A METHOD FOR PROOF
“The proving-up would come from the following fact,” the girl said, equally as businesslike. “Nick said that during that week when he knew the real McCorniss in Cape Town, the latter had, amongst his papers, an addressed mailed envelope that had been returned to him ‘no can find!’ in, I think, Melbourne, Australia. It contained, as he showed Nick one day, his $500 check payable to some artist in New York who had done McCorniss’ portrait, and the $500 was to be payable if and when the Verdi Museum—that’s how Nick was able to remember that Museum all these years—Verdi, see?—almost same as his own name Verdigris—”
“The Verdi Museum up on 175th Street,” put in Derek Wingblade, “was established years ago by Antonio Verdi, the New York Banana King! And is devoted just to portraits of famous American industrialists. It’s a huge honor to hang in it—but you’ve got to be done by a high-class man to hang in it! For—but go ahead.”
“Yes. Well, this artist had evidently sent McCorniss the concrete evidence that he’d gotten the portrait into that museum, and thereby earned same additional half-a-grand fee. But had moved or died or something, and McCorniss wasn’t able to re-connect. But the point is that Nick’s info revealed that the real McCorniss’ picture is in that museum. And it is! For I blew up there this afternoon—and found it. ’Twas painted by a Signe Wellington—”
“Yes,” Wingblade nodded. “A once-great artist. Dead for years.”
“I suppose. Since all this was years ago. Anyway, I sized up that portrait well. For five minutes. For you know yourself, Wingblade, that faces don’t change over the years—at least features don’t. Or—or don’t you admit that?”
“I do indeed,” Derek Wingblade told her. “The bridge of a nose doesn’t change. Or the width of a pair of eyes. Or the shape of a pair of eyebrows. Or—but go ahead?”
“Yes. Well, I knew that if I sized that portrait up well, and then hopped fast and quick to where its ’sposed subject was hanging out, and made a mental comparison, I’d know for myself conclusively that a phony was there. And—but how are you, on holding the details of a phiz in your mind’s eye?”
“Exactly like yourself,” Wingblade admitted. “Or anybody else. I can compare one face with another, in all details, providing I can hop from the one to the other without too long a time between.”
“Okay! That’s the way I am. If I hadn’t seen your phiz tonight when I last opened yonder bureau drawer, I might not have spotted you as quick as I did. Anyway, about this portrait. I studied it well. It’s a bust portrait of McCorniss—in a Willy-off-the-yacht-cap—his mitt on a brass yacht rail—his shirt open—’way open—showing a mole, with a hair in it, on his chest—”
Derek Wingblade laughed. “Wellington was a realist! And died a poor man because of it. But go ahead? This Shelby’s Bluff McCorniss—has he the mole?”
“Nobody but the town undertaker would probably know that today,” she replied. “And, if you’re asking me, I’ll bet that, right this minute, he doesn’t! For people that fix corpses don’t pay any attention to them small things. Anyway,” she went on, “Nick didn’t know—nor could I, if I’d gone down there and sized up this Shelby’s Bluff McCorniss—if he were alive, you know?—known. But I could register the face—the portrait’s face—on my mind’s eye. And then, holding it there, hop like billyhell to Shelby’s Bluff and compare it with the other McCorniss. Which immediately after I came from the museum this afternoon, I made preparations to do. I have train-sickness, you know, like nobody’s business—get sick as a dog after a hundred miles of travel—but I called up the Air Transport Bureau downtown, and found that a huge plane goes out nightly, at 1 a.m. from Arrow Airfield, uptown here, to Hot Springs, Arkansas—but stops around 8 a.m. at an airport in a town on Big River called Boggtown. To drop mail—and take on a special gas that ain’t taxable in that state—and so forth. And from which town—Boggtown—I could get down to Shelby’s Bluff, some day, by train—but not a long-enough jump to get me sick. And the plane, by gosh, could be boarded right on my own doorstep—”
“Boarded—on your own doorstep?” echoed Derek Wingblade. “I fear I don’t understand?”
“I mean,” she said, “that a special bus that travels regularly from the Cunard docks to Arrow Airfield—with certain stop-offs between—stands 10 minutes outside this doorway at 30 minutes to midnight sharp—”
“Why on earth why?”
“Why? Well, for one reason, no parking regulations on Honky-Tonk Row! And for the second reason—as I found by putting the bee on the driver recently—not knowing where he came from, or where he went to—this stop was part of the franchise before this street became Honky-Tonk Row. Back when Hector was a pup.”
“Yes, I get you. I forget that New York has evolved—but franchises follow the old cow paths!”
“I suppose so. Well, I found about the said bus—which, as I say, I’d often seen standing outside here—getting to Arrow Airfield at 20 to 1—and the Air Transport Bureau, not knowing I was a gal of Honky-Tonk Row, and that the said bus literally stopped in my own lap each night, told me obligingly that I could get it, anywhere between 12:15 and 12:35, in front of its main stop, the Upper New York Night Safe Repository and Night Bank—”
“In God’s name—why?—20 full minutes there—of all places?”
She laughed and replied sardonically: “Why, so’s air-travelers can slap their valyables away in one of those two-bit-a-night safety-deposit boxes before taking to the air—and getting burned up in some crash! Or maybe only change their big bills—so’s they can tip the charming air hostesses! Or—” But she grew serious. “I happen to know the answer to that one! Because I made whoopee one night with an employee of that jernt. One of the directors of the Upper New York N.S.R. and N.B. is an owner of that bus line—plus about 20 more intersecting lines—and he makes as many of the buses stop off there as possible.”
“I get it. Bringing all the night customer Mahomets to the business mountain! Well, and so you were all in readiness, eh, to pull out of here tonight—for this Boggtown—and thence Shelby’s Bluff? And—”
“And,” the girl amplified, “compare that portrait—fresh in my mind—with McCorniss. And then, satisfied—as I was cert I was going to be—tell him to kick in, or else! But—” She pointed over her shoulder at the bed where she’d flung her copy of the Evening Handglass. “But you know now what I saw at supper-time tonight. The news that my prospective meal ticket was not only dead—I missed that, so help me, if there was anything in the papers about it—not only, as I say, dead—but buried! Interred, I guess, is the right word in the McCorniss case, since he was put only into a surface ground vault. And my chance to make the fake McCorniss pay is over—finis. But your chance is here—”
“To hand my editor a front-page sensation to the effect that that corpse is a fake McCorniss?”
“Right. And—”
“But you know, don’t you, that no editor would ever touch it just on a mere reporter’s hearsay of a—”
“—clip-girl’s own hearsay?” she put in. “Why, of course I know that. I know that it’s got to be confirmed first. But your chance to confirm that corpse as being the fake McCorniss is right in your mitts. Through either your going up to the Verdi Museum and casing that portrait well, then flying straight to Big River—hopping down to Shelby’s Bluff—getting out to that island with that practically open trick vault, whose unlocked stone lid, it seems, can be tilted back because of some heavy offset concrete cross atop it, and so’s the fake McCorniss, nut as even he was, could get out of the vault in case he got buried alive and came to—the damned old ass!—anyway, where am I?—oh, yes!—well, it all boils down to a matter of you getting out to that island, sizing up that dead man from A to Izzard, including the color of his dead eyes, and whether there’s that mole on his chest and so forth. Or—conversely!—going down to Bleeker’s Island by ox cart, slow train, or what have you—sizing up that corpse—and then flying like billyhell back to New York—and the Verdi Museum. After which you’re ready—with no further delays to shoot the works. Too bad, of course, that you can’t take Verdi’s Museum right down there with you—or, at least, the painting itself!—but alack and alas—”
“Too damned bad, you mean,” Derek Wingblade corrected, “that the now dead but fake McCorniss isn’t some Public Enemy—rather, some ex-—or retired—Public Enemy. And that you and Nick had practically suspected that little ‘fack’—and who. For then—” And he made a curious gesture with his two hands.
She leaned forward slightly. “Yes? If he was—and we knew?—what—then?”
“Why,” he said quietly, “the identifying of him—by even such as I—would be in the bag!”
“It would?” she echoed. “And how?” she asked. And her black eyes were compressed by a puzzled frown.
And because he felt, at this instant, that she knew just a little more about the Shelby’s Bluff matter than she had already revealed, he proceeded to tell her what she wanted to know.