Red Beads

by C. S. Montanye

 

Red Beads

By C. S. Montanye
Author of “One Chance in a Thousand,” etc.

BITTER rivalry waged in Manhattan's underworld between “Gentleman Joe” Pallis and “Yegg Sam” Somers. This existing condition was not due to the crossing of trails, the interfering with jobs, intense professional jealousy, or any one of the thousand-odd things that might have conjured up rage and hate. It was simply that Gentleman Joe and Yegg Sam each craved the slim white hand of a certain young person, known unfavorably to the police as “Sadie the Dip.”

Sadie of the extremely nimble fingers was prepossessing to look upon. Youthful, comely to a marked degree, possessed of quick tongue and wits, she was beautiful as beauty is reckoned in that particular section of the city, characterized by night prowlers with cold, shifty eyes and hands fashioned both for delicate work and the holding of gats. It was small wonder both men desired to take the delectable pickpocket in matrimony.

Gentleman Joe limited his talents to the procuring of illicit wealth, by adhering solely to check raising and worthless transactions. Yegg Sam Somers, on the other hand, was a safe blower of the old school, a cool, merciless individual whose trade-mark in nitro was on twisted boxes that ranged from Bangor to Key West, and from New Orleans to Seattle.

Yegg Sam had met the girl first. Coming into town after a successful coup in Chicago, which he had left in somewhat of a hurry, the yegg had flown straight as a homing pigeon to the gambling house of his friend, one Dan Carter. Here it was he made his headquarters while in town, and here it was also, one fateful night, he perceived Sadie the Dip, one of a group before a whirring roulette wheel. He looked into her slightly slanting eyes and promptly succumbed to her myriad charms.

Gentleman Joe Pallis had first seen the slim, straight Sadie operating in a crowded downtown department store. Here he had witnessed a daring acquisition of a hand bag, snatched with scientific skillfulness. Filled with admiration—and something else—Gentleman Joe had followed the girl back to the Carter gambling house, where, finding both had a mutual friend in the proprietor, he had sought and received a hasty introduction.

From the first Sadie made herself equally alluring to both. She ranked neither above the other in her affections and divided her smiles and caresses with absolute impartiality. For the first two weeks or more affairs drifted on even tide. Then the flame she had kindled within the two men, mounting higher and higher, brought her at last to realize a choice must be made before bloodshed was accomplished. Taking her troubles and perplexity to her friend, the austere Dan Carter, Sadie poured her tale of woe into his ear and begged his advice.

What he told her was such that she dispatched couriers to summon into her presence both rivals. The men came at once and were received in a deserted front parlor, the walls of which had listened to many nefarious schemes.

“The thing is simply this,” Sadie began, addressing both suitors at once, “both you guys have tumbled for me and want to date me for a pow-wow with a deacon. Do I say it or not?”

Gentleman Joe and Yegg Sam exchanged malevolent glances.

“Right,” they agreed.

The girl nodded her brown head.

“Sure. Now, as I can't marry the two of you, and as I like you the same, I'm going to try out a plan Dan Carter told me. I gave him a buzz, and this is his rumble: 'Give the boys a job,' he said, 'that has an egg in it, and marry the one that makes good!'”

Again Gentleman Joe Pallis and Yegg Sam exchanged more looks, wondering than hostile this time.

“What's the lay-out?” the safe blower demanded hoarsely “Give me the frame, a couple of tools, and let me be on my way!”

The other crook remained silent, but his keen gaze swept the face of the girl before him.

“What is he job?” he asked curiously after a moment.

Sadie raised a hand in admonition.

“Just a moment. Let me finish the song and dance before you two pull your spiel. Dan said that as I'm picking a husband on the deal, I should make it a stiff one and dope out something that would net me a piece of change worth talking about. I've thought it over ind here it is: The one that gets me must give me the ruby necklace of Mrs. Van Tyler Emerson. That's the lay-out and I guess there is nothing small about it!

As she finished speaking the lips of both men tightened and their eyes narrowed.

The necklace of the society leader was as well known as any of the city's points of interest. Purchased before the war, by her most recent husband, the beautifully matched and glowing rubies had caused a metropolitan sensation when worn. These were the stones Sadie the Dip wanted as the price to be paid for marrying her, but neither Yegg Sam nor Gentleman Joe Pallis hesitated.

“Suits me,” observed the latter. “I've tackled tougher nuts than this and come clean on them!”

The pickpocket looked at Gentleman Joe curiously.

“How about you?” she asked. “Are you in this or not?”

He nodded, smiling a little. “To a finish!”

Sadie the Dip smiled languidly. Such devotion was pleasing to her vanity.

“Good! I'll allow you one week to pick up the beads. Meet me here any night this week, hand them over, and the next day the merry bells ring!”

II.

As was his custom, Gentleman Joe Pallis gave the matter in hand thought before planning his campaign. Awakening the following morning, in his room at a shabby hotel, he shaved, dressed and breakfasted, and then, ensconced in the depths of the lone chair in bedroom, gave himself up to the of lifting the Emerson ruby necklace

He spent the day brooding over possible ways and means to capture the rich prize, and, with the coming of the early evening, donned hat and coat and sallied forth for an inspection of the premises that housed the thing he must procure to win the girl he loved.

The residence of Mrs. Van Tyler Emerson he found to be a brownstone private house, lying midway in a quiet side street, a stone's throw from Central Park. There was nothing about it which distinguished it from its fellows but as he passed it for the third time Gentleman Joe noticed that on the easterly end of the street stood a tall modern apartment house of some twelve stories. Considering this speculatively, the crook made note of several details appertaining to the building and then, satisfied with the result of his observation, walked back to Fifth Avenue, where busses rumbled north and south at frequent intervals.

An hour later he crossed Washington Square, came to a drab tenement, which he entered and mounted the stairway of, coming to a halt before a door, upon which he rapped out a queer signal. This door was presently opened, and a white face looked out.

“'Coke' Whelan in?”

The door opened wider.

“Oh, it's you! Come in, Joe.”

The crook entered a poorly furnished room, from which the wall paper hung, flapping.

Here, after a bill had exchanged hands, the pallid, finger-twitching hophead listened to what Gentlemen Joe had to say, and then, consulting a well-worn card index, rummaged through a filing cabinet which adorned one corner of the room and purchased a manila envelope, from which he shook countless newspaper clippings and a number of soiled pieces of paper, covered with illiterate handwriting.

These, the man who was known from coast to coast as an “information mine,” sorted through, placing them in neat, precise rows, like cards laid out for solitaire. Then his eves roved over then and he plucked out a square of typewritten paper, with hands that were never still, and read aloud.

“Ruby necklace of Mrs. Van Tyler Emerson. Purchased in Paris: Cottier's, 1912. Necklace is worn only from November until March. Is kept separate from other jewels. This box is contained in a secret drawer of a vanity dresser which stands in a boudoir on the second floor. To reach the hidden drawer remove the last drawer, right, insert hand, and find spring in rear. This spring releases the secret drawer which drops at bottom of dresser.”

The seller of information passed the report across to the crook, who had listened to the reading with glittering eyes.

“This report was made two months ago by Bertha Glass, a maid in Mrs. Emerson's employ.” The dope fiend looked at his visitor with a curious intentness. “Thinking of taking a shot at it, Joe?”

The other nodded, busy memorizing the report he had paid for.

“Who,” he asked, after a moment, “is—or was—Bertha Glass?”

Coke Whelan chuckled.

“I told you—a maid at the Emerson place. She filed this report two weeks before she was caught lifting a set of sables.”

Gentleman Joe handed back the memoranda and stood up.

“By the way,” he said, moving to the door, “no one else been looking at that dope, has there?”

The seller of information grinned toothlessly, shaking his head.

“Not a soul,” he lied cheerfully. “Why?”

III.

It was that hour when Manhattan slumbers—not slumbers entirely, for beneath its crust, lighted trains, like phosphorescent worms, crawled and twisted through subterranean depths, and the first milk wagons rattled up from the ferries with their white cargoes. It was the hour rather when the city stretched its thirteen miles of steel and stone for the brief interlude that comes before the awakening to another day of stress and turmoil.

As Gentleman foe Pallis traversed the deserted side street which housed the dwelling of Mrs. Van Tyler Emerson, he glanced at his illuminated watch dial and saw that the hour lacked only a few minutes of two. Two o'clock! An hour's work at best, and then——

Passing the house he had come to visit, he proceeded to count the successive buildings in order until he reached the apartment house on the street corner. With the certainty that characterizes a man who knows exactly what he is doing, Gentleman Joe descended steps that led down into a gloomy basement and cellar, wandering through dim corridors where rats scuttled noisily before the soft tread of his rubber-soled feet. He emerged at length onto a narrow areaway. here, on one side, was the wall of the last private house of the row; above, the steep incline of the apartment house, from which iron fire escapes cascaded from roof to cellar.

It was these fire escapes which had attracted Gentleman Joe's attention on the occasion of his first visit to the street, and now, as he stared thoughtfully up at them, he chuckled softly. From the last landing, the landing that terminated with the first story, hung a ladder, the rungs of which were a few feet above his head.

It was the work of a minute to leap, catch the metal bars, and draw himself up, monkey fashion, onto the perch. Still chuckling, the crook swung nimbly up, floor by floor, keeping to the shadows, until he reached the fourth story. Now he was on a direct level with the roof of the adjacent private house, separated only by a gulf of a few feet.

Without hesitation Gentleman Joe leaped across the chasm and landed with a soft scramble on the pebble-strewn roof. Then he crept cautiously to the coping and peered down into the street below.

Satisfied that he had been unobserved, the marauder began crossing from roof to roof, counting as he did so, until presently this means of verification informed him that he was at last on top of the Emerson residence. Step number one had been successfully accomplished.

The roof scuttle attracted his attention, and he crossed to it, feeling in the front of his flannel shirt for the jimmy he carried,

But there was no necessity for it's use. The roof scuttle was unlocked and yielded to the touch of the crook's fingers. As he lifted it inhaling the warmer air that rushed out, bearing with it a peculiar odor of something that told of the presence of human beings and hidden menace, Gentleman Joe felt his pulses begin no throb.

With great caution he set his feet upon another iron ladder and lowered himself into a well of darkness.

Thirty seconds or so later, using his pencil flash light, he opened the door of a small storeroom, a room in which the ladder he had descended terminated, and soundlessly passed out into a corridor, where the banisters of the stairway were revealed to him. A thick carpet on this stairway muffled his steps, as he groped his way carefully down from tread to tread, passing as quietly as a sinister shadow.

The particular section of the house—the boudoir of Mrs. Van Tyler Emerson—was located on the second floor. To reach it he had to pass bedrooms wherein people slumbered heavily. It required all his courage and cunning to slip past these shoals of danger, where a false step meant betrayal.

The yellow eye of his torch, as he reached the floor of his desire, picked out a door half ajar, and, stepping close to it, Gentleman Joe felt a little triumphant thrill surge through him. The port of destination had been found, and even the clammy fears inspired by the utter darkness and the quiet of the sleeping house were lost in a rush of jubilant emotion.

As quietly as a breeze whispering across a meadow Gentleman Joe entered the room, allowing the incandescent finger of his flash light to wander interrogatively about. The room, from his brief glances of it, was high-ceilinged, spacious, wonderfully appointed, as would befit the particular place where a society leader dallied and was made beautiful.

The vanity dresser Coke Whelan's information had spoken of stood between two bay windows, heavily curtained windows, and was an elaborate thing of white ivory wood, adorned with a quantity of rich carvings. As he knelt before it, his sensitive hands fondling it, the intruder chuckled again—this time with amusement at the stolidness of Yegg Sam Somers. His imagination conjured up what would happen when the safe blower reached the prize—if ever.

A minute now, and then within his grasp would be the thing that would make Sadie the Dip alone and entirely his!

The wavering gleam of the flash light traveled inquisitively over the dresser, focusing at length on the last drawer of the right-hand row. This drawer Gentleman Joe withdrew and darted a hand that was not entirely steady into the opening. For a minute it roamed about, closing presently over a spring, which clicked harshly as a secret drawer obediently dropped down a few inches below the ledge of the dresser.

Gentleman Joe hesitated, listening with head averted for any sound to disturb the absolute quiet that prevailed.

Then his finger retouched the spring on his storage battery lamp and he opened the secret drawer, withdrawing a long, flat blue satin box. There was a pearl push button in the front of this box, and leaning over to drink in the flaming glory of the rubies, Gentleman Joe pressed the button. The case lid flew open with the sharp sound of a plucked violin string. An inarticulate exclamation sprang from the lips of the bending man

The box was empty!

IV.

Dawn was silvering the eastern sky when Gentleman Joe reached Longacre Square and with lagging steps crossed to the unpretentious hostelry that he called home.

A sleepy night clerk nodded to him as he passed through the lobby. He walked up to his floor and made his way down the long corridor, weary, disillusioned, the taste of ashes in his mouth, defeat leering at him across his shoulder, to his small bedroom.

As he reached the door of it, his jaded nerves leaped and something stirred within him as his narrowing eyes beheld cigarette smoke issuing from the keyhole and the door jamb. One hand shifted the automatic Colt from hip to coat pocket, the other fell on the knob and turned it slowly. Then, a finger on the trigger of his concealed weapon, he threw the door open and stepped boldly across its threshold

As he entered the room, a man lounging and smoking in the chair by the window looked up, and Gentleman Joe found his gaze locked with that of Yegg Sam Somers.

“I've been waiting for you,” said the safe blower. “Got something to tell you—something important.”

The other withdrew his hand from his pocket, empty, and let his eyes sweep across his visitor.

“What?”

“Sit down, Joe. I can't spill it all while you're standing. You get me nervous.”

Gentleman Joe seated himself on the edge of his cot.

“So it was you” he said curtly, “that left the Emerson roof scuttle open for me! And it was you——”

The safe blower silenced him with a gesture.

“Stick out your ears!” he commanded. “Get this: We've both been double-crossed. Sadie has blown with Dan Carter!”

The crook on the bed drew a breath and then laughed.

“What kind of bunk is this?”

Yegg Sam Somers put down the cigarette and shook his head

“The real stuff, Joe! When we got this job I sailed for Coke Whelan, the information mine, and bought an angle on the lay-out. Then I breezed up there to-night”—he saw the spreading dawn and corrected himself—“last night and gave the shack a tumble. After I hit the roof line there was nothing to it. I was in and out again with the stuff by one o'clock, and went straight to Sadie. She was playing the wheel at Dan's joint when I arrived, handed over the necklace and told her to make good.” His voice, as he continued, took on a harsh, ugly note “The minute she got her hands on the stuff she started laughing, and then came clean—she's been married to Carter for months and used us for a couple of suckers—come-ons.”

With twisting Gentleman lips Joe stared across at the man before him.

“And you handed over a necklace worth fifty thousand dollars to a——” Rage rendered him speechless.

Yegg Sam crossed his legs and grinned.

“I handed over a necklace,” he admitted, still grinning. “I don't know anything about the real Emerson ruby necklace, where it is kept, or if there is one, but”—he stopped to yawn again—“Sadie wanted her red beads, and she got 'em!”

Dawning comprehension crept across the taut face of Gentleman Joe Pallis.

“You mean——” he began.

Yegg Sam chuckled.

“What I say. The red beads I swiped were just a string of—red beads!”