CHAPTER IV
THE TANGO THIEF
"My husband has such a jealous disposition. He will never believe thetruth--never!"
Agatha Seabury moved nervously in the deep easy chair beside Kennedy'sdesk, leaning forward, uncomfortably, the tense lines marring the beautyof her fine features.
Kennedy tilted his desk chair back in order to study her face.
"You say you have never written a line to the fellow nor he to you?" heasked.
"Not a line, not a scrap,--until I received that typewritten letterabout which I just told you," she repeated vehemently, meeting hispenetrating gaze without flinching. "Why, Professor Kennedy, as heavenis my witness, I have never done a wrong thing--except to meet him nowand then at afternoon dances."
I felt that the nerve-racked society woman before us must be eithertelling the truth or else that she was one of the cleverest actresses Ihad ever seen.
"Have you the letter here?" asked Craig quickly.
Mrs. Seabury reached into her neat leather party case and pulled out acarefully folded sheet of note paper.
It was all typewritten, down to the very signature itself. Evidently theblackmailer had taken every precaution to protect himself, for even ifthe typewriting could be studied and identified, it would be next toimpossible to get at the writer through it and locate the machine onwhich it was written among the thousands in the city.
Kennedy studied the letter carefully, then, with a low exclamation,handed it over to me, nodding to Mrs. Seabury that it was all right forme to see it.
"No ordinary fellow, I'm afraid," he commented musingly, adding, "thisthief of reputations."
I read, beginning with the insolent familiarity of "Dear Agatha."
"I hope you will pardon me for writing to you," the letter continued, "but I find that I am in a rather difficult position financially. As you know, in the present disorganized state of the stock market, investments which in normal times are good are now almost valueless. Still, I must protect those I already have without sacrificing them.
"It is therefore necessary that I raise fifty thousand dollars before the end of the week, and I know of no one to appeal to but you--who have shared so many pleasant stolen hours with me.
"Of course, I understand all that you have told me about Mr. Seabury and his violent nature. Still, I feel sure that one of your wealth and standing in the community can find a way to avoid all trouble from that quarter. Naturally, I should prefer to take every precaution to prevent the fact of our intimacy from coming to Mr. Seabury's knowledge. But I am really desperate and feel that you alone can help me.
"Hoping to hear from you soon, I am, "Your old tango friend, "H. MORGAN SHERBURNE."
I fairly gasped at the thinly veiled threat of exposure at the end ofthe note from this artistic blackmailer.
She was watching our faces anxiously as we read.
"Oh," she cried wildly, glancing from one to the other of us, strangersto whom in her despair she had been forced to bare the secrets of herproud heart, "he's so clever about it, too. I--I didn't know what to do.I had only my jewels. I thought of all the schemes I had ever read, ofpawning them, of having paste replicas made, of trying to collect theburglary insurance, of--"
"But you didn't do anything like that, did you?" interrupted Craighastily.
"No, no," she cried. "I thought if I did, then it wouldn't be longbefore this Sherburne would be back again for more. Oh," she almostwailed, dabbing at the genuine tears with her dainty lace handkerchiefwhile her shoulders trembled with a repressed convulsive sob, "I--I amutterly wretched--crushed."
"The scoundrel!" I muttered.
Kennedy shook his head at me slowly. "Calling names won't help mattersnow," he remarked tersely. Then in an encouraging tone he added, "Youhave done just the right thing, Mrs. Seabury, in not starting to pay theblackmail. The secret of the success of these fellows is that theirvictims prefer losing jewelry and money to going to the police andhaving a lot of unpleasant notoriety."
"Yes, I know that," she agreed hastily, "but--my husband! If he hears,he will believe the worst, and--I--I really love and respectJudson--though," she added, "he might have seen that I liked dancingand--innocent amusements of the sort still. I am not an old woman."
I could not help wondering if the whole truth were told in her ratherplaintive remark, or whether she was overplaying what was really a minorcomplaint. Judson Seabury, I knew from hearsay, was a man of middle ageto whom, as to so many, business and the making of money had loomed aslarge as life itself. Competitors had even accused him of being ruthlesswhen he was convinced that he was right, and I could well imagine thatMrs. Seabury was right in her judgment of the nature of the man if hebecame convinced for any reason that someone had crossed his path in hisrelations with his wife.
"Where did you usually--er--meet Sherburne?" asked Craig, casuallyguiding the conversation.
"Why--at the Vanderveer--always," she replied.
"Would you mind meeting him there again this afternoon so that I couldsee him?" asked Kennedy. "Perhaps it would be best, anyhow, to let himthink that you are going to do as he demands, so that we can gain alittle time."
She looked up, startled. "Yes--I can do that--but don't you think it isrisky? Do you think there is any way I can get free from him? Suppose hemakes a new demand. What shall I do? Oh, Professor Kennedy, you do not,you cannot know what I am going through--how I hate and fear him."
"Mrs. Seabury," reassured Craig earnestly, "I'll take up your case.Clever as the man is, there must be some way to get at him."
Sherburne must have exercised a sort of fascination over her, for thelook of relief that crossed her face as Kennedy promised to aid her wasalmost painful. As often before, I could scarcely envy Kennedy in hisready assumption of another's problems that seemed so baffling. Itmeant little, perhaps, to us whether we succeeded. But to her it meanthappiness, perhaps honor itself.
It was as though she were catching at a life line in the swirlingcurrent of events that had engulfed her. She hesitated no longer.
"I'll be there--I'll meet him--at four," she murmured, as she rose andmade a hurried departure.
For some time after she had gone, Kennedy sat considering what she hadtold us. As for myself, I cannot say that I was thoroughly satisfiedthat she had told all. It was not to be expected.
"How do you figure that woman out?" I queried at length.
Kennedy looked at me keenly from under knitted brows. "You mean, do Ibelieve her story--of her relations with this fellow, Sherbourne?" hereturned, thoughtfully.
"Exactly," I assented, "and what she said about her regard for herhusband, too."
Kennedy did not reply for a few minutes. Evidently the same question hadbeen in his own mind and he had not reasoned out the answer. Before hecould reply the door buzzer sounded and the colored boy from the lowerhall handed a card to Craig, with an apology about the house telephoneswitchboard being out of order.
As Kennedy laid the card on the table before us, with a curt "Show thegentleman in," to the boy, I looked at it in blank amazement.
It read, "Judson Seabury."
Before I could utter a word of comment on the strange coincidence, thehusband was sitting in the same chair in which his wife had sat lessthan half an hour before.
Judson Seabury was a rather distinguished looking man of the solid,business type. Merely to meet his steel gray eye was enough to tell onethat this man would brook no rivalry in anything he undertook. I foresawtrouble, even though I could not define its nature.
Craig twirled the card in his fingers, as if to refresh his mind on aname otherwise unfamiliar. I was wondering whether Seabury might nothave trailed his wife to our office and have come to demand anexplanation. It was with some relief that I found he had not.
"Professor Kennedy," he began nervously, hitching his chair closer,without further introduction, in the manner of a man who was accustomedto ha
ving his own way in any matter he undertook, "I am in a mostpeculiar situation."
Seabury paused a moment, Kennedy nodded acquiescence, and the mansuddenly blurted out, "I--I don't know whether I'm being slowly poisonedor not!"
The revelation was startling enough in itself, but doubly so after theinterview that had just preceded.
I covered my own surprise by a quick glance at Craig. His face wasimpassive as he narrowly searched Seabury's. I knew, though, that backof his assumed calm, Craig was doing some rapid thinking about theethics of listening to both parties in the case. However, he saidnothing. Indeed, Seabury, once started, hurried on, scarcely giving hima chance to interrupt.
"I may as well tell you," he proceeded, with the air of a man who forthe first time is relieving his mind of something that has been weighingheavily on him, "that for some time I have not been exactly--er--easy inmy mind about the actions of my wife."
Evidently he had arrived at the conclusion to tell what worried him, andmust say it, for he continued immediately: "It's not that I actuallyknow anything about any indiscretions on Agatha's part, but,--well,there have been little things--hints that she was going frequently to_thes dansants_, and that sort of thing, you know. Lately, too, I haveseen a change in her manner toward me, I fancy. Sometimes I think sheseems to avoid me, especially during the last few days. Then again, asthis morning, she seems to be--er--too solicitous."
He passed his hand over his forehead, as if to clear it. For once he didnot seem to be the self-confident man who had at first entered ourapartment. I noticed that he had a peculiar look, a feeble state of thebody which he was at times at pains to conceal, a look which the doctorscall, I believe, cachectic.
"I mean," he added hastily, as if it might as well be said first aslast, "that she seems to be much concerned about my health, my food--"
"Just what is it that you actually know, not what you fear?" interruptedKennedy, perhaps a little brusquely, at last having seen a chance toinsert a word edgewise into the flow of Seabury's troubles, real orimaginary.
Seabury paused a moment, then resumed with a description of his health,which, to tell the truth, was by no means reassuring.
"Well," he answered slowly, "I suffer a good deal from such terribledyspepsia, Professor Kennedy. My stomach and digestion are allupset--bad health and growing weakness--pain, discomfort--vomiting aftermeals, even bleeding. I've tried all sorts of cures, but still I canfeel that I am still losing health and strength, and, so far, at least,the doctors don't seem to be doing me much good. I have begun to wonderwhether it is a case for the doctors, after all. Why, the whole thing isgetting on my nerves so that I'm almost afraid to eat," he concluded.
"You have eaten nothing today, then, I am to understand?" asked Craigwhen Seabury had finished with his minute and puzzling account of histroubles.
"Not even breakfast this morning," he replied. "Mrs. Seabury urged me toeat, but--I--I couldn't."
"Good!" exclaimed Kennedy, much to our surprise. "That will make it justso much easier to use a test I have in mind to determine whether thereis anything in your suspicions."
He had risen and gone over to a cabinet.
"Would you mind baring your arm a moment?" he asked Seabury.
With a sharp little instrument, carefully sterilized, Craig pricked avein in the man's arm. Slowly a few drops of darkened venous bloodwelled out. A moment later Kennedy caught them in a sterile test tubeand sealed the tube.
Before our second visitor could start again in retailing his suspicionswhich now seemed definitely, in his own mind at least, directed in someway against Mrs. Seabury, Kennedy skillfully closed the interview.
"I feel sure that the test I shall make will tell me positively, soon,whether your fears are well grounded or not, Mr. Seabury," he concludedbriefly, as he accompanied the man out into the hall to shake handsfarewell with him at the elevator door. "I'll let you know as soon asanything develops, but until we have something tangible there is no usewasting our energies."