LITMIR.BIZ

      XVIII. A Visitor From the States

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      As I pushed open the inner door and entered the room I conceived the momentary hope of a reprieve from the wrath to come, for I found my two friends in what was evidently a business consultation with a stranger, and was on the point of backing out when Thorndyke stopped me. "Don't run away, Howard," said he. "There are no secrets being disclosed—at least, I think not. We have finished with your affairs, Mr. O'Donnell, haven't we?"

      "Yes, doctor," was the answer; "you've run me dry with the exception—of your own little business."

      "Then, come in and sit down, Howard, and let me present you to Mr. O'Donnell, who is a famous American detective and has been telling us all sorts of wonderful things."

      Mr. O'Donnell paused in the act of returning a quantity of papers to a large attache case and offered his hand. "The doctor," he remarked, "is blowing his trumpet at the wrong end. I haven't come here to give information but to get advice. But I guess I needn't tell you that."

      "I hope that isn't quite true," said Thorndyke. "You spoke just now of my little business; haven't you anything to tell me?"

      "I have; but I fancy it isn't what you wanted to hear. However, we'll just have a look at your letter to Curtis and take your questions one by one. By the way, what made you write to Curtis?"

      "I saw, when I inspected Maddock's will at Somerset House, that he had left a small legacy to Curtis. Naturally, I inferred that Curtis knew him and could give me some account of him."

      "It struck you as a bit queer, I reckon, that he should be leaving a legacy to the head of an American detective agency."

      "The circumstance suggested possibilities," Thorndyke admitted.

      O'Donnell laughed. "I can guess what possibilities suggested themselves to you, if you knew Maddock. Your letter and the lawyer's, announcing the legacy, came within a mail or two of one another. Curtis showed them both to me and we grinned. We took it for granted that the worthy testator was foxing. But we were wrong. And so are you, if that is what you thought."

      "You assumed that the will was not a genuine one?"

      "Yes; we thought it was a fake, put up with the aid of some shyster to bluff us into giving up Mr. Maddock as deceased. So, as I had to come across about these other affairs, Curtis suggested that I should look into the matter. And a considerable surprise I got when I did; for the will is perfectly regular and so is everything else. That legacy was a sort of posthumous joke, I guess."

      "Then do I understand that Mr. Curtis was not really a friend of Maddock's?"

      O'Donnell chuckled. "Not exactly a friend, doctor," said he. "He felt the warmest interest in Maddock's welfare, but they weren't what you might call bosom friends. The position was this: Curtis was the chief of our detective agency; Maddock was a gentleman whom he had been looking for and not finding for a matter of ten years. At last he found him; and then he lost him again; and this legacy, I take it, was a sort of playful hint to show which hole he'd gone down."

      "Was Maddock in hiding all that time?" asked Thorndyke.

      "In hiding!" repeated O'Donnell. "Bless your innocent heart, doctor, he had a nice convenient studio in one of the best blocks in New York a couple of doors from our agency, and he used to send us cards for his private views. No, sir, our dear departed friend wasn't the kind that lurks out of sight in cellars or garrets. It was Maddock, sure enough, that Curtis wanted, only he didn't know it. But I guess I'm fogging you. I'd best answer the questions that you put to Curtis.

      "First, do we know anything about Maddock? Yes, we do. But we didn't know that his name was Maddock until a few months ago. Isaac Vandamme was the name we knew him by, and it seems that he had one or two other names that he used on occasion. We now know that the gay Isaac was a particularly versatile kind of crook, and a mighty uncommon kind, too, the Lord be praised; for, if there were many more like him we should have to raise our prices some. He wasn't the kind of fool that make a million dollar coup and then goes on the razzle and drops it all. That sort of man is easy enough to deal with. When he's loaded up with dollars everybody knows it, and he's sure to be back in a week or two with empty pockets, ready for another scoop. Isaac wasn't that sort. When he made a little pile, he invested his winnings like a sensible man and didn't live beyond his means; and the only mystery to me is that, when he died, he didn't leave more pickings. I see from his will—which I've had a look at—that the whole estate couldn't have been above five thousand dollars. He had a lot more than that at one time."

      "He may have disposed of the bulk of his property by gift just before his death," Jervis suggested.

      "That's possible," agreed O'Donnell. "He'd escape the death dues that way. However, to return to his engaging little ways. His leading line was penmanship—forgery—and he did it to an absolute finish. He was the most expert penman that I have ever known. But where he had us all was that he didn't only know how to write another man's name; he knew when to write it. I reckon that the great bulk of his forgeries were never spotted at all, and, of the remainder very few got beyond the bare suspicion that they were forgeries. In the case of the few that were actually spotted as forgeries, his tracks were covered up so cleverly that no one could guess who the forger was."

      "And how did you come to suspect him eventually?" Thorndyke asked.

      "Ah!" said O'Donnell. "There you are. Every crook—even the cleverest—has a strain of the fool in him. Isaac's folly took the form of suspicion. He suspected us of suspecting him. We didn't; but he thought we did, and then he started to dodge and make some false clues for us. That drew our attention to him. We looked into his record, traced his little wanderings and then we began to find things out. A nice collection there was, too, by the time we had worked a month or two at his biography; forgeries, false notes, and, at least two murders that had been a complete mystery to us all. We made ready to drop on Isaac, but, at that psychological moment, he disappeared. It looked, as if he had left the States, and, as we have no great affection for extradition cases, we let the matter rest, more or less, expecting that he would turn up again, sooner or later. And then came this lawyer's letter and yours, announcing

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