Читать книгу Dead Man's Hat - Footner Hulbert - Страница 4

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In the board-room of the Chambers National, ten of New York’s most famous leaders of finance and industry were seated around the long table. Among them Snowden, thick bodied and arrogant; Gray, meager and ascetic as a monk; Hochschild, the suave international banker, at home in all the palaces of the world; Richmond with his handsome presence, instinct with the pride of race. Every face present was familiar to the public; to have caught them together would have made a photographer’s fortune.

Beekman, the youngest man present, presided. Stuart was the eleventh at the table. Obviously of lesser caliber than the others, he took no part in the discussion, but acted as secretary to the meeting.

They had fallen into some disorder. “You’ve had a hundred thousand,” cried Snowden to Beekman, angrily. “It’s all spent and nothing has been accomplished. Nothing can be accomplished if you ask me. This sort of thing is out of our line. I vote we dissolve. It’s very distasteful to me to be associated with something that isn’t making good!”

Beekman listened with a resolute smile. “We’d be sorry to lose your support,” he said. “But the work will go on if I have to carry it myself. I didn’t say that nothing had been accomplished. I said that we had not yet accomplished our aim. What do you expect for your hundred thousand? The object of this committee is to destroy the evil power that is ruling and ruining our city. We are out to put Jim Mann behind the bars. We are up against a man whose income is said to reach a million dollars a month!”

“Where does he get it?” asked Gray.

Beekman consulted a memorandum. “Well, for one thing he has forty high-class gambling-houses scattered around town at strategic points. I have a list of addresses here. In addition, there are scores of smaller places, while the pool rooms and policy shops must run into the thousands. You can’t bet a nickel in this city without a part of it finding its way into Jim Mann’s bottomless pocket.”

“If you have the addresses, why don’t you turn them over to the police?”

Beekman merely spread out his hands expressively.

“Do you mean by that,” Gray persisted, “that the police are in with Mann?”

“I make no such charge,” said Beekman. “Frankly, I don’t know. If I turned this list over to the police they would do their duty; they would raid the places. And what would be the result? All forty would open up the following night at new addresses. Every speakeasy in town has rooms upstairs that they are glad to rent to the gamblers because it brings business to the house. There is no difficulty in finding new quarters. And every waiter and barman is an agent to tell the customers where to go.”

“Can’t you reach Mann through these raids?”

“No. They are not his houses. He hasn’t a dollar in them. He’s too wise. He merely collects fifty per cent of the profits.”

“For what?”

“Protection.”

“Then he is in with the police?”

“It is futile to take that line. I used the word protection in the racketeering sense. Try and start a game without seeing Jim Mann and you’ll find out what I mean. What do you suppose is the answer to the dozen unsolved killings in the middle of town during the past year?”

“I am told that they have ceased,” said Snowden. “No gambler has been killed in three months past.”

“And why not?” said Beekman. “Because Mann has consolidated himself. He’s beaten out every rival. He’s got gambling sewed up. Through gambling he controls the retail liquor trade, and God knows how many other rackets. Everything is running as smooth as velvet for him. He is the king!”

“Well, if he can keep the lawless element in order, I say let him do it,” said Snowden.

“Hear! Hear!” chimed in other voices.

“Does he bank with you, Snowden?” asked Hochschild, slyly.

“If he does, I’m not aware of it,” said Snowden, stiffly.

There was a general laugh around the table.

Beekman’s powerful glance traveled around, arresting their attention. “None of us here are sentimental reformers,” he resumed; “but doesn’t the good name of our town mean something to us? My family has played a part here for five generations. Every one of us around this table has made good by hard work and square dealing. Well, are we going to let this dirty wop from nowhere put our town in his pocket? Our town? This thug, this three-gun man, this murderer?”

“You exaggerate, Beekman,” said Snowden, mounting his dignity. “I don’t doubt he’s all you say, but what has it got to do with us? Let him lord it over the criminal element, and be damned to the lot of them!”

“What has it got to do with us?” repeated Belmont, ominously. “They tell me he called up a judge of Special Sessions last week, and ordered him to discharge a prisoner who was coming up that day. And the prisoner was discharged. Don’t you feel that as a personal insult?”

There was no answer.

“Nothing to do with us! Presently he will be turning his attention to the banks, and you’ll all be paying through the nose for the privilege of conducting your own business. Gentlemen, there are no bounds to this man’s ambition. He’s got a Napoleon complex. Are you going to stand for it?”

Beekman paused. His hearers frowned and made marks on their scratch-pads. Presently the speaker continued:

“I confess it riles me to see the twenty-thousand-dollar armored car speeding through the streets with the fat wop inside bowing and smiling to the populace like royalty! I was born a free man. Have you ever been in the theater when he came in attended by his bodyguard of twenty men all in faultless tuxedoes? And have you seen them rise as one man when the master went out into the foyer to smoke a cigarette? How did you like it?

“His name heads every charity subscription list. Well, he can afford it. Scarcely a day passes when he doesn’t appear as the hero of some front-page story in the newspapers. Through such publicity he has built up a well-nigh impregnable position, I tell you. The people run after him in the streets, cheering!

“And not only in the streets. Jim Mann is being received into society now. It is considered very smart to have him at our parties. Well, women are only human. The halo of lawlessness and murder and power that he carries around with him excites them. Are you going to stand for that, too? Gentlemen, it was on the day that I walked into a fashionable reception and found Jim Mann ogling my wife and boasting to her of his adventures—it was at that moment I made up my mind this town was not big enough to contain him and me together. Are you with me?”

“I’m with you,” said Hochschild, promptly.

“And I, And I,” the voices went around the table.

Only Snowden still grumbled a little. “Where do we stand at present?” he asked.

“I have dug up a pretty complete history of Jim Mann’s past,” said Beekman, “but I have not yet got sufficient evidence to let the story break. I am hampered by the fact that Mann sooner or later buys up every agent and investigator that I hire. I must again impress upon you gentlemen the necessity for absolute secrecy. There is a leak somewhere. Mann seems to learn everything I do as soon as I do it. It is as if I were surrounded by a cloud of invisible spies.”

The men around the table glanced at one another uneasily. Beekman suddenly rose and flung the door open. But the main office outside was completely empty.

“Mann has been clever in destroying the evidence of his crimes,” Beekman resumed, returning to the table, “but I’ll get it if I live. I’m not going to take it into court at first. It would be useless to try to obtain a conviction as long as he occupies his present pinnacle of popularity. I propose to publish the story in the newspapers with evidence to back up every charge. What publicity can set up publicity can destroy!”

“That’s all right,” grumbled Snowden. “The only thing that gravels me is, we put up the money and you get all the credit.”

“It was at your own request that your name was kept out of this,” retorted Beekman; “all your names. Do you want to change places with me?”

“Well ... no!” said Snowden.

“It’s true you’re putting up the money,” said Beekman, quietly. “But I’m putting up my life.”

There was complete silence around the table. The members of the committee took out their check-books. Vice-president Stuart gathered up the checks with a peculiar smile.

When the meeting broke up, Stuart lingered in the board-room. To Beekman he said:

“Don’t wait for me. I’ll clean up the room so that there will be nothing to show we had a meeting here tonight.”

Except for the watchmen, Stuart was the last to leave the bank building. Lower Broadway was like the main thoroughfare of a deserted city. The hands of the clock in the little old City Hall tower opposite, pointed to midnight. Looking over his shoulder to make sure he was unobserved, Stuart crossed Chambers Street and dropped in an all-night cigar store. Entering a telephone booth, he called a number. When he got an answer he said, cautiously:

“Let me speak to the boss.”

“Who are you?” asked the voice at the other end.

“Just tell him it’s John S.”

“Okay.”

A thick, good-humored voice drawled over the wire: “Hello, John, old catamount! What’s the good word?”

“The meeting is just over,” said Stuart, primly. “I called up to tell you about it.”

“Well, shoot!”

Stuart proceeded to describe what had taken place around the board table. He concluded by saying: “None of them showed any stomach to keep up the fight against you. It was Beekman heated them up to it.”

A comfortable fat laugh sounded over the wire. “I’ll take care of Beekman,” said the voice. “It’s a shame, ain’t it? such a promising young guy! ... Say, I’m going down to Adolph’s speak’ on Forty-first in a little while. Meet me there in half an hour, and we’ll talk things over.”

“A speakeasy!” said Stuart, in horror. “Think of my position!”

The fat laugh sounded again. “Cheese, John, what do you do to get warm? ... Well, come to my place tomorrow morning at nine.”