The Gray Ghost Returns

by Arthur Somers Roche

 

Coincidences Have Important Part
in a Story of Mystery, Excitement,
Action and Succession of Thrills.

The Gray Ghost Returns

BY ARTHUR SOMERS ROCHE

KEELER, paying-teller of the Ore and Metals National ankB, cast a last glance Bank, cast a last glance rolls of a dozen concerns were all neatly arranged awaiting the arrival of messengers with their firm checks.

Keeler was a methodical young man. Always cool and calm, he was clock-like in his punctuality. His firm chin, his strong nose, his steady blue eyes were, to the discerning, sufficient indication of his integrity. Also, one felt that there could be no question of his courage. And his ability in his chosen career seemed proved by the fact that at twenty-nine he had achieved so responsible a position in one of the largest banks in the world.

He saw the uniformed porter unlock and open the huge steel doors of the bank, and Turner, the young messenger of the Caraway Company entered. Almost simultaneously emissaries arrived from the Wilton Company, the MacEnany concern, and the other big clients of the bank. Each one, Keeler noted, was accompanied by a husky guard.

Keeler reached automatically forth the bundles of bills labeled “Caraway.” Then, almost as automatically, his hand swept below the counter and touched the switch that dropped, with a jarring crash, the steel grating whose interlaced bars would protect him from assault and robbery. His other hand gripped his ready pistol, and through the bars he aimed the weapon. For half a dozen men had entered the bank after the messenger from the Elspeth store.

Keeler had heard a cry from the uniformed porter struggling with one of the late arrivals. He had acted with instant decision; the bank's money was protected against the marauders. For Keeler had only to dodge down behind his counter to be out of range of any possible bullet and the steel grating could be raised only by the switch inside the cage. No threat could make Keeler touch that switch again.

But he did not hide behind the counter. Instead, he pointed his revolver at a man struggling with the Wilton guard. The man heard his hoarse cry and immediately ceased his struggle. The uniformed porter had backed the man, whose attack upon him had caused the outcry, into a corner, and blew upon a shrill police whistle.

****

WITHIN three minutes after the attempted robbery had begun, the bandits were lined up against one wall, were disarmed, and were penned in by a dozen bank detectives and employees. Keeler pressed the switch that caused the heavy steel grating to ascend into the ceiling. He laughed as he did so. In a moment the police, summoned by the porter's whistle, would arrive and take away the ridiculous bandits.

Indeed, the police arrived sooner than he had deemed possible. A whole platoon of them, sixteen in all, headed by a sergeant, raced up the bank steps with drawn revolvers and nightsticks in their hands. The sergeant took one comprehensive glance at the situation, then ordered the massive doors closed.

From the inner offices the president, the secretary, the treasurer, and other officials of the bank had come. The sergeant seemed to recognize the president. He called him by name. “Get everybody in here, Mr. Dana,” he commanded brusquely. “Everybody! Looks like an inside job to me.”

”That's absurd,” said Dana. His heavy jowls shook with indignation. “Every man in this bank, every woman, too—is absolutely trustworthy. Why”—and he pointed at the six cowering figures against the wall—“they're all outsiders.”

“How'd they know all these payroll people were to be here at a certain hour, with the cash ready for them? Get everyone here; I want to look at them.”

Dana felt the justice of the sergeant's attitude, even though he could have informed the police officer that information as to the time of sending for pay rolls could be easily picked up by any client of the bank who kept his eyes open. He ordered an underling to summon the rest of the employes.

While they were coming the sergeant and five of his men advanced to the prisoners. They slipped handcuffs on each of them and hustled them roughly into the center of the hank lobby. The sergeant looked at the other customer's of the bank.

“Any of these mixed up in this?” he demanded of Keeler.

The paying teller peered through his cage. He pointed as he spoke: ”That's Mr. Kelly, an old client; that's Mr. Wynans, another old customer; that's Mr. Bennett, who's all right; and that is Mr. Pellham. They're all known to me, and I can vouch for them.”

“All right,” grunted the sergeant. He turned to the president. “Everyone here?” demanded the sergant.

“Even the telephone girls,” Dana replied.

Over the face of the sergeant spread a grin. Pelham, the dapper young-old man with the gray hair, who had been last indicated by Keeler, seemed to sense something odd in that grin. He took a step toward the sergeant; a policeman standing beside him lifted his nightstick, and Pelham crashed to the floor.

Dana cried out in astonishment. The cry died in his throat. For the sergeant thrust a revolver against his stomach. The banker was suddenly sick.

“Hands up, and don't move, every lastone of you,” cried the sergeant.

His sixteen policemen wheeled suddenly upon the armed guards who had accompanied the messengers. Nightsticks knocked them down, and their revolvers were taken as they sprawled upon the floor.

****

KEELER, dazed, uncomprehending, reached for the switch that should lower the grating again. Too late he remembered that the mechanism of the thing had got out of order a week before. A temporary repair fixed the mechanism so that the grating could be lowered and raised once. After that had been done it was necessary to adjust certain parts of the machinery again. And, of course, there had been no time to do this now.

Sick with apprehension, he reached for the revolver which, upon the arrival of the police, he had placed again upon the shelf below the counter. But before his fingers closed upon it a bullet from one of the policemen's revolvers struck his shoulder and whirled him dizzily to the floor. A tap upon the head from one of those heavy nightsticks rendered the teller hors de combat.

And almost before the dazed bank employes could think of offering resistance they were disarmed, beaten unconscious, or shot.

Sacks appeared from beneath the blouses of two of the invaders. These two stepped into Keeler's cage. His assistant, covered by a revolver, had no opportunity to resist. More than $800,000 in bills were swept, in less than thirty seconds, into the sacks carried by the counterfeit policemen.

Seventeen of them, including their leader, and reinforced by the six handcuffed men in business clothes, herded those of the bank employes and customers who still were conscious into an inner room, the private office of President Dana. A telephone in the room was ripped from its fastenings. Dana was seized and searched. From his pockets were removed keys; one of them fitted the lock of his private office, and the door was fastened upon them. From the uniformed porter the key to the outer door had been taken. The great doors swung open on to Broadway.

Attracted by the closing of the doors, the porter's police whistle, and the noise of the shots was a great crowd of excited people. They set up a yell of exultant fury as the policemen descended the bank steps hustling the handcuffed men toward empty taxicabs that happened to be standing at the curb. The spectators could guess that a robbery had been attempted, and that the bandits had been captured. After all that the papers had been saying about the incompetence of the police department, it was good to see with your own eyes proof of the falsity of the newspaper charges.

That is, it was good until you happened to read the afternoon papers.

****

“I TELL you, Jerry,” said Jimmy Pelham positively, “it's the Gray Ghost.”

Jerry Tryson shook his round bald head. Also, his shoulders moved with mirth.

“Mr. Pelham, you're as crazy as I was ten years ago.”

”Were you crazy, Jerry?” asked Pelham, mildly.

The red face of the former policeman—now one of the most successful private detectives in Now York—took on a deeper shade.

“You know what I mean: everything that happened. I said 'Gray Ghost' and I got the raspberry from headquarters, the papers, the public, and everyone.”

”Except me,” insinuated Pelham.

Tryon's eyes lowered In embarrassment. “Don't think I've ever forgotten it, the way you encouraged me, backed me—everything. Only, Mr. Pelham, the Gray Ghost is dead.”

“And ten years ago every one said that he had never been alive,” smiled Pelham.

Tho square blue chin of Tryon set stubbornly; his lower lip protruded pugnaciously. “But, Mr. Pelham, we cornered the Gray Ghost aboard your yacht ten years ago. He jumped overboard a couple of hundred miles from land. You can't get behind that, Mr. Pelham.”

“I never saw his dead body; did you?” asked Pelham.

“But how could ho have escaped?” cried Tryon.

Pelham shrugged. “What difference does that make? I couldn't answer that offhand. But he might have caught a rope hanging over the yacht's side, pulled himself aboard, and stowed himself away. Or, what is more probable, he might have kept himself afloat. You know it's not easy for a boat's crew to find so small an object as a man's head in the waves. Suppose that he was picked up by some trading vessel?”

“He'd have been turned over to the authorities at the first port,” said Tryon scornfully. ”The whole world knew of him and of his leap from your yacht.”

”But you know, Jerry, the Grey Ghost might have had in his pockets jewels worth thousands. All the loot that he stole was not recovered. It might not have been difficult for him to bribe a whole ship's crew to keep silent about his rescue.”

Illustration: MORE THAN $800,000 IN BILLS WAS SWEPT, IN LESS THAN THIRTY SECONDS, INTO THE SACKS.

Tryon suffered exquisite confusion. Jimmy Pelham, by placing his fortune at the disposal of a discredited police officer, by believing implicitly in the reasoning of that officer, had enabled Jerry Tryon to effect the capture of the Gray Ghost, a stroke that immediately made Tyron internationally

****

TEN years ago, in the great days of the rounding up of the Gray Ghost and his gang, Jimmy Pelham had been a gay youth in his late twenties, with a favorite in society, a man of importance in the eyes of certain banks and trust companies. But shortly after Jerry Tryon had achieved reputation and fortune by the destruction of the Gray Ghost's gang, reverses had come to the young millionaire.

The great war broke out just as the young man was ruefully contemplating the impossibility of living on the bare ten thousand a year remaining to him. He forgot his troubles for the next four years, during which he served with distinction in the French army. On this morning in Jerry Tryon's office he was down to his last thousand dollars.

Time and again Tryon had offered Pelham a half interest in the prosperous detective agency which the former police officer conducted. But Jimmy Pelham was not in the list for charity. Now, once again Tryon made an effort to return past favors.

“Of course, Mr. Pelham, you may be right, at that. Suppose you come into my office and let me detail half a dozen men to you, and you can start an investigation. It would be worth at least five hundred a week to me to have you——”

Pelham's roar of laughter interrupted the other. “Bless your good old heart, Jerry,” he cried. ”You've tried in so many ways to put your hand in my pocket and leave some money there. *** Thank you just the same; but if you think I'm crazy, I don't want you to oppose your own judgment. Not another word about it.”

He rose and rubbed gingerly the plaster on the crown of his head.

“I must run along now, Jerry,” he said. “They want to question me at headquarters.”

Tryon smiled deprecatingly. “I wouldn't mention the Gray Ghost to them guys down there, Mr. Pelham,” he advised. “They'll just give you the razz, and, honest, the papers will think you're a nut.”

Pelham returned his smile. “Much obliged, Jerry. I'll try to be discreet.”

With a smile and a nod he left Tryon's offices.

****

COMMON sense said that the Gray Ghost was dead, that he had perished ten years ago. But imagination told him that one might as well expect to find two Napoleons in the same generation as two Gray Ghosts.

Such greatness could not repeat itself so soon. The Gray Ghost lived! Pelham clung to the thought. But at headquarters he did not mention his belief.

So he gave his little information in matter-of-fact fashion, embellished by no speculations. Intending to leave the previous afternoon on a fishing trip to Maine, he had stopped at the bank to cash a check. So he had been present at the robbery. Somehow or other he had suspected the alleged sergeant of police had taken a step toward him and that was all that he remembered until he awoke with his head resting on the knee of an ambulance surgeon. He had gone home as soon as his injury had been attended to.

The captain of detectives who questioned him grinned: “Must have reminded you, Mr. Pelham, of the days when you and Jerry Tryon rounded up the Gray Ghost. Those were the good old days.” He made the statement regretfully, as though he lamented the passing of the police's great antagonist.

“Maybe he's come to life,” laughed Pelham.

The officer returned his laugh. “Nothing but part of the crime wave that's been following the war. Much obliged to you, Mr. Pelham,” he said briskly, terminating the conversation.

Outside, in the hallway, Pelham encountered Keeler, the paying teller of the Ore and Metals Bank, just released from an examination by a deputy commissioner. The teller carried one arm in a sling; there was a plaster upon his head. His face was drawn and bloodless.

They shook hands and Pelham noted that the other was weak. “Those idiots shouldn't have let you come down here. You ought to be in bed. Let me take you home.”

Keeler thanked him. “I do feel a bit woozy,” he admitted. “But what's that at a time like this?”

Pelham could but commend the younger man's attitude.

”Do the police seem to have any idea, any theory, about the robbery?” he asked as they stepped into a taxicab.

Keeler's blue eyes were contemptuous. “I've heard a lot of loose talk about inside jobs and outside jobs. But common sense ought to tell them it was an outside job. Furthermore, hold-ups aren't inside jobs.”

“True enough,” agreed Pelham. “Too bad that grating didn't come down the second time. The newspapers said the machinery was out of order.”

Keeler groaned. “One of those unaccountable carelessnesses that crop up everywhere. The thing could have been repaired, but who could have foreseen that two attempts would be made, one right after the other.”

****

A SUDDEN thought flashed into Pelham's mind. He asked calmly: “What was the idea, do you suppose, of the fake robbery?”

“Pretty obvious, wasn't it?” retorted Keeler. “As soon as the first bandits were disarmed we dropped all precautions. Whoever planned the crime counted on that very thing. Who on earth would think of questioning the bona fides of a platoon of uniformed police? Certainly no one in the bank. And the people outside, seeing a bunch of policemen dragging half a dozen bandits into taxicabs, would never suspect that the uniformed men were confederates of the prisoners. The first group were decoys to draw our fire.”

“Perhaps,” suggested Pelham, trying to keep his voice steady, “their leader knew that the mechanism that raised and lowered your grating was out of order. That would explain the two groups of robbers.”

“You're making an inside job of it,” said Keeler. “Only three people knew that that mechanism was out of order. President Dana knew it, Cashier Henry knew it, and I knew it. And I never told a soul.” He touched his wounded shoulder. “This isn't proof of my honesty, but it's evidence,” he laughed.

Pelham, helping the teller to the sidewalk, grinned. “I guess that it's pretty good proof,” he said.

Upstairs in Keeler's apartment he made the teller lie down and prepared some medicine which the doctors had left with the wounded man. The other man urged him to stay a while for a drink, a smoke and a talk.

Pelham liked Keeler. Despite his commercial success, he was boyishly frank and ingenuous. Perhaps the suffering induced by his Injuries rendered him a shade more confidingly loquacious than was his wont. Anyway, he told Pelham of his boyhood struggles, his self-education, his ambitions, and. finally, of his girl. He even pointed out her picture where it hung upon the wall.

Illustration: “MAYBE I'M THINKING OF ANOTHER MINNIE GREY” SAID PELHAM, SHAKING WITH NERVOUSNESS. “NOT FROM MY TOWN,” DECLARED SLIM DICKENSON.

She—this Minnie Grey, who was Keeler's fiancee—was a shade too sophisticated in appearance. But, then, he told himself, nearly all girls wear a look of sophistication nowadays.

“Black hair?” asked Pelham.

“Yes, and black eyes, too,” said Keeler.

“She's beautiful,” admired Pelham.

“And lovely,” supplemented the teller. “We're going to be married soon. Funny thing. I've always sworn that I'd marry a small-town girl. The minute I met Minnie I fell in love with her. And I could hardly believe it when 1 discovered that she came from a little town in Maine.”

”What part of Maine does she come from?” asked Pelham idly.

“Town called Juno,” smiled Keeler. “Funny name, isn't it?”

“I suppose you'd prefer that her home town should change its name to Venus, after Miss Grey,” suggested Pelham.

Keeler blushed. “She is beautiful. Too beautiful for me; too good for me. And such a patient girl. She's been the sole support of her mother and sister, down there in Maine, ever since she came to New York two years ago.”

”That's fine of her,” said Pelham slightly bored. “She works, then?”

“At Mason & Marsh's brokerage house. She's a stenographer. But not after next month—she's to be Mrs. Keeler then.”

”My heartiest congratulations,” said Pelham. Shortly thereafter he made his excuses and his departure.

****

PELHAM walked to his apartment. All the excitement that had been in his mind had left it. Certainly the president was beyond suspicion, Pelham happened to know that the cashier was one pf the chief stock-holders of the bank and could hardly be suspected of complicity in robbing his own institution. And as for Keeler, his honesty was too patent to be questioned.

The failure of the mechanism of the grating was a coincidence, then, that had been fortunate for the robbers. And the moment that Pelham admitted this he ceased to believe in the existence of the Gray Ghost.

For coincidence never aided nor hindered that master of crime. Chance never entered into his schemes; they worked with mathematical exactitude.

Jerry Tryon called him up that night to inform him that he had been retained by the bank authorities to run down the criminals.

“And I didn't tell them that I thought it was the Gray Ghost's work,” chuckled Jerry with good-natured malice. “If I had, they'd think I'd gone cuckoo, and I'd lose a ten thousand dollar retainer.”

”All right for you, Jerry,” Pelham laughed back at him, ”but if the Gray Ghost does show up don't say I didn't warn you. The evening paper says that the bank is offering a hundred thousand dollars reward for the recovery of its money and the arrest of the criminals.”

“Yes, it's a nice mark to shoot at,” said Jerry. “When are you going down to Maine?”

“In the morning,” replied Pelham.

“Well, I wish I was going with you,” said Tryon. “Hope they're biting.”

”Much obliged,” answered Pelham.

****

AT noon next day Pelham left for Maine. Two mornings later he was seated in the bow of an Old-town canoe, industriously whipping the waters of Lake Shennebago. By 7 o'clock he had caught eight beauties, and his guide was propelling him back to camp.

During the after-breakfast smoke the guide, one Slim Dickenson by name, discussed many things, finally fastening his speech upon New York.

“The way I look at it,” pronounced Slim, “it don't take no more to be a big guy in New York than it does to be a big guy in my home town of Juno. If a feller has git-up-and-git to him he'll succeed anywhere at all. Ain't I right. Mr. Pelham?”

”I guess you are,” Pelham conceded. “Did you say that Juno was your home town?”

”Certainly did.” said Slim. “Born and brought up there. Know every man, woman, horse and dog in the township. Why? Ever been there? Know any one there?”

“No, I don't,” admitted Pelham, “but a friend of mine is engaged to marry a girl from Juno. Her name's Minnie Grey. Do you know her?”

”Minnie Grey? 'Course I know her. I can remember, like it was yesterday. the day she put up her yellow hair. Used to hang in a pigtail down her back, yellow as corn.”

”The Minnie Grey I mean has black hair and black eyes,” said Pelham.

“Don't know about her hair now,” Slim said. “She may have got crazy ideas like the rest of the girls that go to New York. But her eyes was as blue as blue. And they ain't found any way of changing the color of eyes, have they?”

“Maybe I'm thinking of another Minnie Grey,” suggested Pelham. He was shaking with nervousness.

“Not from Juno,” declared Slim with decision.

”Perhaps you're thinking of her sister,” argued Pelham.

“Minnie never had no sister,” stated the guide. “She was an only child—an orphan, who lived with her aunt.”

Pelham cross-examined the guide, but the man stuck stoutly to his story. He vowed that he could not be mistaken.

****

TWENTY-FOUR hours later Jimmy Pelham landed in New York. He might be a madman. What connection there could be between the statement of Keeler and the emphatic contradiction of Slim Dickenson, he did not profess to understand. But he was convinced that the guide was not mistaken; nor could Keeler be mistaken about the color of his sweetheart's eyes.

If the gang knew of the accident to the grating machinery they could have learned it only, Pelham was convinced, through the fiancee of the paying teller.

On the assumption that Keeler had told the girl and that the girl had told the gang, Pelham theorized.

If he could reconcile the discrepancy between the two Minnie Grays—— He took Slim Dickenson with him to the offices of Mason & Marsh. He gave the guide a hundred dollars.

”Go in,” he told him, “and buy a liberty bond. I know the offices. The stenographers are all in an outside room. See if Minnie Grey is there.”

A quarter of an hour later Dickenson reported that he hadn't seen Minnie Grey inside.

”We'll wait right here,” said Pelham.

In a doorway across from the brokerage house they waited until the offices closed for the evening. Pelham recognized the original of the photograph that he had seen in Keeler's room. He indicated the girl to Dickenson and ordered him to follow her.

Pelham went directly to Keeler's apartment. The young feller was still in a weakened condition and was wrapped in a dressing gown when he received Pelham.

”Keeler,” said Pelham, “you told Miss Grey about the trouble with the grating that protects your cage.”

Keeler's face went dead white. “How dare you say such a thing?” he cried.

“Suppose I told you that your Minnie Grey doesn't come from Juno? What would you say to that?”

The fire died out of Keeler's eyes; Pelham was so patently in earnest. “I'd not indulge in heroics,” said Keeler. “But I'd ask you to explain, and if you couldn't I'd throw you out of here, wounded shoulder or not.”

“Spoken like a man, Keeler,” said Pelham. “But I have a man in New York who comes from Juno, who knows Minnie Grey extremely well. He says that she left Juno about two years ago and has never been heard from since. He says that your Minnie Grey is an impostor. Now, did you tell your fiancee about the mishap to the mechanism of your grating?”

Keeler had mentioned it to her! He admitted it, white-faced, dazed at Pelham's statement, yet believing, because there was no reason for Pelham to lie.

“Pelham, do you think they'll arrest her?” he asked.

“Nothing has been proved yet,” said Pelham. ”But if proof follows—I'm sorry, old man,” he said.

Keeler, lying upon a couch, buried his face in the wide sleeve of his dressing gown. Pelham got Jerry Tryon on the phone. “I'm at the apartment of Keeler, the teller of the Ore and Metals Bank, Jerry. Race up here with at least twenty men. Hustle.”

No sooner had he hung up than the phone rang. Slim Dickenson was on the wire. “I followed the girl to her home; I waited outside a while, until she came out. Then she took a taxi to Washington Square. At least, that's where my chauffeur says I am. She went into a house and she's there sow. What'll I do?”

“Wait for me!” cried Pelham.

He turned to Keeler. “Tryon will be here in a few minutes. Send him right down to Washington square. It's tough, Keeler,” he said gently.

“You haven't proved anything yet,” said Keeler defiantly.

“For your sake I could wish that we wouldn't,” replied Pelham.

****

HE left the apartment. Presently he had alighted from his taxicab and was standing on the south side of Washington square with Dickenson, watching the house into which Dickenson said the girl had disappeared. As they stood there a man alighted from a limousine and walked rapidly across the sidewalk and up the stoop of the house. He let himself in with a latchkey and the door closed behind him. Pelham turned to Dickenson.

“That,” he said, “is one of the men who staged the first attempt at robbery of the Ore and Metals Bank——”

“Let's go in and clean them,” suggested Dickenson.

“Let's wait,” said the cannier Pelham.

Ten minutes later Tryon and a score of his private detectives emerged from taxis. A sentence informed him of the situation. While one of his men ran to summon the police, Tryon sent some of his men around to the back of the house. With the others and with Jimmy Pelham by his side, he crashed in the front door.

Three hours later, in Pelham's apartment, Tryon congratulated his former patron. “As neat a piece of detection as I ever heard of,” he commented. “Of course, you had luck. Running into your guide and him happening to know what the real Minnie Grey looked like didn't hurt none. We split the reward, Mr. Pelham. And if you'll only come in with me——”

Pelham shook his head. “You don't believe in the Gray Ghost, Jerry.”

Tryon laughed heartily. “Just because none of those prisoners that we took tonight will talk, you think they're afraid of the Gray Ghost. I don't. I just think that they're wise guys, waiting for their lawyers.”

“How do you account for their having all the loot of the bank gathered in one box at their house, undivided? Doesn't that look as thought they were awaiting instructions from their chief?” demanded Pelham.

“If they'd had a chief, he'd have got his a couple of days ago,” declared Tryon.

”If that chief happened to be the Gray Ghost, he'd have so many irons in the fire that he'd be necessarily delayed in removing some of them,” objected Pelham.

Jerry Tryon rose, stretched his arms and yawned. “Well, Mr. Pelham, we won't quarrel about it. But before you are too certain that the Gray Ghost is alive get hold of some real proof.”

“I will,” said Pelham grimly.

That proof came sooner than he had expected. In the morning's mail there came to him a simple note, which read;

“Dear Sir: Ten years ago you interfered with me. You have done so again. Yours respectfully,

”PETER BALLANTYNE.”

There was no threat in the letter. None was needed. For Peter Ballantyne had been the nom de guerre ten years ago of the Gray Ghost.

Copyright, 1923.