Rich Crooks/Chapter 7

CALLED on Joseph and asked for the truth, though I already knew more than he could tell me. Having been a successful business man, he was an adept at lying; in fact he had begun his career by being admitted to the bar.

With a tall glass of whisky and water by the table, toward which his trembling hand went frequently, he tried to tell what he thought would arouse sympathy for him.

It was impossible. Had he not been a feeble, sick old man I would have made his life more miserable than it was by letting him know just how much I knew.

What facts I did get from him were jerked rather than pried. It was offensive to me to hear him say that he had been in love with Mrs. Ellis almost from her girlhood. He had always been well off in money matters, but she chose to marry Steve Ellis, a big, drunken bully. So Joseph Cornwall said.

He had never married. He tried to make me think that it was because of a sentimental attachment for Cora's mother, but he did not succeed. He had no relatives that he cared about. He got himself appointed Cora's guardian, made her his heir though he had not legally adopted her.

I try to be honest—that is as honest as a man can be without developing into one of those unprejudiced nonentities who look at all sides of a question and never let themselves be stirred by a fierce, direct anger. But I did have to take into consideration that Joseph had been on a trip to the Orient during the time that I was in Salt Lake and at the time of Mrs. Ellis's death. In fact he had not returned until Ellis had been convicted of the murder. It was really his ill-health that kept me from being brutal toward him. I have repeatedly said that he was an old man, but he wasn't, in years—somewhere around forty-five, I judged. But he was feeble and troubled by fears, if not by his conscience.

He wanted my sympathy, my “friendship,” as he spoke of it. I told him rather ambiguously that most of my friends were crooks who took their chances boldly with the police, and he reached hurriedly for his whisky, without understanding precisely what I meant.

In the course of trying to gain my gratitude, he explained that his brother—suspecting the gambler who had been staying at Mrs. Ellis's had had something to do with the theft of the little black box—had caused vicious reports of my presence there to be carried to Ellis in prison. Ellis was an inordinately jealous man, and the purpose of the lies had been to break up what friendship may have existed between Ellis and the man who called himself Smithers. The Cornwalls had learned through Quiller that Smithers and I were the same.

Joseph explained several times that he and his brother, knowing my reputation and knowing that I was in New York, had thought to engage me to protect them from Steve Ellis, and Daniel had been terrified to discover that I had in Utah been known as Smithers.

Joseph asked many questions, but he got no answers—or rather no information. I did not give him Cora's address and he could not give me Ellis's. Private detectives had kept him and his brother informed of Ellis's threats and movements after he was pardoned by that rascally governor, Walsh, but all track had been lost after he reached New York.

“You have no idea, Mr. Everhard,” he said, “what a wretchedly dishonest man Walsh is.”

It happened that I knew something of that too.

“I am convinced,” he went on, “that he pardoned Ellis just to have him hound my brother and me.”

“Why don't you strike back?” I demanded.

“Strike back!”

“Yes, Ruin him?”

“What do you mean?” he asked anxiously, suspiciously. Then he blurted it out: “You got that box. You opened it! You're going to sell it to ie I'll pay you more. I must have it. I'll have you arrested” Then he checked himself and tried to wipe out the threat of arrest by talking money again.

I assumed a pose of puzzlement and twisted from him the admission that the box contained papers that would ruin Walsh. But alas! Walsh had evidence that would injure the Cornwalls and ruin the name of his dead brother, who—another alas—was not alive to refute it.

I assured him with sincerity, and for the time convinced him, that I did not have a single paper or scrap of paper that belonged to his brother or referred to Walsh.

He wanted to know where Cora was. He wanted to get hold of the little black steel box. It, contained valuable documents. He explained how it came to be in Cora's possession. That must be returned to him.

What could she have done with it?

I could have told him what she had done with it, but I didn't. I could have told him that it was in my room, but I did not mention any such thing. I could have told him lots of things that would have surprized him—a few things, one at least, that would have nearly paralyzed him.

I demanded to know why he thought Ellis might hurt the girl.

Cornwall tried to be rather vague. He really did succeed in a way, but it seemed that Ellis had been enraged when she permitted him, Joseph Cornwall, to make her his heir.

Why should he have felt that way?

Cornwall was perturbed by the line of questioning. He evaded anything more definite than to say Ellis had always hated him because of Mrs. Ellis.

That old fellow had not had his legal training in vain. He was good at subtleties, lies and evasions. I could have rocked him, knocked the props from under him in twenty words, but there seemed to be no reason just then for crushing what little spirit—if not life—that he had left. The affair was far from being ended and I thought that after I had had a talk with Steve Ellis—if I could ever locate that fellow—I would know more of what I ought to do.

I may pause to admit that my income is not so large as I sometimes wish it, and on occasion I have been known to use a little of what looks suspiciously like blackmail. I haven't many weaknesses of sentiment, but two things always arouse my sympathies—sick dogs and crippled children. Before I finished with Joseph I expected to see a large subscription go to a certain children's hospital. Perhaps I would sell him the little black box. But more important motives than that were, of course, behind my interest.

I am fairly likely to want to meddle—though I do not always do so—wherever it appears that rank injustice has been done. I had not only liked Mrs. Ellis, I liked Cora also, and if she were coming into my family as Jack's wife, as there was no doubt that she would, for Jack was a youth who got what he wanted, I had good justification for taking the trouble to interfere in the complications that affected her.