Carden, Crook Comedian/Chapter 6

HE firm of Carden & Burke rested the remainder of the day and spent the night in innocent slumber. In the morning Joe Carden took his usual exercise, bath, and breakfast, and then grinned across the room at Nifty Burke.

“Time for the next move in the game,” the crook comedian said. “I’ll write the letters now, Burke, and then you’ll go out and send them by messengers. To-morrow should be our big day.”

“I'll say so!” Nifty Burke remarked.

Joe Carden chuckled and turned to his desk. When he wrote, it was with his left hand, and in large characters, a handwriting so disguised that no expert could have attributed the authorship to him. The first letter was addressed to Razelus, and read as follows:

Joe Carden addressed and sealed the note, chuckled again, and looked across at Nifty Burke.

“A certain gentleman by the name of Razelus is going to throw a fit when he gets this,” he said.

“Think he’ll mail the coin?”

“Yes,” Carden replied. “Either he’ll mail it immediately through fear, or he’ll try to work some game with the police, in connection with Belcher, and throw all blame on me. In that case, Nifty, the coin will be mailed—marked bills probably. You see, the police know that to catch me they must get me with the goods. I could call for mail addressed to George X. Z. Brown and declare that was a name I used in certain business matters. There is no law against using a name not your own unless you do it to defraud, public opinion to the contrary. To nail me, Nifty, they’d have to send money and afterward find it in my possession. Now I’ll write another letter.”

He took another sheet of paper and indicted an epistle to Roger Belcher.

“Here you are, Nifty,” Carden said, when he had finished. “Go uptown some distance, get messengers from some central messenger station, and send these letters on their way. Then return here and we’ll pose as estimable citizens for the remainder of the day. Understand?”

“I getcha, boss!”

“Your language is nothing if not expressive.”

“Gosh, boss, I never could learn to sling good talk,” Nifty Burke declared. “Polite language don’t seem to have any punch, anyway. Slang for mine—a man can understand it.”

Joe Carden grinned. Nifty Burke was hopeless when it came to a proper regard for the English language, and the crook comedian knew it.

Burke hurried away with the letters, and Joe Carden paced the floor of his living room puffing at a cigarette, and began planning things to be done after the affair of the Chinese vase was closed.

He told himself that he was a peculiar sort of crook, since the robbery of honest men did not appeal to him. He was trying to justify his mode of life.

“I don’t steal from honest men, and I wouldn’t steal from a genuine crook,” he declared to himself. “Razelus is an old scoundrel who poses as a decent citizen, and Belcher is a high-class thief who lives an outwardly respectable life. I’m glad I’m putting over this little deal. But I must get that vase back to Burlington; if he’s honest and decent, I don’t want to sting him!”

He stood before one of the windows looking down at the street and watching the seething traffic. The telephone rang, and he hastened across the room to answer it, hoping that Nifty Burke was not reporting any trouble.

“Hello!” he called.

“Good morning, Mr. Carden!”

It was the voice of the Nameless One again, and Joe Carden once more felt an unexplainable fear tugging at his heart.

“Well?” he snapped.

“We are not very polite this morning, are we? How is the genial crook comedian?”

“What do you want?” Carden demanded.

“Merely to ask how you are, and if you had an excellent breakfast,” the soft voice replied.

“See here!” Carden cried into the transmitter, “this thing has to stop. If you wish to meet me, say so, and I’ll make an appointment. I can’t be having you call up like this”

“Oh! Somebody is grouchy this morning, is he?” said the soft voice. “He doesn’t like to talk to a mysterious woman?”

“I do not!” Carden said. “How you happen to know all about my affairs is more than I can figure out, but I suppose you’re going to blackmail me some day.”

“So you think I’m that sort of woman, do you?”

“Well, I’d like to come to an understanding with you. What is it that you want? Why do you call me up on the telephone continually just to inform me that you know all about my affairs?”

“I don’t want to talk to you when you’re grouchy. I’ve never threatened you, have I? Perhaps this is just a lark with me, Mr. Joe Carden.”

“I don’t fancy it,” Carden said.

“By the way, be careful in this vase affair, will you? I’d hate to have the police get you, you know. I probably would have difficulty telephoning you if you were in prison.”

And then the receiver at the other end of the line was put on the hook, and Joe Carden turned to pace the floor again, angrily this time. Confound the woman! He had a feeling that some day she would make demands, and that the longer they were delayed the greater they would be.

“Take a week or so off and run her to earth,” he growled to himself. “Have to learn her identity—that’s all. Worries the life half out of me!”

Meantime Nifty Burke had journeyed uptown by means of the subway, traveling in a leisurely fashion and seemingly without important destination, though he was continually alert for sight of Marter or any other officer. He was careful, too; he did not care to be arrested on any charge whatever, searched, and those blackmail letters found in his pocket. That would lead to disaster for both himself and Joe Carden.

Up on the street, finally, he walked into a hotel and called for two telegraph messenger boys. When they arrived, he gave them the letters and generous fees, saw them depart, and then left the hotel by another exit.

Nifty Burke’s work was done for the day, according to the plans Joe Carden had made. He walked down the street for some distance, went downtown on a surface car by way of diversion, and left the car about four blocks from home.

Burke was thinking, now, of a suit that he intended ordering, a gorgeous suit of ultrafashionable cut with which he expected to startle his friends and acquaintances. And so he did not observe that Detective Sam Marter saw him, and began shadowing him.

Marter knew very well that Nifty Burke was a sort of valet to the crook comedian, and guessed that he also was an assistant in nefarious schemes. Where Burke lived, there Carden lived, and that was what Sam Marter wanted to discover. If he could learn Carden’s whereabouts without the comedian knowing it, he could watch, and he felt sure that there would come a time when Carden would make a wrong move, when Sam Marter could catch him with the goods and have revenge for that vagrancy fiasco.

Nifty Burke was not in a hurry to get home, having ample time and nothing important to do, and so he led Sam Marter a merry chase. The detective, standing where he could not be seen, chewed his cigar and curled his lips in scorn as he watched Nifty Burke, in a haberdasher’s, select some cravats that shrieked with color.

He followed Nifty on down the street and to a shoe store, and waited patiently while Nifty Burke looked over the stock and finally decided that there was nothing classy enough for him. He went on after Nifty again, and watched that young gentleman go into a pool hall and play billiards with a friend for an hour.

Marter was growing disgusted, but he had no idea of leaving the chase. It had been said of Marter that he never quit until he had his man. He was known as one of the bulldogs of the force; given a hold, he held on like grim death until the very last.

Out on the street again, Nifty Burke touched a match to a cigarette and decided that he would go home. Sam Marter followed at a distance, sensing that he was about to the end of the chase, careful that he was not observed now, lest his work be ruined.

Into a side street went Nifty Burke, and Marter, standing at the corner, saw him let himself in a certain door with a latchkey.

“So that is where the crook comedian hangs out, is it?” Marter asked himself.

He knew the building, a three-storied, narrow one that housed only six tenants. He did not approach it now, for he was afraid that Joe Carden might see him, or come out in time to face him, and he knew that Carden would move overnight if that happened. Marter did not care to see the comedian at present; he wanted to know where he lived and so be prepared for the future. He would get permission from his superiors, he would glue himself to Joe Carden, and he would run him to earth at a moment when the evidence would be such that the crook comedian would surely be convicted.

“Make an ass out of me, will he?” Detective Sam Marter said, as he started back down the street. “I’ll investigate that house to-night and be sure he’s there, and then”