Karmesin, page 7
“You see: the man of whom I told you; he was a good man, but Providence has used him for a tragic purpose.”
Karmesin became silent. I said:
“Have you ever wanted to commit suicide?”
“No,” said Karmesin. “Only murder.”
“But I thought you disapproved of murder.”
“I do, I do. Evildoers should be left in the hands of their destiny, which always destroys them in the end. Nevertheless, I was responsible for the planning of the Perfect Murder.”
“How?”
“Come with me,” said Karmesin, jingling the remains of his pound. “I have been your guest many times. Now you must be mine.”
He took me to Xavier’s Bar, and with an air of magnificence that sent the waiter skipping, ordered brandy.
“What is money?” said Karmesin. “Dross, rubbish. Thank God I have always spent mine as it came!”
He lumbered over to the Numbers Machine in the corner, inserted a shilling, pulled the handle down. The numbered discs whirred round and thudded to a stop — 3, 3, 3. Ten shillings dropped out of the machine with a jingle.
“Observe,” said Karmesin. “There is one thing in the world which no man can resist; the jingle of cash. See — every eye in the bar is upon us. Now, come and drink your brandy, and I will tell you about my murder.”
My scheme was not unconnected with a fruit—machine in a club not unlike this, not many years ago (said Karmesin). The victim was a man called Skobeleff, a man who richly deserved to die.
He was a criminal of the worst type, my friend; one who lives upon women. Skobeleffs specialty was blackmail. He had a genius for working his way into the affections of highly respected women.
You know how it sometimes happens, with the wives of great men. Their husbands, preoccupied with affairs, neglect them. They yearn for attention. It is only natural.
Then comes an intrigue, possibly an innocent intrigue — a friendship, quite often with an unworthy man versed in the wiles of the woman- hunter.
Skobeleff was such a man. Women found it difficult to resist him, for he had a handsome face, a fine imperial Guardsman’s figure, magnificent blue eyes, the flaxen hair of an angel, perfect self- confidence, a boundless experience with women, and a voice more melodious than harp—strings ...
He struck up friendships with several nice ladies of uncertain age. This was his line; he would profess pure love and need for spiritual companionship; and then, by devious shifts, manage to get his victim to write a tender note — you know, my friend, “just to read when you are not here”: it is an old trick.
And it always worked. It always has worked. I tell you, and always will: for women are fools in their affection, just like men.
Having his note, he would begin to bleed the victim. She was, you understand, always the wife of a very great man; somebody who could not afford a scandal of any kind, even if she were utterly innocent. He had a heart of ice, that Skobeleff, and bled them dry. It was a hideous business.
And when he wanted to have a quiet drink he always sat in the Maecenas Club near Piccadilly — an elegant drinking-den, with several fruit-machines in it, at which numerous idiots lost money enough to choke a hippopotamus.
Now it came to pass that I was approached one day, by a woman for whom I entertained the deepest affection. She was the wife of a very famous French politician.
I liked her very much in a quite platonic and brotherly way. Yes brotherly is the word for it, for she was twenty years younger than me, and I had bought her an ivory gum—ring with golden bells on it for her to cut her teeth on when she was a mere liver-coloured handful of babe in long clothes.
She approached me now and now told me a sad story. She was in terrible trouble. She had involved herself with Skobeleff, and had written him letters. Now, he demanded twenty thousand pounds sterling. Otherwise, he would place the letters in the hands of her husband’s political opposition; ruin him, ruin her, ruin everything.
By selling some jewels she could raise ten thousand, but Skobeleff would not take ten thousand. He said: “Twenty or nothing. I can sell these letters for twenty thousand anyway ...”
Could I help? Could I lend her ten thousand pounds?
I said that I could do better than that, and get the letters for her.
I did so. It is a story of common burglary. I went to Skobeleffs apartment heavily disguised, with a large revolver, made him open his safe, took the entire contents of it, together with the letters my friend had written, and, having knocked Skobeleff unconscious with the barrel of the gun, quietly made my departure. That was easy...
But when I came to examine the other papers I had taken, I was horrified. I, Karmesin, was disgusted! The man had made indexes and ledgers of dirty crime. He had a whole career of vile blackmail laid out.
God knows what a trail of misery he was planning to leave in his wake. I only knew one thing; by stealing his papers, I had held him up only for a little while. Sooner or later he was certain to operate again.
The law could not touch him. If he left the country, he would operate elsewhere. I decided to take the law into my own hands. I approached him with a proposition.
I told him who I was, and he was impressed; he knew of the things I had done. Then I said to him:
“Do you know who lives in the flat above the Maecenas Club?”
“Old Lord Westerby.”
“Do you know what he keeps in his safe?” I asked.
“No, what?”
“The Westerby Collar.”
“The Westerby Collar!” said Skobeleff. “A hundred and eighty priceless emeralds, and the Green Devil Emerald in the centre!”
“You could help me to get them. I have an immediate market. We can get at least two hundred thousand. Help me, and I’ll split with you fifty-fifty.”
“But how?”
“Now listen,” I said, “I will do the work. I will get the emeralds. What I am going to suggest is this: I slip upstairs and get the jewels. A diversion is created that draws everybody in the club into the fruit- machine room.
“You slip out on to the balcony in the room behind. That balcony stands directly underneath the servant’s bedroom in the Westerby flat. We synchronise our watches.
“At midnight precisely, you step on to the balcony and I drop the jewels down into your hands. Then you rejoin the crowd in the next room, and nobody will ever know that you have not been there all the time. Next morning you meet me and give me the jewels ...”
Even as I spoke to him I could see the idea of a double-cross entering his treacherous mind. I could see it in his eyes.
“But how will you get everybody into the fruit—machine room?” he asked.
“At ten minutes to twelve,” I said, “a man will win the jackpot on every machine in the place.”
“If you can arrange that,” he said, “you must be a wizard.”
“I am a wizard,” I said.
When I left him I looked up a man called Martin, a good little rogue who had had occasion to be thankful to me many a time, especially once when I supported his wife and three children while he spent a year in jail.
He was something of a genius of engineering; I mean, very clever with wheels and springs. Would he help me? He would have gone through hell and high water for me. I promised him fifty pounds.
His act was simple. At about eleven o’clock he had to come to the club with a bag, showing the official card of the firm that manufactured the fruit-machines. Then he was to unlock each machine, and adjust it so that the next revolution of the wheels would bring the total to Three Bars, which wins a jackpot.
That is a very simple matter for a man who knows how to handle his machinery. Normally, of course, your fruit—machine engineer sends the wheels flying round six or seven times before leaving the thing, just to see that all is well. But Martin would not do this, of course; and nobody would notice.
I told you: nothing attracts people like the jingle of money. There must have been a dozen machines in the club. The crash of a dozen jackpots would bring every member running from the next room; the floor would be knee—deep in silver. Everybody would be pulling handles, or stooping for fallen coins.
Then Skobeleff would come out on the balcony. He thought he ran no risk, for the secretary and commissionaire whom one had to pass before entering or leaving the club could both swear that he had been in there all the time.
Only I was not going to be on the next floor with a priceless emerald collar. I was to be at the darkened window of the flat across the road. In my hands there was to be a rifle. I was a perfect shot, and still am.
From that distance I could not miss. I should put a bullet in the centre of Skobeleffs forehead and wipe his evil presence from the face of the earth.
Martin was waiting in the street with a car. At ten seconds before twelve, as the theatre crowds filled the streets, he would jam the traffic; there would be a chaos of horns. He would make his engine backfire furiously. The sound of my shot would be unheard. It was perfect. And so it turned out.
A young fool called Poppins put a shilling in the fruit—machine and let out a deluge of coins. Others followed suit. The proprietor of the place came running, white in the face. The machines had gone mad! They were paying out jackpots!
The whole club poured into the room, eager to put a shilling in, or to see money coming out. Simultaneously, a fearful uproar broke out in the street below. Cars jammed in a black mass, honking like fury.
Martin’s big black automobile banged and thundered, giving out clouds of smoke.
I got Skobeleff s head in line, took a careful aim. He was outlined against the light. I could not miss — I who have knocked the head off a running antelope at five hundred yards. I pressed the trigger.
Skobeleff shrugged his shoulders and walked back into the club. Remembering everything, planning everything, organizing everything so perfectly, I had forgotten to load my rifle.
Karmesin laughed. “Yet he deserved to die,” he said.
“Well?” I asked. “Well? What?”
“Yes,” said Karmesin. “It proves my point. Such men are always punished in the end. Nemesis is always upon them. They are never more than one jump ahead of a terrible vengeance. It is not for man to kill: only for God.”
“But Skobeleff?”
“Skobeleff,” said Karmesin. “He stayed in the club until one o’clock in the morning, then went home. Do you remember the big fire in the hosier’s shop in Dublin Street, Piccadilly? Skobeleff lived above. He perished there that night.
“You see, in leaving that blank spot of forgetfulness in my brain, Fate was preserving Skobeleff for something terrible A man cannot run away from his destiny.”
“But how did you get into the flat exactly opposite the club, when you meant to kill Skobeleff?”
“Ha!” said Karmesin. “I got into it the same way as I got into it before: with a duplicate key. And I knew that the occupant would be on the balcony opposite. It was Skobeleff’s flat!”
“And the fire?”
“Inscrutable Providence,” said Karmesin. “When I found that I had forgotten my cartridges, I took my cigar out of my mouth and casually flipped it over my shoulder. ‘Let Providence proceed with the matter,’ I said.
“It was a ten-to—one chance against the cigar—end causing a fire. Well, it caused a fire, but not until Skobeleff was asleep. Providence! Fate! Skobeleff perished.
“It is right and proper that rubbish should be incinerated. So perish all rubbish. Another brandy?”
Karmesin and the Invisible Millionaire
“You are a damned fool, because you believe nothing,” said Karmesin. “And yet, if I may coin a phrase, there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy. Yes, indeed, if you will permit me to lapse into verse: things aren’t always what they seem. When I told you about the affair at Rocky Centre you seemed not to believe me. Little Henry, the ghost of Mr. Thurston’s valet, was something you could not swallow, yes? Yet he existed. Oh, yes! And twice! Oh, yes! I mentioned to you that, though I had a lucrative offer to make him, he went with an American millionaire to the United States, lured there on the premise of a company directorship.”
“Bah,” I said. “What would a ghost want with money, since he can’t spend it?”
“Why, you confounded idiot,” said Karmesin. “Don’t you realize that a ghost, in order to have social status in the Shades, must have a treasury to gloat over? Haven’t you read your books? Ghosts are as delicate about such matters as men and women: they need money in order to keep up their appearances. For example, one of the most respected phantoms in the spirit world is that of Atilla, the Scourge of God, whose fabulous treasure is still undiscovered, and who can, therefore, still boast about it. You mark my words, there was more than the merest superstition in the preoccupation of the ancients with the treasure that was buried in their graves. In Limbo, as elsewhere, you need a little cash in your pocket: for the spirits are but the shades of human beings, and are therefore still influenced by human follies. Have you never heard of a revengeful ghost? Yes. Very well then. Should a greedy or acquisitive ghost be so strange, therefore? I would not harp on my partnership with the ghost of Henry, if a certain topical indication had not arisen.”
Karmesin pointed to a cutting from a newspaper:
Mystery Disappearance of Sago King
Ira K. Kiljoy Still Missing
F.B.I. Question Maxie Waxiendinero
We Say “So What?”
“Missing,” said Karmesin. “Disappearance. Pfui and pfui and pfui! That means to say he went to his country club without notifying his relations; or visited one of his love-nests. The Bureau of Missing Persons will find him. To be lost in a country like the United States is like being a needle in a haystack: it is hard to find one, but one is there and may certainly be found. Now I don’t know whether you ever heard of Dickson M. Sackbut, the Copper Baron. It was one of the most baffling mysteries of the century,” said Karmesin, “and I only know the secret behind it.”
He fumbled in a pocket and found nothing; said, peremptorily: “Cigarette!” He lit it, and went on. “Now listen.”
Then he told the following story:
You will not have heard of Dickson M. Sackbut. I forgot: the maternal milk is hardly dry on your lips. You are a child. This happened in 1906, in America. Sackbut was a copper king: he had come from nowhere, and, by dint of doing nothing, had made a huge fortune. He was a decent kind of man, but a fool, who did not understand finance. If there was too much copper in the market, he simply flashed his ten— thousand-pound cuff-links and bellowed: “Then we must mine more and more!” In effect, he made a bit of a beast of himself, like all men who acquire great fortunes and don’t know how to handle them. He could not think in terms of tens or hundreds: I liked him for that. He liked thousand, millions, billions. If he bought a girl a bouquet it turned out to be a van—load of gardenias; and though his early drinking had been black tea out of a dirty billy, in his latter life he was grossly insulted if his champagne was served in anything but a silver goblet. A mining— man, my friend; a wild fellow.
Bon. When I arrived in America in 1906, I met him in Chicago, and liked the man. He was very nice. There was something about him that appealed to my Russian sense of proportion — it was delightful to see him bathing barmaids in brandy, and beating the waiters. I saw him knock out Pig Iron Moloney with one left hook, for spitting on his newly-polished boots; and then smash up the Millionaires’ Bar because his Sole Meuniere was not done to his liking.
Sta bene! He liked ladies. All right, all good men do. I like ladies, chort vozmi! He was fooling with a certain woman named Mrs. Twinkletoe — an absurdly pure woman, my friend, such as these ignorant miners love: a spinsterish matron with prominent teeth and bony shoulders; a thinker of beautiful thoughts. Rough men seem to like these caricatures of womanhood; or, at least, sentimental men who lead rough lives. She, however, was married to a certain Roger Twinkletoe of Schenectady, a kind of adventurer. Though they had been man and wife for years, one felt that there was nothing between them, if you know what I mean. You could not imagine making love to this woman, amiable though she was. The bones of her shoulders would have lacerated your enfolding arm; and she had hips like a giraffe. What Sackbut saw in her, God knows. He pursued her.
It happened that they were riding together in an open carriage when the horse shied, and she was thrown into his arms. A million people saw. Mr. Twinkletoe spoke of taking his father’s sword from the wall and confronting the home—wrecker with cold steel. Father’s sword, bah and pfui and ptoo! His father never had a sword and anyway, he never had a father. It ended with divorce proceedings, which Sackbut, in the state of his business, could not afford. You know what the American women are: one hint of home—wrecking, and they will start a landslide: though they always love a rake.
Sackbut had nerves. He wanted to negotiate, but dreaded the service of the papers. Yet he could not get out of Chicago. He was ringed around. He was a man whom any kind of incarceration would have driven mad — a man of the open spaces, if you get what I mean, whom fifty minutes in an opera-house afflicted with claustrophobia. And he dared not move out of his hotel—room! It was dreadful.
I had gone to Detroit on certain dirty business. A day after my arrival I received a wire as follows:
COME AT ONCE DAMN IT STOP KEPT BLASTED PRISONERS IN DAM BEDROOM BY DINGBUSTED PROCESS HYPHEN SERVER STOP HELP ME OUT BY THE JUMPING JIMINIES OR COMMIT SUICIDE STOP SACKBUT HOTEL CROESUS CHICAGO
I received the wire at midnight, and wondered what to do about it. I was aware of the circumstances, and felt baffled. And so I sat and thought; and even as I sat and thought, I heard a nasty, shy little voice say: “Ahem! Mr. Karmesin?”
I looked, and saw nobody. Nerves? I said, in as calm a voice as I could: “Well?”
The voice replied: “Ah, still as brave as ever, I see,” and, looking in the direction of it, I saw a mist appear, like breath on a mirror, just by the bathroom door. Then, out of this mist, my little ghost Henry appeared. He looked fatter; more prosperous.
