The Hunter and Other Stories Read online

  But the fat man shook his head.

  Mrs. Newbrith stopped laughing to cough. The elder Newbrith was coughing, his eyes red, tears on his wrinkled cheeks. A cushion case was limp and empty in his fingers: it had burst under his violent handling and its contents had puffed out to scatter in the air, thickening in an atmosphere already heavy with the smoke and stench of burnt hair and fabric.

  “Can’t we open a window for a second?” the younger Newbrith called through this cloud. “Just enough to clear the air?”

  “Now you oughtn’t to ask me a thing like that,” fat Joe complained petulantly. “You ought to have sense enough to know we can’t do a thing like that.”

  Old Newbrith spread his empty cushion cover out with both hands and began to wave it in the air, fanning a relatively clear space in front of him. Servants seized rugs and followed his example. Smoke swirled away, thinning toward the ceiling. White curls of fleece eddied about, were wafted to distant parts of the room. The three men at the door watched without comment.

  “I’m afraid this young man is going to make a nuisance of himself,” the fat man squeaked after a little while. “You’ll have to do something with him, Tom.”

  “Aw, leave the young fellow alone,” said Tom. “He’s all—”

  A white feather, fluttering lazily down, came to hang for a moment against the tip of Tom’s red nose. He dabbed at it with the back of one of the hands that held his pistols. The feather floated up in the air-current generated by the hand’s motion, but immediately returned to the nose-tip again. Tom’s hand dabbed at it once more and his face puffed out redly. The feather eluded his hand, nestling between nose and upper lip. His face became grotesquely inflated. He sneezed furiously. The gun in the dabbing hand roared. Old Newbrith’s empty cushion case was whisked out of his hands. A hole like a smooth dime appeared in the blind down across a window behind him.

  “Tch! Tch!” exclaimed the fat man. “You ought to be carefuller, Tom. You might hurt somebody that way.”

  Tom sneezed again, but with precautions now, holding his pistols down, holding his forefingers stiffly away from the triggers. He sneezed a third time, rubbed his nose with the back of a hand, put his weapons out of sight under his coat, and brought out a handkerchief.

  “I might of for a fact,” he admitted good naturedly, blowing his nose and wiping his eyes. “Remember that time Snohomish Whitey gunned that bank messenger without meaning to, all on account of being ticklish and having a button bust off his undershirt and slide down on the inside?”

  “Yes,” fat Joe remembered, “but Snohomish was always kind of flighty.”

  “You can say what you want about Snohomish,” the brutish man said, rubbing his chin reflectively with the blackjack, “but he packs a good wallop in his left, and don’t think he don’t. That time me and him went round and round in the jungle at Sac he made me like it, even if I did take him, and don’t think he didn’t.”

  “That’s right enough,” the fat man admitted, “but still and all, I never take much stock in a man that can’t take a draw on your cigarette without getting it all wet. Well, don’t let these folks do any more cutting up on you,” and he waddled away.

  Hugh Trate, surrounded by disapproval, sat and stared at the floor for fifteen minutes. Then his face began to redden slowly. When it was quite red he lifted it and looked into the elder Newbrith’s bitter eyes.

  “Do you think I started it because I was chilly?” he asked angrily. “Wouldn’t it have smoked these crooks out? Wouldn’t it have brought firemen, police?”

  The old man glared at him. “Don’t you think it’s bad enough to be robbed without being cremated? Do you think the insurance company would have paid me a nickel for the house? Do you—?”

  A downstairs crash rattled windows, shook the room, put weapons in the hands of men at the door. Feet thumped on distant steps, scurried overhead, stamped in the hall. The door opened far enough to admit a pale hatchet-face.

  “Ben,” it addressed the cheerful man, “Big Fat wants you. We been ranked!”

  Two shots close together sounded below. Ben, recently Tom, hurried out after the hatchet-face, leaving the brutish Bill alone to guard the prisoners. He glowered threateningly at them with his little red-brown eyes, crouching beside the door, blackjack in one hand, battered revolver in the other.

  Another shot thundered. Something broke with a splintering sound in the rear of the house. A distant man yelled throatily, “Put the slug to him!” In another part of the building a man laughed. Heavy feet were on the stairs, in the hall.

  Bill spun to the door as the door came in. Gunpowder burned diagonally upward in a dull flash. Metal buttons glistened against blue cloth around, under, over Bill. His blackjack arched through the air, twisted end over end, and thudded on the floor.

  A sallow plump man in blue civilian clothes came into the room, stepping over the policemen struggling with Bill on the floor. His hands were in his jacket pockets and he nodded to Newbrith senior without removing his hat.

  “Detective-sergeant McClurg,” he introduced himself. “We nabbed six or seven of ’em, all of ’em, I guess. What’s it all about?”

  “Robbery, that’s what it’s all about!” Newbrith stormed. “They seized the house at daybreak. All day they’ve held us here, prisoners in our own home! I’ve been forced to withdraw my bank balances, to sell stocks and bonds and everything that could be sold quickly. I’ve been forced to make myself ridiculous by demanding currency for everything, by sending God knows what kind of messengers for it. I’ve been forced to borrow money from men I despise! I might just as well live in a wilderness as in a city that keeps me poor with its taxes for all the protection I’ve got. I haven’t—”

  “We can’t guess what’s happening,” the detective-sergeant said. “We came as soon as Pentner gave us the rap.”

  “Pentner?” It was a despairing scream. The old man’s eyes rolled frenziedly at the bright round hole in the curtained window that concealed his neighbor’s residence. “That damned scoundrel! I hope he waits for me to thank him for his impudence in meddling in my business! I’d rather lose everything I’ve got in the world than be beholden to that—”

  The detective-sergeant’s plumpness shook with an inner mirth. “You don’t have to let that bother you,” he interrupted the old man’s tirade. “He won’t like it so much either! He phoned in saying you had taken a shot at him while he was standing in his room brushing his hair. He said he always expected something like that would happen, because he knew you were crazy as a pet cuckoo and ought to have been locked up long ago. He said that, since you had missed him, he was glad you had cut loose at him, because now the city would have to put you away where you belonged.”

  “So you see,” came the triumph of Brenda Newbrith’s voice, “Mr. Trate is clever, and he did show you!”

  “Eh?” was the most her grandfather could achieve.

  “You know very well,” she declared, “that if he hadn’t set fire to the sofa you wouldn’t have burst the cushion, and the feathers wouldn’t have tickled that man’s nose, and he wouldn’t have sneezed, and his gun wouldn’t have gone off, and the bullet wouldn’t have frightened Mr. Pentner into thinking you were trying to kill him, and he wouldn’t have phoned the police, and they wouldn’t have come here to rescue us. That stands to reason. Well, then, how can you say that Mr. Trate’s cleverness didn’t do it?”

  Detective-sergeant McClurg’s plumpness shook again. Old Newbrith snorted and fumbled for words that wouldn’t come. The younger Newbrith murmured something about the house that Jack built.

  The young man who had been clever turned a bit red and had a moment of trouble with his breathing, but the bland smile his face wore was the smile of one who wears honestly won laurels easily, neither over-valuing nor under-valuing them.

  “I think it’s wonderful,” the girl assured him, “to be able to make plans that go through successfully no matter how much everybody tries to spoil them from the very
beginning.”

  Nobody could find a reply to that—if one were possible.

  THE DIAMOND WAGER

  I always knew West was eccentric.

  Ever since the days of our youth, in various universities—for we seemed destined to follow each other about the globe—I had known Alexander West to be a person of the most bizarre, though not unattractive, personality: At Heidelberg, where he renounced water as a beverage; at Pisa, where he affected a one-piece garment for months; at the Sorbonne, where he consorted with the most notorious characters, boasting an acquaintance with Le Grand Raoul, an unspeakable ruffian of La Villette.

  And in later life, when we met in Constantinople, where West was American minister, I found that his idiosyncrasies were common topics in the diplomatic corps. In the then Turkish capital I naturally dined with West at the Legation, and except for his pointed beard and Prussian mustache being somewhat more gray, I found him the same tall, courtly figure, with a keen brown eye and the hands of generations, an aristocrat.

  But his eccentricities were then of more refined fantasy. No more baths in snow, no more beer orgies, no more Libyan negroes opening the door, no more strange diets. At the Legation, West specialized in rugs and gems. He had a museum in carpets. He had even abandoned his old practice of having the valet call him every morning at eight o’clock with a gramophone record.

  I left the Legation thinking West had reformed. “Rugs and precious stones,” I reflected; “that’s such a banal combination for West.” Although I did recall that he had told me he was doing something strange with a boat on the Bosporus; but I neglected to inquire about the details. It was something in connection with work, as he had said, “Everybody has a pleasure boat; I have a work boat, where I can be alone.” But that is all I retained concerning this freak of his mind.

  It was some years later, however, when West had retired from diplomacy, that he turned up in my Paris apartment, a little grayer, straight and keen as usual, but with his beard a trifle less pointed—and, let’s say, a trifle less distinguished-looking. He looked more the successful business man than the traditional diplomat. It was a cold, blustery night, so I bade West sit down by my fire and tell me of his adventures; for I knew he had not been idle since leaving Constantinople.

  “No, I am not doing anything,” he answered, after a pause, in reply to my question as to his present activities. “Just resting and laughing to myself over a little prank I played on a friend.”

  “Oho!” I declared; “so you’re going in for pranks now.”

  He laughed heartily. I could hardly see West as a practical joker. That was one thing out of his line. As he held his long, thin hands together, I noticed an exceptionally fine diamond ring on his left hand. It was of an unusual luster, deep set in gold, flush with the cutting. His quick eye caught me looking at this ornament. As I recall, West had never affected jewelry of any kind.

  “Oh, yes, you are wondering about this,” he said, gazing into the crystal. “Fine yellow diamond; not so rare, but unusual, set in gold, which they are not wearing any longer. A little present.” He repeated blandly, after a pause, “A little present for stealing.”

  “For stealing?” I inquired, astonished. I could hardly believe West would steal. He would not play practical jokes and he would not steal.

  “Yes,” he drawled, leaning back away from the fire. “I had to steal about four million francs—that is, four million francs’ worth of jewels.” He noted the effect on me, and went on in a matter-of-fact way: “Yes, I stole it, stole it all. Got the police all upset; got stories in the newspapers. They referred to me as a super-thief, a master criminal, a malefactor, a crook, and an organized gang. But I proved my case. I lifted four million from a Paris jeweler, walked around town with it, gave my victim an uncomfortable night, and walked in his store the next day between rows of wise gentlemen, gave him back his paltry four million, and collected my bet, which is this ring you see here.”

  West paused and chuckled softly to himself, still apparently getting the utmost out of this late escapade in burglary. Of course, I remembered only recently seeing in the newspapers how some clever gentleman cracksman had succeeded in a fantastic robbery in the Rue de la Paix, Paris, but I had not read the details.

  I was genuinely curious. This was, indeed, West in his true character. But to go in for deliberate and probably dangerous burglary was something which I considered required a little friendly counsel on my part. West anticipated my difficulty in broaching the subject.

  “Don’t worry, old man. I pinched the stuff from a good friend of ours, really a pal, so if I had been caught it would have been fixed up, except I would have lost my bet.”

  He looked at the yellow diamond.

  “But don’t you realize what would have happened if you had been caught?” I asked. “Prank or not, your name would have been aired in the newspapers—a former American minister guilty of grand larceny; an arrest; a day or so in jail; sensation; talk, ruinous gossip!”

  He only laughed the more. He held up an arresting hand. “Please don’t call me an amateur. I did the most professional job that the Rue de la Paix has seen in years.”

  I believe he was really proud of this burglary.

  West gazed reflectively into the fire. “But I wouldn’t do it again—not for a dozen rings.” He watched the firelight dance in the pure crystal of the stone on his finger. “Poor old Berthier, he was wild! He came to see me the night I lifted his diamonds, four million francs’ worth, mind you, and they were in my pocket at the time. He asked me to accompany him to the store and go over the scene.

  “He said perhaps I might prove cleverer than detectives, whom he was satisfied were a lot of idiots. I told him I would come over the next day, because, according to the terms of our wager, I was to keep the jewels for more than twenty-four hours. I returned the next day, and handed them to him in his upstairs office. The poor wretch that I took them from was downstairs busy reconstructing the ‘crime’ with those astute gentlemen, the detectives, and I’ve no doubt that they would eventually have caught me, for you don’t get away with robbery in France. They catch you in the end. Fortunately I made the terms of my wager to fit the conditions.”

  West leaned back and blinked satisfyingly at the ceiling, tapping his fingertips together. “Poor old Berthier,” he mused. “He was wild.”

  As soon as West had mentioned that his victim was a mutual friend, I had thought of Berthier. Moreover, Berthier’s was one of those establishments in which a four-million-franc purchase or a theft of the same size might not seem so unusual. West interrupted my thoughts concerning Berthier.

  “I made Berthier promise that he would not dismiss any employee. That also was in the terms of our wager because I dealt directly with Armand the head salesman and a trusted employee. It was Armand who delivered the stones.” West leaned nearer, his brown eyes squinting at me as if in defense of any reprehension I might impute to him. “You see, I did it, not so much as a wager, but to teach Berthier a lesson. Berthier is responsible for his store, he is the principal shareholder, the administration is his own, it was he and it was his negligence in not rigidly enforcing more elementary principles of safety that made the theft possible.” He turned the yellow diamond around on his finger. “This thing is nothing, compared to the value of the lesson he learned.”

  West stroked his stubby beard. He chuckled. “It did cost me some of my beard. A hotel suite, an old trunk, a real Russian prince, a fake Egyptian prince, a would-be princess, a first-class reservation to Egypt, a convenient bathroom, running water and soapsuds. Poor old Armand, who brought the gems—he and his armed assistants—they must have almost fainted when, after waiting probably a good half hour, all they found in exchange for a four-million-franc necklace was a cheap bearskin coat, a broad brimmed hat, and some old clothes.”

  I must admit that I was growing curious. It was about a week ago when I had seen this sensational story in the newspapers. I knew West had come to tell me about it
, as he had so often related to me his various escapades, and I was getting restive. Moreover, I knew Berthier well, and I could readily imagine the state of his mind on the day of the missing diamonds.

  I had a bottle of 1848 cognac brought up, and we both settled down to the inner warmth of this most friendly of elixirs.

  II

  “You see,” West began, with this habitual phrase of his, “I had always been a good customer of Berthier’s. I have bought trinkets from Berthier’s both in New York and Paris since I was a boy. And in getting around as I did in various diplomatic posts, I naturally sent Berthier many wealthy clients. I got him the work on two very important crown jewel commissions; I sent him princes and magnates; and of course he always wanted to make me a present, knowing well that the idea of a commission was out of the question.

  “One day not long ago I was in Berthier’s with a friend who was buying some sapphires and platinum and a lot of that atrocious modern jewelry for his new wife. Berthier offered me this yellow diamond then as a present, for I had always admired it, but never felt quite able to buy it, and knowing at the same time that even if I did buy it he would have marked the price so low as to be embarrassing.

  “However, we compromised by dining together that night in Ciro’s; and there he pointed out to me the various personalities of that international crowd who wear genuine stones. ‘I can’t understand,’ Berthier said, after a comprehensive observation of the clientele, ‘how all these women are not robbed even more regularly than they are. Even we jewelers, with all our protective systems, are not safe from burglary.’

  “Berthier then went on to tell me of some miserable wretch who, only the day before, had smashed a show window down the street and filched several big stones. ‘A messy job,’ he commented, and he informed me that the police soon apprehended this window burglar.