Diamond Tolls

Front matter

"Standing at the sweeps was a slender, blue-eyed girl ... the light and wind caused her to squint ever so little."

DIAMOND TOLLS

BY RAYMOND S. SPEARS

Chapter 1

CHAPTER I

OBERT GOLES left Maiden Lane, in New York City, with an assortment of several hundred diamonds and several rubies to visit the Ofsten & Groner customers who were nearly all jewellery stores down the Ohio River. The total value of the gems was $106,450, wholesale. The jewels were in a small leather-bound case, weighing with its contents less than a pound.

Ofsten & Groner knew all there was to know about Obert Goles, from his grandparents to his own record in Ottawa, Ill., and thence eastward when he brought four beautiful pearls which he traded for two thousand dollars and a job as office boy in the Ofsten & Groner establishment. The pearls were finds from Fox River, and helped make that river famous in jewellery circles as pearl-bearing. He offered with that money to pay for the bond which the firm required of every employee, but the lad's willingness and his eagerness caused the company to see means of remitting the cost at Christmas time.

Goles soon proved his instinct by bringing in a definite pearl trade from western rivers, and within fifteen years he had established himself as salesman for Ofsten & Groner. He was, perhaps, the most inconspicuous man imaginable. It was said of him that people could look at him and not know that he was present! His voice was a monotone, his face a blank, his gait a glide, and his habit complete silence.

Yet his very self-abnegation served but to impress upon customers the gems and jewels he desired to sell. He never distracted a customer from the beauty of a bit of work in platinum or gold; he gave a buyer the feeling of being entirely alone with a tray of diamonds, to make his selection; there was in him not the least trace or hint of the strong-arm method of salesmanship—so he sold specially beautiful gems with extraordinary success to collectors and to the trade.

It was a year of belated prosperity down the Ohio Valley. All summer the jewellers had been waiting for some sign which would help them decide how much Christmas goods to take on. Also, they had waited before buying jewels which are in demand when crops are bountiful, when, especially, the patrons of the local bucket shops and stock-exchange brokers have teen making money, and when tradesmen see big trade in hand.

Now they knew that money was plentiful down the valley, and as the political situation was satisfactory, by the signs that the gem trade read, it was time for Obert Goles to go selling gems from Pittsburgh to Cairo.

His going was not announced in any of the trade papers, and the fact was not heralded on Maiden Lane. The New York gem trade has long since learned that a salesman carrying from $50,000 to $250,000 worth of gems needs to slip away from his home store in the night, like a thief, and to scout from centre to centre like a spy in the land of the enemy, telling no man his business, suspecting even little children and hating especially beautiful women and good fellowmen.

So Obert Goles vanished from Maiden Lane, and apparently no one missed the shadow that never stood in the way of the least sparkle in a diamond or clouded the lustre of a pearl. He glided uptown and caught a train over to Pittsburgh, where he appeared unannounced in a little store around a corner, under a stairway, in which a little Rabbi of a man welcomed him and shortly paid him for certain stones the sum of $4,360.

Goles mailed his sales slip to the home office that night in a plain and not overly clean envelope. He deposited the cash in a bank to the credit of Ofsten & Groner, and dropped down the Ohio by train. He stopped in three towns, and made two sales—two or three small stones in each. Then he struck Marietta, whence he wrote a note detailing his future course—as usual—but adding one significant sentence:

"I am obliged to use extreme care, for I find that I am followed."

Now this statement gave Ofsten & Groner considerable satisfaction. Goles was such a perfect salesman for the business that he worried the firm. They knew that he was unmarried, had no social life, spent his spare hours reading in the libraries, where he amassed volumes of notes about gems and the lore of gems. His suite of three rooms on the West Side, near the Museum of Natural History, contained a beautiful collection of books, documents, and ancient writings. Nothing had ever happened to Goles since he found the four pearls in the Fox River except that he invested in conservative stocks, with one exception. He bought a very cheap stock at 21, and later sold it at 478, thereby clearing a matter of forty-seven thousand dollars.

The fact of this little flier, known to the firm, worried its members. It was the sign of weakness, to their minds, and accordingly they had the National Agency shadow Goles on this trip down the Ohio Valley. He was carrying less than half as valuable an assortment as when he struck what the Maiden Lane gossips call "the wheat pit, cattle land, and copper-mine route," from Chicago to Kansas and Butte.

Goles had observed the shadow; he had noted it; he had called the firm's attention to it, which was equivalent to a warning to them to put the National Agency on the trail to protect him! It was an excellent corroboration of the visible trust reposed in Goles. They were glad to know that he was not only competent, honest, and thorough; he was also watchful. One of the most successful shadows in the detective branch of the jewellery business had been detected almost instantly.

Accordingly, Ofsten & Groner notified the National manager of their satisfaction and the detective, Volcon, was called off at Cincinnati at noon. Volcon trailed his man till noon, sharp, and saw him enter a restaurant at that moment. Then the case closed, Volcon reported to the local branch of the National Agency, and was assigned to a hold up over on the Wabash River, in which a pearl buyer had lost a thousand dollars in cash, and pearls of the value of $6,000.

From that moment, noon sharp, Obert Goles vanished. He failed to make his customary report that evening, and when Ofsten & Groner telegraphed to the hotel in Warsaw, where he was to have put up the following night, they learned from the proprietor that Goles had not appeared there. Agency Manager Grost at Cincinnati, informed of the matter, immediately called up all the customers down the river on Goles' itinerary, and the one whom the salesman had last visited was at 10:45 o'clock, in Cincinnati, from whose shop the detective had followed him to the restaurant.

They did not even recall him in the restaurant. Obert Goles was so inconspicuous that even the waiter who brought him his commonplace lunch would not remember him, no matter how faithfully he was described in feet, inches, pounds, and complexion.

Unfortunately, Goles had no other customer to visit in Cincinnati when he entered the restaurant. He presumably was bound down to Warsaw, and it was noted that he had failed to tell whether he was going by railroad, taking the stage across from Glencoe, or by the river on the Packet, which would have been the obvious way.

Warsaw contained only one customer, Judge C. Wrest, of the Ofsten & Groner Company. He was a peculiar old man, with a large income from an unknown source. His strict orders to Ofsten & Groner were that no one should know that he purchased diamonds. He lived in a brick house on a knoll the fence of which was falling down, the yard grown to weeds, and some of the windows broken and patched with boards. Nevertheless, he purchased about five thousand dollars' worth of diamonds twice a year, for cash.

He refused to answer telegrams and he had no telephone. When the manager of the National Agency went down to see him personally, he would only say:

"I know nothing about Goles; another agent of Ofsten & Groner was here on Thursday morning, at 10 o'clock,and I purchased my usual supply from him."

"Then you admit having in your possession some of the diamonds which came from the firm of Ofsten & Groner?" Manager Grost asked, softly.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that if you have any of those stones, you are a receiver of stolen goods," the detective said, sharply.

"Stolen goods?" the man repeated. "I think not—I have here the receipt——"

He handed the manager a sales slip, and there was the list of stones, weight, grade, value—$5,190. It was signed, "B. L. Folded, Agt."

"What kind of a looking man was this Folded?"

"Black moustache, dark eyes, dark complexion—perhaps thirty years of age," the old man replied, for a shade of worry had begun to trouble him.

That was all the detective manager could learn from Wrest. He went to the stage driver, but he nor any one else in town recalled a man as described by the customer. No boat had arrived at the hour described to bring the pseudo diamond salesman. No automobile had come in over the roads; no one recalled any boat on the river—skiff, launch, houseboat, or other craft—which might have brought in or taken away the man who sold diamonds.

Instantly suspicion was directed against the customer. He was known by the detective to hoard diamonds, and it was not beyond the realms of chance that he had in some way killed the salesman and stolen the diamonds. Manager Grost summoned Operative Volcon and they ransacked Warsaw from the water-front river rats to the hill billies back on the river ridges.

Then they learned from a shanty-boater two miles above town in the mouth of the creek that he had seen a dude in a white collar and derby hat coming down the Ohio on Thursday morning. The man was as described by the customer. He had run his skiff into the bank in a little eddy, where the fisherman, when he passed down with some fish, about 11 o'clock, saw it moored to a stake. The skiff was gone when he returned about noon.

With a good description of the skiff, word was sent up and down the river, and the skiff was found in a boat livery at Misquaw.

"I'll be back Tuesday after it," the man had said, taking his suitcase and going to the train. He had bought a ticket to Cincinnati, but in Cincinnati no trace of him could be found.

"He's an old timer," the detectives decided. "He knew about that customer, and he took in the cash—more than five thou'! Now how did he know about the customer? Easy enough! He rapped Goles over the head, carried away his stock and itinerary, and he knew it was safe to go to Warsaw——"

The case was pigeonholed until they could trace out some of the men who were abroad who might pull such a job as that. But the matter remained pigeonholed only a week.

From Warsaw arrived Judge C. Wrest, the purchaser of diamonds, limping and whimpering:

"They stole my diamonds!" he wailed to Manager Grost. "A fellow came in and pulled a gun on me; he tied me to a chair, and he moved me up to the fire-place, and—and he put my feet against the coals. I couldn't stand it! I like to died—and I was muzzled so's I couldn't holler. I had to give 'em to 'im—most a hundred thousand I paid for 'em. But—but he didn't get 'em all!"

"You told the officers?" Wrest was asked, for he had seen no mention of the theft in the newspapers.

"Not a word!" the old man shook his head. "I don't know what to make of it!"

"What kind of looking men held you up?"

"Only one, suh—just an ornery looking fellow, kinda middling, you might say, and just a purring kind of voice. Not much of a man! Some no 'count white trash, I bet, but mean and trifling. I paid a hundred thousand for them. Here's the slips, how much they weighed and what I paid, but they's a sight more valuable now'n when I bought 'em."

"What'd you keep that much around you for, anyhow?" Grost asked, exasperated to think that any one would have so much wealth in so exposed a place.

"I—I 'lowed that nobody knowed about it, suh." Wrest shook his head. "I—I never 'lowed it'd leak out. Theh's been profit in diamonds! I aimed to sell, directly, and I'd be good interest ahead—I saw it a-coming! Now look 't me!"

He grimaced, but added, cunningly:

"But I got some left!"

"You want us to look after those stones?"

"Yes, sir, I'll spend some money to get them back—I brought this up, to kind of guarantee it—there's two thousand here. You boys look around, and see what you can find. It's kind of funny, that Gole feller turning up missing, and then they got me, right along! You look into it!"

And with that, the quaint old customer of diamond merchant and detective agency hobbled out of the office, leaving the detective to the contemplation of the case, as stated accurately by the old man.

Chapter 2

CHAPTER II

MANAGER GROST called in a trusty newspaper reporter who favoured the Agency on occasion, and who was in turn favoured when a good story broke that was safe to print. This reporter was Charles Urleigh, a slim, tall, blue-eyed bundle of nerve and nerves. He was a free lance, with a string of papers that reached from Nashville and Knoxville to Chicago and St. Louis and New York—trade journals and occasional articles in noted weekly semi-newspapers supplying him with his pocket money, and helped him meet the demands of his brokers when wheat broke or certain favourite industrials had a "temporary relapse."

To Urleigh, Grost made a clean breast of the whole affair. The Agency was stumped. It did not know which way to turn. There was a certain tone to the double diamond robbery which had no ear marks familiar to the Agency's archives. They could not recall a single gem salesman specialist who would go to a salesman's private customer and sell him a line of the stolen diamonds and thus—perhaps—obtain information as to where the old fellow hid his hoard of gems.

"That's just what happened, though," Grost told Urleigh. "They pulled a double play that time, and look what they got! Two hundred thousand—and they've made a clean getaway with it! Poor Goles—he's a deader now. Yet there's just one chance about him: If he survived the rap they gave him on the head, he may be somewhere around, though he's not in any hospital here or down in Warsaw. I believe he's in the Ohio, but if he is, I've an uncommonly strong hankering to see the corpse."

"That's a real story!" Urleigh smiled. "It's all mine?

"Yes, sir. Don't spring it here, though. Make the headline Warsaw, or Louisville, or Columbus, so that you don't mix us up in it. The police are working, you know; it'll be plumb amusing to me to hear their voices over the telephone asking me how long they've been working, when our local reporters have brought them the news from Chicago and Pittsburgh that Obert Goles disappeared between Cincinnati and Warsaw with a hundred thousand in diamonds, and that Warsaw's mysterious Mr. Wrest was held up and tortured and forced to give over another hundred thousand. Oh, I'm waiting for that!"

The two laughed. Sheriffs, chiefs of police, and U. S. Secret Service workers often read the newspapers to find out what they were doing, now that Urleigh was working with Manager Grost of the National Agency.

"I think I'll just marshal several stories," Urleigh smiled. "I'll mention despatches from Pittsburgh, Louisville, Columbus, Marietta—I always like to run Marietta into a live story, because they run to literature in that town, with more book stores than any other town down the Ohio—and I'll run my big story from Warsaw. I've been down there a few times, and I know the lay of the land. What's the town marshal's name, now? I'm going to have him very close mouthed on the subject and also the Sheriff of Gallatin County——"

Grost laughed aloud.

"That's just what I want you to do—have everyone busy! That'll worry the thieves, and they'll be watching the local authorities and the hooks in sheriffs' offices and police headquarters which carry the rewards offered for bad men. We're not to figure in it at all. Not a word about the National Agency. We're asleep, and our snores are deep. Possibly I may find it necessary to deny that we know anything whatever about the matter. Just to give it all to you—not for publication—we had a man after Goles; our man trailed him right up to the Fresco Restaurant door, and then dropped out of the case on orders. From that moment, noon, Goles has not been seen by any one who knew him. Volcon, who trailed him, says he was the most difficult man he ever saw to keep in sight—he would have made a perfect shadow, he made so little impression on any one. Why, jewellers here who knew him well could not give us the colour of his eyes, his height, weight, kind of clothes he wore, or a single detail of his appearance. We tried that, just to satisfy ourselves that Volcon was right."

"No picture of him?"

"Not a picture. They ransacked his apartment in New York, and found a lot of queer junk about gems and jewellery but not so much as a silhouette of him."

"Well, much obliged, Grost! See you later—I want to get this written in six different ways, fifteen hundred words per each way, between now and 10 o'clock to-night. So long!"

Thus the mighty engine of publicity—general publicity—was set in motion in the case of the Goles mystery and the Wrest robbery. Urleigh did his work well, at from five to nine dollars a column, and from the Mississippi to the Atlantic. Having the story well distributed as a news sensation, he followed it up with second-day stories, and the theories of rather surprised and wondering sheriffs and police and detective chiefs, who obtained their first information from Urleigh's own tales.

Then Urleigh wrote Sunday specials, which retold the first-day stories and mentioned previous jewel thefts, giving numerous details of what may have happened to the two lots of gems, speculation as to what may have become of the missing Obert Goles, with details of the debate among county and city authorities as to whether or not Goles's disappearance was connected with the Wrest robbery.

Now Charles Urleigh, being a free lance, had very many questionable acquaintances among his friends in public, financial, political, up-the-bank and down-the-river acquaintances. He knew the boss pig sticker in town, for example, and a hundred moored and tripping shanty-boaters on the river. He was a frequent visitor in the little back office of a certain liquor emporium where the upper met the lower world on terms something like equal. Now he sought his most questionable friends, one after another, and listened with acute ears to their suggestions.

Speaking of diamond robberies, Urleigh's friends were reminded of many other strange things which had happened and which had never been fully explained. Suppose Goles had disappeared—was that so unusual? It was astonishing how many people knew of men, women, and girls who had suddenly vanished from sight without leaving a trace behind them—not even a reason for their going. Lost diamonds, it was suggested, were more interesting than lost people merely because there were so few diamonds lost compared to the number of lost people.

Urleigh picked up a list of more than thirty people who had dropped out of sight within a year in that locality. A little inquiry revealed the fact that the list was far from complete—there were people right in his own circle, for example, who had packed up their duds and vanished from their boarding houses and left no trace behind them. Whole families changed their address from Known to Unknown. Even the post office delivery department received a steady stream of mail which they were obliged to turn back to the senders, or to the Dead Letter Office undelivered.

Thus the diamond robbery led to forty or fifty columns of stories suggested by the missing Goles and the double raid on precious gems. It was, from Urleigh's standpoint, a very satisfactory news story to begin with, and he recalled none that had given him a better income. It led to his reassorting the one hundred thousand clippings which were a chief part of his capital and indexing the six hundred box-drawers in which he stored them for ready reference. This same collection was very embarrassing to sundry people, for Urleigh was enabled to recall episodes in their lives which few remembered.

Literally hundreds of stories led down to the bank of the Ohio and there trails vanished—girls, women, children, and men were last seen going down Main, or John, or Cutter, or Woodburn, or State, or some other street or avenue "toward the river." It was this little phrase recurring so often that led Urleigh to write the news special headed "Toward the River" which attracted so much attention in newspaper circles a few weeks after Goles vanished.

Manager Grost told Urleigh that he had found no trace of Goles anywhere; neither had the diamonds nor rubies been recognized in any of the legitimate marts—but that meant nothing. The Diamond Trade had its Under World, through which wandered gems as precious and perhaps a thousand times more interesting than anything one could learn about the legitimate traffic of the surface trade, which by comparison is prosy and uneventful. The $200,000 worth of diamonds had sunk into this Under World, leaving hardly a trace.

"If you see a hundred thousand worth of diamonds above aboard and in the open," Grost explained, "there's a lost million somewhere!"

That exaggerated a condition, but sometimes it does seem as though gems drop from sight faster than any other form of wealth—and it is a fact that the Treasures of Solomon, of Inde, of the Spanish Main, of Rome, Carthage, Constantine—of countless kings and even nations, have vanished, leaving no trace, plowed under by Time.

"Then the chances are you'll never find those gems?" Urleigh asked,

"Looks like!" Grost admitted. "I tell you, there's something pretty bad in that double robbery. You just don't know whom to suspect, or which way to turn!"

Other stories, other things gradually crowded the Goles diamond case into the background. It seemed as though no new phase could enter into the matter now; but an astonishing word reached Manager Grost in the routine mail one morning. From the New York office arrived a letter relating to Case J-1416—the Goles case.

In matter of Obert Goles, missing with diamonds and rubies belonging to firm of Ofsten & Groner (see files) Goles arrived at office of the firm to-day bringing a black fishing tackle box containing a large number of diamonds. Putting the box on the counter, he said:

"There're those diamonds!"

Immediately he turned and left the store, every one too astonished to stop him. He was very seedy, clothes badly worn, hat a dirty gray. Face very haggard and unshaven.

When the diamonds were examined, they were found to exceed in value those with which he disappeared, but only a few of them were the same as those in the selection which he carried away. No rubies in this lot.

Please reopen the case energetically; these stones seem to be the ones stolen from Judge C. Wrest, your local case, J-1416a. Ofsten & Groner are examining records to make certain that they are gems from Wrest collection.

"Now that just beats Hades!" Grost exclaimed to himself. "What's the reason?"

A messenger arrived from the telegraph office, and this confirmed the suggestion in the order regarding cases J-1416 and J-1416a.

"Records show that gems are identical with sales to Wrest," the code resolved the message.

Grost brought out the records in the two cases. With these records were hundreds of clippings from newspapers, including the Urleigh articles which were authoritative and accurate; the records were the reports of the detectives who had been assigned to the cases, and tips which had been received by anonymous letters and reward seekers.

He went over them all. He saw, of course, new angles of the subject now—many things might have happened which no one had dreamed happened. What could that seedy man, Goles, bringing in those Wrest diamonds and then taking his departure, tell? What was it that troubled his conscience or stirred his mind?

Grost was an able student of psychology, and he had made his success in detective work, doping out the minds of criminals and of subjects of his inquiry. Here was a subject worthy of his best practical study. He could see a dozen different things that might have happened, perhaps the most obvious one being the supposition that Goles had stolen away with his case of gems, and then become troubled by his conscience.

"But why didn't he bring back those gems he absconded with?" Grost asked himself. "Why and how did he fall upon the Wrest diamonds?"

Then again:

"Where are the Ofsten & Groner diamonds and rubies?" Grost asked again, without any reasonable reply.

As this report had been sent, in substance, to all the branches of the National Agency, Grost had no compunctions about calling in Urleigh and telling him the latest development in cases J-1416 and J-1416a.

"Only don't head it from this town," he grinned. "You might date-line it at Pittsburgh. That'd suit me very well. They've been laying talks up there onto me from time to time!"

"Pittsburgh it is, then!" Urleigh grinned.

Chapter 3

CHAPTER III

A LITTLE white cabin-boat floated down the Ohio and swung around in the eddies where the green waters rubbed with the yellow of the Mississippi. On the bow, standing at the sweeps, was a slender, blue-eyed girl with wavy brown hair; she was tanned, and the light and wind caused her to squint ever so little. Apparently she was at her ease, as though she knew the river, but when she pulled the sweeps, she looked around uncertainly, as though wondering which way the boat would go.

When she was swinging down Putney Bend, she found herself approaching a number of other shantyboats moored along the river bank. She attempted to row straight to them, but Mrs. Mahna, an old river woman, called to her. What kind of a fool soft-paw was she, anyhow, trying to row against a reverse eddy current?

"Drop down to the foot of the eddy, an' float in!" Mrs. Mahna ordered. "Then float along up the bank an' land in, the way you'd orter!"

The young woman flushed under the river woman's scorn, but she did as she was told, and landed beside Mrs. Mahna's boat, and Mrs. Mahna took the girl's mooring lines and made them fast handily to the stakes which other shantyboaters had driven into the bank and left when they pulled out.

"If it's no offence, who all mout you be?" Mrs. Mahna asked in her politest river language.

"Delia," the girl answered.

"Delia?" Mrs. Mahna repeated, adding, "that's a lady's first name!"

"I'm a lady," Delia smiled, "and that's my first, last, and middle name."

"Sho!" Mrs. Mahna exclaimed, perplexed. Then the elder woman burst into a low chuckle, saying: "It's a good name, Delia is. It'll be plumb popular down Old Mississip', d'rectly Miss Delia, Mrs. Delia, and Delia! Yas, suh! I expect hit'll be a regular old tangle-tongue name!"

"What do you mean by that?"

"You're a pretty girl, and you're alone, and you're a soft-paw on the river," Mrs. Mahna observed, shrewdly. "But I expect you-all can take care of yourself, you look real handy, thataway. There's lots of girls come down Old Mississippi that can't take care of themselves, so they gets took care of, but you—sho! you make me think of Big Sue."

Delia's lips pursed doubtfully, and then they smiled without showing her pretty teeth. She asked, a minute later:

"Who was Big Sue?"

"She was one of those big brunettes, with brown eyes and long lashes," Mrs. Mahna explained, "and she made a real good living, into a skiff, selling whisky along in Plum Point and Fort Pillow and down thataway. Seems like she might of lived real nice, and owned a whisky boat and made a good bit of money, but she took to marrying and 'vorcing. You know what that does to a lady!"

Delia laughed aloud, showing her teeth. Mrs. Mahna looked at her in surprise. There wasn't anything at all funny in what she had said, and so she wondered what ailed Delia?

"Anybody'd know you was from up-the-banks!" Mrs. Mahna exclaimed, petulantly, "no feelings at all, laughing about Big Sue and her plumb foolishness!"

"Oh, I•meant no harm, Mrs.—Mrs.2"

"Mrs. Mahna. See that old feller up the bank, staring at you? Well, he's my husband. Don't forget that!"

Delia's eyes opened, and her mouth closed, tentatively.

"Well, why don't you laugh this time?" Mrs. Mahna demanded, with asperity. "When a lady warns you about taking her husband you want to smile!"

Delia laughed aloud at that.

"Really, Mrs. Mahna!" she cried, "I want to laugh right. But I've not been long on the river2"