Читать книгу Putting Crime Over - Footner Hulbert - Страница 3

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IT was owing to the last-minute illness of Mrs. Cornelius Marquardt that I had the good fortune to be included in this little dinner of Mme. Storey's. Her guests do not often disappoint.

Everybody in the know is aware that the best talk in New York is to be heard around her table. She picks her guests' with that end in view, careless of their social position. One may meet a visiting marquis or a tramp poet—the poet more often than the marquis.

Mme. Storey herself is a better talker, in my opinion, than any of them, but one would be slow to learn that at her own table. Her object there is merely to keep the ball rolling briskly. She likes to listen. better than to talk.

On this occasion the men included Ambrose G. Larned, the brilliant. advertising man, who had introduced so many new ideas into his profession; John Durward, the famous English novelist; Harry Evans Colter, our own clever and popular short story writer; and Inspector Rumsey, of the New York police.

Rumsey, the dear little man, is not at all a brilliant person; but he is a perfect compendium of crime, and, since crime seems to be the most interesting of all subjects to persons of every degree nowadays, Mme. Storey finds him very useful at the dinner table. When people try to draw her out on the subject of crime, she shifts them on to Rumsey.

Foreigners regard us. Americans as pre-eminent in crime; they come over here to see crime; and when we have a distinguished visitor like Mr. Durward, Rumsey is pretty sure to be included.

My mistress, as you know, is not enamoured of crime, and she managed to divert the talk to other subjects until after we had left the table. When the little company was grouped around the amusing 1850 living room upstairs, it could no longer be staved off, and she let it have its way.

I must tell you that New York was experiencing a crime wave at the moment—but indeed it always is. It is like an ocean beach, with one crime wave falling right on top of the one before.

This was the time of the bobbed-hair bandit sensation, when many of the smaller jewelers were putting in defensive arrangements of siren whistles and tear gas. These things were always going off accidentally and throwing whole neighborhoods into a panic. The Englishman was all agog as he listened.

Everybody is familiar with Mr. Durward's fine head with its silvery hair and delicately chiseled features. He supplied a chorus of "Amazing! Extraordinary! Incredible!" to all the stories that were told.

"In the middle of the day!" I remember him saying. "With crowds passing in the street, these fellows go boldly into your jewelry shops, and point their guns, and take what they please, and get away scot-free! Such a thing would be impossible in London!"

"Not impossible," Inspector Rumsey pointed out good-humoredly. "It has happened even in London. Your police are luckier than we are, that's all. For London streets are narrow and crooked, and the few main thoroughfares are always crowded. It is exceedingly difficult to make a get-away. Now, our streets are broad and straight, and only one of them is completely full of traffic during business hours. You may have noticed that our holdups never take place in the center, but always in busy neighborhoods off the center, where there is enough traffic to conceal the bandits in their get-away, but not enough to stop them."

"Well, what's to be done? Are you just going to submit to this state of affairs?"

"There is a remedy," said Inspector Rumsey quietly, "whenever the public is willing to pay for it."

"And what is that?"

"It is ridiculous and humiliating to the police to be forced to go on foot, when every bandit is provided with an automobile. All patrolmen should be mounted on motorcycles."

"Hear! Hear!" said Mme. Storey.

"Even the women are taking to banditry!" murmured Mr. Durward. "An incredible country!"

"There's a good deal of nonsense about her," said the inspector. "The newspapers have played up the bobbed-hair bandit so hard that their credulous readers see a bobbed-hair bandit everywhere they look. And I notice that the police are advertising in the subway cars," Mr. Durward went on. "Cards addressed to the bandits, warning them that they will certainly be caught in the end. Surely that is very naïve."

"Well," said the inspector, smiling and firm in the defense of his beloved department, "we must try everything."

Colter spoke up, a young man quick in his movements, with an eager, warm-colored face:

"If you're sure to get him in the end; why bother to advertise?"

"It was Mr. Larned, here, who persuaded the commissioner to use those cards," said Rumsey.

"Anything can be accomplished by intelligent publicity," said Larned.

He went on to sing the praises of the wonderful new science, of which he was one of the most brilliant professors. A handsome man in his forties, with the full, beaming eye of the enthusiast, we were all sensible of his charm. He was of that type not uncommon in our country, the artist turned business man.

They said his private life was rather scandalous, but I know nothing about that. His new wife was among the ladies present, a pretty woman, but negligible as far as conversation went.

"That's all true," said Harry Colter, when he could get an opening, "but publicity, is a two-edged sword which is apt to cut in unexpected directions."

"Take these subway cards," went on Larned. "The idea was that the bandit lives in a world of his own, supported and encouraged by those of his kind, and cut off from all others. It was thought that it would be a good thing to remind him in this unexpected fashion of the existence of the real world which would not tolerate his actions. I appeal to Mme. Storey to tel us if this is not sound psychology."

My mistress smiled in a way that told me what her opinion was, but refused to commit herself.

"Harry has something more to say on the subject," she remarked.

"It's a confession of weakness on the part of the police," said Colter energetically. "Mr. Durward, with his fresh point of view, instantly perceived that. Irrespective of the effect on an occasional bandit, it certainly lowers the morale of the whole public that rides in the subway. For the public relies on the stern and secret measures of the police in dealing with crooks, and to have them come out in the open like this and beg the bandits to be good cannot help but be demoralizing."

Inspector Rumsey agreed with Colter, though nothing could induce him to admit that the department could be in the wrong.

"It is true," he said, "the stick-up boys have the public scared. And every story of a successful holdup that the newspapers print is just that much additional publicity for the bandits."

"You can't blame the newspapers for that," said Larned.

"I don't. It's their job to purvey the news. But it's too bad they've got to feature it the way they do."

"That just proves my point," said Larned. "You've got to have a counter-publicity to deal with it."

I felt impelled to put in my oar at this point. Though I'm only a humble secretary, Mme. Storey expects me to keep my end up. There must be no dummies at her table.

"But a true counter-publicity would be directed toward boosting the public morale instead of further depressing it," I suggested.

Mr. Larned gave me a cold look, as much as to say: Who is this red-haired female? His eyes quickly passed on to my mistress.

"Perhaps Mme. Storey will tell us how she would handle the situation," he said.

My mistress held up her hands in mock dismay.

"Thank Heaven, I'm not obliged to answer that," she said laughing. "My job is quite difficult enough. Bandits are a little out of my line."