The Seven Vanished Men

by Arthur Somers Roche

 

The Seven Vanished Men

BY ARTHUR SOMERS ROCHE

The Gray Ghost-Criminal Technician—As a Kidnaper Extraordinary

AT the clubhouse of the Wolves, that gay association of actors, managers and others connected with the theater, Pelham signed his luncheon check and started from the dining room.

Maline, the famous producer, waved a hand to the immaculate Pelham. "Any time that the Gray Ghost dies, or you give up your battle with him," laughed the manager, "you can have a job with me, Mr. Pelham."

Pelham flushed. His warfare with the Gray Ghost was a matter of common knowledge. Nevertheless, he was sensitive on the subject. The criminal had had the better of their encounter thus far. But he shrugged and laughed.

"You look as gloomy as though you had a private Gray Ghost walking your own ancestral chambers, Maline," he said.

"Some people have got it pretty soft," declared the manager. "I'd trade jobs in a minute. if the Gray Ghost robs a bank it doesn't cost you a penny if you can't find him. But if I can't find an actor, where the deuce am I?"

Pelham looked down at the fat, red face of Maline. Usually that face was wrinkled with mirth; the small brown eyes twinkled. But today the face was lugubrious. Pelham glanced about the crowded dining room.

"I see a lot of pretty good actors here," he declared.

"Not the ones I want," frowned Maline.

"Sorry, but I can't waste sympathy on you," said Pelham. "With five plays packing New York theaters and a dozen successes on the road, you strike me as being one of the filthy rich. Why do you want actors, anyway? Aren't the ones you have satisfactory? I've seen all your current productions, and they seem well cast to me."

Maline stared at him almost angrily.

"Which interests you most? What the Gray Ghost did last year or what he is going to do tomorrow? Well, it is the same way with me. The plays that I've produced don't interest me. It's the play that I'm going to produce that counts. And here I've got the greatest manuscript I ever read and no one to play it. 'The Three Wise Men' is the name of it—a mystical melodrama. And I can't find three character actors to fill the bill."

****

DEWEESE, who was also a producer of note, had stopped at the table and listened to Maline's plaint.

"I'm in the same boat," he said. "I have a play in the office which has elderly men's parts. Big parts. And I can't find anyone to play them."

"What do you mean?" asked Pelham. "Are character actors as scarce as that?"

"Good actors, like good detectives or generals or kings or cooks, are always scarce," declared Deweese. "There are, outside of a few recognized stars, just seven men on the American stage capable of playing, with distinction, the parts of men between fifty-five and seventy. I mean men with some reputation, who'd draw a few dollars into the box office."

"Well, why not engage them?" asked Pelham.

Deweese shrugged. Maline spoke. "I don't know about Deweese," he said, "but I've written and telegraphed to every one of those seven men. I've sent messages to their addresses, only to learn that they're all out of town. Minister, Septen, Blanford, Kelley, Swinburn, Sheddon and Garceau—every last one of them disappeared."

"Same here," stated Deweese. "Why, only last month Septen was in my office offering to work for almost nothing. And now, when I have a fat part for him, at the biggest salary he ever received In all his life, he's gone out of town and left no address." He grinned at Pelham. "How much would the Tryon Agency charge for locating Septen and the others?"

Pelham smiled, "I'd do it for nothing, Deweese, if it would make you offer a decent cast to a long-suffering public."

Deweese's face resumed its sad expression. "Sh-sh! I think I see the Gray Ghost," he whispered.

Pelham managed to join in the laugh against himself and was still smiling as he stepped out into Broadway. But once there, the smile left his lips.

Walking toward his apartment, his mind busied itself with the never-ending problem of the arrest and conviction of the Gray Ghost.

The battle between them had become more than a struggle between the forces of law and order and the forces of vice.

The fight was personal; their antagonism was personal.

Pelham went to the office of the Tryon Agency, in which he was a silent partner. But he found Jerry Tryon awaiting for him now at his apartment. With Jerry was a choleric old gentleman, Robert Bleakie, of tho international banking house of Bleakie & Horton, and it was concerning his partner that he had called upon Tryon, who, in turn, had brought him here.

"And if you were a Dalai lama you couldn't be harder to reach," said Bleakie, after the introductions had been performed. "I had an idea that any detective would be glad to be retained by Bleakie & Horton. But Tryon here tells me that he doesn't know whether you'll lake the case or not." He stared belligerently at Pelham. "What the blazes are you, anyway? A prima donna?"

Pelham chuckled; he liked this vigorous, irascible old man. "Jerry humors me so that I do act a little bit upstage," he admitted.

"Well, don't act that way with me," cried Bleakie. Suddenly he beamed upon Pelham, thereby extracting from his words all possible offense. "Young man, if you'll find out what ails my partner, Tom Horton, you may write your own check."

"Those are sweetly sympathetic words," said Pelham. "I have always a chair by the fire, and a seat at my table, for gentlemen whose conversation is so interesting."

****

TRYON realized that his partner and their new client had acquired a liking for each other. Jerry loved Pelham, and the surest way to Jerry's heart was to indicate that one liked Pelham. Bleakie saw the beaming face of Jerry and frowned.

"Quit grinning like a cat that's stolen cream," he cried. "Let's see this wonderful partner of yours produce the goods."

"Suppose you describe the goods, Mr. Bleakie." suggested Pelham.

"Fair enough." declared Bleakie. "My partner, Tom Horton, is acting like a madman, and I want to know why."

"What's he doing?" asked Pelham.

"Making a fool of himself," snapped Bleakie.

"There are so many ways in which that may be done," smiled Pelham.

"Meaning that you want me to get to the point, eh?" demanded Bleakie.

"I would like to know what's wrong with Mr. Horton," said Pelham gently.

"Young man, I like you. I haven't been shut up so politely in a long time. What sort of golf do you play?"

"Rotten, when I've work to do," replied Pelham.

"Why, you impertinent young jackanapes!" cried the banker. Then he grinned cheerfully. "All right, here are the facts."

His rubicund countenance assumed an alert seriousness.

"Tom Horton and I have been partners for forty years," said Bleakie. "Although our tastes are different, I believe I know him about as well as he knows himself. I've always gone in for sport and more or less of a good time. Tom is different. He rarely even plays cards. His idea of a good time its to collect rare antiquities, precious stones, first editions of ancient books—all that sort of thing. I've known him to spend four hours standing in front of a picture, staring at it, never moving, as though hypnotized. The man is beauty insane. Always has been. The things he owns would fill a museum. And no expert ever got a dollar from Tom. He's told me that probably lots of his possessions are fakes, but that it doesn't matter: they're beautiful. And suddenly this man, without a moment's warning, starts destroying a collection that it has taken forty years to gather."

"Destroying?" cried Pelham.

"Diapering, I should say; but it's just as bad. He's selling all his possessions. And he's selling them at any old price. You must understand that because you've paid two hundred thousand dollars for a painting doesn't mean that you can get that price for it at a moment's notice. It takes time to find a purchaser who will meet your price. And Tom Is letting things go almost to the first bidder. if he continues, twenty million dollars' worth of precious things will go for two or three million."

"He's mad," declared Pelham.

"Exactly," said Bleakie, positively.

"Can't you have him restrained?" asked Pelham.

"The firm of Bleakie & Horton does more hundreds of millions of dollars' business in a year than I'd be prepared to tell you offhand, young man," replied Bleakie. "if it leaked out that I was trying to prevent my partner from disposing of his collection it might cause a panic that would shake the financial world. I can't do that."

"Won't he listen to reason?" demanded Pelham.

"Listen to it?" cried Bleakie. "He won't even see me. He simply telephoned me one day last week that he wouldn't be down to the office for a month or so. Said he was going to sell his collection, and rang oft. I went to his house and he refused to see me. I talked with his secretary and that gentleman informed me that he had pleaded and argued with Tom without result. The next day Tom telephoned me again, thanked me for what he termed my misguided objections to his action, but told me that minding one's own business was a marvelous policy.

"It's a matter that must be confidential. As yet it has not leaked out to the press. Tom's secretary told me that all sales were being made quietly.

"Now, if I consult lawyers they will suggest obvious things—injunctions, medical examinations, trustees, the declaring of Tom incompetent. I'd rather be dead than subject my partner and dearest friend to such indignities. But at the same time I do not like to see him lose $15,000,000. I came to you to have you tell me if there is any way short of legal proceedings whereby I can prevent Tom from this insanity."

Pelham shrugged. "I'm afraid that such a matter is completely out of our line, Mr. Bleakie," he told the banker. "A man has a right to dispose of his property as he sees fit. Only you or Mr. Horton's family could apply to the courts in such a case as this."

"I don't want to apply to the courts, and Tom hasn't any family," said Bleakie.

"Then I'm afraid that there's nothing to be done," asserted Pelham. He frowned. "Still, because it's an interesting affair—let me think it over, Mr. Bleakie."

****

BUT nest afternoon he telephoned the banker. "I've seen your partner," he said. "I happen to know several dealers, and I got one of them to take me to Mr. Horton's house this morning. I happen to know something about jade and I was able to interest Mr. Horton. I asked him why he was disposing so recklessly of properties that had been expensively and painstakingly acquired. He looked at me quizzically and replied; 'Young man, a time comes to every one when he makes the discovery that a human being is free or is a slave. I've worried forty years about my possessions. I've been afraid of burglars, of fires, of loss. I'm ridding myself of that obsession, and if it costs me $20,000,000 to be a free man it's cheap at the price. I suppose you think I'm foolish, crazy. Maybe I am: but, if so, there are others just as crazy. Bill Smathers is doing the same thing. So is John Wilkie. In fact, seven of us, the biggest private collectors in New York, have decided that we'll free ourselves from the dreadful burden of ownership, no matter at what cost."

"He's insane," cried Bleakie.

"Maybe." said Pelham dubiously. "But I never met a saner-seeming man. You know, there's a lot to be said on his side of the argument."

"You're a young jackass," cried Bleakie.

"Thank you," said Pelham.

"Keep the change," cried the banker. "How about some golf?"

Pelham laughed. "Any time at all."

"I'll ring you up," said Bleakie. "But I won't bring any blank check with me."

And that, Pelham thought, was the end of the Horton affair.

It was a week later that Maline, the play producer, called upon him. There was a worried look upon the manager's red face.

"Mr. Pelham, you remember Deweese asking you how much the Tryon Agency would charge for locating Septen and the other character actors?"

"I remember some joking remark of his," replied Pelham.

"It's no joke now," stated Maline gloomily. "Have you read the papers lately?"

Pelham looked surprised. "I skim through all of them."

"Didn't happen to read of Septen's suicide four days ago, did you?" asked Maline.

Pelham looked shocked. "I didn't see it," he admitted.

"And you didn't read of Swinhurn's accidental death the day before yesterday?" inquired the producer.

Pelham shook his head.

"Septen was found in Central Park, a bullet hole in his forehead, powder marks around the wound and a revolver lying beside him. Swinburn slipped on the 6th avenue L platform at 42d street and was instantly killed by a train," said Maline. "There was nothing much in the papers about either of them. Just paragraphs on an inside page. But they were both Wolves, and a few of us over at the club got the idea that there is something queer about the two deaths. You know, neither of them has been in evidence at all recently. They seemed to have disappeared, along with five other character actors—Minister, Blanford, Kelley, Sheddon and Garceau. They were all more or less friendly, all about the same age and all actors. And it looks funny to us. Last night one of the committees of the Wolves had its monthly meeting. It's a committee that has broad powers. Talking over those two deaths and the continued disappearance of the five other men, we decided—well, we didn't decide any thing except to ask you to look into tho matter. It's hard for us to believe that even the direst poverty would drive Septen to suicide. And it happens to be well known to all of us that Swinburn never rode on the elevated. He was in an accident on the elevated ten years ago and had ever since an obsessing horror of those trains. Of course, this isn't evidence. Neither is our belief that Septen was normal real evidence. Nevertheless, here's a check for $2,500 as a retainer. Will you take the case?"

Pelham looked at the check and tore it up.

"I am a Wolf," he said, "and the case interests me. I don't want money. Now, tell me everything you know."

But beyond giving Pelham, the addresses of the two dead men and the five other missing actors Maline could add nothing to what he had already told. Septen, according to the police, was unquestionably a suicide. Swinburn had been accidentally killed.

****

PELHAM began his investigation by visiting the last known residence of Septen. He learned that on a day about a month ago Septen, a widower without children, had received a letter by messenger. He had left his modest rooms and never returned. He had taken with him no baggage. The same facts fitted the cases of all the other men. Un-uniformed messengers had brought them letters. They had gore out hurriedly and had never returned. In three cases their rooms had been rented to other people and their bag gage stored in the cellar. The others happened to have paid in advance, and their rooms, or apartments, were ready for them. And it was not extraordinary that their landlords had not reported their disappearance to the police. Any one of them might have obtained a sudden engagement with a road company or with a motion picture concern that necessitated instant travel.

One thing attracted Pelham's attention. Of the seven missing men four had been observed to carry in their hands as they left their rooms the letters which had just arrived. The letters had probably contained instructions that they should be brought to the sender, as a matter of identification, perhaps. Or else the address to which, these actors went was unfamiliar to them.

Perhaps the writer of these letters had wished no evidence of the destination of the letters' recipients to be left In their homes. Pelham found a thrill of excitement as this theory presented itself to him.

At the last address which he visited, the room of Minister, he found among the missing man's effects, to which he was given ready access on showing his card, a diary kept by the actor. The last item on the last page gave Pelham his first clue:

"Just received letter from Ferry Theatrical Agency, —— Broadway, asking me to call," the diary read.

Pelham arrived at the Broadway address, to learn that the Ferry agency had been a brief tenant. It had rented two rooms about six weeks ago, and a month ago had forfeited its advance rent and closed its offices. The agency had apparently consisted of one man, Mr. Ferry himself. The elevator boys and the janitor gave Pelham varying descriptions of the agent, by none of which would he be prepared to identify any one.

But of one thing Pelham was certain. The seven character actors had been deliberately lured from their homes and had been inveigled into some adventure that had cost the lives of two of them. Even as he sat helplessly at his apartment one or, more of the five men might be in the process of being killed.

Why? The imagination failed to supply any motive whatsoever.

All of these seven vanished men were poor. These men, though successful as artists, had had no financial success. Robbery could not be the motive.

Behind the most unreasoning occurrence lies a reason. if one actor had disappeared, the problem might be insurmountable, but where seven had vanished the problem should become easier. Parallel trails, amazing coincidences, should offer themselves to his observation. Only they didn't.

Robbery he discarded. Why, then, should any one interest himself in the disappearance of seven old actors? if not for what they had, could it be for what they were? He seemed to feel something at his mental finger tips, something elusive yet tangible. But it slipped from his clutches. Never had the Gray Ghost proposed a puzzle so unsolvable as this. Indeed, it seemed like a feat of the Gray Ghost. It took organization to kidnap seven men, to kill two of them, and leave no traces of murder. Only the Gray Ghost would not waste his time with poverty-stricken actors.

****

PELHAM laughed at himself; wherever he turned he saw the mocking countenance of the Gray Ghost. And it was while he sneered at himself that slim Dickenson, his friend and man of all work, ushered into his living room one of the elevator boys whom Pelham had interviewed earlier in the day.

The boy, an undersized gamin of the streets, with a hard mouth and bold eyes, was in a fever of excitement.

"That guy Ferry—the agent! I seen him half an hour ago, Mr. Pelham. In a taxi, shootin' across 42nd street. I got another taxi. I followed him until he stopped in front of a house on East 7Jst street. I got out of my car half a block down the street. I told my taxi man to keep an eye on the other machine, that was still standing in front of a house. I ducked into a drug store on the corner and telephoned me brother. I tells him not to care about expense. In five minutes he drives up in another taxi. I describes Ferry to him, gives him all me loose change, and tells him if Ferry come out to follow him to Chicago if he has to. Then I beats it down here to you."

Pelham eyes the youngster. "How much are you paid as elevator boy?"

"Eighteen berries a week," replied the boy.

"And what's your name?" asked Pelham.

"Daniel Boyd," answered the boy.

"Twice eighteen is thirty-six? You're working for me. That's your weekly salary to start," said Pelham.

Young Boyd grinned impudently at him. "I'll be getting seventy-two this time next month, if you know a good man when you see him," he said.

Pelham smiled; then his eyes grew eager. "What's the address of the house that Ferry entered?" he asked.

The boy told him. Bewilderment appeared in Pelham's eyes. Then, bidding young Boyd follow, he raced downstairs, out of the building and into the taxi waiting for Boyd. He ordered the man to drive to the corner of 71st street and Madison avenue. There he alighted, but there was no trace of Boyd's brother or of the taxicab which had brought Ferry to this neighborhood. So Pelham, bidding his new employe to wait there until his brother returned, and commanding him then to come at once to his apartment, returned there himself. One hour later Boyd and a small edition of himself came to Pelham. The younger boy, whose name was George, burst into his story.

"The guy Dan told me to lay for came out about three minutes after Dan left. I followed him to No. — Madison avenue. From there I fol lowed him to No. — East 39th street. Then he went to two houses on 5th avenue, one on Grammercy Park and another on Washington Square. He stayed a few minutes at this house and then came out. Last he drove to the corner of 16th street and 3rd avenue. He got out of his taxi, paid the driver and walked to a house on Stuyvesant Square. He opened the front door with a latch key, so I figured that was where he lived and I was safe to leave him. I got another taxi and beat it up here. Me brother Dan is working for you. Am I?"

"You are," said Pelham. "At the same salary. Now give me the numbers of those houses again."

The boy handed him a dirty piece of paper on which he had written the numbers. Pelham nodded commendation and went to the telephone. He called up Mr. Robert Bleakie, and a moment later was talking to that gentleman: "Mr. Bleakie, John Wilkie lives on Gramercy Park, and William Smathers lives on Washington square. Please tell me the names and addresses of four other friends of your partner who are also collectors of precious things."

"Tom Bartholomay lives at No. — Fifth avenue. Sam Harding lives two doors from him. Phil Riley lives at No. — East Thirty-ninth street, and Ben Thompson at No. Madison avenue. What's the idea?"

Pelham's laugh was excited. "I'm not sure, but—your partner told me that Wilkie and Smathers were selling their collections. Can you tell me if the other four are doing the same thing?"

"They are," replied Bleakie. "And their business associates are as worried as I am. They refused to see their friends, just as Tom Horton refused to see me."

"Tell them to quit worrying," said Pelham. And then he hung up.

****

VENICE contributes exquisitely em- over the telephone with Jerry Tryon, and ten minutes after that he was standing on a corner of Stuyvesant Square remote from the house that Ferry had entered. He had hardly left his taxi when Jerry, accompanied by half a dozen of his operatives, descended from a big limousine. Two other cars followed, and in all there were twenty men in the group which Pelham led across the square.

A few doors from the house which was their objective, Pelham paused.

"Jerry," he said, "I'm acting on the wildest sort of theory. Either there are seven multimillionaires imprisoned in that house, or there are not. In the latter case, we may pay an unwilling visit to the police court. It is no light offense to batter down the doors of a respectable private house. And if I'm mistaken, the laugh that will go up——"

"We've been laughted at a lot already, Mr. Pelham," replied Jerry grimly. "Let's go."

Beneath their overcoats four of the operatives carried axes and crowbars. The door of the house which Ferry had entered gave way in thirty seconds. Pelham had been tricked before; this time there were men in the yard behind and on the roofs of the adjacent buildings. Of the twenty-four men that were in the building not one escaped. And seven of them did not wish to escape. These seven were Tom Horton and the other multimillionaire collectors, who had suddenly decided to simplify life by getting rid of the treasures which they had spent their lifetime in collecting.

"I said you could write your own check, and I meant it," said Mr. Robert Bleakie. He wrote his name in the right-hand corner of a check, and pushed the paper over to Pelham.

"And I said that your words were sweetly sympathetic. I find your actions equally so. I have already collected ten thousand apiece from six victims. Ten thousand more will just about make it right," said Pelham.

Mr. Bleakie lighted a cigar. "And if you care to tell me just how you doped it all out, you may make it eleven thousand," he remarked.

"I'll do it for nothing," smiled Pelham.

"There was a coincidence in seven men deciding to sacrifice fabulously valuable collections at the same time," he began, "but the coincidence did not seem important to me until another coincidence was brought to my attention. That was the strange disappearance of seven character actors. And still I did not put the two things together. I did so only when a man whom I believed responsible for the disappearance of the seven actors paid a visit to the house of your partner, Tom Horton. Then I began to have a glimmering of the scheme.

"The glimmering became the dazzling rays of sunshine when I learned that this man—his ostensible name was Ferry—had paid other visits to the homes of six wealthy men, two of whom I already knew to be collectors who were disposing of their properties. You told me that the others were doing the same thing. Of course, what I considered sunshine might have been moonshine, but—it wasn't. Ferry was the commander visiting his troops.

"I found, within the house that Ferry last visited, all of the rich collectors. The actors had been kidnaped because they could impersonate millionaires. The millionaires had been kidnapped in order to make way for the actors who would impersonate them and sell their property."

"But who could have engineered such a thing?" cried Bleakie.

"Ferry brazenly admits that the Gray Ghost is his employer. So do the other men. And, as usual, they don't know where he is, and if they did they wouldn't tell."

"But how could he know that the actors would consent to turn criminals?" asked Bleakie.

"Fear works wonders," answered Pelham, dryly. "The Gray Ghost had planted his own men as secretaries and valets in the households of his victims. He spends a year in plannlng, if need be. The actors knew that if they disobeyed they would be killed. Septen tried to betray his captors. He was killed. So was Swlnburn. It was pretended that the men whom they impersonated were sick in bed, and tho sales at their houses stopped. But the other five actors, learning of what had happened to Septen and Swlnburn—the latter was drugged, then pushed in front of a train—were so frightened that they offered no further resistance."

"What will be done to the actors?" asked Bleakie.

"Nothing," said Pelham. "I have the promise of all concerned as regards them. If the millionaires submitted, to save their lives, to the indignity of being kidnaped, why should they wish to punish men who yielded to similar threats."

"I think, young man, that you are a remarkable detective."

"Thank you," replied Pelham, bitterly. "if I were half as good a detective as the Gray Ghost is a crook, I'd be the greatest man in my line that ever lived."

****

REACTION had come, and he was still in the depths of despair when he reached his apartment. He had served millions by his quick understanding of the situation. But his victories were half victories. He could prevent the Gray Ghost from reaping his full profit, but that was all. The great criminal always gained something. And never could Pelham lay his hand upon his great opponent.

"if once again I could meet him face to face," he said to himself.

As though In answer to his whispered speech the telephone rang. He answered it and thrilled as he recognized the icy tones.

"Mr. Pelham, you have interfered for the last time. Within the next week I am going to kill you with my own hands."

That was all. Pelham would meet bis great opponent face to face.

(Copyright, 1924.)