MRS3 The Velvet Hand (7 page)

BRICKLEY, New York
July 5th.

Have Cardozo pass on Mr. Greenfield's endorsement of cancelled New Process certificates. Has Cook still got the cancelled check or checks that he gave Mr. Greenfield in payment for his stock? STOREY.

STOREY, Crillon, Paris
July 6th.

Cook had cancelled check to Greenfield framed and hung over his desk. Was largest check he ever drew. Cook most obliging. Brought me cancelled check and certificates this morning, and I immediately carried them to Cardozo. Cardozo says signatures on Greenfield's letters to Cook, endorsements on stock certificates, and endorsement on check all written by the same hand. May be forgeries. Will give you a final opinion after he has made a further study of Mr. Greenfield's handwriting.

The check dated July 28th, a year ago. It was deposited in the Interstate National. Besson positively asserts Mr. Greenfield never had an account there, but bank officials state he kept a varying sum on deposit for nearly a year, and the account was closed only a short time before his death. President states he tried to establish personal relations with Mr. Greenfield, but though his letters were courteously answered, he never succeeded in seeing him. The account was opened by mail. BRICKLEY.

BRICKLEY, New York
July 6th.

Good work, Bella! See if you can trace through any stock exchange house the sale of a large amount of bonds to Mr. Greenfield in the days following July 28th a year ago. Don't go to the individual firms, but to the governors of the exchange, who have their own system of communicating with the members. Get the numbers of the bonds if possible. STOREY.

STOREY, Crillon, Paris
July 8th.

Have found Frank Carter. Now working for Mackubin, Goodrich & Co. Intelligent and well-disposed lad of 19. Cable questions. BRICKLEY.

BRICKLEY, New York
July 8th.

From Carter I want full particulars of luncheon served Mr. Greenfield day of death. STOREY.

STOREY, Crillon, Paris
July 9th.

Lunch consisted of two chicken sandwiches and bottle of ginger ale. Brought to the office at 1:15. Carter took tray from waiter and, carrying it into inner office, placed it on the table (D) just inside door. See plan I sent you by mail. Mr. Greenfield was then sitting at his desk by the window (A), with Miss Gowan at his right hand taking dictation. Mr. Greenfield turned as Frank entered saying: "Here it is! I'm thirsty." It was fifty minutes later when Miss Gowan raised the alarm of Mr. Greenfield's seizure. In the confusion that followed, the luncheon was forgotten until about 3:30, when the waiter came for the dishes. Mr. Greenfield's body had then been taken home. Frank gathered up the dishes and handed them to the waiter. BRICKLEY.

BRICKLEY, New York
July 9th.

More particulars. Vitally important. Have Frank enumerate every article upon tray and describe exact position and condition of every article when he gathered them up. STOREY.

STOREY, Crillon, Paris
July 10th.

It was a small, round silver-plated tray covered with a napkin. Upon it (a) a plate bearing two chicken sandwiches white bread, white meat only, divided in half by a diagonal cut. (b) A pair of glass pepper and salt shakers with silver-plated tops, (c) A pint bottle of ginger ale, C. & C. brand. This was lying on its side, (d) A bottle opener, (e) A thick, plain glass like restaurants use. (f) A folded napkin, (g) A napkin spread over the whole.

Carter showed some hesitancy in answering my questions about the lunch, but I finally elicited the fact that he had eaten and drunk what remained and was reluctant to confess it. When he went into the private office to get the things for the waiter, the tray was still on the table inside the door where he had set it down. The bottle had been opened, and cap and opener lay on the tray. The bottle stood there half empty. The glass was beside it quite empty. Frank smelled of the glass to see if Mr. Greenfield had had a highball but couldn't smell anything whatever. The plate with the sandwiches had been carried over to Mr. Greenfield's desk. Also folded napkin and pepper and salt shakers. Only a single bite had been taken from one of the sandwiches. The napkin, partly unfolded, lay underneath Mr. Greenfield's desk.

Here is a new fact I drew from Frank. About fifteen minutes after he had carried the lunch into the private office, Miss Gowan came out and went to her desk, where she sat down but didn't do anything. Carter noticed that she was just fooling with a pencil. This was not like her. He was going to chaff her about it, but checked himself. She was not one that you could fool with, he said. After two or three minutes she got up and went back into the private office, letting herself in with her key. I put this up to Besson, and he confirms it. He just forgot to mention it in his statement. After Miss Gowan had gone, the boy glanced at the paper lying on her desk. Among aimless marks she had written the telephone number Plaza 5771. This is Dr. Strailock's number. BRICKLEY.

BRICKLEY, New York
July 10th.

Fine! Is there a wash basin in Mr. Greenfield's private office? STOREY.

STOREY, Crillon, Paris
July 10th.

No. Wash basin in outer office.

BRICKLEY.

BRICKLEY, New York
July 10th.

Was there a water cooler? None marked on plan.

STOREY.

STOREY, Crillon, Paris
July 10th.

Yes. Cooler supplied by Red Deer Water Co. Removed by them when offices were vacated. Hence not on plan. It stood alongside table (D), on your left as you entered from outer office. BRICKLEY.

STOREY, Crillon, Paris
July 11th.

Hasbrouck, James & Co., members N. Y. Stock Exchange, report on August 7th last year they purchased on Mr. Greenfield's account U. S. Liberty 3 ½s reg.; D. & H. cvt. 5s; L. & N. rfg. 5s; Iron Mountain gold 5s, totalling $263,000. [The numbers of the bonds followed.] None of these securities appeared among Mr. Greenfield's assets.

BRICKLEY.

This correspondence closed with a surprising piece of news from Mme Storey.

BRICKLEY, New York
July 11th.

Hélie and Margaret sailed S.S.
Paris
Le Havre to-day. Booked under their own name without the title. Suite 625. Will arrive New York 18th. Have them kept under surveillance. I sail
Mauretania
Saturday; arrive New York 19th. Am booked as Mrs. Davidge in case you have to wireless. Meet me at pier. Should Hélie call me up on arrival, tell him I got back on the
Berengaria
. I am supposed to have preceded them home. Warn Matilda at my apartment to tell the same story.

STOREY.

On the day named, with Crider and another operative duly armed with passes, I made my way to the pier of the French line. With the jabbering on every side it was like a bit of Paris transplanted, that Paris which I only knew for three days, but which I shall be homesick for as long as I live. All we could see of the great ship were squares of black hull and white upperworks through the openings in the pier shed. She brought a good crowd for the westward voyage at this season. The majority of the passengers were foreigners coming to America for
their
vacations.

We stationed ourselves where we could get a good view of the first-class gangway. My job was to point out Margaret to Crider and his partner, who were to keep her in view until Mme Storey's arrival on the following day. I had not much fear that she would recognize me in my workaday clothes. Moreover, I was in the crowd, whereas the passengers had to pass one by one in review before us, as they gingerly picked their steps down the plank.

Hundreds of passengers descended before them, and I was growing anxious. Finally I saw them on deck, standing back with aristocratic reserve until the press should be over. It was Hélie's red cheeks that I spotted. He was quite unchanged, but in America he looked very French. As for Margaret, had he not been with her, I should have had to look hard before recognizing her. For with M. Craqui's assistance she had changed her role again. Nothing of the bizarre or the sensational in her appearance now. She was the high-born Princess on her travels. Her hat, suit, summer furs expressed the very perfection of well-bred distinction. Her make-up was absent—or discreetly appeared to be absent, and it surprised me to discover how good-looking she was without it.

But she was not extraordinarily good-looking; she was something rarer. For a thousand good-looking women there is I suppose one who can look and bear herself like a princess, and Margaret was that one. When she came stepping daintily and stiffly down the gangplank you could see all the lookers-on glance at each other as much as to say: "Here comes somebody. Who is she?" I could only ask myself helplessly:
Where
did she get it? Where
did
she get it? this daughter of the odd-jobs-man of Weddinsboro, Ind.

She looked around her with an amused interest, as might a Frenchwoman first setting foot on these shores. Technically, of course, she was a Frenchwoman now, and undoubtedly travelling under a French passport. She kept herself very much to herself, and left Hélie to attend to the luggage, of which they had a vast pile. Each expensive piece was marked with an R under a coronet. All the good Americans on the dock stared awestruck at the coronet. Yet nothing is easier, surely, than to have a coronet painted on one's trunks. I wonder if the million in securities was in one of the trunks. Probably not.

Leaving them there under the eyes of Crider and his partner, I returned to the office.

Later Crider reported that they held passage tickets to Shanghai, and that the greater part of their baggage had been forwarded through to Vancouver in bond. This was somewhat disconcerting. However, taking a trunk apiece, they had had themselves driven to the Madagascar, where they had engaged a suite for three days. At the Madagascar they had registered as Prince and Princesse de Rochechouart, and the reporters had already got hold of Hélie.

The interview, when I read the report of it in the evening papers, was merely the perfunctory thing which gives nothing away. Margaret had kept out of sight, and the reporters had not elicited the fact that she was an American.

Next morning I made my way to a different pier with very different feelings. This time I had no need to hide. I planted myself as close to the foot of the gangplank as they would let me. When my dear mistress ran down she gave me a good squeeze. She was dressed with extreme plainness, and was partially disguised by a comical little veil to the tip of her pretty nose. It appeared that she had kept as close as possible to her stateroom on the way over, and had made no friends aboard. True, she was recognized by reporters on the pier, but she smilingly asked them not to announce her return "for reasons of policy." Mme Storey is a great favourite with newspaper men, because she deals with them with absolute frankness, and they promised to respect her request.

She had brought but one tiny trunk home with her. As soon as we were alone in the taxicab she said:

"Well, where are they?"

"At the Madagascar," I replied. "Ostensibly for two more days."

"Hm! That doesn't give us much time, does it? I suppose you're keen to know what happened in Paris after you left. Well, nothing happened except the grand fact of their marriage and the announcement of their voyage to America. That astonished me, I confess. My one tête-à-tête with canny Margaret convinced me that I would never get anything out of her by direct methods. At our first meeting at the Jockey I caught her off her guard with a strong dose of flattery, but she evidently thought it over, and at the Ritz she was armed for me. So I appeared to let her drop. She thought I had a tenderness for Hélie and was jealous of her, and I allowed her to think so. The woman is a fool, my Bella, that's the extraordinary thing about her. One of the toughest problems that has ever confronted me, and yet, in a sense, a fool!

"After that I only met her by accident. I had them both kept in sight, of course. You can get such good men in Paris for almost nothing. A week before they sailed it was reported to me that they had engaged passage for America. This was playing right into my hand, if they meant it, but I could not be sure they might not slip off to South America instead. To have come back on the same ship would certainly have aroused the lady's suspicions, so I engaged passage on the
Berengaria
and bade good-bye to all my friends, and left Paris. But I let the
Berengaria
go, of course, and spent a glorious week in Rouen doing the Norman churches: Chartres, Coutances, Mont St. Michel; I had an adventure—but I'll tell you that some other time. When my Frenchman reported that they had actually gone aboard the
Paris
and she had cast off, then I cabled you and ran up to Cherbourg to catch the
Mauretania
.

"Bella, I'll bet a dollar you cannot guess where they are going next!"

"Shanghai," I said.

"Eventually, yes. But before that."

I shook my head.

"To Weddinsboro, Indiana."

"No!"

"That is why she was obliged to tell Hélie so large a part of the truth about herself. That is why she has brought him to America. Indeed, I believe that is the principal reason why she married him, as she does not seem to care for him particularly and sees through him perfectly. How stupid I was not to have foreseen it from the first. Crider's report from Weddinsboro throws a great white light upon her motives. The daughter of the village drunkard! An object of contemptuous pity to the village women. No young friends of either sex. One can imagine how that wound has been festering all these years. Now she is going back as La Princesse de Rochechouart to put it all over them.

"Can't you see her registering at the village hotel, if there is one; walking about the village streets for a day, clinging to the arm of her prince? She will donate ten thousand dollars for a war memorial, if they haven't got one already, or a village hall; then on to Shanghai, trailing clouds of glory! Can you imagine a more complete and artistic revenge? There are moments when I can scarcely bring myself to interfere with it!"