Born to be Hanged, But—/Chapter 3

WAS soon given some other things to think about, though in a way these too had a bearing on Miss and Mrs. Curwen.

Zellers, the pickpocket, more familiarly known as "Hop"—probably an abbreviation of "Hop-Head"—had evidently not been so drunk as I thought. He had talked, apparently, a good deal about "his letter." He had talked promiscuously.

The fact that he told conflicting reports, and elaborated what the letter contained at every recital, did not at all minimize the interest his drunken blabbering had stirred up in a most surprizing fashion.

I began to have people speak to me about the letter. Some ventured to intimate that they would like to read it. Two fellows of Zellers' stripe, with himself hanging sheepishly at their coat-tails, came to demand it of me. It was Zellers' letter. Not mine.

I ought to give it up, et cetera, et cetera, to the point of intimating that I had appropriated it for a little personal graft on my own behalf. For fellows who had put on such an assertive manner and talked at such length, they made rather abrupt apologies, and retired without knowing any more about the letter than when they came.

What I thought must certainly be the climax arrived the day after I had returned the letter in the presence of a stranger who introduced himself as Edwin Ellis and asked for a private conversation. He was obviously from the other world—the business world. He had brains and a knowledge of men in general, but I fancy that I added a little to his store of information concerning men in particular.

Mr. Edwin Ellis was a small man, neat as a burnished rapier and much like that most flexible, subtle and sharpest of all weapons. He opened with commendable directness, scrutinizing my face with flint-like gray eyes, and perhaps wondering how a young man of my age could have the reputation I had.

"I understand," he said in a straight businesslike manner and tone, "that you have come into possession of a letter from the office of Congressman Bryan."

A pause. His manner was sharply interrogatory. I said nothing.

"Am I correct?"

"Go on," I replied noncommittally.

"There is no occasion to go on until I have assurance on that point."

"Very well," I said.

I was curious, of course. I didn't want him to get away without knowing why he came. But the supreme schooling in Bluff is had at the green table.

"You decline to answer yes or no?"

"I see no reason for answering yes or no until I understand why you ask."

He paused thoughtfully, not once shifting his eyes from mine. I reflected that he would have made a fine poker player; but I guessed that he had probably chosen law. It, too, is a fine game for clever crooks. An honest lawyer—that is, honest in spirit rather than merely scrupulously observant of what is called the "ethics of the profession—" will, I am sure, become as familiar with empty pockets as an honest gambler. He was, I found later, not a lawyer but a detective, and from the East; so different from such detectives as I knew that he had none of their mannerisms.

Mr. Ellis and I lapsed into silence. We would probably have remained all through the afternoon and all night, too, if he had not at last decided that I did not intend to say anything more until he advanced the conversation.

He did, with customary directness, thus—

"I am prepared to pay you any reasonable sum you may ask if you place the letter in my hands."

Figuratively, I sat up and took notice. Actually, I did not let a muscle of face or finger move.

"Reasonable?"

My intonation finished the question, made it explicit: how much did he consider the maximum of "reasonable"? I was really anxious to know of how much importance, measured in terms of money, that letter was considered.

With the air of a man who thought he was driving home his bargain, he said—

"Ten thousand!"

I let a second or two pass, then barely shook my head, but made no other reply. That got under his armor. He exclaimed—

"You've read the letter—you know you can't possibly get more than that out of it?"

"How do you know its contents?" I asked quickly.

"I don't," he said as quickly. "But I know who the concerned parties are, and I mow what they will pay."

"Concerned parties—how do you mean?"

"I will mention no names. No names." A pause. Then—"But how much will you take to give the address—the address of that letter?"

I wondered whether he was after information, after the address on that letter, or whether he wanted to find out whether or not I would give it up; or if possibly that it was a subtle play on his part to get some reassurance that I did have the letter. Again he might fear—or hope—that the letter had got out of my possession without my having noted the address.

I won't give further details of the conversation. In much the same manner as already related, I at last succeeded in getting him to offer five hundred dollars for the address, and I declined without comment.

It must be made plain that this Edwin Ellis was no ordinary person. He did not lose his temper, and he was straight business all the way; but, having discovered nothing of value, he prepared to go.

"Young man," he said quietly but rather impressively. "I did not believe a fraction of what I had heard of you—I made inquiries before coming. I have rather altered my opinion. You have brains, you have nerve and you are stubborn. Of course, what I want is the letter. But there is some altruism in my pointing out to you that any party or parties who are prepared to offer a voluntary blackmail of ten thousand dollars for the recovery of that letter will not be likely to hesitate at violence."

I thanked him, for he had been gentlemanly about it. But I have heard that as a child, as a mere baby, the surest way of getting me to do something was by threatening to punish me if I did it, which, of course, is only a kind of legend that my family kept alive to illustrate a certain stubbornness that has not wholly left me.

"Will you tell me this," he asked with a frank directness that I liked; "how much more is the other side bidding for that letter? Maybe I can meet it?"

I was tempted to tell him that there had been no other bid; but he would probably have thought I was lying—and that might have led to unpleasant complications—so I kept silent, beyond replying that I could say nothing.

The situation had reached the intensity where I felt it my right to know something definite about that letter, or at least to talk it over with Mrs. Curwen.

I went to her home. No one was in. The neighbors did not know where she was. She and her daughter had been gone for some days. It was evident that the departure had been sudden, for the neighbor on the right declared she and Mrs. Curwen were "the best of friends," were always running in and out of each other's back door, that Mrs. Curwen was a lovely woman, and that she had said nothing of planning to go away.

So I went my way and wished sincerely that I had had no scruples about prying into the content of that letter. I could have kept silent and lied. I am excellent at keeping silent, and on crucial occasions I am not likely to be called a liar—no matter what I say. I tell the truth more frequently than is comfortable because I have an aversion to lying: for one thing, I don't like to give any man credit for being too formidable for me to dare tell him the truth.

And then, too, there is something contemptible about lying—except when it becomes magnificent, a thing that can happen to no man more than once or twice in a lifetime, and then inevitably in connection with some woman's fate.

A poet, the one poet that I read, has said:

My own regard for women is not that great; but my admiration for men who have such a regard for them is excessive.

HOSE remarks have not led me so far from my story as may appear; but to get hack to that letter: Zellers waylaid me at every corner and whined for his letter. I would not explain; as well have tried to explain to a leech that it should not suck blood. Naturally he thought I was playing a lone graft, and he became something more than objectionable—a pest.

He circulated whatever report of me he felt like among whatever crowd gave him a drink. I did not greatly care about that. What people think of me is their own business, and I seldom interfere except when they meddle with my business—at such times I am at pains to correct wrong impressions of me, for people who judge me aright do not often try to meddle.

But when Zellers, accompanied by three men this time, two of them recognizable as liegemen of James Thrope, came at me in a body and tried to talk what they called "business," I thought the time had come to be firm.

I was told pointedly that Thrope had "it in for me," and that of course I knew what that meant; but that Thrope was interested in Zellers' letter, and if I would give it up, I could name my price.

I suggested that Mr. Thrope's interest could not be so very great, since he had not come in person; and I said that if I heard any more about that letter of the same nature that had been coming back to me through friends that had listened to Zellers, I might give it up on the stipulation that Zellers was permanently silenced—and that I did not greatly care how!

The little malevolent rat was thoroughly frightened. He knew that the methods of obtaining silence in that quarter of the city ranged from Chinese hatchet-men to an overdose of chloral, from a blow in the dark to being pitched with tied hands and weighted feet into the bay.

Thrope's men made their bid, a somewhat larger one than Mr. Ellis had offered, so I imagined that, he having failed, men thought to be more nearly in my class were delegated to try their persuasive power; and they retired with somewhat more direct threats than Mr. Ellis had suggested. I was under the impression that Ellis himself was a Thrope man.

Zellers went with them, but he came furtively to me later in the evening. He was frightened. He whined as usual about being a poor fellow who needed a little honest money, and declared he knew that I wouldn't throw over a good friend like himself.

According to his interpretation of our "friendship," which on my part had never extended beyond giving him an occasional dollar or so for drugs and booze, though he always asked for the money under the euphemism of "food," we had been rocked in the same cradle and maintained a sort of Damon-Pythian friendship.

"Youse 'undn't trow me over fer dis bunch o' graf'ers, 'udju?"

I suggested that he tell me what was behind all this effort and rumor about that letter.

He didn't know. He really didn't. His memory was none of the best and, having been drunk at the time of reading it, he didn't know what was in the letter; but his imaginative tongue had overcome that little handicap until, by his report, the letter contained enough specific information to have convicted Congressman Bryan of compounded felony and implicated any number of other persons. He did not remember the party to whom the letter was addressed but it was a woman and there was some kind of an intimate relation between her and Bryan.

That information, of course, did much to explain why such a persistent effort was being made to get hold of it.

The report had circulated among the tenderloin that Zellers had made a lucky find of "something" on Bryan; the report had percolated up into the ears of Thrope, and he would have any day given an arm to "get something on" Bryan. Political enemies never were more bitter.

My interest in the letter dropped to almost zero when I arrived at that conclusion. I told Zellers he had better make haste to start a contradictory report, because if the letter was produced Thrope and his gangsters would probably be furious to find he had so misled them.

He was shaken, but wanted to see the letter. I told him that I had sent it to the party whose name was on the envelope. He wanted the name and received the answer that might be expected.

So I thought the episode of the letter was definitely settled.

Then Mr. Ellis again called on me.

He laid down ten one thousand dollar bills, said—

"There you are, sir," took up his hat and started to go without another word.

But he seemed amused—not amused exactly, but possessed of a great deal of knowledge that he didn't intend to reveal. It was my turn to ask questions, and I did. He knew as much about silence and evasiveness as I had on the previous occasion.

"Why the money?"

"It belongs to you."

"Marked?" I asked, eying the bills. An easy way to get a man into the penitentiary is by marked bills.

"Examine them."

"You could have kept a record of the numbers."

"Certainly," he admitted.

"But why offer this? I told you before"

"I am not offering it. I am leaving it. The money is yours."

It irritates me to be puzzled. I looked at him for some time and said nothing. Neither did he. I wasn't in the mood to play a waiting game: it was I who wanted information this time.

"Tell me something definite—or take the money."

"Certainly," he said politely, with a slight, well-mannered trace of amusement. "The party I represent—though very severely condemned in certain quarters—is a man of his word. The letter which we know to have passed through your hands has been placed in the hands of the party to whom it belongs. Hence the price agreed upon. I would have given it to you before but I only lately learned all the facts. I congratulate you, sir, on your discretion and honesty."

With that he went out and left me standing there, ten thousand dollars on the table and ten thousand questions tugging at my thoughts.