The Golden Age of Pulp Fiction MEGAPACK ™, Vol. 1: George Allan England. George Allan England

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СКАЧАТЬ father-in-law. And the price paid for me was just exactly—”

      VI.

      “That’s a damned lie!” cried Brant passionately, starting up.

      “The price paid for me was just ex­actly fifty thousand dollars which I at once very securely invented in Danish securities,” Vestine calmly finished. He, too, stood up. “With accrued interest, and the rates of exchange as they now are, I am comfortably well off ‘in my ain countree.’ I have exchanged a life of chance and insecurity for one of respectability and competence. I no longer need continue any activities that might bring me into conflict with the law.”

      “You—you—” choked the district attorney, but could articulate nothing.

      “I have purchased a controlling in­terest in a reform newspaper at Aarhus, Denmark,” smiled Vestine. “My wife-to-be, whom you will release, will help me do uplift work—quite like yours, that is perfectly safe and pays fine dividends, as Mr. Cozzens, the Honor­able Mr. Cozzens, well knows. As your humble servant and fall guy, I ask you the one favor in question.”

      “Fall guy, nothing! It’s a damned lie!” Brant had grown quite livid with agitation. His hands twitched.

      “Please phone the Honorable Coz­zens,” requested Vestine. “Ask him to come to this office for a few minutes. And tell him to bring Best-policy Bogan with him. Say Mr. Vestine is here, spilling immense numbers of ap­palling beans. Go on, Mr. Brant, call your father-in-law, who ‘framed’ you to success.”

      Brant gasped, paled, reached for the phone, but did not take it up. Suddenly he sat down, with an oath.

      “It’s—it’s all a—”

      “Of course,” laughed Vestine. “All a fairy story of mine. Hans Christian Andersen, my esteemed compatriot, isn’t in it with me as a raconteur, is he? By no means! For that reason I am so in­timately acquainted with the way the first clue was fed you; with all the de­tails leading up to the arrest; with a score of other factors in the case, as I’ll prove directly. For that reason I am—”

      “Hold on!” choked Brant. “What number did you say that case was?” His eyes looked hunted. “That case you—the case of that woman?”

      “My fiancée, you mean?”

      “Yes, your fiancée.”’

      “Ah, that’s better. It is No. 327, on the spring list. I see your memory needs refreshing. I can refresh it to any extent you may need. And you’ll attend to the matter at once?” Brant nodded.

      “I’ve had enough of you,” said he hoarsely. “Get out! I wish you were both in hell!”

      “On the contrary, we’re leaving it for good. Well, I’ll expect you to take action inside of twenty-four hours. That will square everything. I squared the bank, squared your highly neces­sitous legal record, squared myself with fifty thousand dollars of your esteemed father-in-law’s money—which really bought you your present success as well as my own—and squared your father-in-law.”

      Vestine smiled at Brant, who, dis­armed before him, stood there speech­less and staring.

      “Just one more thing before I go,” said the Dane. “This case represents a very pretty mathematical problem. It is known as the Theorem of Pythagoras. Mr. Cozzens and you and I form a tri­angle. Perhaps I may state it better by saying we three are the three sides of a right triangle. I insist on being the hypotenuse, or longest side. I’m the hypotenuse, because the square of the hypotenuse equals the squares of the other two sides, added. And I’m going to be squared, now. I’m going square. Hope you and the Honorable Cozzens are, too.”

      Speaking, he drew from his pocket a slip of paper, a blue check, and looked at it; and as he looked, he nodded.

      “No more prison for mine, thank you,” said he. “Under your law, a man can’t be twice put in jeopardy of his life or liberty for the same crime. Even though guilty, if he’s tried and acquitted, that lets him out. So I’m safe now. Therefore, I don’t mind telling you—”

      “What?”

      “See this check?”

      “What is it?”

      “It’s the one that Markwood Hinman cashed. The one that was taken from Henry Kitching, after he had been knocked cold in the alley.”

      “The forged check that—that disap­peared?”

      “Yes.”

      “But how did you—”

      “Listen, my dear young man,” an­swered the Dane. “What I got for being the fall guy, and agreeing to be tried by you before a fixed jury—facts that your father-in-law will verify—was a good deal more than fifty thousand dollars. I got—”

      “What else? What more?”

      “Perpetual immunity. Now you know. But you will never dare tell the world. That would ruin you. But now you understand.”

      He struck a match, lighted the check, and held it till it flared. He dropped the ashes into the wastebasket, picked up his hat and gloves, and turned toward the door.

      “Here, wait a minute!” gulped Brant “What—what’s the idea? Where did you get that check—and what do you mean by immunity, if—if you aren’t the man that—that killed—”

      “Ah, but I am, you see,” smiled Vestine impassively. “Good-by!”

THE SUPREME GETAWAY

      Originally published in People’s Magazine, October 1916.

      “Serene, indifferent to fate.” Slatsey leaned back with a sigh of almost perfect bliss in the huge, padded Morris chair and drew at his priceless panatela.

      Dr. Bender, in the depths of a leather rocking chair, his slippered feet on the table, smiled with beati­tude.

      For their rooms in the extreme pri­vacy of the neat little Hotel de Luxe were marvels of bachelor comfort.

      On the table reposed a tray with fragmentary remnants of a delectable feed—always including Pod’s ultimate joy, rich rice pudding with lots of but­ter and cream, and with fat raisins of the juiciest.

      “Pretty smooth dump, this,” grunt­ed Pod, with another sigh. Dur­ing the past weeks of inactivity and gorging, he had put on a trifle of forty or fifty pounds.

      “Me for the De Looks, every time! Ever since the big gilt dropped into our kicks, after that Vanderpool race, an’ we stowed away, I’ve been strong for the resher-shay stuff they hand out here. The way they act certainly makes a hit with muh!”

      “And no fly-cops butting in, either,” added Ben. “I tell you, Pod, this con-throwing isn’t such a much, beside the real refinements of a home like this. Now that we’ve brought home the bunting, me for squaring it, a bundle of A-1 bonds, and respectability.

      “That’s my dope—that, and a con­tinuation of this chow, with a little something dry on the side. What more could a couple of honest, retired congents require?”

      Pod СКАЧАТЬ