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Title: The gallery gods
Author: Murray Leinster
Release date: October 1, 2023 [eBook #71770]
Language: English
Original publication: New York: The Frank A. Munsey Company, 1920
Credits: Roger Frank and Sue Clark
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GALLERY GODS ***
[Illustration]
THE GALLERY GODS
By Murray Leinster
The white-painted fruit steamer steamed out between the forts and turned
toward the south. She only touched at Bahia del Toro to drop the mail on
her downward trip, though on her return toward the north she paused to
take on a portion of her cargo. The Stars and Stripes at her masthead
fluttered brightly in the golden sunshine of midday, and the same
sunshine made the sea seem bluer, and the palms greener and vividly
alive. Half a dozen small launches that had clustered about the white
ship scattered and made for different points along the waterfront of the
city.
_El Señor_ Beckwith was seated in a great cane chair on the veranda of
the white house that sprawled over the hillside. He looked at the ship
and heaved a sigh. It was not a wistful sigh, nor was there pathos
concealed anywhere about it. The sigh was a sign of the satisfaction
that filled him. He sat at ease, puffing a long black cigar. At his
elbow a glass tinkled musically when he moved. His huge frame, now clad
in spotless white duck, was eloquent of content. Only his left thumb,
bandaged and in splints, gave the slightest sign of discomfort, and he
smiled when he felt the incumbrance of the wrappings. It was a souvenir
of the incident that caused his sensation of complete satisfaction.
Conway had broken that thumb in his last struggle, two weeks before, in
New York. Conway was dead.
There was a clattering of tiny hoofs. One of the house-boys had been
down to the wharf to get the New York papers Beckwith had arranged
should be sent him. They would contain the details of Conway’s death,
and Beckwith drew in a pleasurable breath at the thought of reading
them.
The little donkey had brought the boy hastily up with his light burden,
and now the brown-skinned boy came in to Beckwith. The papers were all
there, with all their “magazine sections,” their “rotogravure”
illustrations, and all the other minor features on which they prided
themselves. As the newspapers were handed to him, Beckwith even noticed
a gaudily-colored comic section. He flicked it carelessly aside.
These flimsy bundles of print had been brought four thousand miles for
him to enjoy this moment. He would read of the death of Hugh Conway,
multimillionaire philanthropist, patron of the arts, and other worthy
things to the extent of a reportorial vocabulary, killed in the most
open and daring fashion by William Beckwith, now at large. He would read
of the letter left pinned to the multimillionaire’s breast in which that
same William Beckwith announced his reasons for killing the millionaire,
and the precise fashion in which he intended to escape punishment.
Beckwith smiled cheerfully to himself as he visualized in advance the
excited indignation with which the editorial comment would point out the
loophole of which he had taken advantage. For weeks to come there would
be indignation and anger at his calm defiance of the law and the power
of the United States, while here in Bahia del Toro he would live openly
and happily, frankly glorifying in the crime he had committed, respected
and feared by the people.
There were the newspapers. The murder of Hugh Conway would be good for a
scarehead on the front page.
Beckwith spread out the paper with his uninjured hand and ran his eye
over the head lines. Hugh Conway--Hugh Conway. Where was it? Not on the
first page. Beckwith glanced at the date with a frown. The date was that
of the day after the murder, and surely it should have been a news
feature. He looked on the second page. Nothing there. He ran his eye
over the third page and the fourth.
He flung the flimsy sheet impatiently aside and picked a second. The
date was the same, and the name of the paper was that of one of the most
sensational journals in New York. That, at least, would play up the
murder in great shape. A new airplane record, a crisis in Europe, a
prominent divorce case. Not one word of Hugh Conway. The second page.
Beckwith rumpled the newspaper and threw it away. He bit angrily on his
cigar. He had killed Conway, strangled him with his two hands. He took
up the third paper, then the fourth. Not a word concerning Conway.
Beckwith growled throatily, then an idea struck him.
The police might have concealed the crime for a day or more, hoping to
ensnare him before be escaped. A later paper would tell. Beckwith’s brow
cleared. Of course that was it. He half smiled as he realized bow
typical such an action would be. The police would want to announce the
crime and the arrest of the murderer at the same time. Wells, the
commissioner of police, was fond of just such tricks. He and Beckwith
and Conway had gone to school together, and Beckwith knew Wells down to
the ground.
With a leisurely gesture he selected a newspaper of the day following,
and unfolded it, only to frown again. The first page was still devoted
to commonplace events, and the second likewise. Still another one was
barren of news on the topic that was all-important to Beckwith. He
impatiently cast them down and examined those of the next day, and the
next. When the last of his newspapers had joined the crumpled pile at
his feet, Beckwith sat helplessly puzzled.
He was both puzzled and annoyed. His left thumb was bandaged, where
Conway had dislocated it in his struggle for life. The cumbrous wrapping
was still reminder of that event. Conway was dead, had been dead for
three weeks, but for at least one week after his death no mention of him
had appeared in any New York newspaper.
Why? Conway was well known and an important figure in the financial
world. His murder, surely, would be a news item of the first importance.
But not one single paragraph had been devoted to him. Beckwith had
strangled him in his own motor-car, then knocked the chauffeur
unconscious and escaped to a waiting yacht. The mere melodrama of the
feat was enough to make it “copy” for the whole United States, let alone
the city of New York. But every newspaper in New York had ignored it, as
they had ignored Beckwith’s scornful letter, sarcastically giving his
address to the police.
Dusk had faded into twilight, and twilight into diamond-studded night.
Down in the city the band played faintly in the plaza, while the long
lines of dark-eyed _señoritas_ promenaded primly in a duenna-guarded
circle, listening decorously to the music, but casting liquid glances at
the olive-skinned young men who less primly strolled in the other
direction, twirling their budding mustaches for the admiration of the
fairer sex. Now and again the muted chords of a guitar tinkled through
the air, and now and again bursts of more uproariously amorous festivity
came from the section of the town devoted to the _cantinas_ and their
less frank adjuncts.
Beckwith put his hat upon his head and sallied into the cobble-stoned
street. He would go to the American Club. Soon, he was grimly aware, he
would be barred from its precincts, unless his importance under the
Garrios government overcame the normal dislike of the Anglo-Saxon for a
murderer. He would go there to-night in any event. The newspapers might
not have printed details of Conway’s murder, but Melton, the American
consul, would surely have been cabled.
Beckwith had told in his sarcastic note to Wells that he would make for
Bahia del Toro, and Wells would certainly wire the consulate to find if
he had actually appeared. Beckwith grinned as he thought of the touching
faith of the civilian American in the efficacy of a demand by a consular
representative. Wells would insist that the Nueva Bolivian government
turn the criminal over to justice. He would ignore the absence of a
treaty of extradition.
The interior of the club was painfully hot, and most of the members sat
upon the terrace above the entrance, sipping drinks from glasses that
tinkled musically. Two or three cigars glowed fitfully in the obscurity,
and the white-clad figure of the _mozo_ moving from chair to chair was
wraithlike.
Beckwith stood in the doorway a moment before emerging. The band was
good, even for a military band among a musical people. At the moment it
was playing a soft and dreamy waltz, while the young people in the plaza
below eddied in their endless circles, the women inside, prim and
decorous and the men without, discreetly admiring. Half a dozen
sputtering lights detracted from the romance of the scene, but made it
possible to catch an occasional glimpse of some darkly beautiful face,
outlined in the sharp glow of the arc-lamp.
Beckwith paid no attention to that phase of the scene, but searched
among the seated, coatless figures for Melton, the consul. Melton had
drawn his chair close to the railing and was looking out and down upon
the plaza with a curiously wistful expression. Beckwith caught sight of
him when the red glow of his cigar lighted up his face for a moment.
With an assumption of indifference, Beckwith dropped into the chair by
his side. Melton turned and squinted at him through the darkness until
he recognized who it was.
“Oh, hello, Beckwith,” he said casually.
“Hot, isn’t it?”
He turned and surveyed the prim crowd below him, without waiting for
Beckwith’s acknowledgment. Melton was silent for a moment or so.
“Beckwith,” he said presently, “do you know what this reminds me of? It
reminds me of Springfield, Massachusetts, about November. It’s so
different.” He half smiled to himself in the darkness. “I remember I
used to be going about this time to call on some girl, with a box of
candy under my arm.”
“_Mozo_,” said Beckwith harshly. The boy came and took his order.
“You’ve been down here ten years,” went on the consul, still in that
half-hushed tone of reminiscence. “I’ve been away five years from the
States, but I can still picture it. Crowds of people going into
vaudeville houses, others climbing excitedly on street-cars. I’d give a
lot to have a street-car clang a bell at me just about now.”
“I was in New York two weeks ago,” said Beckwith suddenly, half minded
to blurt out his reason for going north and what he had done there.
“Went up there, but it was all strange. I wasn’t comfortable until I got
back here.”
“I hope I won’t feel strange,” said the consul dreamily. “I’m going back
next year. Do you know, I’m thinking about fried fish. They don’t have
the same kinds of fish down here, and they don’t cook them the same way.
The first thing I’m going to do when I land in New York, is to eat a
meal in a restaurant. And I’m going to have fried fish and griddle cakes
with maple syrup. I don’t know why fried fish appeals to me so much,” he
added thoughtfully, “because I never cared much for them when I could
get them.”
Beckwith moved uneasily.
“Any news lately?” he asked, succeeding very well in keeping his tone
casual.
“Nothing but the papers,” answered Melton abstractedly. “Your boy was
down at the dock and got a batch of them. I say, Beckwith--”
He launched forth in a vivid description of the joys of living in
Springfield, Massachusetts, to which Beckwith listened uninterestedly,
but perforce, sipping at his grenadine rickey from time to time. When he
left, Beckwith was puzzled, but convinced that there had been no message
or inquiry sent to Melton from the States concerning him he went slowly
up to his white house that sprawled over the hillside, wondering why. As
he was entering his own door the obvious solution came to him.
Wells would naturally have tried to keep the murder secret for
twenty-four hours. That was one of his favorite tricks, keeping a crime
secret to afford himself so much start in his efforts to unravel the
mystery, so that the story of the crime and the capture of the criminal
could be announced at the same time. Twenty-four hours was usually his
limit. Evidently, however, he had been able to extend the time on this
occasion. He must have possessed an incredible influence with the
newspapers to keep them for seven days from exploiting so succulent a
morsel of melodrama.
Beckwith chuckled. Wells was trying to save his face. He had held off
public knowledge of his failure for a week, but would be unable to keep
it up much longer. When the next mail came, in seven days more, the
newspapers would spread the news of Conway’s death and Wells’s
humiliation, with Beckwith’s triumph as their principal theme. A man who
so defiantly flouted the law, who sneered at the police to the extent of
giving them his address, would surely be made much of by the press, even
if they denounced him. The next mail would tell the story, and Wells’s
humiliation would be the more complete for being delayed. The newspapers
would flay him for trying to conceal the crime.
Beckwith went to sleep with a sense of profound satisfaction in spite of
his recent disappointment.
The steamer usually made the port of Bahia del Toro about noon, but as
early as nine o’clock in the morning of the next steamer day Beckwith
was looking down the coast-line for the smudge of smoke that would
portend the arrival of the vessel. He swept the horizon with his glasses
from time to time, growing more and more impatient. The white hull did
not appear until nearly four, however, and it was five o’clock before it
turned in between the forts. Beckwith went out in one of the launches to
meet it, smiling in anticipation of triumph. He waved gaily to the
globetrotting passengers clustered by the after rail. They would know of
Conway’s death, and one of the officers of the ship would undoubtedly
point him out as the man who had defied the law.
The bundle of newspapers fell into the launch with a heavy thump, and
the purser who had dropped them over waved a friendly hand. The little
boat backed off from the steamer and sped toward the shore, while
Beckwith cut the twine about his package of papers and began to run
rapidly through them, glancing only at the first-page head-lines.
The first, no, the second, no, the third. A curious sensation settled
upon him. Bewilderment and unreasoning suspicion, then poignant
disappointment, finally a persistent hope. He could not examine them all
thoroughly in the launch. The wind threatened to blow them overboard,
but he put them together in a compact package and waited impatiently
until he could go over them in detail at his home.
He hastened to his house, carrying the parcel himself. He hurried into
his smoking-room and flung them on the table, then went over them again,
and again, each time more minutely, each time with growing incredulity.
Not one newspaper issued on any day of the second week after the murder
of Hugh Conway contained one hint of that event. Not one word, line, or
paragraph referred to the murder of Hugh Conway by William Beckwith. Not
one faintest indication appeared in any issue of any periodical during
the second week after that murder of the defiant note written by the
murderer to the commissioner of police. There was nothing to make any
one suspect that any harm had come to one of the foremost figures in
American finance.
Beckwith rubbed his forehead in amazement and perplexity. His dislocated
thumb was still _tender_ where Conway had struggled to save his life.
His memory of the event was lucid and complete. He _knew_ that he had
killed Conway.
During the following week he brooded almost continuously over his
problem. He cabled a confidential message to the Nueva Bolivian consul
in New York, who knew his influence with Garrios well enough to heed his
requests, asking for information about Conway. The consulate replied
with a succinct list of his offices as head of this and that
corporation, and added that his present whereabouts were unknown.
The message cheered Beckwith immensely. He made a resolution to wait one
more week. If there was still no public news of Conway’s death, he would
write to the New York papers and put them in possession of the facts.
He, William Beckwith, had killed Conway with his bare hands, and now
resided openly in the city of Bahia del Toro. He would defy the police
to punish him, and expose the duplicity of the commissioner of police,
who had concealed the crime for no less than two weeks.
The steamer date arrived, but Beckwith was no longer impatient. He was
calmly confident that there would be no mention of the crime in the
newspapers of this week. Wells might prevent the news from ever becoming
public. Beckwith had been so long in the Latin countries, where
censorship is ruthless and complete, that he did not realize the
impracticability of such a plan.
He watched the steamer arrive and drop the mail-bags over the side
without emotion other than air abstract interest. When she came back on
her way north again, he would have letters to form a part of her cargo;
letters which would upset the smug complacency of the city of New York.
A sodden, heavy rain was falling when the steamer made port, and it was
barely visible from the house on the hill because of the sheets of
falling water. Beckwith stood for a moment on his veranda and strained
his eyes through the misty obscurity. The grass was exhaling fresh and
fragrant odors in the rainfall. The palm-leaves were dark and glistening
with the wet. Outside, the cobblestones of the street were running
miniature floods of water to the gutter.
Beckwith sat comfortably indoors and smoked one of his thin black
cigars, quite tranquil, waiting for the boy to bring him the papers for
which he had sent.
Presently, above the humming roar of the rain on the roof and street, he
heard the donkey’s hoofs. A door opened. A boy’s voice spoke in liquid
Spanish, and then one of the servants brought him a rain-sodden bundle
of flimsy printed sheets.
Beckwith quite calmly cut the twine. The papers on the inside were dry,
and he spread one out, looking at it with interest which sought
confirmation of a conclusion already made. Wells had concealed the
crime.
“_Hugh Conway--_” The name leaped at him from the head-lines. A shock
went over Beckwith so that for a moment he could read no more. His hands
were shaking. Triumph welled up in his heart. He laughed for an instant,
and steadied his hands against the table before him. He fixed his eyes
on the printed page.
A moment later his always frightened half-caste wife was shrinking in
terror from the room she had been about to enter. Her husband was in
there, staring at a sheet of paper and pouring out imprecations from the
dregs of two languages. He seemed so furious that his anger verged on
panic.
“_Hugh Conway Announces Gift to City’s Poor!_” The head-lines were those
of the “feature” section of one of the larger newspapers which
invariably made much of the benevolences of the rich. Below the headline
a pen-and-ink portrait of Hugh Conway--Hugh Conway, whom Beckwith had
killed a month before--smiled from the page.
Beckwith, with the sensation of unreality one experiences in a
nightmare, read the fulsome eulogy of the dead man. But the dead man was
not here described as dead. The conventional phrases of the newspaper
reporter, “Mr. Conway refused to be interviewed.” “At his home it was
said that Mr. Conway did not wish to add anything, to the statement of
his attorneys, who have completed the arrangements for the gift.” All
the evasions and artifices of men who have failed to see an important
man were used.
Through the mist of incredulous amazement, Beckwith could gather only
one impression. Conway had not been seen. No one had looked upon his
living form to write of him recently. Beckwith knew why, of course.
Conway was dead. But why, why had this gift been announced as from a
living man?
With trembling fingers Beckwith spread out the remainder of the papers.
Here and there he saw references to the gift. A monster sum was to be
expended for fresh-air outings for the children of the slums. Every
reference spoke of the frequent benefactions of the man Beckwith knew
was dead, but not one word or line referred to his murder.
True, there was no direct mention of a late interview with him, but on
the other hand no faintest hint had escaped the editorial writers of the
fact that he had been killed, and that his murderer had gone openly to a
country from which he could not be extradited, where he was living in
ease and comfort, defying the law to punish him.
When the last of the papers had been gone through, Beckwith was in a
frenzy. He had killed Conway, and the papers would not mention it! He
felt almost as if he were being cheated, as, in a way, he was. A large
part of his triumph was the public knowledge of his superiority to both
Conway and Wells. To be deprived of that was infuriating, daunting.
Beckwith suddenly got up and went from the house, to walk heedlessly in
the pouring rain and try to think what could have happened to set his
plans awry. Such few brown-skinned folk as saw him shrugged their
shoulders and murmured softly to one another. _Los Yanquis_ were mad,
though el Señor Beckwith had seemed less mad than they until now. But
behold him walking in the downpour!
When he finally stumbled into his own house again, Beckwith was
exhausted both mentally and physically. He made his way, dripping, into
the room where he had left his newspapers. His wife rose and fled from
the room when he appeared, leaving behind her the picture section at
which she had been looking.
She read no English, and but little Spanish, but the brown-tinted
pictures gave her childish pleasure. Beckwith paid no attention to her
hasty flight, but slumped down in his chair and stared gloomily at the
floor. Then, suddenly, a picture on the illustrated sheet grew clear and
distinct It was a picture of Hugh Conway, at the top of his stroke,
about to strike a golfball. The legend beneath the picture read: “Hugh
Conway, well-known multimillionaire, taking a vacation from business
cares at Newport. He is shown driving off from the first tee in front of
the clubhouse.”
Beckwith, staring at the picture of the man whose life he had choked out
a month before, caught his breath and began to swear at the printed
sheet, hysterically, as he might have sworn at a ghost.
When the fruit steamer stopped on its northern trip, Beckwith took
possession of a cabin. He did not quite understand why he was going to
New York, but he was feverishly impatient for the ship to leave Bahia
del Toro. He had a letter of credit in his pocket, and was determined to
find out once and for all what had happened. If Conway had escaped him
before, he would not escape again.
In his stateroom Beckwith carried the last batch of papers he had
received, and spent much time reading and rereading the items concerning
Conway. He weighed again and again each phrase in the accounts of
Conway’s munificent gift to charity, hoping to find therein some hint of
Conway’s death. He knew Conway was dead. He had choked Conway’s life
from him with his two hands. But why, why, why did not the papers
announce the murder?
The ship steamed up the coast with incredible slowness. It put into
Havana with nerve-racking deliberation. There were fresh papers to be
secured there, but none of than told of the murder. Beckwith read them
minutely, and as the steamer neared New York he came out on deck and
paced back and forth, smoking incessantly, torturing his brain for an
explanation of the silence of the newspapers.
His nerves were in shreds when they finally reached New York. He watched
the forts swing by to his left, and the tall buildings of lower
Manhattan rise from the water. The fixed expressionlessness of the
Statue of Liberty irritated him. He was all impatience to be ashore and
free to make his final investigations. What had happened that had
prevented the press from learning of Conway’s death? And why had they
printed no word of murderer? The leisurely manner of the customs
inspectors drove him nearly frantic. When he was at last free to go
ashore he was trembling from sheer nervous tension.
He went down the gangplank, an olive-skinned steward carrying his bags.
He pushed roughly through the crowd of people come to meet the voyagers,
and closed his ears to the soft Spanish greetings. He failed altogether
to see a motion-picture photographer cranking busily. He pressed free of
the assembly of people, and turned impatiently to the steward behind
him.
“Trouble you to come with me, sir,” said a quiet voice at his elbow.
Two unimpressive figures in civilian clothes stood, one on either side.
The hand of each was in his coat-pocket, where a suggestive bulge warned
against resistance.
“What the devil!” began Beckwith furiously, and stopped.
Wells was standing there, smiling sarcastically at him--Wells the
commissioner of police.
“You’re under arrest for Hugh Conway’s murder, Beckwith,” he said
caustically.
A dozen or more delighted men watched the scene, cameras and note-books
busy. Beckwith saw the unmistakable signs of the reportorial trade.
There was even a woman or two among them, “sob-sisters” beyond a doubt.
“We might as well make it a nice, dramatic moment, Beckwith,” Wells said
dryly. “I got your letter, pinned to Conway’s breast. Kind of you to
tell me where you were going, and that you couldn’t be extradited. I
wouldn’t have got you but for that. I knew you’d took in the papers for
news of your feat; as a matter of fact, you mentioned it in your letter,
so I took the boys here into my confidence”--he nodded at the group of
newspapermen--“and they agreed to help out. Their owners O. K.’d the
scheme and the murder was kept absolutely secret from the public and the
press.
“We gave you two weeks to get worried, and then announced Conway’s
bequest to charities--it was really in his will--and printed a picture
or so of him. You rose to the bait, all right. We couldn’t touch you in
Nueva Bolivia, but as soon as you boarded the steamer, we had you. We
let you come on to New York alone, though, to save trouble. We’re much
obliged to you, I’m sure.”
Beckwith suddenly understood. He had not won his revenge and freedom
after all. He had not proven himself cleverer than Wells. He had lost,
utterly and irreparably. He had been lured into the power of the law by
nothing more than silence. But the thing that cut deepest into his
hearts that made the cup of his humiliation run over, was a final remark
of Wells. The reporters were listening intently.
“I guess that’s all, boys,” said Wells indulgently. “No more to be said.
You’ll have a good story for the evening editions. Beckwith couldn’t
resist playing to the gallery gods.”
[Transcriber’s Note: This story appeared in the August 21, 1920 issue
of the Argosy—All Story Weekly magazine.]
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