Keeban - free ebook by Edwin Balmer

KEEBAN

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I MY BROTHER FINDS HIMSELF IN TWO PLACES AT ONCE.

The quick, quiet unlocking and then the closing of the hall door on the floor below told me that Jerry had come in; so I sat up, roused as I always was when I felt him about. He put life into any place,—even into an Astor Street marble mansion in the somnolence of two-thirty on a morning after everybody else has gone to bed. Since my light was on, although it was only a shaded reading lamp and although the double blinds before my window must have prevented more than the merest glint outside, I w

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II AND ESCAPES FROM BOTH.

I got into my clothes in a minute; Jerry hadn’t been able to remain in the house, but I found him walking up and down beside the cab which he had kept. “Chicago Avenue police station,” he said to the driver, and he was in ahead of me. “They took her there,” he told me, “from where they found her—on West Division Street near the river.” He had no doubt whatever that she was Dorothy Crewe—his Dot whom he had loved; and, for what had come to her, he was holding himself guilty. “Steve, she thought s

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III I HAVE ENCOUNTER BY THE RIVER.

As long as I stayed by myself, I had some luck at believing; but there was morning and the newspapers and telephone calls. I had to tell my father then, and mother; and they talked with the police. They talked with Mrs. Sparling and Gibson and fifty others who were at the dance. And also they talked with Dorothy. She was conscious now but in complete collapse, and her prostration, added to what she said, gave the final proof against Jerry. She’d loved him, too, it seemed; and he’d attacked and r

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IV I SIT IN ON FATE.

I got the money next day; I took it myself from the bank. Also I got my revolver and spent the evening in the city. About half an hour before ten, I went to our offices and roused the watchman to let me in. I pretended to work for a while and then let myself out the river door and started down the black, narrow walk above the water. No one was anywhere about at that hour; not a window in the walls on either side was alight. Ships slid in and out; one minute deckhands, sailors and mates on watch

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V THE UNDERWORLD INTRUDES.

It came completely out of the blue. Ten minutes to twelve, noon, was the time; and no doings could have been more dull and drab than mine the minute before the buzzer under my desk rattled my “personal” call. This meant my private wire, which did not run through the office switchboard and which had no published number in the telephone book; so, when my buzzer jerked, Miss Severns always left the call to me and quietly rose and vanished from my room. She always acted as though I owned some enormo

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VI AND I FAIL TO PREVENT A BUMP-OFF.

Shirley was at her piano near a window facing the boulevard walk. As the night was cool and therefore the window was down, I could not hear what she played but her fingers moved over the keys and her red lips parted and closed and her red head tossed with animation as she sang her song. She sang to no one; at least, no one but she was visible from the walk. Surely it was a light, happy song which she sang as she tossed her head and smiled. Her hair was bobbed and it flung like fine spun bronze a

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VII I KEEP MY OWN COUNSEL.

When I arrived at the big gaudy house, where I had watched Shirley singing last evening, the coroner’s men were filing out; they’d completed their examination. Police were all about the doors, keeping back a crowd; the officers passed me and Fred came down almost immediately and took me into the long, gay room where Shirley had played and sung. The shades were drawn to-day but as they were white they let in plenty of light; the glass doors to the hall were closed and so, though we could talk wit

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VIII A LADY DISCREDITS ME.

She was not in bed but was lying upon it in a negligee—a silk and lace, pink and white creation which was originally no garment of grief. She was pink and white herself, except for her bobbed hair of bronze and for her big eyes which were blue. She displayed a good deal of herself, especially the beauty of her bosom; she did this not with any evident design of the moment but probably upon the general principle that it was never a disadvantageous thing for her to do. She was alone in the room whe

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IX I SEEK THE UNDERWORLD.

For sketching a situation, no one ever touched Shakespeare; and he has a line which certainly described my state of dignity during the next days. It’s in “Julius Cæsar”; Anthony has just been saying, in some well chosen words which escape me for the moment, how important and prominent a citizen Cæsar was before his last meeting with Brutus, whereas afterwards there was “none so poor to do him reverence.” That’s the description which struck me. Lord knows, I was no Cæsar, not even in Chicago; so

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X AND LEARN THE WAYS OF ITS LOGIC.

He had just risen from a bed upon which he had been seated,—a plain, white, iron bed with a red quilt. He looked me over and, welcoming me, waved me to a chair, a plain, wooden chair, not new. The room was ordinary with striped, cheap paper on the walls; it had a floor of soft wood with a circle of rag carpet; besides the bed and chair, there was a washstand boasting of a bowl and pitcher. Altogether these were the furnishings which a person reared on Astor Street knows to exist but which he has

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XI THE THIEVES’ BALL.

The approach to the floor of the Flamingo Feather was past a bakery, a pawnshop, a drink parlor, all decorous and dreary. Then there was a door distinguished by a bracket extending a black, iron basket in which a yellow electric bulb glowed. Over the street, this and a single iron feather painted flame color made a flaunt of festivity. From the door stretched a hall, tinted Pompeian red and reaching toward gents’ smoking rooms and the placarded penetralia of ladies; upward led iron stairs to the

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XII I DISCOVER “THE QUEER.”

Then Tom Downs was getting married and he asked me to usher, so there I was in Caldon’s, picking out an after-dinner coffee set to be sent to the bride; and a lot I knew about breeds and varieties of Hepplewhite and Colonial and Queen Anne. Now if setter dogs could only be wedding presents, or beans, I’d be right on the spot; or a bag of Rio coffee would be all right; but the coffee container never meant anything to me. So I was about to judge by the good old way, which has proved such a help to

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XIII AND LEARN THE SOOTHING EFFECTS OF FOND DU LAC TWINS.

It went direct to the LaSalle Street station; and Doris and George and Felice were standing in the carriage court watching porters pick up their luggage, when I drove in. They glanced at me; that was all. At least it was all I saw, and they went up to the train shed. I snatched a ticket and a coupon for an “upper” from the Pullman window and went through the cars. Doris and Felice had a compartment together about the middle of the train. George wasn’t with them; he seemed to possess a section in

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XIV I TAKE GOVERNMENT ORDERS.

She nodded to Felice who admitted me and went out. Felice closed the door and, as I remained standing, Doris invited me to sit down. “You remember me?” I asked her. “Erasmus?” she said. “The thriller of Holbein? Certainly.” I dropped upon the seat opposite her and, as I gazed at her, she gazed at me and continued, “Also we were both at Caldon’s, as well as at the Blackstone, weren’t we, Mr. Fanneal?” “You not only remember me but you know me, then.” “Certainly. Don’t you know me? Or what were yo

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XV IN WHICH I ASSIST A GET-AWAY.

She came into my car, blithe and smiling; at least she smiled at me. Every one looked up and every one, seeing that smile for me, put me down as lucky, I know. When she was past and out of the car, I could feel them gazing at me and wondering what I’d done to deserve such a smile. She was a gay, delightful maid. Suppose that, not having had the advantage of acquaintance at the Flamingo Feather, I had met her in an ordinary way. I’d have been mad over that girl. Heaven salvage my soul, I was anyw

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XVI I WALK INTO A PARLOR.

Naturally I debated about opening the bag. She’d given me the key; she had told me to use it, “please!” to find her new toothbrush. But I didn’t open it for that. She had meant, I thought, that I should see what I was carrying. So at last I unlocked it and in the light of the little berth lamp I came upon her own intimate attire—a kimono, slippers and silk pajamas, ridiculous little lovely things; stockings, some more gossamer silk which probably was what Field’s advertise as an “envelope”, a mi

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XVII CHIEFLY DEVOTED TO A GAS CALLED KX.

A good many persons of both sexes have put into writing the mental confusion usually concomitant to the process of “coming to.” The descriptions which I’ve happened to read were done by good writers, certainly; but the writers don’t impress me now as people who’d been personally hit on the head. At least, they lacked treatment under the hand of a pluperfect, postgraduate performer upon the medulla oblongata . The trouble with those descriptions is that they are too advanced and intricate. The su

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XVIII DORIS APPEARS AND VANISHES.

I was a changed man, as you may imagine. Yesterday and up to this minute of this morning, I was the laugh of the locality. “F. P. A.” had put in a little paragraph about me; the librettists of the running revues also had tamped in a line or two of appropriate personal reference to the Chicago vendor of beans, with two nice, new money plates packed in his jeans. It was music to me to hear any one address me as Teverson was doing. “You know nearly all that I do,” I told him. “Maybe you’ve heard I’

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XIX I HEAR OF THE GLASS ROOM.

They were not masked; it was daylight. The hour was late in the afternoon, to be sure; but I saw them plainly as they made no attempt at concealment. And I could guess at the significance of this. They showed themselves, without care, for they felt absolutely sure I would never have a chance to give evidence against them. I used to wonder why a man doesn’t put up a fight, in spite of having a gun shoved against him, when he knows he’s in for the worst possible after he surrenders to such a circl

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XX DORIS AND I ARE TAKEN TO IT.

When she said “for us,” I got another thrill there in the dark, and right away I got quite the opposite when she said “the glass room.” I had not heard of it before. No; that was the première for the phrase with me; but it was one of those phrases which carry their own connotation; and this was decidedly an uncomfortable one. “What’s the ‘glass room’?” I asked her. “Never mind,” she said, and it was like a mother to a child. You’ve heard something of the sort when a visitor let slip, before the

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XXI DORIS ENTERS THE GLASS ROOM.

You see, I had remained sure up to this time that there were two of them. Now and then, for short periods, I had questioned myself about it; but always my certainty of Jerry, as somebody distinct from Keeban, won over my doubt. I would never grant that Jerry, my brother, could be guilty of what Keeban had done. Then, if they were only one, why would Jerry warn me and send me to prevent the plan of Keeban, as he had sent me to the Sencort Trust? “Here’s Jerry!” I said to myself, and that jump of

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XXII A CROAKING AND FINIS.

Doris was up and she was steady. “You didn’t get the gas,” Jerry was telling her. She said nothing to him. It was harder for her than for me to understand what he had done; yet she got it before I did. “You’re Jerry Fanneal,” she said to him. “That’s me.” He went to a window and threw up the sash and flung back the shutter. He fired three shots in the air. “You were here—not Harry Vine—just now.” “He’s been cold for half an hour. That’s what delayed you.” “What?” “Christina stopped to croak him,

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