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About The Omaha morning bee. (Omaha [Neb.]) 1922-1927 | View Entire Issue (July 16, 1922)
unday Bee MAGAZINE SECTION" VOL. 52 NO. 5. OMAHA, SUNDAY MORNING, JULY 1G. 1922. F1VK CENTS MUSH ANTS ESSAY By Will Payne The Crime Was the Topic Upon Which the Hard-Boiled Lawyer Was Writing and Before He Got Through tfe Lived the Things of . Which He Wrote! JOSIAII MUSHAM of, Musham & Maccldowucy. patent lawyers, had let himself be persuaded to ad dress the senior class of a Chicago law school re gretting his good nature as soon as he had yielded, for he detested making public addresses, or an appearance in public of any sort. The promise had been given, how ever, and he was now conscientiously composing the ad dress. HU theme not an original one was loyalty to the law. There wasn't much of that in the United States, he wrote; for one thing, we were a hopelessly sentimental people; wc insisted upon giving every criminal four chances of p scape to one of conviction, and it was notrious that a pretty woman could murder any mar) she chose any where in the United States and go scot free. As he wrote that, in his study at home of a Tuesday evening, he was thinking of one pret , ty wonian in particular. Early Thursday eve ning before dinner he received a note from1 her asking him to call her up immediately at the Illini hotel. At the Illini hotel, about tliat time. Captain and Mrs. Helm as they chose to call them selves for the time being were carefully re hearsing a scene. They occupied a parlor and bednjpm on the third floor. The dressing table, against the east wall of the bedroom, supported a broad, thrce-lcaved mirror. A tall pier mirror stood near the south wall. When Mrs. Helm sat at the dressing table her image, reflected from the three-leaved mirror into the pier mirror, was clearly visible to Capt. Helm as he sa in an easy chair by the center tabic in the parlor. , They tried it many times, changing the an gle of the threc-lcaved mirror and the position of the easy chair in the parlor; also, readjust ing the filmy scarf thrown over the leaf of the dressing table mirror so that this scarf cut off the head and a slice of the shoulders of the image reflected in the pier mirror. Then Mrs. Helm put a corset on a pillow, slipped her rose colored kimono over that, and stood it in the chair by the dressing table. Capt. Helm, sitting in the parlor, could net tell whether his wife or the pillow occupied the chair by the dressing table. Mrs. Helm would slide out of the chair, whip her kimono around the corseted pillow, and pop that into the chair. A witness sitting in the parlor and looking into, the pier mirror would think that the lady at the dressing table had taken a step to one side and immediately resumed her seat at the table. At length, after many rehearsals. Capt. HelHh expressed himself completely satisfied. There was to be a ball at the Illini hotel that evening in honor of the Japanese crown prince, and by 8:30 the vast establishment was visibly tuning up for the great event. All that afternoon its block-long sober Georgian facade had been blossoming in bright festoons of bunting, one patch after another, with wedded flags of the United States and Japan. The main lobby was emblematically dressed in chrys anthemums and roses. By 8:30, from the big, gold-braided doorman down , to the smallest page, every one was on edge for the coming .zero hour; the last sack coats were vanishing from the lobby. 1 here were other portents; not so obvious to the casual observer towit: Capt. Macready from de tective headquarters with eight subordinates, all duly white gloved and claw-hammered, and Peter Backus himself with an even dozen of his operatives in the disguise of gentle men attending a ball. It was to be expected that Chicago would put on its shiniest ornaments for this occasion; "everybody," excepting some 2,500,000 plain citizens, would be there; the detectives were to keep, every corner of the big hotel and every dribble of the mob under watch. At 8:39 Horace Altman left his apartment on the third floor and went down to the cashier's office. Afterwards Capt. Macready remarked to him that he would naturally be as careless of, $100,000 worth of jewels as of his life. That afternoon he had taken the jewels out of the safe deposit vault downtown, brought them to the hotel, and seen them put into the cashier's safe. He now got the jewel case from the cashier, opened it there to make sure nothing was missing, locked it again, and tucked it under his arm. Altman, fat and bald, was already in full evening dress. His temper, none too good to begin with, had been worn brittle as glass by the trials of accumulating $5,000,000. It sometimes seemed to his bewildered wife that it broke if she even looked at it. But he was genial among his men friends. Going from the cashier's office to the elevators he met two men friends, like himself already dressed and waiting for their wives. He invited them up to his apart ment. The apartment consisted of four rooms in a row, con nected by a private hall which ran parallel to the public hall outside. There was the big corner room parlor or living room then a smaller one that was sometimes used as a dining room; then Mrs. Altman's bedroom; lastly, Altman's bedroom. Leaving his friends in the parlor, Alt man carried the jewel case to his wife in her bedroom, where a maid was preparing to do her hair. Then, from the sideboard in the dining room he tqok a brown bottle and three tall glasses with which, and a pitcher of cold water from the bathroom tap, he and his friends settled themselves to spend the time pleasantly until the female toilets should be made and duty called them to a less con genial occupation. Altman's bedroom, last in the row. adjoined the bed room occupied by Captain and Mrs. Helm. There was a door between, go that all the rooms along there could be thrown into one suite. The door was provided with a stout bolt on both sides so that an occupant on either side might be sure his neighbor did not trespass. Excepting this door between the bedrooms and the windows there was only one possible entrance to the Altman apartment namely, by the door between the private hall and the parallel public hall. About the time that Altman and his two friends were putting down half-drained glassed and lighting cigars in agreeable anticipation of a snug three-quarters, of an hour chat, Josialt Musham arrived at the main entrance of the hotel in a taxi. Nervously consulting a gold watch whose large closed face had been worn smooth by a quarter cen tury's use, he saw that it was 15 minutes to SI; so he was just in time. He then noticed that a gaudy awning, in the form cf a tent, stretched across the broad cement pave ment from the curb to the hotel door. Beneath the awning a red carpet was spread for daintily shod feet. The gold braided doorman stood at the curb, prepared to receive royalty and its friends. Already, at intervals, glistening machines were wheeling up there to discharge silk-hatted men and butterfly women j Musham's vehicle was an unfavorable specimen of the genus taxi decrepit and mud stained. Its frowsy driver looked as though he might be a blood relation of the ve hicle. Musham himself was of the gangling and stringy build, unhandsome even in youth, and now with an over grown, straggling mustache which age had not so much The pier mirror showed him the image of a woman without legs. blanched as turned it into a dirty sort of yellow. Although grown children bulied hiiu into patronizing a respectable tailor, his clothes always had a baggy, haphazard, and heterogeneous look; at this moment his bow tic had come half undone and dangled bibulously. I A bricky redness was the common condition of his lean ' face. Noticing the festal signs at the Illini, he turned a bit redder, for he was one of tfiose shy, absent men who try to carry it off with a grumpy air and secretly with a thou sand mortifications. It was like him to be, perhaps, the only literate person in Chicago who did -not know there was to be a ball for the prince at the Illini that evening balls and princes being as far out of his world as the Milky Way The gold-braided doorman, tuned up. for royalty sulkily opened the door of thedisreputablev taxi and re garded its scarcely more reputable passenger with candid resentment. Musham eyed him sternly, hastily handed him a half dollar, and stumped into the hotel, the pretty carpet like coals of fire under his rusty shoes that hadn't been shined in a week. There was a saying among those who knew that you never could tell about a patent" until Musham & Macel downcy had given an opinion on it. Gold-braided doormen might regard the senior member of that firm contemptu ously, but the supreme court of the United States did not, nor did a long list of clients especially when they saw his bills. But he was incurably unfashionable and unsocial. Even an appearance in court he regarded as a bore. He lived in his law library and his family like a hermit 'crab in alternate shells. In the matter of clothes and all that clothes connoted he was now and then lumbering into em barrassing situations, feeling the embarrassment keenly, resolving to look out next time, and immediately forgetting to look out. ." But clothes and momentary embarrassments were small matters tonight. Clutching his slouch hat in a bony hand, he strode across the bedecked lobby, where a few men and women in gala dre-ss were beginning to gather, to the bank of elevators, and went up to the third floor. As on alt the eight upper loors. here was a lounge in front of the ele vator landing. Following the directions he had received over the telephone, he turned to the right, and to the left at the first angle, which brought him into the long hall upon which the Aitman and Helm suites opened. Mr. Altman stood at the door of the apartment taking a box of flowers from a messenger boy. Passing, Musham nodded to him, and received a nod in reply. The box of flowers was ad dressed to Mrs. Altman. Her husband tk it to the dining room and dropped it on a chair there, calling into his wife's bedroom, "Some flowers." He then returned to Inn iriends in the parlor, shutting the door again alter him. Mrs. Altitun's stout, dark maid, with a little mustache stepped into the dining room to get the flowers. The plain black fabric which covered her ample bosom fluttered trout the rapid beating of her heart, and there was a nervous shimmer in her dark eyes. This was a momentous night for her. The box contained a dozen roses and a calling card that read, "Mr. Arthur Spcllman." At 45 Mrs. Altman liaj more flesh and less hair than she cared for; but there was a soft heart under the flesh and a great wjslt for domestic peace beneath the hair. At sight of the calling card her lips parted in a sudden alarm too acute for words, and a hunted look in her eyes appealed to the maid. Mr. Arthur Spellman was her nephew, and one of her chief afflictions with a good heart, as she always forlornly maintained, but a weakness for stimulants and an inverterate careless ness in money matters. The last failing had caused a violent breach between her husband and her nephew, and she was under a strict prohibition not to have any inter course or communication with the culprit. Yet he was her own sister's flesh and blood, and her heart was soft. Like many another woman under the iron hand of domestic tyrannythe had a confederate in her maid. For some three mouths, Arthur had been conducting himself respectably in New York to his aunt's immense relief. These flowers, however, came from a Chicago florist, so un fortunately Arthur must be near at hand. The dismayed mistress asked her maid's -opinion as to what it might portend with a keen fore boding that it portended more trouble for her. There was no further clew in the box. Tearing up the card, so she could tell her husband, in case he happened to ask, that she didn't know who sent the flowers, Mrs. Altman unhappily -resumed her toilet. Musham, meanwhile, consulting the numbers s on the doors, had goue on to the one that gave . , to Helm's parlor, at which he knocked. Capt. Helm threw open the door, smiling cordially a tall man of 35 or so, with a neatly-pointed red beard and light blue eves, dressed for Jhe ball. Musham acknowledged the smile with a grumpy nod, and strode in. The door xto the adjoining ncaroom was ajar, l ticnce a gay voice lilted at him, "Hello, Uncle Joe! Be out there in a minute." Nobody else had ever called him "Joe," let alone "Uncle Joe." He said he didn't care to be called that. Capt. Helm was courteously steering him into the easy chair by the center table and inviting him to lay off his overcoat. "'S no matter," Musham grumbled back, meaning the coat, and folded his lank person into the chair, glowering. There was a curi ous turmoil of anger, disgust and something else inside him. The bedroom door flew inward, wide open, and a woman in rose-colored kimono flitted in, white teeth and blue eyes flashing, a dim ple in either cheek. Her wavy hair was the color of cornsilk. If there was art in the pink of her cheeks, it was good art. A faint tan underlay the pink, as though some of the cold pigment of her hair had lightly dusted down upon her che,eks. Floating to the easy chair, she extended a round, white arm and shapely hand; and when Musham stood up, redder than common and frowning, to shake her hand un graciously, she laid the tip of her tongue to the edge of her teeth in a. little, merry, derisive bubble of laughter, saying: "Ycu know you can't help shaking hands with me, much as you want to!" Musham was 61; had two sons and a daughter already married, and three grandchildren. All his abstemious, con scientious life largely spent in stocking his brain with dry points of patent law he had walked in the straight and narrow path in respect of such glowing objects as now confronted him. That he should ever walk otherwise was as unthinkable as flying without wings. Yet in spite of himself he acknowledged the pull. She sparkled with vitality. It was beautiful to see her move or even stand like watching a bird of paradise flit and preen. - All through this wretched affair, along with disgust and anger, his role of emissary carried a certain immoral ad vantage which he sometimes secretly and in a rather startled way acknowledged to himself. That is, it enabled him, even while reprobating her, to watch the fascinating play that she staged before him the plaX of herself. She bubbled with life and incarnated the grace and beauty for ; which the unregenerate heart of man will ever' thirst; and, in spite of himself, the old, rigidly upright, dusty wayfarer did furtively dip bis cup in the fountain and take a sip. Like a bird sailing, she moved to a chair, perched on the edge of it, bending toward him, clasping hands round a knee, a teasing twinkle in her eyes! It was so graceful that something oppressed his heart, and once more he said to himself, in mournful protest, "Thunder! If she'd only be square!' That was the direction which his enforced ad miration of her took an evangelical direction. Secretly he was always hoping that the play would end with her reformation. But she was giving no sign of that now, and in a smother of anger he thrust his hand into his trousers pocket, draw ing forth a thick roll of bank notes inclosed with a rubber band which he silently extended to her. With a swift change of pose she took the roll and spread it out on her knee, not counting the bills but uttering them admiringly as a pretty woman handles a bit of lace or ribbon. "Too bad they don't grow on bushes," "she commented, and laughed. "Nice of you. Uncle Joe!" And, as though it were a sufficient apology, she added; "We had to have it, you know. They're going to put us out of the hotel un less we pay the bill tonight." She rolled the bills again deftly, sliped the rubber band around the roll; and tossed it to her husband with, "Better seexabout-it now, Nick." The toss was a pretty thing, a free TP,vcnient of the round, white arm, landing the roll neatly iu her husband's t