”
“And I can assure you both,” the girl reporter cut in, “that your two boy friends downstairs can’t possibly get off without life and about a hundred extra years tacked on for good measure.”
“Splendid,” the Madame remarked, “but if the police expect witnesses of this little business I’m afraid you will really have to hire a pair of actresses for Miss Devine and I are going to scram, and that quickly. And you must forget that we have been here at all.”