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About The Omaha morning bee. (Omaha [Neb.]) 1922-1927 | View Entire Issue (July 16, 1922)
THE SUNDAY BEE: OMAHA. JULY 16. 1922. Musharn's Essay By Will Pay CaiM4 ttMa raa Om.) haitd. But Mutham had deep repect (or niuiteyj her light finger ing and totning, a though the S)0 were no more than bit of rib bon, was seemly shocking to him, like whittling in church; 10 he do tlared, in hrtplrk exasperation: "I was a fool to bring it. I won't do it again." Red and angry, he flung at her uncomprom fcmgly, "It's nothing but black mail." not at that inciting word she nly laughed and twitted him, "Why, Uncle Joe, you know you don't want me to go ragged and hungry. You ought to blame the pigf that run the hotel. They won't let u stay here without money. And what'a $500 to Benny, now that he's married a rich wife?" That muital reference wai of fensive, and he blurted. "You're just blackmailing Inm. tie's a fool to submit. Weak as a rag that's the trouble with him. If his father and I hadn't been together 30 years like brothers if I didn't know the young' blockhead was full of good intentions now and scared out of his wits " but he could hardly explain satisfactorily how he had got into this strage role of emissary in an affair of blackmail. Mainly it had been the veil intentioned young bride groom's white, frightened face. With that in mind he declared, hotly, "You've got jo let him alone!"- i She tipped her golden head a little and sweet laughter rippled. "O, probably 1 was careless." she mocked. "1 ought to have got run over by a truck or struck by lightning instead of bobbing up here, awfully alive, after Benny's married his rich wifcl" Then, swift as thought, the laugh ter vanished; she stooped toward him again, grave and accusing. "You're awfully hard on me. Uncle Jo not fair. It's just as I've told you before. Benny treated me like a dog. We were angaged. I gave up my career on the stage when I had good prospects. We would have been married, only he was afraid of his father a man 23 years old I Then he got me tc 0 to New York; he was to come on and we'd be married. He just strung nic along. I suppose he'd already got his eye on the rich Kirl and wanted to get me out of the way. With his letters and the rest of the evidence I could sue him for breach of promise and get $100,000. A good lawyer told me so. But I didn't want to break him up; I forgave him.. Gracious! He mustn't think he owns Chicago and that I can't ever come bk-.k here.,. The money he's been pay ing me, you see, is really only a little bit of what he really owes me. If he doesn't know that's so why does he keep on giving it? It's In's guilty conscience. That's the truth, Uncle Joe." She had said substantially that before, and now as before the old man sort of quailed and doubt ed, for she looked the lovely image of truth. But Benny, in spite of weakness, was the more truthful person of the two, and the circum stantial evidence was on his side. Besides even when she looked so sweetly grave and accusing, he couldn't help an uneasy suspicion that the laughter was still bubbling inside of her. Captain Helm, lounging against, the back of a chair a dozen feet away, had been listening to -this dialogue in calm detachment. He glanced again at the little gilt clock on the mantel, which showed five minutes to nine, and stepped to the table to drop his half smoked cig aret into the ash tray, saying to his wife, "I'll go pay the bill." Musharn's feeling about the wom an may have been complex and not easily defined.. But his feeling about the man was perfectly simple. Except to kick him he would no more have touched tall, immacu lately dressed, distinguished look ing Captain Helm into whose pocket the roll of bills had gone than he would have touched a dirty rag. It occurred to him that the quirk look which passed between husband and wife as the captain dropped his cigaret was a look of understanding. He rather suspect ed that he was going to be fooled again. Under that suspicion he waited a moment after the captain's shape ly, black rlad back had disappear ed through the door, then turned to the woman with a brusque de mand: "Give me the letters." That referred to the stipulation he had made over the telephone the stipulation which had induced him to come that evening, as she had insisted he must. " Was it fear In her pleading blue eyes? Every line of her lithe body seemed to plead as she said. "Honestly. Uncle Joe, I" can't. He's got them." . Then, lower and swiftly. "I sick of this. I want to get out of it. He's got me, too. What can I do?" So he was fooled- Benny's let ters were not to be surrendered to him at the had promised over the telephone. But the Hooping woman's murderous, pleading voire was catching him in a new cur rent as she hurried on with veiled confessions, fear, unhappiness. "Honestly, I'm sick of it. I'll do anything to get out if youll only help me a little corns k'nd ' a start. I haven't a cent, you know. He's suspicious now. He's hidden the letters somewhere. Rut I'll get them for you. Really I will. I promise you. There's a woman on Madison avenue in New York she has an awfully cute lit tle doll and toy rhop. She told me she made a good living at it. I thought of something tike that here in Chicago, you know. I be lieve I could do it if I could get a start. Tell Benny to give me $1,000 for the letters. You pay me the money after I've handed the letters over to you. I'll never bother him again.' With $1,000 if you'll help me get a lease on a little shop. I've been thinking it over all the while. I've got to get out of this." Her low, rapid utterance ran on. It was the penitent Magdalene. The little gilt clock on the mantel clicked off the minutes. She stood up abruptly: "Wait for me two or three min utes. Don't go. He may be com ing back. He's suspicious now. I don't want him to think we've been sitting here and talking allx the; while." I'll give my hair a .twist and slip on a dress only a iiffy. Wait two or three minutes." She was moving toward the bed room, her grave blue eyes upon liim. Musham, his aged heart expand ed, gave an assenting nod. She fled into the bedroom, and at once 'lie saw her headless image as she sat at the dressing table, re fleeted in the pier mirror. ft was five minutes to nine by the little gilt clock on the man tel, which was set to the second, when Helm stepped into the public hall, looking up and down. The hall was empty at that moment, lie glided along it and swiftly let" himself into a vacant bedroom. The IW.vA 'as a new hotel and there .were half a dozen vacant bed rooms along that corridor. To get a duplicate of a chambermaid's pass key, so that he could enter any of those bedrooms at will, was an easy feat., He took up (he telephone in the bedroom and called Altman's apartment. In the parlor of that apartment .Altman and his two friends were " killing time agreeably with tall glasses, cigars and conversation. In Mrs. Altman's bedroom the maid was doing tip her mistress' hair much of it hers by right of purchase. The door between 'that room and the small dining room was open, but the door between dining room and parlor was closed. The telephone was in the dining room. It buzzed, and Mrs. Alt- man said to the maid, "See who it is." Ninehundred and ninety nine times out of 1,000 that is ex actly what would have happened. The maid went into the dining room and returned a minute later looking excited. In the undertone that fellow conspirators use she 'said, "It's Mr. Arthur. He wants to see you wants you to come downstairs. I tried to tell him, but they cut us off. I tried, but couldn't get him again. The lines ore mixed up. He said he must see you." Upon Mrs. Altman's fleshy face a startled expression appeared. Arthur's sending the flowers, with out any previous notice that he , had left New York, was eccentric. ' This message was even more ec centric. As the confidential maid well knew,- Arthur was given to eccentric behavior when under the influence of attohol. If. he was now downstairs in that state, like as not he would come blundering lip here to the apartment and touch off a grand family row The . sympathetic maid suggested. "I might go down and find him see what he wants." "Dol" her mistress replied eagerly. "Don't let him come up here." And she added, with a needless caution. "Don't go through the parlor." The maid therefore went into the private hall, from which she could gain the public hall without disturbing -. Mr. Altman and his friends in the parlor. This also is . exactly what would have happened ' times out of 1,000 Mrs. Alt man herself being in corset cover and underskirt, her hair half done up, and so unable - to leave the -apartment. Stepping into the public hall, the maid at once saw the tall, dis tinguished -figure of Captain Helm walking-toward her as though on his way to the elevators. She gave him a little nod, which was unnecessary, and sped toward the stairway. Turning at right angles to gain the stairway, , she threw a swift glance over her shoulder at the captain also -quite unneces sary. Captain Helm indulgently re flected that the maid, being an amateur at grand larceny, was nervous. He strolled on. It was now one minute to nine and the game was at 'its most critical stage, but there was a steely firmness in the captain's nerves as he stepped to the ele vator landing, entered a cage, descended to the main floor, made his way to the cashier's office, called for his overdue weekly bill, and at once disputed an item so that the cashier was obliged to get out the signed checks from the restaurant and go over them with the guest. The object of this pro ceeding was to establish beyond question that from about 9 o'clock to about 10 minutes after Captain Helm was standing at the cashier's wicket arguing about his bill. No detective could dispute that alibi. Earlier in the evening the maid had stepped into the bathroom be tween Mrs. Altman's bedroom and her husband's. Then she had run into the husband's bedroom and drawn the bolt on the door that gave to Helm's bedroom which took her 20 seconds. When she returned from downstairs she was to go into the bathroom again, glide into Altman's bedroom, and rebolt the door to Helm's bedroom.' The window in Altman's bedroom was up four or five inches. There was no fire escape, but an expert steeplejack or porrhclimber might possibly scale the rear rough brick wall of the hotel and get through the open window. That was the theory, according to Helm's plan, with which the police were to amuse themselves when the robbery was discovered. But Helm presumed that police suspicion would fall upon himself and wife at first. Their record was dubious. Their bedroom adjoined Altman's'. On this night of the big dance the hotel would be carefully watched. Probably the police would be reluctant to believethat a porchclimber had scaled the rear wall unseen. So Captain Helm had his own alibi carefully ar ranged. And, as for his wife, there would be the impeccable testimony of Josiah Musham that Mrs. Helm was under his eyes during every moment of the time when the rob bery must have been committed. Tlrat was why Musham had been summoned to the hotel that par ticular evening at a particular hour. It was a beautiful symmetrical plan, as Captain Helm viewed it. and he took a pride of authorship in it, regarding it as another of those masterpieces which had en- . abled him to reach the age of 36 without labor or visible income, and without any really serious col lision with the police. Yet the plan might go wrong. The maid had left Altman's apartmtnt at 8:59. She would return about 9:10. In the interval some untoward cir cumstance might develop in the apartment. As to that, thev must take the chance. Just possibly the maid might be prevented from rebolting the door before the theft was discovered. They must take that chance. But the jewelery was worth $100,000. A man who wouldn't take a chance for that would better resign himself at once to working for his living. Something had gone wro,ng a little in the apartment. Taking the jewel case from her husband, Mrs. Altman had put it in the sec ond drawer of the dressing table, instead of putting it on the table as the maid had supposed she would do. That, however, seemed a trivial disarrangement of the plan, for Mrs. Helm, not seeing the case on the table, would naturally look for it in the draw ers. Left to herself after the maid went downstairs to find Arthur, Mrs. Altman went on single handed with the elaborate business of do ing her hair; At nine minutes past nine the maid called the apart ment over a downstairs telephone. Mrs. Altman heard the instrument buzzing in the dining room and naturally went iu there to answer. It was the maid's voice saying something about Arthur, but the telephone seemed to be working badly; Mrs. Altman couldn't make out the message. Then the con nection was broken, and she had to wait for it tor be re-established. Altogether the maid kept her at the phone nearly three minutes. But Mrs. Altman had not been alone in hearing the buzz. At eight minutes past nine a corseted and kimonoed pillow stood on the chair by Mrs. Helm's dressing table and was duly reflected to Musharn's eyes in the pier mirror. Mrs. Helm, herself in white un dress, lips apart, out of the cat-, lers reflected line of vision, was standing at the slightly opened door to Altman's bedroom, listen ing breathlessly. The maid had left the bathroom doors a little ajar. Mrs. Helm heard the tele phone buzz and glidded through Altman's dark bedroom to the bathroom. An instant after Mrs. Altman disappeared fro mher bed room Mrs. Helm darted to the dressing table. ' This was the crucial moment for her, Mrs. Altman might step bark and see her. Her jierves were not as hardy as the captain's, yet suf ficient. The jewel case was not on the dressing table. She at tacked the drawers, but the top one stuck, giving her trouble, for she must be careful not to make a noise. Nothing had happened to give Josiah Musham any suspicion of the plot. - All that had occurred since he entered the room seemed to be a natural flow and sequence of events. He had bee alone in the parlor two or three minutes, undreaming of a present plot; dreaming, instead, something quite different. The woman intrigued his heart honorably, and piously, in his simple fashion. The picture she painted and the song she mur mured of the penitent Magdalene stirred his emotions, not only be cause she was lovely and bubbling , with life bur because, -down tinder many dusty layers of law and daily habit, there was an evange lizing covenanter. Would she be square come into the fold? In a simple, undogmatic piety he would have given much to be the means to that eid. Absorbed iu that, his brow wrin kled, he mechanically stood up, from a long habit of thinking on his feet tramping the floor over a knotty problem in law. Mechan ically he rubbed his brows, took two steps, glanced up and ex perienced a profound shock, for the pier mirror now showed him the image of a woman without legs, the rose -kimono dangling empty. For an instant he gazed in stupid amazement. Then a swift alarm flashed along his nerves some trick here! He stepped to the bedroom and looked in. A glance revealed the trick. That was a pillow on the chair by the dressing table, with a rose colored kimono over it. The beautiful penitent was not in the room. But the door at the end of the dressing table stood ajar. She must have gone in there. It was a. trick I She had been fooling him with the appeal in her eloquent eyes and on her pretty lips some deviltry afoot. It came to him that he had .seen Altman at the door a little way down the hall. Probably this open door led to Alt man's apartment. In a surge of righteous anger he stepped over, closed the door, and shot the bolt; then stood stock still in a sort of paralysis. She was in there steal ing something; he felt sure of that. The knob of the door in front of him turned noiselessly, but, of. course, the door did not open. That was her hand on the opposite knob; he could see that she was pressing against the door from the other side, trying to force it open. Then the pressure ceased; she gave it a little shake. Signals so she must have comprehended that the bolt had been shot and she was trapped on the other side. That turning and shaking of the knob was a plea. He stood motionless. A whisper came through the keyhole: "Uncle Joe, let me in!" So she guessed he had discov ered the trick and shot the bolt! In spite of the momentary surge of anger it shook Musham deeply. He fairly saw her stooping to utter that quick, desperate whisper golden head, white shoulders, round, white arms; in a trap, and as beautiful a creature as ever the jaws of a trap closed upon. In out line it was clear enough to him; the next suite belonged to Altman; she had gone in there to steal a crime going on under his nose. - But her penitence had there been something real in that, after all?. That trap meant prison for her a million pities for so lovely a creature who might repent even if she hadn't already! He had only to extend his hand and draw the bolt. A faint odor of cosmetics rose to him from the dressing table, a silkv white garment lay on a chair; paraphernalia of the en chantress. The whisper came again: "Let me in. Uncle Joe a note of terror in it, he thought. To emphasize it she lightly shook the knob agian. She was trapped, two feet away from him with the hunters at hand. Holding her in the trap was al most like running a spear through her quivering body with his own hand. His heart trembled; and he had only to reach out and draw the bolt. The faint odor of cosmetics rose to him. ' The natural color of his face faded to a patchy sort of yellow, the wrinkles deepened in dogged lines, his eyes were heavy with woe. But he turned sullenly from the bolted door and walked out of the room. Probably she was still shaking the knob and whis pering through th kevhole. It was not yet too late, his finger was on the trigger, but he had not pressed it. He stood a mo ment an aged mask of misery, wretched to the core. Doubtless she was still appealing. Miserably he turned to the telephone, took down the receiver, and spoke brusquely: "This is room 347. There's a robbery going on up here. Send a detective or romebody quick. Ye. 347. Be quick I" Then he went over and sat on the arm of the chair, putting a hand to his brow, which was fur rowed as though he had a severe headache, Three detectives came on the run. Musham gave them a dozen words and a gesture. They hur ried into the bedroom, drew the bolt and caught her, dragging her in. Musham had to look her in the face her face white under the rouge, with great frightened eyes. He had driven the spear through her. During the commotion fat, bald Altman was pumping Musharn's hand, babbling excited gratitude and congratulations. But Musham cared nothing about Altman and his foolish jewels would as soon he lost them as not. Next day 'a round-faced young man with a neat little black mus tache, who looked as though he might be well intentioned, was babbling gratitude- and appreciation having been let out of a most uncomfortable position, because a woman taken in theft is in a poor situation to blackmail anybody. But Musham told him with grim candor that he had been a fool and deserved to suffer more than he had. The evening of that next day he sat alone in his study. She in trigued his heart. Iji an odd, hon orable, ghostly fashion hoping; for repentance he loved the pretty, sparkling creature. Yet he had handed her over to the hunters. For she was a criminal an habitual, practiced breaker of the law en gaging in crime under his nose, so that he had been obliged either to become an accomplice to the crime or to denounce it. "Sloppy, maudlin, sentiment, dis loyal to the law, soft, without the courage to strike home," he had written. Sitting gauntly upright by the study the old lawyer laid a bony hand on the manuscript having justified a lifelond faith by works. (Copyright, 1922.) Violated Treaty, Charge. Paris,. July 15. Accusation that Germany is manufacturing, or has manufactured, war planes con trary to the terms of the Versailles treaty is made by an aviation au thority writing in L'Auto. These planes are being turned .out in great numbers, according' to the writer, not in Germany itself, but in Czecho-Slovakia, Poland, Hol land, Switzerland, Austria and es pecially in Russia, Germany fur nishing the capital. It is hinted that German influence is behind a newly formed Spanish company to establish an air line between Spain and South America.' Home to Be Restored. Clarksburg, W. Va., July 15. The project of restoring the old "Stonewall" Jackson mansion at Jackson's Mills Park, long fur thered by the Clarksburg chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, has been taken up by the state chapter of that organiza tion. It is planned to restore the old mansion, which was burned down several years ago, on the same site and convert it into a his torical museum. One-Pound Baby Born. Mansfield, O., July 15.-rAlthough weighing only one pound and sev en ounces, the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Gage&born this month, was normally developed at birth. Attending physicians, pointing out that ordinarily a babe of such di minutive proportions would have been placed in an incubator for treatment, said it is expected that tiny Miss Gages will progress as a normal child. Bavarians to Learn English. London, July 15. Bavaria's parliament has decided to make the teaching of the English language compulsory throughout the middle schools of the country and to make French optional. French had pre viously been compulsory, but the committee which made the report stated that French culture had passed the highest peak and that English culture was far more valu able. ' Big . Price for Stamps. Paris, July 15. Two thousand dollars was the price paid for two American postage stamps at a re cent sale at the Hotel Drouot. The stamps were 5-cent blue issues of an early series, bearing the por trait of Livingston. A brown 5 cent stamp of a similar series brought $1,300 and a continental 10-cent stamp of Uniontown, Pa., red over blue, $1,100.