Framed at the Benefactors Club/Chapter 6

T was nearly three hours later—night had dropped like a veil, secret, mystical, netted in the delicate silver mist of the drifting snowflakes and with the sleepy voice of the city whispering through the heave and sough of the wind—that Blaine Ogilvie, after three long-distance conversations with Washington, finally slammed back the receiver and announced triumphantly:

“That little matter is settled!”

He entered the next room.

“Good thing,” he said, “that Spencer slipped me that twenty thousand. Those toll charges to Washington are going to cost me a pretty penny.”

Then he noticed that Gadsby was fast asleep in his winged chair in front of the open fire, and shook him awake.

“Bob,” he said, “leave off sawing wood and listen to the words of Baruch, the son of the priest.”

“What is it?” asked the police commissioner, sitting up and rubbing his eyes.

“I have found out what I expected to find”

“Namely?”

“That Doctor McGrath, Mr. Clapperton et alias are”

“What?”

“Are not plain fools—unless you call idealists fools!”

“Would you mind being less philosophical and more explicit?” suggested Gadsby.

“That friend of yours at the patent office did a whole lot of tall hustling and doubtless disturbed the slumbers of half a dozen assorted Uncle Sam servants, working all of five hours a day and five days a week for thirty per of the taxpayers' hard-earned simoleons, but he roused them. He hustled and made them do likewise. He looked up dusty files and ledgers and card indexes and cross-reference books and loose-leaved records—and”

“For the love of Mike! Come to the point!” exclaimed the police commissioner, exasperated.

“I am at the point! They looked up the records of the patent office Bob—it's really tremendous news!”

“What, what?”

“Not one of the members of the Benefactors Club—neither McGrath nor Clapperton nor that green-tweed addict—failed to take out patents for their various inventions and discoveries. And they are all poor!”

“All except Chester.”

“Right,” agreed Ogilvie. “But he didn't invent anything!”

“Don't forget Martyn Spencer!”

“Who disappeared,” commented Ogilvie, “but who did belong to their club just the same.”

“I can't make head or tail of what you are intending to prove, Blaine.”

“Intending to, did you say?” asked the other. “Boy, I have proved”

“What?”

“That here is an organization of people who all have most excellent reputations”

“Except, perhaps, Spencer” suggested the police commissioner,

“Who disappeared. Let me resume. This organization is largely composed of engineers and mechanics, many of whom have invented extraordinary devices, others of whom have doubtless helped with the perfecting and working out of these inventions, still others of whom—here's where I take a shot at the blue—are working at inventions and discoveries. They are not fools. But they seem to be idealists. For they have protected their brain children by patents—by the way, Bob, it takes money to get the right, waterproof sort of patent—and they have not made money out of their inventions, since they are all poor.”

“Except two.”

“Exactly—Chester and Spencer! As to the latter, allow me to repeat that he disappeared suddenly, scared to death, sacrificing a mint of money in doing so, while the former—well, Bob, I have an idea on the subject and I am going to find out presently if I am right.”

The police commissioner lit a cigar.

“And still I fail to see,” he objected, “how all these undoubtedly very interesting details will help you sidestep the electric chair?”

“Don't be so brutally realistic. Also, if you can't see, I can—chiefly after you have called in some of our best New York physicians and have them make another autopsy of Monro Clafflin's body.”

“What for? The man was shot. A bullet pierced his brain. There's no doubt of it.”

Ogilvie smiled.

“Perfectly correct,” he admitted. “The man was shot—and a bullet did pierce his brain.”

“Then”

“Just the same, please do what I tell you, do you mind?”

“Well, if you insist on being mysterious”

“I don't insist,” replied Ogilvie. “But, first of all, there are your professional limitations which would keep you from understanding anything new and a little unorthodox.”

“Thanks awfully!” came the dry rejoinder,

“Don't mention it. Secondly, I am dog-tired. I am off to bed.” He rose, yawned, stretched himself. “Lend me a book, do you mind?”

The police commissioner crossed over to his bookshelves. “I don't see,” he said, “how a man in your predicament can read frivolous French poetry. Why—it's positively uncanny.”

“Tm not going to read any French poetry to-night,” replied Ogilvie. “You have quite a complete library, haven't you?”

“Fairly representative.”

“I want you to find me a book—oh—a sort of encyclopedia, all about inventions and discoveries.”

“Going to join the Benefactors Club?”

“Possibly. I want a book about the inventions and devices people used to know centuries ago, but which have been forgotten—like the use of the pyramids and the tempering of copper and that sort of thing.”

“More clews?” came the ironic query as Gadsby hunted among the shelves.

“You've guessed it first time, old man.”

“Here's the kind of book you mean, I suppose,” said Gadsby, taking out two volumes—“'Forgotten Discoveries' and 'Valuable Inventions Not Yet Made.'”

“That's the dope!” replied Ogilvie, taking both. “By the way, think it'll be safe to telephone to Miss Dillon?”

“Quite. The police haven't yet discovered that the escaped murderer's name is Blaine Ogilvie and that he is engaged to her. Feel in a sentimental mood and want to phone?”

“No—in a scientific mood.”

And he went upstairs to bed and read for a while. Finally he seemed to have found what he was after. For he made a note, called up Marie Dillon on the telephone which stood on his night table, talked for quite a while, then switched off the electric light and fell into dreamless, untroubled sleep.

He came down to breakfast fairly late to find the police commissioner impatiently awaiting him. The latter looked up rather angrily as the other entered with a bright “Good morning!” For, like most men of average honesty and average dyspepsia, he had occasional, spasmodic attack of antagonism even against his best friends—chiefly before breakfast.

“Heavens!” he exclaimed. “I could hear you snore clear down here. Detective Sergeant Miller asked me if I had a walrus visiting me.”

“Oh! Has he been here?”

“Yes—confound his soul!” came the heated rejoinder. “He came an hour ago—before breakfast! Called me out of bed!”

“What did he want? Anything that bears on my case?”

“Yes. He found out quite a little more about Martyn Spencer.”

“Let's hear it,” said Ogilvie, neatly slicing a muffin in two, buttering it generously, and commencing breakfast with a hearty appetite, which Gadsby seemed to take as a personal affront.

Detective Sergeant Miller was the old-fashioned policeman, the sort whose sources of information are diversified, patchy, and often—if the truth be told—slightly muddy. The tale he had told his chief, and which the latter was now relating to Blaine Ogilvie, was a mosaic gathered here and there, partly by bullying and partly by cajoling, from a number of people, including two taxicab drivers, a Sicilian fruit vender, a Russian cobbler in a cellar on Charles Street, the head waiter of a Broadway restaurant, three sardonic and elderly reporters, one youthful and enthusiastic cub reporter, and the intoxicated mate of a disreputable Liverpool tramp ship that had just docked, after a smelly and uneventful voyage out of some West African port. The sum total of this information was that a man, closely resembling Martyn Spencer, had been seen going up the gangplank of another, equally smelly and equally disreputable Liverpool freighter, outward bound, dressed in the rough clothes of a deep-sea sailor, that he had been greeted by the captain of the ship with: “So glad to see you, sir. Please, sir, won't you” And that he had interrupted roughly with: “Cut it out, you poor fool! I am Tom Higgins, able-bodied seaman, and that's all you know”

“Disguise and change of name,” said Ogilvie, a little disappointed. “But nothing new—it really only corroborates my theory that Spencer is scared clear out of his wits.”

“Yes,” agreed the police commissioner, “but Miller also did a bit of cabling over to London—to Scotland Yard.”

“What results?”

“He found out how Martyn Spencer made his money,” said the police commissioner with pompous impressiveness.

Ogilvie laughed. “Why,” he said, “I know how he made it.”

“Oh—you do—you”

“Yes,” Ogilvie cut the other's words short.

“How?” asked Gadsby with satanic suavity. “Let's hear how clever you are.”

“I am not clever. I only know that two and two makes four—and, at times, five,” he said. “And chiefly in detective work—naturally so. For, since crimes are an extraordinary, and not an ordinary, thing, one must apply extraordinary, and not ordinary, logic and arithmetic.”

“After which philosophic interjection”

“After which philosophic interjection,” said Ogilvie with a laugh, “I rise to maintain that Spencer, since he left New York, did a heap of traveling in the wilder places of the earth—Africa, Central Asia, Western China, South America, certain regions of Russia. Why there? Because, since he was out after new, exotic, and expensive minerals difficult to obtain, he specialized in mineral regions that had not yet been exploited. Why did he need those minerals? Because the gentlemen of the Benefactors Club needed them for their new inventions, discoveries, and devices. So he kicked around a whole lot and bought up mining claims and concessions. Often he had to use a great deal of pull—pull which, on the other hand, cost him a great deal of money. With West African chiefs, for instance, and Manchu mandarins and Tartar Khans—and—oh, yes”—smiling reminiscently—“Russian grand duchesses who, if extra well paid, extra well bribed, might throw in a priceless sable coat as a commission. Isn't that so?”

“Absolutely!” admitted the other just a little grudgingly. “But I fail to see how”

“I repeat,” said Ogilvie, “that two and two make five—and occasionally seven!”

“Don't be so supercilious!”

“Really, Bob, I didn't mean to be. Let's get back to Martyn Spencer. He was well paid for these voyages and these mining claims he accumulated the world over—by whom do you think?”

“Chester?”

“Move to the head of the class, sonny! By the millionaire who did not see fit to contribute to the war charities, but who, according to his own light, is quite a public benefactor. But Martyn Spencer was not rich. You see, you can work out your liver, but you simply can't become really rich on a straight salary—until rather more recently. Am I still right, old man?”

“Quite. That's what they cabled to Miller from Scotland Yard.” Something like admiration had crept into Gadsby's accents.

“Perhaps,” continued Ogilvie, “our friend only started making real money during the last year or eighteen months. Then he made it hand over fist.”

“How”

“By selling the foreign rights to various patents which were registered in his name.”

“What patents?” asked the police commissioner.

“Oh—for instance, Doctor McGrath's pulmotor and the Clapperton automatic cream separator and the Fischer piston pump. He either sold them for cash or took a certain amount in the stock of the new foreign corporations founded for the exploitation of these various patents and devices.”

“Perfectly correct,” admitted Gadsby, consulting a London cable which Miller had decoded and read:

“Cream Separator Limited,” interrupted Ogilvie, “and a few more Limited!”

To the other's question if he thought that the Benefactors Club, angry at having been cheated, had tried to frame up Martyn Spencer, getting Ogilvie into the trap by mistake, the latter replied that it was something like it, but not exactly so.

“That's just what Martyn Spencer thought,” he added, “and I have an idea, yet to be proved, that he was a fool for thinking so, a fool for running away scared to death, when all he had to do was to keep his nerve and stand pat, when all he needed was a little knowledge of applied psychology. You see, it is clear that these people did not know him by sight, isn't it?”

“Quite,” said the police commissioner, “or they would not have mistaken you for him.”

“Yes. I imagine the club has a number of foreign members and corresponding members in Europe.”

“Indeed,” agreed Gadsby, consulting the cables from Scotland Yard. “There are half a dozen belonging to it in London”

“And doubtless in Paris and Rome and other parts of the world. Spencer, though an American, joined abroad. It's easy enough to figure out how. He must have made some small invention. He was poor then. His family, fine old American stock, knows the Chesters. Followed a correspondence between him and Audley Chester, the financial backer of the club. Gradually the correspondence became more intimate. Eventually Chester made him a proposition, and Spencer accepted it and joined. Then, when the club needed a man to pick up mining claims for them here and there, they naturally thought of Spencer. He proved clever and valuable, until in the course of time he became their confidential man, all the foreigns rights to the patents being registered in his name. Spencer kicked about from pillar to post these last years, without coming home; and these people never went abroad, because they were too poor and too much wrapped up in their Utopian dreams.”

“Utopian?” echoed the police commissioner.

“Exactly! I'll explain all that presently—after I've made quite, quite sure—with the help of”

“Who?”

“Marie Dillon, I guess. I'll tell you later. Let's get back to Spencer. He and the members of his club here in New York never saw each other, that's quite clear, isn't it?”

“I guess so. But why did he return? Home-sickness?”

“Not a bit of it. Indirect, upside down, negative, vicarious fear!”

“I don't get you!”

“Listen, Bob!” Ogilvie went on. “When Spencer first decided to use these patents for the benefit of his own pocketbook—well, he just did it. He was money mad—he made up his mind—and that's all there was to it! He expected a big row, perhaps a civil or criminal action. He had prepared for these eventualities, had retained beforehand the best legal talent in New York and Europe, felt quite safe. But the members of the Benefactors Club did”

“What?”

“Nothing, Bob! And that's what first made him afraid.”

“Why should it?” asked the police commissioner.

“Because Spencer knew them. He knew what sort of people they were—idealists, terribly sincere, of single-track minds—and they did nothing. And, I repeat, he became frightened, nervous, uneasy. Do you know the old adage about the murderer who always returns to the scene of his crime? I guess it applies in Spencer's case, too. He grew more and more fidgety as the club remained silent, and so he decided to come to New York, perhaps to force their hand, to brazen it out, or to get it over with, once and for all. And still, even after he returned here, the club did nothing. They surrounded Spencer with a wall of complete, inhuman silence and inaction, and he became more and more uneasy—he imagined that this wall of silence would presently topple over and crush him. Then, one day—perhaps the very day I called on him or a few days before—he received a notification from the club to come to No. 17.

“By this time he was absolutely scared stiff. He imagined that they would either kill him or make such a scene that somebody would lose his head; in the latter case he thought there would be a fight, he would find himself in a minority of one, battling for his life, and then in self-defense, but with a number of witnesses to deny it, he would draw a weapon. This part of his reasoning”

“If he reasoned that way,” sardonically interrupted the other.

“This part of his reasoning,” Ogilvie continued, unheeding, “was remarkably lucid. You see, Spencer is no fool.”

“If he isn't, why did he go to No. 17—make up his mind to go there at all?” demanded the police commissioner.

“Because he was getting crazy with that complicated and illogical emotion called fear. Because he had arrived at that stage where he preferred anything, even death, to waiting for something to happen. All right. I dropped in on him. We talked. He saw that I was stone broke. Right then, suddenly, he decided not to go, but to send me instead. He must have reasoned very quickly, must have said to himself that the only thing for him to do, now that the club was on his trail and had sent him notification to appear at their meeting, was to disappear under a different name, and there was that Liverpool freighter in port which doubtless belonged to him.

“He argued that the club members would pounce upon me quickly and kill me before I had a chance to explain that they were making a mistake, that I was not he, but an innocent party. Or, if they gave me time to explain, he thought they would calmly point at the club badge—which must have been fastened to the nether side of the lapel of the fur coat, remember—might even point at the sable-lined ulster itself, a quite extraordinary and priceless garment of whose acquisition by Spencer, in the course of some mining deal with the grand duchess, they may have heard—yes—they would have pointed at the club badge and discounted my denial that I was Spencer by a sudden desire on my part to bluff them, to fool them, to get away with a whole skin. Finally, he reasoned, if they did believe me, it would take a long time before they did. Either way, by the time I was killed, or got into the pickle into which I actually did get, or even persuaded them they had made a mistake, he would have escaped. Incidentally let's give the devil his due. He tried to be decent. He warned me against carrying a gun. But, not sure if I would take his advice, he sent that thumping big check to Marie in case she needed money for herself or me.

“At all events, as to the club members, he underestimated their intelligence, or he overestimated their brutality—it comes to the same thing. I repeat, all he needed was a little knowledge of applied psychology”

Ogilvie interrupted himself.

He said that terribly idealistic people—and in his own mind he was convinced that those of No. 17 belonged in that category, from the hunchback down to the check boy and the brown-eyed girl—were also, when occasion seemed to warrant it, terribly cruel and shrewd and vindictive. It was as if, he added, the Creator did not want human virtues to run to extremes, for fear that they might run amuck. “Nature,” he said, “always tries to strike a logical balance between good and bad. If we let our virtues overwhelm us we cease to feel sympathy and pity and tolerance for others less virtuous than ourselves. No, no, Bob,” as the other made an impatient exclamation, “I'm not shooting off at a tangent. I am just trying to show you what a confounded fool Martyn Spencer was for being afraid.”

“Seems to me, the way it panned out, that he had mighty good cause to be afraid,” replied the other. “I agree with you that excessive goodness often leads to cruelty. Aristotle was right, virtue is the mean between two extremes. Witness the cruelty of the medieval reformers.”

“But you must not forget that these people at No. 17 are removed from sixteenth-century fanatics by several hundred years of human development—call it increased moral weakness, if you prefer. They are men of the twentieth century who have forgotten the clean, fearless brutalities of the Middle Ages. When their slightly hectic, idealistic virtues turned into the gall of hatred through another's—Spencer's guilt—they were weak enough or careful enough—it comes to the same thing—to stop short of murder. You see, they might have killed Spencer, but they didn't. So why, logically, should I assume that they killed Clafflin?”

“Well—if you didn't kill him, and if they didn't, who did, for the love of Mike?”

“Must, necessarily, anybody have killed him?” came Ogilvie's counter query.

“You don't mean to say suicide?” asked the police commissioner,

“I don't indeed!”

“Or accident?”

“Nor accident!”

“Well, what other possibility”

“Beg pardon,” interrupted Tompkins, who had come in. “Miss Dillon to see Mr. Ogilvie.”