The Black Cat (magazine)/Volume 22/Number 2/Number One on the Sucker List
NUMBER ONE
ON THE SUCKER LIST
Two men match wits to see which is on the side of the intellectuals and which is on the sucker list—and all because of a few letters written by a young lady who had not reached the age of discretion.
HE sign on the door read, The Kimbarton Detective Agency. Underneath in smaller letters were the words, Divorce Cases A Specialty. The building was dingy and the corridors showed strong evidences of neglect.
The man in the hall plainly did not belong. From the "tissue weight fall soft" to the neatly shod feet, he was immaculate. The gray suit with the gardenia in the buttonhole, seemed to recoil in disgust from the dry, musty odor that pervaded the place; the irreproachable linen of his attire looked whiter for its surroundings. His nostrils twitching disdainfully and the clean-cut patrician face with its thin, cruel lips, showed the distaste he felt for the work before him. He reluctantly opened the door and went in.
The office bore out the promise implied by the rest of the building. It was lighted by two dingy windows, through which the sun was trying in vain to shine. A typewriter desk, minus the typewriter, occupied the room. Three or four chairs, timeworn and dilapidated, stood along the wall, and a calendar bearing a date of two years previous hung between the windows. A door at the back of the room bore the inscription, Mr. Kimbarton, Private, and from behind this issued raucous snores with steady monotony.
The visitor rapped smartly on the desk with his cane, waited a moment, rapped again, and then a third time.
The snores ceased, the door opened, and from within came a short, pudgy figure dressed in a soiled and wrinkled suit of blue serge. He stood in the doorway for a moment, sleepily rubbing his eyes, his pasty face moist with perspiration.
"Whadya want?" he growled surlily.
"Mr. Kimbarton, I take it?" remarked the visitor.
"You take it right then, an' I don't need no books, an' no insurance, an' you gotta fat lotta nerve a-comin' into a busy man's office an' poundin' on his furniture with a stick. Whadya want anyway?"
"I thought," said the stranger, picking his stick up from the desk where he had laid it, "that this was a detective agency. I see that I was mistaken. It's a school for bad manners; and, as I don't feel that I need any lessons in that line, I will bid you good-day."
He started for the door, but the other forestalled him.
"I beg your pardon, sir," he said meekly, "but I was up all night on a case and my temper is a bit short today. Anything I can do for you in the line of business I assure you I'll be very glad to handle."
He brought two chairs from near the wall and placed them by the table.
"Sit down, sir," Kimbarton urged; "anything you may give us to handle will receive the most excellent of attention." His eyes searched the visitor's face anxiously now.
The man in gray stood by the door, twirling his stick, mulling the situation over and trying to reach some decision. Then, with a smile of contempt at his own weakness, he walked to the table and seated himself. "Kimbarton," he said slowly, "I'm going to lay my case before you and 1 want to tell it in my own way without interruptions, mind, without any interruptions. Understand?"
"Yes, sir," said the detective, "I gotcha."
"Right! First then, my name is Van Der Cynck and I am the private secretary of Mrs. Willis Stairing, wife of the Nevada smelter magnate. Remember, no interruptions," as the detective moistened his lips with his tongue. "Jerry Longley recommended you to me. He said you were a 'damned crook' and would do anything in the world for money." He paused, but the detective remained silent and he went on again. "That's why I gave you another chance. Crooks are common. I know twenty in my own set that are fully as crooked as you, but Longley says that you have brains and can use them. That's what I'm looking for,—crooked brains.
"Three years ago I met Ethel Clagdon at a house-party at Saranac. It was the first time I had seen her for about ten years, and she had changed from a long-legged, freckle-faced kid into a magnificent looking woman. I did not know her at first, but she recognized me at once and greeted me most cordially with outstretched hands."
Van Der Cynck raised his hand warningly to Kimbarton, who had straightened up in his chair and was gaping at him, stupid with amazement.
"'Ethel Clagdon,' she replied to my salutation. 'Wyndham was my uncle's name, Billy; I had no right to it. Oh, that glorious summer! I shall never forget it. And you—you haven't changed a bit. Come over and sit down, Billy.' She led me to a chair away from the rest of the crowd and we began to talk over old times.
"'It was always money, money, money,' she said. 'Wherever I went, even when a child, people forgot to look at me. The Clagdon millions blinded them. They didn't care whether I was an ugly duckling or a bird of paradise; whether I was an angel or an imp; it was all one to them. I reflected money, and to stand in the glow of that reflection was all they craved. Billy, I was so sick of it. Never an honest opinion; never a kindly impulse. They were drunk with the thought of so much gold, and I was fawned on and petted until—well, I couldn't stand it, and so summers I would go to visit Uncle Tim and I told every one my name was Wyndham. The summer I met you was the first of six, and the happiest of all, Billy. When I was finally discovered even there and I saw people who had known me for years change over night and get the gold-greedy look in their eyes and the fawning, sycophantic tone in their voices, I gave up the struggle and that was the end of masquerading.'
"We saw a great deal of each other after that; and a year later she promised to marry me, but insisted that the engagement be kept a secret for the time being. Then came the failure of the Mastodon Bank, and the Clagdon fortune was wiped out. Henry Clagdon committed suicide rather than face a term in a Federal prison; and when everything was settled, Ethel was not only fatherless, but penniless. I urged her to marry me then, but she kept putting me off. Then yesterday," and Van Der Cynck's face was wicked with anger, "she told me she was going to marry John Dally, a miserable artist who can't sell enough of his own pictures to keep him out of the poorhouse,—and she penniless." He slapped his stick on the desk in wordless rage and stared straight ahead, forgetting, apparently, the man to whom he was talking.
An apologetic cough from Kimbarton recalled him to his surroundings and he took up his story again.
"That brings me to my purpose in peeking you," he said. "Once she told me that,"—he gulped with rage. "She said, 'It was the third summer Billy, I was nineteen, and my head was full of romance. His name was Kenally, Howard Kenally, and I thought I was in love with him. He said he was in love with me, and I believed him. We eloped, but Uncle found out and brought me back. Then I wrote to him. Foolish, silly letters they were, the kind a silly, sentimental child would write, saying how dearly I loved him and always would, and a lot of silliness; nothing that was wrong, but horribly and utterly foolish. Then my uncle told me that he had looked him up and found he was a married man, and that killed it. I never saw nor heard of him again and hope that I never shall, but I wanted to tell you nbout this, Billy, so you would know.'"
Van Der Cynck studied the tip of his shoe for a moment and then went on, his face fiendish in its intensity, his voice vibrating with suppressed anger.
"Here is my plan. Find this man Kenally, get the letters, and send them to Dally. Dally is a prude, a man who. would think a woman unclean if she should tell a lie even by imputation. He's a Puritan of the most rigid views. Those letters would damn her in his eyes as surely as if she were Saphira herself. I'd bleed them of every cent they have; but she's broke, and he's . as poor as a church mouse. I don't care a whoop about the money anyway, but by God, she won't marry him if I have anything to say about it Get those letters, Kimbarton, and I'll give you a hundred dollars apiece, for them, and pay your expenses. Look up this man Kenally. All I know of him is that he was at Idlemere ten years ago and he was a short, stout blonde, with blue eyes. He was married and lived in Chicago on Dearborn, near Schiller Street. Can you, handle it?"
"I can handle it all right," said Kimbarton slowly, "provided the price is O. K. One hundred apiece isn't enough for them letters."
"How much, then?" asked the young man angrily. "Look here; don't think you can play me for a mark. I'm not a rich man and while I am willing to do the right thing, I won't be held up. What's your price?"
"Listen to me, now," said Kimbarton, his face showing the confidence he felt in his ability to handle the situation. "In the first place, you come into my office as if you owned it, tell me where to head in at, and call me a crook without any license. If I'm a crook that's my own business. I haven't got you skinned any, I reckon. You talk about blackmail like you was pretty well used to it, and you're trying to hand this girl a package because she throws you down and hooks up with another guy. Well, the letters will cost you one hundred dollars apiece, all right. That's five hundred. Callin' me a crook is five hundred more, and five hundred more for necessary expenses is a grand total of fifteen hundred. Take it or leave it."
"Right," said Van Der Cynck, shaking with passion and getting to his feet. "I'll leave it, you dirty little shyster."
"One moment, please," grinned Kimbarton malignantly; "that word 'shyster' will cost you another hundred. Yes, I know," as the young man started to speak, "there are plenty of other agencies that would be glad to handle this, but you see I happen to be Kenally," and he burst out laughing at the look of blank amazement on the face of his visitor.
Van Der Cynck came back and sat down. "What's your price?" he asked helplessly, "and how the devil do you happen to be Kenally and Kimbarton, too?"
"Oh!" remarked the detective airily, "I just traveled under that name for a while, liking the sound of it, so to speak. As to the price, I told you, sixteen hundred."
"Ridiculous!" cried Van Der Cynck. He rose to his feet again. "I will give you a thousand dollars for the letters, and that's the ultimate limit. If you insist, I'll apologize for calling you a crook and a shyster, but I won't give more than a thousand for the letters, and that's final."
He had his hand on the door knob when the detective spoke. "You win," he said; "a thousand goes. Wait!" He went into the room marked private, and for several minutes the visitor waited. Kimbarton presently returned with a packet of letters in his hand and laid them on the table: "C. O. D." he remarked and looked expectantly at Van Der Cynck.
"I want to examine them first," was the answer; "that's a little thin. First you say you are Kenally, when I know you are Kimbarton, then you want to sell me those letters you have there for a thousand dollars when I don't know whether they're the ones I want or not." He held out his hand. "Give them to me. If they are what you say they are, you'll get your money immediately. Come!"
He looked expectantly at the detective, still holding out his hand; and, after a moment's hesitation, Kimbarton placed the letters in it.
Rapidly Van Der Cynck ran through them, his lips relaxing into a faint smile as he gathered the import of them. Folding the last one, he placed the packet in his pocket. Then, drawing a fat wallet from his inside pocket, he counted out ten hundred-dollar bills on the desk. Picking up his cane, he started for the door when the voice of the detective halted him again. There was a taunt in the voice now and a sneer on the coarse lips of the man as he spoke.
"Say," he drawled, "you're a pretty wise Willie. Not! You were going to hand me a package wan't you? Going to get them letters cheap and get away with it while I played the sucker and watched you do it? Well, you're just about a thousand out on this deal, Old Top."
"What do you mean?" demanded Van Der Cynck coldly. "Are not these the letters I wanted? Are there any more besides these?"
"Oh! They're the ones you wanted all right, and that's all of 'em; but you, you're a fine come-on you are. Why, you poor nut, I'd a-pulled that game myself if you hadn't butted in, and anyone had tipped me off where I could find that Wyndham doll. I didn't know her name was Clagdon. Kicked me out of the back end of a rig, her uncle did, and I've been laying for a chance to get square. And you! You blow in and run the whole game for me and hand me a thousand bucks. You're a hot sketch! I gotta hand it to you, kid."
Van Der Cynck had flushed angrily while Kimbarton was talking, but waited quietly until he had finished. Then, in the same even, well-modulated tone that had characterized his earlier speech, he said, "Jerry Longley said you were a damned crook, and I believed him. He said you were a fat-head, and I believed him. Figuring you to be these two things, I called you the first to make you mad, and added that you had brains to make you foolish. I succeeded admirably in each case. Me, you characterize as a sucker, a come-on, and several other very worthy things that are, no doubt, a part of your profession. You say I'm a thousand dollars out. Maybe. Mrs. Stairing, however, is probably many thousand in, besides, and an untold amount of happiness and a fortune in nights when she will be able to sleep. On the whole, I think I'm entirely satisfied, and I am sure Mrs. Stairing is."
"What the hell has Mrs. Stairing got to do with this anyway?" snarled Kimbarton. "I don't know anything about Mrs. Stairing. It's this Wyndham kid we are talking about, ain't it?"
"One and the same," assented Van Der Cynck, over his shoulder, as he opened the door and stepped into the hall, "and my name, by the way, is Clagdon, not Van Der Cynck. You see, Ethel Clagdon married Stairing this morning; and as I happen to be her brother, she asked me to clear up this annoying little business detail while they were on their honeymoon, and before you found out who she was. Come-on—eh? Why, my dear Mr. Kimbarton Kenally, I've known who you were for six months. You're number one.on the sucker list. No one but a come-on would fall for that sentimental bunk I sprung on you."
The door closed with a bang.