# The Red Book Magazine/Volume 36/Number 4/Never Deal With a Woman

Extracted from Red Book magazine, 1921 Feb, pp. 54–58, 109–110, 112–115. [Heywood Achison / Wallace Ramsey]. Illustrations by Robert W. Stewart may be omitted.
NEVER DEAL WITH A WOMAN
By
MRS. WILSON WOODROW
PHILIP AMES was a tortoise-man—sure, slow, cautious, methodical and very obstinate; and he, blind victim of the law of the attraction of opposites, had fallen in love with and married Betty Dormer, the maddest of hare-women.
She was as inconsequential as a morning breeze, as extravagant as the proverbial inebriated mariner, as daring as steeple-jack. She not only achieved publicity; she had it thrust upon her in a way that made press-agents sicken with envy and caused her husband sleepless nights. She was the tonic that kept old ladies creaking in their rocking chairs on summer porches and saved them from succumbing to fat on the brain. And finally, she was the life-preserver of reporters in the slack news-season. The headline, “Latest Stunt of Most Daring American Sportswoman,” was kept standing in type.
Ames was a very busy man indeed. He had not only the task of husbanding and increasing a large inherited fortune of his own, but' he was the steward of his wife's money. In addition, he had taken on himself the thankless and impossible job of keeping her out of mischief, and conscientiously and stubbornly applied himself to it. It seemed a more thankless and impossible undertaking than usual one Saturday afternoon when he hastened into the Grand Central Terminal to take a train to Chicago for an important business conference.
He was standing dejectedly before one of the gates when he saw in the hurrying throngs a tall, imposing man who had evidently just stepped from a suburban train and whom anyone that knew their New York would have easily recognized as Heywood Achison, the famous criminal lawyer.
Ames waved his hand and caught Achison's quick eye. Immediately the latter swerved from his course and came toward him, noticing as he did so that the other, in spite of his sleek, well-groomed appearance, wore a harassed and despondent air.
As the two shook hands, though, Philip brightened a little. In his present perturbed state of mind the desire was strong for the counsel of some safe person; and who safer than Achison?
After a brief word or two he drew the lawyer away from the group about the gate.
“I've got something on my mind, Achison. I just closed a real-estate deal—some of Betty's property—with that man Sprague, and he made a first payment of thirty thousand dollars in Liberty bonds. It was after banking-hours, and there was nothing to do but chuck them into that old safe of Father's in the library. I can't help feeling uneasy about them, and I'm wondering if you would mind getting me a night watchman or some one of that sort to stand guard over the house while I'm away.”
[Illustration: “In view of your problem,” he replied, “it strikes me as a little odd that the client just announced should be a safe-blower.” ]
“Certainly, if you wish it,” agreed Achison; “but I don't know that it's altogether advisable. Burglars don't often work without being pretty sure what they're going after, and to put on a watchman would simply advertise the fact that you had something worth their efforts. Does anyone beside yourself and Betty know that the bonds are in the house?”
“Betty doesn't,” returned Ames emphatically—“nor any one else.”
“Are the bonds registered?”
“No. As far as that goes, I haven't even got the numbers of them. When Sprague turned them over, I asked him for his list; but he said that he had kept them in his safety-deposit box and had never bothered to list them. I intended to do it myself, but Betty had to start an argument, and before I realized, it was train-time, and I simply had to grab my bags and run. Darn women, anyhow!”
“God bless women!” laughed Achison. “Cheer up. You've had a rough day, and your nerves are a little on edge. But don't worry; your bonds are perfectly safe, and Betty will be all right by the time you get home. What was the matter? Did she find another lady's letter in your coat pocket?”
“No; and she wouldn't bother if she did,” Ames growled. “She's not the jealous kind, and she knows that I wouldn't waste a thought on any other woman—knows it too well. It's only that she came at me for a perfectly incredible sum of money, and refused to let me even know what she wants it for. Lord knows what she's been up to. She—But that's my train they're calling.” he interrupted himself hastily. “I've got to run. So long!”
“Good-by and good luck,” said Achison heartily. “Enjoy yourself; it's a beautiful world, if you don't bother over trifles.”
“I'll make a try at it, anyhow,” Ames called back over his “You're good medicine, Achison.”
He passed through the gate, and the lawyer, deep in thought, walked out into the crowds and noise and late-afternoon sunshine of Forty-second Street.
His car was waiting for him, and he was at once driven to his home in one of the exclusive apartment houses of the upper East Side. There, although he had spent a long day on the links, and was craving a bath and a change into dinner-clothes, he seated himself before the telephone and spent a half-hour or more in inviting a number of guests to one of his justly celebrated Sunday night suppers on the following evening.
When Achison entertained, which was not infrequently, it was always an event. This especial Sunday night he was at his best, urbane, witty, flattering, the center of a laughing group; but anyone watching him closely might have seen that his steely eyes roved frequently over the heads of the company and glanced toward the door. Presently it was with a slight, satisfied lift of his eyebrows that he saw Betty Ames come in. He detached himself easily and went forward to meet her, but not until she was halfway across the room. He was generous; he would not detract from her entrance.
She was all verve and vivacity. Jocund, easy and gay, there was nevertheless a little hedge about her which the too familiar were apt to find had thorns.
“You are cruelly late,” said Achison, taking her hand. “I want you to sit beside me at supper and compose a new dish which my cook and I have spent all afternoon in inventing.”
She made a queer grimace. “Just so it isn't beef-stew. I'm not taking any at present.”
“That means something,” said Achison quickly. “You'll have to tell me later.”
“It means a lot, especially when you translate it into figures,” she said, still enigmatic.
“My dull wits don't grasp it.” He shook his head. as he led her to the table and began mixing deftly in the big silver chafing-dish something which was very far from beef-stew. “You'll have to explain further. And what, by the way, have you been doing to Philip? I saw him at the station yesterday, and he was pretty well down.”
“He hadn't got back his wind,” she retorted coolly. “We went to the mat verbally. I told him I had to have twenty-five thousand dollars at once and no questions asked, and he had heart-failure.”
“Poor Philip!” Achison murmured sympathetically.
“Poor Philip?”—in caustic mockery. “Philip's rich. It's Betty that's poor.”
He twitched up his eyebrows humorously.
“And now you're meditating revenge and reprisals? Fiddlesticks! By the time he gets back, you will both have forgotten what you quarreled about.”
“I may have time to remember it in jail.”
“So bad as that?” He pretended to be aghast. “Never mind; I'll bail you out and undertake your defense. It will be easy; no jury could possibly resist you.
“Seriously, though,” he went on, “I think you misjudge Philip. When he came home yesterday, you caught him on the wrong side at the right moment. He was naturally worried at having to leave those bonds in a flimsy library safe all the time he is away.”
“Bonds?” she repeated, looking up at him in surprise. “What bonds?”
Achison was plainly chagrined at his slip of the tongue.
“Didn't you know?” He bit his lip. “I thought of course that as they belonged to you—”
“My bonds?” She clutched his arm. “What do you mean?”
He threw up his hands with a gesture of resignation.
“Shades of Philip forgive me for inadvertently betraying a confidence!” he said piously. “But as I am in so deep, I might as well go on. The fact is, then, that Philip received a payment late yesterday of thirty thousand dollars in Liberty bonds on some property of yours he had disposed of, and since it was after banking hours and he had to leave almost immediately, he could think of nothing better to do with them than to leave them in his library safe. The bonds are unregistered, and not even listed; so there they lie at the mercy of any chance thief who might come prowling around. Can you wonder that Philip was somewhat disturbed, or that happening to meet me, he discussed the advisability of putting a guard on the house?”
“And did you tell him to do so?” she asked quickly.
“No; it seemed to me there was more security in trusting to the general ignorance that there is anything in the safe worth stealing. Still,” he admitted, “it is undoubtedly taking a chance. Anyone who got possession of those bonds could dispose of them without the slightest danger of detection.”
She looked at him with eyes as big as saucers and mouth open; then she caught her arms at the side, and rocked back and forth in soundless laughter.
Some one along the table claimed her attention just then, and Achison did not get an opportunity to speak to her again until the close of supper.
“We will have to go back and play now,” he said as they rose from the table, “and I sha'n't have a chance really to talk to you this evening; but I'm curious to know just what church you've been robbing that you require twenty-five thousand dollars to make good, and also why you have forsworn beef-stew. Come down to my office tomorrow and tell me about it. I am really very ingenious sometimes in suggesting expedients; that's a part of my trade. And what's the use of having friends. if you don't use them?”
“They'll be used,” she promised. “Somebody's got to pull me out of the deep, boggy hole I'm in, if Philip wont. What time are you least busy?”
“Will three o'clock suit you?”
“Perfectly.”
“Don't forget, then, I shall be watching the clock all day.”
IT would require a wide stretch of the imagination to connect the destinies of Mrs. Philip Ames of Park Avenue with those of Mike Willetts, gangster and gunman, who was earnestly wanted by the police, but had for some time successfully eluded their pursuit. But the imagination, however inelastic, must always yield to the fact; and the truth was that in the invisible world of causes, Mike Willetts' arrest was due entirely to Betty Ames, although she would have been the first to refuse to believe it.
Quite early on Monday morning the District Attorney received an anonymous communication giving a clue to Willetts' whereabouts. He was immediately located and taken into custody, and within an hour his brother, known to the police as Harry Thorne, was at Achison's office—Achison on a former occasion having extricated him from a situation where a ten-year sentence to State's prison seemed the least he could expect.
Asking to see the lawyer, Thorne was informed that Mr. Achison would be fully engaged up until after luncheon, but that if he returned a little before three in the afternoon, he would be granted an interview.
Before that time, however, Mrs. Ames, having the earlier appointment, was shown into the private office, and in that handsome, subdued, strictly legal sanctuary, she found Achison turning over in his hands a bit of jeweled Venetian glass. He set it down reverently as he rose.
“I bought it the other day, and it has just arrived,” he explained, noting her glance toward it, “—one of the sunbeams of a dusty life! Do you know, it has always seemed to me that Whistler was far from inclusive enough when he said: 'The story of the beautiful has never been told; it was hewn in the marbles of the Parthenon, and painted with the birds on the fans of Hokusai.' But to my mind the story of the beautiful is written in many other things—yourself, for instance.”
His eye rested flatteringly upon the picture she made, the fur about her throat, the black frock with its smart, novel touches of white, her slender, steel-buckled shoes.
“Now,”—he leaned back in his chair after he had waved her to a seat opposite, and smiled at her benevolently—“begin. Tell the old Father Confessor why you are off beef, and why you need twenty-five thousand dollars?”
“Because,” she said, “I have made a beef-stew that will cost me just that amount. It was this way: Down in the country the other day a party of us were shooting at a mark, a perfectly innocent and harmless amusement. But as luck would have it, one of my shots went wild and killed a prize Guernsey bull in the next meadow. It belonged to that old skinflint Jonas Watson, and he came storming in a few minutes later, and said that he would have to be reimbursed. Of course, twenty-five thousand is a pretty stiff price; but it was my blunder, and there was nothing to do except pay, and do so out of my own money. When I went to Phil and asked for a check, though, and especially when I named the figure, he lost his mind and raved. Shylock was a model of gracious clemency in comparison.”
“But why didn't you tell him the whole difficulty—let him know that it was an accident?”
She raised her hands and eyes ceilingward.
“He would have died on the spot; a thing of that kind has to be broken to him by degrees. You see,”—resentfully—“every time that he has planned to transfer some of my money from one investment to another, it has always happened that I needed an amount of ready cash, and needed it quick. The last time, he swore that he was going to put his foot down, and that this business of eating into my capital had to stop once and for all. And then, of course, just as he closed up this deal with the Sprague man, old Jonas Watson's bull had to get in the way of my wild shot. I couldn't have done better if I'd aimed at it—bored him right through the eye.”
“But,” argued Achison, still smiling indulgently. “Philip will have to know sooner or later.”
“Not if I can help it,” she affirmed, “not after the way he has acted. Why should I tell him? It's my own money I'm using.”
“There is something in that,” admitted Achison “After all, Philip is rich enough for both of you; why shouldn't he permit you to indulge your charming eccentricities unquestioned? I don't imagine he would allow you to dictate to him regarding the disposition of his own funds.”
“Oh, see him!” she cried “And yet when it comes to mine!” She paused eloquently. “That dominant male attitude of his, that, 'There, there, little woman; you can't understand business!' air, turns me into a wildcat. I'm going to spend every cent I've I got, just to spite him.”
Achison nodded, as though tolerantly condoning human frailty while regretting the exercise of it.
“Really,” he said, “your self-restraint strikes me as rather remarkable. In your present box, most women would got that safe of Philip's open some way, even if they blew up the house to do it. Disingenuous, of course but a thoroughly natural impulse.”
She gave him a funny little side-glance, wrinkling up her nose
“Don't credit me with too much forbearance,” she disclaimed. “I spent half the night twisting the knob of that old safe. I even tried to pry it open with a table-knife.”
He threw back his head, and the office resounded to his hearty laughter.
“What a delightfully feminine confession! Ah, we all have our moments of temptation. A corking joke on old Phil if you had succeeded.” Then more seriously:
“However, the only sensible course for you—the only thing that I can advise—is to hold off Watson until Phil returns, and then very humbly confess what you have done, appear properly contrite and all that, and persuade him to settle.”
She threw up her head with a flash in her eyes
“Just what Philip would most enjoy! Humbly confess, indeed! Why should I? It was an accident. I didn't shoot the beast on purpose. And I am the sole loser. It's my money that I'm asking for, not Phil's. I see myself getting on my knees to him for it—”
It was at this precise juncture that a clerk entered and murmured something in Achison's ear.
“Tell him to wait a few minutes,” was the response. “And by the way, bring me those Upham papers to sign. I must get them out of the way before I see anybody.”
As the clerk left the room, Achison turned again to Betty: there was a quizzical expression on his face.
“What are you thinking?” she asked.
“Only that in view of your problem,” he replied, “it strikes me as a little odd that the client just announced should be a safe blower.”
She looked up quickly. “A safe-blower?”
“Yes, a fellow generally known as Harry Thorne, although he has, of course, a string of other aliases.”
“You're trying to make fun of me,” she scoffed. “I know. It's probably some perfectly respectable citizen.”
“No—on my honor. The man is a bona-fide burglar—top notch, too, I understand—although you'd never think it to see him. He looks more like a broker. I suppose he wants me to take the case of his brother who was arrested this morning for murder.” He sighed and ran his fingers through his hair. “I am becoming more and more like my famous prototype—Jaggers in 'Great Expectations,' wasn't it? I can't go into the street without having them clamoring about me.”
“See what it is to be celebrated,” she said absently, her eyes fixed on a spot in the rug. Then with a start she came back to the moment. “Do forgive me for taking your time. It's been a comfort just to talk to you.”
“'Time is for slaves,'” he quoted, as he too rose. “I'm afraid that I've been of no earthly use to you. But keep up your courage, and I am sure that everything will come out right. You and I will use our combined influence with Philip when he returns and make him see reason. Good-by.”
HE did not accompany her farther than the door; and once in the outer office, Betty paused to adjust her fur, at the same time taking a rapid but comprehensive survey of the man who had looked up quickly on the opening of the door and had half-risen from his seat.
She got the impression of a slender young fellow, a little too modishly dressed, suggesting sartorially a movie hero or the men's-wear advertisements. Self-expression was, however, permitted only in his clothes; for his impassive face revealed nothing, and neither did the cool, light eyes which returned her scrutiny.
Betty swept on, but just as she made to open the outer door her hand-bag slipped from her wrist and fell to the floor with a little silver clatter.
[Illustration: He twirled the antiquated combination..... The door swungopen. Thorne reached inside, and handing the package of bonds to Mrs. Ames, closed the safe.]
Thorne recovered it and handed it back to her.
“Thank you,” she murmured with her gleaming smile. “So stupid of me!” And then, as he was about to turn away: “I wonder if you're not the man Mr. Achison was just speaking about. He said you were so awfully clever, that I am sure you can help me out. There's an obstinate safe in my house that I must get open, and I can't remember the combination.”
There was no flicker of either interest or surprise in his face; his muscles were too well controlled for that; but his eyes bored into hers like gimlets.
“I don't know what you mean,” he said. “I guess you've made a mistake.” Then, as she continued to look at him appealingly, he asked roughly: “What is this, anyway—a plant?”
“A plant?” Her brows came together in a puzzled frown. “Now it is I who don't know what you mean. Oh, you must aid me.” She made an artfully helpless gesture with her hands. “I simply must get that safe open.”
He rubbed his chin thoughtfully, taking in every detail of her appearance with wary, sidewise glances.
“What is it that you're aching for—money, jewels, papers, what?”
“Liberty bonds,” she murmured. “And I'll pay. I'll pay a thousand dollars to whoever opens that safe for me.”
“Why don't you get the plumber or a blacksmith, then?”
She took these rude questions meekly for her.
“There are reasons why it must be kept quite secret.”
“Whose Liberty bonds are they?” She thought his skeptical cross-examination would never end.
“Mine. But I don't know the combination of the safe, and my husband is out of town. When he comes home, he will think that thieves have broken in and taken them.”
“Oh, you're staging a burglary? Nice dope! Say, what are you—a newspaper woman trying to get a story out of me for the Sunday supplement, or a lady dick?”
She clicked her teeth in impatience, and glanced uneasily toward Achison's door.
“Oh, for heaven's sake! How absurd! You can easily find out all about me. Here.” She drew her visiting card from the bag and gave it to him.
He studied the inscription carefully, looking doubtfully from it to her.
“I will open the hall door myself,” she urged; “the address is on the card. At ten—no, eleven o'clock tonight. Don't ring, tap. You will come?”
“Maybe.”
She drew a breath of relief. “And don't mention our talk to Mr. Achison; he might tell my husband. Eleven o'clock!” She slipped through the door, closing it noiselessly behind her.
Two minutes later Thorne was admitted to the inner office.
“Well, Harry, I can guess what you're here for.” Achison looked up from the papers in which he was immersed. “You want me to take Mike's case? I saw by the noon editions that they've got him.”
“I'll say it ought to be an easy case to win, Mr. Achison.” But his tone of assurance failed to conceal his underlying dejection. “Mike's innocent. We can prove a cast-iron alibi.”
“That's good, that's good. But I am taking fewer cases all the time, and only important ones. I'd be dead, otherwise. And my fees are high, you know. How much can you and your friends raise?”
“Somewhere around ten thousand. I've got a sort of list here.” Thorne produced a slip of paper from his pocket and laid it on the table.
Achison smiled cynically as he glanced over it.
“Mike's innocent, of course; but it will take the deuce and all—far more than any alibi—to convince a jury of that fact.” He sighed and leaned his head on his hand. “I am not so young as I was, Harry, and the emotional strain of such a trial as Mike's will be tremendous. I'd throw myself into it heart and soul. I always do, you know. I become one with my client, palpitate with his hopes, suffer with his despair. I am literally pleading my own cause, fighting for my own life.
“You see how it is.” He drew his hand wearily across his forehead. “I'm sorry, Harry, honestly sorry. But you know and I know that they've got the goods on Mike, and I couldn't take his case in my present state of health—I hate to say it, my boy, but I must—for less than forty thousand dollars.”
The safe-blower looked back at him a little dazed.
“Win or lose?” he asked incredulously.
“Win or lose,” repeated Achison firmly. “Only I don't lose Harry.”
“You oughtn't to, for that money,” remarked Thorne with blunt candor. His eyes roved about the table, and then fastened themselves to the same spot in the rug which had engrossed Betty Ames' attention ten minutes before.
“Well.” He gathered up his hat and stick. “Look here, Mr. Achison: give me until tomorrow, and I can tell you better about it. What with the high cost of living and all, it's doubtful if the boys can come across as strong as that; but—well, anyhow, I'll let you know tomorrow.”
“Very well. Good-by, my boy.” Achison returned to his papers
But Harry still halted in the doorway.
“Swell dame that was here just before me. A 'tec'?” he asked.
Achison looked bewildered. It took him a moment or two to recall Betty's visit. Then he broke into a peal of laughter.
“A tec' indeed!” He wiped his glasses. “I'm afraid you're not up on the social register That, Harry, was Mrs. Philip Ames, the wife of one of our best-known millionaires. She's in some trouble too, poor lady.
“Harry,”—he frowned thoughtfully,—“take the advice of age and experience, and never have any business dealings with a woman unless the terms of Darling creatures, it are down in black and white. Darling creatures but uncertain—uncertain.”
[Illustration: “It means a lot, especially when you translate it into figures," she said, still enigmatic. ]
“I guess you're right, at that,” Thorne agreed. “But she's there with the clothes! Nothing uncertain about that dress, I'll say, especially the price. Well, 'Until tomorrow, then,' as we say in the movies, Mr. Achison.” He left the office with a step noticeably lighter than when he had entered.
THAT evening Betty Ames elected to dine at home and alone. She scarcely tasted her dinner, and afterward sat turning over the pages of a book or else roving restlessly about the room. As the hour neared eleven, she went out into the empty hall, made sure that the servants had vanished for the night, and then sat down to wait, anxiously watching the tall grandfather's clock in the corner, and wishing that she could either accelerate or silence its rhythmic, monotonous ticking. When the hands at last indicated the hour, she started indecisively; then, her lips tightening as she remembered her grievance, she crept nearer the door. There was a faint tap from the outside twice repeated. She turned the knob.
Silently as a shadow Thorne slipped inside.
“Well, I'm here,” he said in a low voice. “Now, where's that kitchen range you wanted fixed?”
“She led him swiftly to the library, where all the lights were on, making a brilliant illumination. He closed the door behind him and leaned against it, his quick eyes exploring every inch of the room while she drew aside the curtain which concealed the safe. Then, turning the key in the door, he walked over and examined the old-fashioned receptacle minutely, never touching it, however. His inspection over, he faced her again.
“Now, lady,” he said, “you and me have got to have an understanding. I aint any too particular about tackling a job of this kind—you get me? There's too many chances of a comeback. You want some bonds out of that safe, and you want me to open it for you. Well, what next?”
“What next?” she repeated. “Why, I pay you, and you go. The state of the room and a window open somewhere will show that a burglary has been committed during the night.”
“Yes,” he sneered, “that's all right for you. But how about me? Maybe you'll find yourself more up against it than you think. The police has got trained eyes for these planted burglaries. You might find it convenient to remember that you caught a glimpse of somebody who describes a good deal like me—or some one outside might have spotted me coming in or going out. I've got to have a guarantee before I tinker with your bird-cage. If you honestly want those bonds, just sign this first.” He threw a bit of paper on the table.
She drew it toward her, and read:
    I agree to pay Harry Thorne one thousand dollars for confidential services in opening the safe in my house.
(Signed) ——
“Never,” she cried. “It's absurd. Of course, I wont sign that.”
“All right.” He picked up the slip. 'I'm on my way, then. No harm done. Good night.”
“No,” she said vehemently, catching his arm as he started toward the door. “Wait. I'll sign. But do hurry up and get the thing over.”
As he again laid the paper on the table, she dipped a pen in ink and hastily wrote her name.
“It's only for my own protection, you understand,” he explained as he folded the agreement and placed it carefully in an inside pocket. “I aint got a doubt in the world but what you're on the level; but as—well, a friend of mine—as he said only today: 'Harry,' he says, 'when you have any business dealings with a woman, see that the terms are set down in black and white and her signature is on the dotted line.'”
She made no answer other than a gesture of impatience; so, in deference to her obvious desire for haste, he produced from various receptacles about his person the different parts of a finely-tempered drill and joined them together.
“How long will it take?” she questioned as she watched him fussing over the instrument.
“Oh, a half-hour or so. And a lot of hard work for nothing,” he grumbled. “If it was just opening up the old box you wanted, I could do it in three minutes.”
“Then, for heaven's sake, go ahead and do it!” she exploded.
“Fair enough.” He swiftly restored the sections of the drill to the places from which he had taken them. “I only thought you wanted some extra scenery.”
Slipping on a pair of rumpled cotton gloves, he stepped over to the safe, bending down and listening carefully as he twirled the antiquated combination. The tenseness of his pose, the narrowing of his eyelids, the tight drawing back of his lips over his teeth gave an almost panther-like suggestion to the concentration he was bestowing on his task.
A turn or so of the knob to the right, two or three to the left; and then in less time than he had promised her, the iron door swung open.
THORNE reached inside, and handing the package of bonds to Mrs. Ames, closed the safe again and carefully polished the knob with a bit of greasy rag. Then he stood up and confronted her.
Betty had clutched the bonds, fingering them exultantly, and now her smile was sparkling with a reckless joy and relief, as she took from her precious package a one-thousand-dollar bond and held it out to him graciously.
“I don't think I have ever paid out money with more satisfaction,” she said with her best great-lady manner. “You have been of inestimable service to me.”
“Let me see them.” He snatched the bonds from her hand and rapidly counted them over. “Righto!” There was an incandescent gleam in his cold, light eyes. “I guess I've got a whole lot more pressing need for these than a rich lady like you,” he said, and put them in his pocket.
For a moment she stared, incapable of believing the evidence of her eyes, and then sprang at him wildly, recoiling just as sharply as he thrust the muzzle of a small automatic into her face.
Angrily, and as through a mist, she saw his face beyond it, the nostrils dilated and showing white dints at the corners, his lips curling back in a wolfish smile.
“You—you low thief!” she gasped.
“Same to you,” he jeered insolently. “Now I'm going to walk out the front door, and I guess you wont scream, nor phone to the station-house, neither—not with this receipt in my pocket.”
She ran after him, catching his arm and trying to hold him back; but he menaced her again with the pistol.
“You shut up and stay in this room till I get out, or I'll give you one in the jaw that'll put you to sleep for an hour.”
Betty Ames obeyed him. She needed no putting to sleep. She simply fainted quietly into the nearest chair.
WHEN she came to, she crawled onto a couch and lay there until nearly morning. Finally she summoned sufficient strength to creep upstairs to her room and undress. She did not follow out any of her somewhat elaborate plans for “staging” the evidences of a burglary.
Unable to sleep, and spurred by the imperative need for action of some sort, ten o'clock found her at Achison's office. Her spirits began to revive as she reached the building; if, anyone could recover the bonds for her, it was he. Surely it would be easy for him to force Thorne to disgorge.
Her name was sent in, and the lawyer received her almost immediately.
“What pleasant wind has blown you here again?” he asked as she entered.
“Not a nice wind at all, but a bitter east one,” she said shortly. “I might as well tell you at once and get it over. That man who was waiting to see you yesterday afternoon—well, I spoke to him, and engaged him to come to the house last night. It seemed an act of Providence—then. He opened the safe in the library for me, and got out the bonds: and then,”—she stamped her foot in angry recollection—“he held me back at the point of a pistol and made off with them.”
“What? What are you telling me?” His tone was incredulous, horrified.
In response to his sharp questioning, she went more into detail. When she had finished the story, he sat thinking, his face set into stern lines of concentration.
“There's apparently only one thing to do,” he said at last: “the matter will have to be reported to the police, and Thorne placed under arrest. That should have been done last night, before he had a chance to dispose of the bonds or conceal them.”
As he spoke, he reached for the telephone; but she grasped his arm before he could lift the receiver.
“No, no!” she cried. “You don't fully understand. He made me sign a paper—a sort of an agreement hiring him to open the safe for me.”
“But that was under duress—with a pistol pointed at your head.”
“No,” she confessed, “it was before he started in. He wouldn't move a hand until I had signed. So I—”
Achison cut her short with an impatient gesture.
“What next?” He threw out his hands. “Of course, in that case, we can't go to the police. It is too ridiculous.”
“Surely, though, this man will listen to you,” she pleaded. “He wants you to take his brother's case, you told me. Why, Mr. Achison, you simply must make him give me back those bonds. He told me that he had a very pressing need for them. Maybe he meant that he was planning to pay your fee with a part of them.”
There was a momentary hard flash in Achison's eye.
“No,” he said decisively, “that matter was all arranged yesterday afternoon. Just to satisfy you—”
He turned over some papers on his desk and drew out a memorandum on which was written in an illiterate hand a list of names with varying amounts set down opposite them, the whole making a total of ten thousand dollars. This he handed over to her.
“That covers my fee,” he said briefly. “As you see, it has no possible connection with your loss. However, I shall get into immediate touch with Thorne, as you suggest, and you may be sure that I will spare no pressure, either by threats or persuasion, that I am able to exert. In the meantime, my dear child, let me beg you to go home and rest. Try to put this miserable affair out of your mind as much as possible. I promise that you shall hear from me the moment I have anything to communicate.”
Betty returned home more disappointed over the result of her visit than she would have cared to admit. She felt that Achison, for all his promises of aid, was rather hopeless as to an actual recovery of the bonds. And failure was something she was temperamentally unable to face. If Achison was going to sit placidly by and let the bonds go, she was not.
Was there not some one else to whom she could turn for advice, some one in whose judgment and real coöperation she could trust? But not a woman—a woman wouldn't know what to do. Mentally she ran over the list of her various men acquaintances, dismissing each from consideration for this reason or that, until at last she happened to think of Wallace Ramsey.
He was indubitably the one person for her purpose, quiet, discreetly reticent, a gentleman and clever. She wasted no time in hunting up his telephone number; and finding him at his apartment, she asked him if he wouldn't come to her house as soon as possible, as she wished to consult him upon a matter of great personal importance.
WITHIN fifteen minutes Ramsey arrived. He was a tall, dark young man who gave the impression of dependability. Most of his life had been spent abroad, and he had only recently come to New York as a representative of one of the French journals to write up certain phases and characters of American social life.
There was nothing aggressive about him; yet when he was shown into Betty Ames' sitting-room, he brought with him an atmosphere of optimism and resolution which insensibly buoyed up her courage.
“I'm in an awful mess, Wallace,” she began at once, “and I've got to confide in some one; so I turned to you.”
“Well, I'm here at your service,” he responded. “Just how awful a mess is it?”
“Really awful.” And then somewhat shamefacedly she gave him a recital of events commencing with the night of Achison's party.
At the mention of the lawyer's name, Ramsey sat up as if he had received an electric shock.
“Achison?” There was a queer flash in his dark eyes. “So he is in it? Go on; I am anxious to hear the rest.”
After that he did not interrupt again, but leaning forward listened to her story with the closest attention. When she had finished, he made no immediate comment, but sat back gnawing his lip and tapping his fingers on the arms of his chair, his eyes fixed far beyond her.
“What does Achison have to say about the matter?” he asked at last. “You have reported to him of course?”
“Well, he was awfully indignant and distressed. At first, he was going to notify the police; but when he found out about the paper I had signed, he dropped that idea very quickly.”
“In other words, he made it very plain to you that your hands are tied?”
“Yes; that was practically his attitude. And I don't understand why!”—resentfully. “When I went to him, I had scarcely a doubt but that he would straighten things out for me. I thought that, since he had charge of the brother's case, he could easily make some sort of an arrangement with Thorne. You see, it had struck me that possibly the reason Thorne had taken the bonds was in order to pay Mr. Achison's fee.”
Ramsey lifted his head as if something that was puzzling him had been faintly illuminated.
“A woman's intuition,” he muttered; then to her: “Did you mention anything of the sort to Achison?”
“Yes, I did; but he explained to me that the question of his fee had all been settled yesterday afternoon and could not possibly be connected with the robbery. To convince me, he showed me a slip of paper with a list of names and the amount each had agreed to subscribe. Altogether, it made about ten thousand dollars.”
“I see.” Ramsey's tone was a bit disappointed. “It proved something of a blind alley, eh?”
Again he sat for several minutes in silence, knitting his brows.
“Mrs. Ames,” he said finally, looking her directly in the eyes, “do you believe that this was a matter of chance, that it all just happened?”
She looked back at him bewildered. “Of course it happened,” she said. “Do you think I dreamed it?”
“No. But I believe there was a design behind all this seeming happening; and the more you tell me of the circumstances, the more I am convinced of it. It is all too—well, coincidental. Now, I am going to give you a shock. Your friend Achison is at the bottom of the whole thing.”
“Achison!” she repeated in uncomprehending amazement. “Wallace, you've gone crazy. Why, there would be no reason for it. He is rich and—”
“How do I know his motives, or what gaps there may be between his income and his expenditures?” he demanded impatiently. “I do know something, though, of his consummate trickery. He shows one phase of himself to the world; but on another side, he is X, an unknown quantity, or a quantity known only to himself.
“I have had some personal experiences with him,”—his face darkened and there was a sudden vindicative gleam in his eyes,—“which have proved decidedly enlightening. I'm on that man's trail, I tell you, and I'm on it until I get him.”
HE saw the dubious, questioning look in her eyes, and caught himself up with a slight shrug of the shoulders.
“Naturally,” he resumed his even tone, “you think I am speaking from prejudice or personal enmity. But wait until I have finished. Let us go over the circumstances as you have told them. In the first place, Achison informed you of those bonds and where they were, explaining also that they were easily negotiable. I don't believe that that was a slip of the tongue on his part; his tongue is too well trained to slip, unless he means it to do so. Then he suggested that you come to his office the next afternoon at three o'clock. The burglar also happened to be there. How do you know that Thorne's very pat appearance was not all arranged beforehand?”
“Ridiculous!” Betty broke in quickly. “Thorne came there to see about his brother's defense. Mr. Achison couldn't have known Sunday evening that the brother would be arrested the next morning.”
“A weak spot in my chain,” conceded Ramsey, “although it doesn't at all affect my belief in Achison's complicity. But let it pass for the present. The main point is that Thorne appeared while you were there, and that Achison was very careful to inform you of the fact, and also to let you know that he was a safe-blower. Mark this too: Thorne was not waiting in the large outer office according to your story, but in a small reception-room adjoining Achison's office, where you likewise were shown. And when you left, Achison said good-by to you in his inner office; he did not even go with you to the door of the reception-room, much less to the elevator. The punctilious, Chesterfieldian Mr. Achison, who prides himself on his old-school manners! Thus, Thorne and yourself were entirely alone together, and you were allowed plenty of time for conversation without being interrupted.
“Mrs. Ames,”—he rapped the table sharply,—“can't you see how it all dovetails?”
“It seems too preposterous,” she objected. “I can't quite take it in.”
“Think it over,” he advised. “Go over it all bit by bit, and I believe you will come to my conclusions. And now”—he picked up his hat and stick—“I am going to scout about a little in certain circles. I've been doing some work lately which has taken me more or less into the underworld, and I've made a valuable friendship or so. If I hear anything that will help clear up the situation, I will let you know at once.”
“Oh, but time is pressing! Phil will be home the last of the week.”
“I know. But let me tell you, Mrs. Ames, you are no more anxious to recover your bonds than I am to show up Achison in some of his sinister activities. That's all I'm living for at present.”
FORTUNATELY for the state of Mrs. Ames' nerves Ramsey telephoned her early that evening, and soon afterward made his appearance. There was something in his expression and manner, a sort of repressed triumph, which stirred a thrill of hope in her; and seeing this, he made a hasty protest.
“Don't expect too much,” he warned as “I only know a little; but it is something, and I thought you would like to be told.”
“Oh, go on, go on!” she urged
“To begin then, I have found that an anonymous note was received by the district attorney's office early Monday morning, which divulged the hiding-place of your cracksman's brother, and, of course, led to his immediate arrest. Who sent that note, or what clues to the writer it may contain would be very difficult for us to find out. Those things are not usually revealed except in the course of an official investigation. Probably, to you or me, the district attorney would even deny that there had been any such communication.
“The point is, though, that Thorne's brother was arrested on Monday morning, as I say, and that within an hour afterward—I have positive assurance of this—Thorne was at Achison's office. Achison was too busy to see him at the time, and he was told to come back again at three in the afternoon. Do you begin to see, now, that your mutual appearance there at the same hour was probably less of a coincidence than you have imagined?
“What passed between Thorne and Achison at their interview I am, of course, unable to say. I only know that Thorne submitted a list of contributors to a defense-fund—the same memorandum slip probably that was shown to you—and that the offer was refused. Then on the following day Thorne submitted an amended list with every one of the original subscriptions more than trebled, although not one of the contributors had been asked for an additional cent, or was in any position to give it. One of Thorne's closest pals told me this. They are discussing nothing else, he says, but Harry's haul and where he got it, and the size of Achison's fee.”
Betty's eyes had dilated.
“Oh, if it is true!” Her voice was harsh with anger. “If Achison has done only half that you accuse him of, Wallace Ramsey, I tell you I'll make him suffer for it.”
“I only wish I could be as sure that he will suffer as that I'm right.” Ramsey shook his head. “But to be perfectly frank with you, Mrs. Ames, we are still not much farther along than we were at the beginning. You and I can make out a pretty convicting indictment against him to our own minds, but we can't act on it. I might go to his office, and laying the conclusions we have reached before him, charge him with being a receiver of stolen property and demand the return of your bonds. He would, if I judge him correctly simply order me out of the place, and be quite safe in doing so.
“You he would treat as an hysterical woman whose mind was overwrought by this experience, well knowing that if you went to your friends with the story,—which he is quite sure you will not,—they would doubtless take the same view.”
“Then there is nothing we can do?” she cried despairingly. “I shall have to tell Philip what a dreadful fool I have been.”
“No!” He spoke vigorously. “We're not through yet. I've got a plan that may work. But it all depends on you—whether or not you've got the nerve to put it through.”
She flung back her head. “I'll try anything, take any chance. There's nothing I would not do to get those bonds. You see,” her lip quivered, “I'm really absurdly fond of Philip. Only this morning—I got the sweetest letter from him begging my forgiveness for leaving in such a grouch, and telling me that as soon as he came back he would give me the twenty-five thousand I had asked for, not out of my money but as a present from himself. I'd love to show you that letter, only—
“But we are wasting time,” she broke off abruptly. “Tell me any plan, any ideas you may have.”
RAMSEY unfolded his scheme. She took it up eagerly, and together they went over it in detail and elaborated it. Then on the following morning, as soon as he might reasonably be expected at his office, she called up Achison and asked when she could see him.
In reply he told her that he could not come to her house until late in the afternoon, as he was engaged in court that day; but if she could arrange to come down to his office at once, he would make time to see her.
It is doubtful if Betty Ames ever before put on a hat and snatched up her furs with so little thought for her appearance. In an incredibly short time, considering the traffic regulations, she was shown into his presence.
He rose hastily from his desk at the sight of her and bent over her hand, expressing his solicitude with his customary grace of utterance. It was intensely annoying to him, he assured her, that he had made so little headway in the affair of the bonds since he had last seen her.
“I have cross-examined that villain Thorne,” he went on, his brow darkening, “and I threatened to throw up his brother's case unless he immediately returned your property. He swears, of course, that he took nothing except the single one-thousand-dollar bond you promised him, and that you are now distorting the facts for purposes of your own. Pure invention, we know; but with that signed agreement of yours in his possession, what can we do? It is his word against yours, and—you will pardon me—your conduct in the matter has not been such as to create confidence.”
She looked back at him without replying, but there was something in her undaunted smile, the faint sparkle of malice in her eyes, that made him vaguely uneasy.
“Are you going to refuse the brother's case, then?” she asked.
He shrugged his shoulders. “I tried to frighten Thorne by saying so, but he was too clever for me. You see, the arrangement for conducting the case, including the payment of my retainer, had all been completed before the robbery took place. I am convinced, too, that Willetts is innocent, and I feel it a matter of public duty to clear him if possible.”
“I see.” Her voice was noncommittal but the smile lingered. “But it was impossible for me to sit idly waiting, Mr Achison; and so, although I did not take your first suggestion and go to the police I did put a private detective on the case.”
THE paper-cutter which he was turning over in his hands clattered slightly against the desk.
“Yes; and naturally you are disappointed at the result?” His suave was tinged with acerbity.
“Not wholly so,” she corrected. “The detective, in fact, has discovered quite a number of things which have surprised me enormously. He tells me, for instance, that not one of Thorne's friends has actually increased his subscription to the Willetts defense fund, but that Thorne himself has 'tilted'— Isn't that the word?—the amount contributed by each so as to quadruple the original total. He says that crooks generally are talking of nothing else but the size of the fee you are receiving. Forty thousand dollars they name as the figure—which would be the original ten thousand tilted by just the amount that was taken from Philip's safe.”
The veins on Achison's forehead swelled.
“Ridiculous!” he exclaimed, his deep voice hoarse with anger. “My dear lady you seem to have an infinite capacity for mixing yourself up with rascals of every description. This detective is, of course a blackmailer, who, knowing that you are a rich woman, is simply playing you for more money. Bring him to me, and I will choke the lie out of him.”
“No.” She leaned forward in her chair, and looked at him steadily. “My confidence has been so shaken that I no longer know whom to trust; and since I don't feel as if I could bear the thing all alone, I have resolved, fully acknowledging my own folly and recklessness, to lay the whole chain of circumstances before—”
“Philip?” He could not conceal the sneer. “Well, thank heaven, I shall have little difficulty in convincing him that this infamous complicity on my part at which you are hinting is merely a figment of your own disturbed imagination. I have every sympathy for you, Mrs. Ames, but—”
Her eyes flashed, but she kept herself well in hand.
“I did not mean Philip,” she said gently. “I mean my uncle, Judge Hampton, chairman of the Grievance Committee of the Bar Association.”
There was not a sound in the room. Achison sat motionless. Who knows what pictures cinematographed themselves before his eyes—visions of a searching investigation, of possible disbarment, of professional oblivion and disgrace?
“Your uncle?” he repeated in polite surprise. The color had left his face, but there was not a tremor in his voice.
“Yes. Had you forgotten—or didn't you know? He is such a dear old man, and has always been so fond of me. He would forgive me a good deal.”
Achison thoughtfully lighted a cigarette, and then turned toward her with his persuasive, delightful smile.
“I wouldn't, my dear Mrs. Ames; I really wouldn't, if I were you. Why should you bring a pain of worry to those who love you, and humiliation upon yourself? Chance has made me the sole repository of this secret of yours; let it remain so.”
“But?” she began.
“I know!”—with a wave of his hand. “I know just what you are going to say: that doesn't give you back your bonds. But just a moment! It may be that in the very tenseness of my thought on this matter I have overlooked some very simple solution. There must be a key to it somewhere; there is always a loophole, you know, if we can but find it. Let me think undisturbed a minute or two.”
He bent his head in his hands, his eyes closed. Presently he looked up, his face alive with a new idea.
“I have it!” he exclaimed. “What is the one thing that will bring Thorne to book? Publicity. I will tell him that you have determined to give the whole story to the newspapers, and show him how much notoriety would seriously militate against his brother's chances. He will understand. Thank the Lord, the suggestion came to me in time.
“I will have him here in ten minutes.” He rose briskly. “And suppose, while I put the screws on him, you wait in the small outer office?”
“Certainly.” She turned toward the door with alacrity.
FOR nearly half an hour she waited in the little room, now walking up and down the floor, and now drumming absently on the window-pane, and gazing over the roof-tops at the bay.
Then Achison appeared. He was waving an envelope in his hand, his expression was jubilant.
“Here they are, safe and sound! The threat of publicity, presented as I was able to put it to him, threw the fear of God into him just as we hoped.” He clapped his hand to his forehead. “What a relief!”
“What a relief!” she echoed as she clasped the package to her heart. “Back they go where they belong, and Phil will never know what I have done.”
“That is wise.” He was benevolently approving. “And now, my dear child, don't you think you owe me an apology. Your unjustifiable suspicions of me were only natural, in your state of mind, I suppose, but they wounded me deeply. Why, even were I the deep-dyed villain that you thought me,”—he gave a-mellow laugh—“give me credit at least for respecting the convénances. Don't you know that in the best crook circles they never practice their nefarious wiles upon their friends? It simply isn't done.”
Half yielding to his compelling magnetism, half resisting it, almost persuaded but not quite, she gave him an enigmatic smile.
“I never apologize, Mr. Achison; I simply ignore. Good-by.”
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1935, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 88 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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