The Hollow Lens

The author of “Beyond the Wall,” “Whispering Wires,” and “Peterman’s Luck” is at his best in this fascinating story of underworld life.

In the argot of the underworld, Chester Fay, alias Edward Letchmere, an expert on other people’s strong-boxes, had lammistered to Short Hills, California, where an excellent golf-links surrounds a half-hotel, half-clubhouse of the superior order.

After finishing a game, upon the twelfth day of his stay at Short Hills, Fay tossed his golf-bag to the turf, dismissed his caddy and sat down at the Nineteenth Hole, where refreshments were at that time available.

The girl who entered his life, a few minutes after he was seated, came diagonally from the clubhouse. He mentally concluded that she had been waiting on the porch for the game to finish.

She wore a picture-hat, carried a parasol and was extremely cool, as was attested by her manner as she drew a chair up to his table and said:

“I’m Charlie Laurie’s only daughter.”

Had the California sky fallen upon the links, Fay would not have been more surprised. Charlie Laurie was serving fifty years in the Isolation Section of Dannemora for the crime, committed against the dignity of New York State, of forcing open a national bank, seizing the contents of the vault and escaping to Argentina, where he was later turned up by a former pal.

This man, as Fay recalled him in that long minute of his stare across the table, was bulky, rough-voiced and disfigured by a giant scar which ran from the lobe of his right ear down to, and under, his chin. The girl who now professed to be his daughter resembled him in no particular.

“Some mistake,” Fay said, rising gallantly. “I’m sure that you have taken me for some one else.”

The girl lifted her elbows from the table, opened her parasol, raised it and asked:

“Wont you sit down? I haven’t mistaken you for some one else. You are Chester Fay, alias Edward Letchmere—an old friend of my father’s.”

Fay took off his plaid cap and sat down. He fingered a platinum-and-gold cigarette-case, removed a monogrammed cigarette, scratched a match on the bottom of the table and inhaled a deep breath of Turkish-scented smoke.

“By what other name was your father known?” he tested her.

“He was sometimes called ‘Big Scar’!”

“Where were you born?”

“In Chi. I was with Micky Gleason’s mob in Paris. I worked deep-sea with Minnie May, ‘The Duchess.’ I have been trained by my father to dip, forge, stall for pennyweighting and ever so many useful things.”

“You don’t look it!” Fay exclaimed. “Upon my word I don’t believe you’re Charlie Laurie’s daughter. Why, he is hardly your kind—at all.”

“Laying aside compliments, Mr. Fay, and how I found where you were here in California and—so many things that take up time, I’ve got a proposition to make which should be mutually advantageous. In other words you are the only man in the world I would let in on a great, big job.”

Fay removed his cigarette from his mouth and eyed the ashes. He ran his slender fingers through his prematurely gray hair. His face lighted with retrospection.

“Go on Miss—”

“Saidee Isaacs, they call me, although you know my name is Saidee Laurie.”

“Proceed, Miss Isaacs, with your plan.”

The girl’s olive-shaped and tinted eyes swept the golf-links. She brushed back a lock of sherry-colored hair.

“I’m going to help you crack a safe,” she informed him, “The safe—or goopher, as Father would call it—is in the brokerage office of Frank Robertson Pope, otherwise known in California get-rich-quick circles as ‘The Black Cougar.’”

Fay crushed his cigarette. A film dropped over his eyes. His lips hardened to a straight line.

“Go on,” he said.

“You know the man?”

“I know him!”

“He deserves no mercy?”

“None.”

“He is a disgrace to all the good crooks in the world—a coward and a hypocrite. He has served time—for usury. He got out of San Quentin by squealing on his pals. He is trimming suckers right and left. He makes suicides of widows. He fills the poorhouses. He is within the law—but far guiltier than you or I.”

Fay realized that he faced a very well-informed young woman. He moistened his lips and gazed over the golf-links. No one was within driving distance of the Nineteenth Hole.

“Briefly,” he suggested, “you believe me to be Chester Fay, an old friend of your father’s. You located this Chester Fay through the underworld. You want him to help you turn off a trick on ‘The Black Cougar.’ What would there be in it for him if this trick were successfully turned?”

“One hundred thousand for him and the same for me.”

“How is the goopher protected?”

“By every known electrical device. It is in the back of his office. It consists of three layers of vanadium steel and two layers of fireproofing. The circular door has two dials and a time-lock. The inner door has one dial. The day door has a flat-key lock.”

“What is above the vault?”

“A photograph studio.”

“What is in the basement?”

“The basement is occupied by a cigar-store. It doesn’t close until twelve o’clock. There’s a pool-room in the back. Sometimes men play poker there all night.”

“How many watchmen in the building?”

“One, employed by ‘The Black Cougar.’ He can’t be bought. I’ve tried.”

“The regular thing, then—watchman, electric protection, standard vault built by Seaber, I suppose?”

“No—by Terryton!”

“A good box, but soft on top.”

The girl tilted her parasol so that her face was in a shadow.

“Are you game?” she asked.

“The proposition strikes me as being peculiar. Suppose I am Chester Fay. How do I know that you are Charlie Laurie’s daughter?”

“Would this convince you?” The girl reached in her breast and laid a folded photograph on the table. Fay picked it up. It was a good likeness taken in a rogues’ gallery. A tag with a number was about the girl’s neck. Her eyes were straight before her. Beneath the card was the notation:

“Saidee Laurie, alias Saidee Isaacs, alias English Kitty. Shoplifter, gun-moll, con-woman, gay-cat for Continental mobs of safe-blowers and card-sharpers. Sentences, suspended each instance: Auburn, N. Y., Rochester Workhouse, Rochester, N. Y., Bridewell, Chicago, Ill.”

Fay turned the card over, then handed it back.

“Rather convincing,” he said. “Frankly, you don’t look it.”

“Are you going to help me?”

Fay traced circles on the iron table-top. He stared at his golf-bag. He considered the situation from a score of angles. The thing that swayed him and inclined him toward the proposition was the fact that “The Black Cougar” was fair game for any self-respecting crook.

“I make one stipulation,” he said, finally. “Buy out the photograph gallery and establish yourself above the vault. I’ll advance the money.”

“I have the money. I had already figured on that,” was the girl’s reply.

“You seem to have thought of most things. Do you know that if that vault is taken by either an electric-arc or an oxy-acetylene blow-pipe, I will be suspected?”

“I didn’t think of that.”

“It is a fact! You see the police and the private agencies know a man by his work. How can we take that vault in a new way? How can I go through three layers of vanadium steel?”

“Has it ever been done?”

“Yes, by the introduction of graduated blasts of nitroglycerin.”

“Father would have opened the safe that way.”

“Your father was of the old school. The presence of a watchman, the poker-players in the basement, the natural suspicion which ‘The Black Cougar’ will have concerning his ill-gotten gains, calls for a new idea—one that will be effective and noiseless. Can you think of a way?”

“No. That’s why I came to see you.”

Fay crossed his legs and leaned away from the table. The girl’s face was still in the shadow cast by her parasol. Again the thought came to him that the whole proposition was a trick. Perhaps she was a tool in the employ of “The Black Cougar.” Perhaps the police had sent her to Short Hills in order to arrange a trap. He dismissed this thought, however. The police of Los Angeles would have been anxious to make a quick arrest. The price on his head amounted to five figures.

“I’ll chance you!” he said. “The only motive I see for your actions is the one you’ve explained. You want to rob a robber—cheat a cheater. Frank Robertson Pope, which is only one of ‘The Black Cougar’s’ names, has amassed too much money, in too rotten a way. I understand he has the longest and most complete sucker-list of any bucket-shop broker in this country.”

“We can steal that and sell it.”

“There are people who would buy it?”

“I know a very well-known firm in New York and Washington that would pay fifty thousand dollars for the list.”

“Perhaps that is all Pope has in the vault?”

The girl dropped her parasol to the turf, rose, leaned over the table and said:

“If that were all, would you still be game enough to try it?”

Fay stood erect. He pulled on his cap, pocketed his cigarette-case and smiled down at Saidee Isaacs.

“After thinking the matter over—I will do anything in my power to beat ‘The Black Cougar.’ He is within the law and you and I are outside the law. But I’ll take my chances against his, on Judgment Day.”

Saidee Isaacs thrust out an impulsive hand.

“I like you immensely for saying that, Chester Fay. I knew I’d like you—from what Father told me. You see I visited him when I was East, last week. He gave me directions how to find you here at Short Hills.”

Fay recalled a letter which he had written to Charlie Laurie. In it had been a code telling where to send an answer. There was very little danger in doing this, for prison guards were notoriously stupid.

“That explains everything I wanted to know,” he said. “You had better hurry to Los Angeles and secure that studio.”

“I’ve already looked it over. I can buy all of the fixtures and assume the lease. I’ll set up a Miss Sorjoni, Photographer of Children. You’ll have until day-after-tomorrow to find out a way to cut down through the vault.”

Fay watched the girl cross the lawn to the clubhouse, where she entered a taxi which was waiting under the porte-cochère. The taxi disappeared over the dusty surface of a winding road that led to Los Angeles, via Pasadena.

He wasted no time. Picking up his golf-bag, he strode lankily to the showers, bathed, took the small elevator to his room and there changed his clothes. He went to Los Angeles, by trolley. His costume was calculated to disarm any suspicion. A closely woven Panama hat shaded his features. A plaid suit and square-toed shoes gave him the appearance of a remittance-man in town for the theater.

Of Robertson Pope, otherwise “The Black Cougar,” he learned considerable. The bucket-shop operator lived in an Italian-period palace on one of the principal avenues given over to motion-picture magnates, oil-boomers and actresses. Pope had a string of seventy branch offices extending from San Diego to Boston, Mass. The Government, through the Post Office Department, had recently been defeated in the higher courts by “The Black Cougar’s” attorneys. It had been proved that his business was legitimate.

Fay stayed in Los Angeles that night and went over the record in the Building Inspector’s Office the next morning. He was able to do this by posing as an architect in search of villa specifications. He traced on rice-paper, a working drawing of the building wherein Pope had his main office. The floor plans gave the location of the photograph studio, the construction of the ceilings and the thickness of the walls. A skylight was shown above the studio.

He rounded out a day’s hard work and went back to Short Hills. The plan he had in mind took slow form. Many details depended on Saidee Isaacs.

A phone call from her studio, the next afternoon, brought him from the golf-links.

“I’ve just moved in,” she said. “Everything is topsy-turvy. Wont you bring little Cecil tomorrow? I’ll have my camera up then. Good-by.”

“Talks like a man,” thought Fay. “Snappy and direct.”

He passed the day considering the plan of relieving “The Black Cougar” of his available wealth. The bucket-shop operator was shrewder than most men of his type. He was a crook, at heart. Fay realized that no one, not excepting millionaires, raised a louder outcry when robbed than a thief himself. Old Charlie Laurie had once said, “The poor man never squeals when trimmed, but look out for the big grafters.”

Fay’s precautions when visiting the studio consisted in wearing a baggy, tweed suit, yellow gloves and sun-glasses. He found a child who could play the part of “Cecil” for the first visit.

Saidee Isaacs had accomplished the impossible. A new sign was hung in the place of the old one. New curtains were at the front windows. Grass matting covered the floor of the reception-room. The camera she had set up between the studio and the dark-room was a fair imitation of a good one. It was covered with a black cloth.

“This is all right,” Fay said to her. “But there’s one thing to be changed. That skylight has got to be moved south about seven feet.” He consulted the rice-paper tracing while the boy sat in the reception-room.

“Why has it got to be moved?”

Fay pointed to the floor of the photographing-room. “The vault is in the wrong place. We can’t move it. We have got to move the skylight.”

“Has the skylight anything to do with cutting through the top of the safe?”

“Everything, Saidee.”

“Then it’ll be moved where you say, if a carpenter can do it.”

The other tenants of the Bradock Building, so called from a stone over the doorway to “The Black Cougar’s” brokerage offices, had ample opportunity to observe Miss Saidee Sorjoni, Photographer of Children. She wore shiny celluloid cuffs and a neat white ruching about her neck. Her fingers were stained with developer. Beneath this yellow stain was a coating of collodium—a sovereign cure for fingerprints.

The boy, whom Fay had picked up in the street, held down the position of messenger. He could be sent on almost any kind of pretext. He had an innocent though dirty face, that disarmed suspicion.

Fay took his time in cutting through the floor over the exact center of “The Black Cougar’s” customers’ room—a place of wire-wickets, tickers, soft chairs and a long board upon which two boys changed the day’s quotations with lightning-like celerity.

The hole he made through the floor of the studio’s front office was cone-shaped and ended in a quarter-inch opening. A view could be obtained by means of this peekhole of “The Black Cougar’s” private den—adjoining the vault.

Fay neatly fitted this opening with a trapdoor covered by a small table. Upon this he placed current magazines and samples of photographic art—left by the late owner of the studio.

“Come here, Saidee,” he said to her one day. “Get down and watch Pope. What is he doing at his desk? What is that he has carried from the vault?”

She dropped to her knees and looked through the opening. She bent lower. Suddenly she rose and arranged her skirt.

“That is queer,” she said. “He took a large spool of wire out of the vault, set it on a spindle, passed one end of the wire through a little box he has on his desk and then started winding the wire on another spool. He’s doing it now.”

Fay lay flat on the grass matting. He saw, through the circular opening, the board-room, the grill and ground-glass partitions and the thick purple neck and bald head of “The Black Cougar.” The bucket-shop operator was doing nothing more interesting than winding wire from one spool to another. He stopped now and then to examine a tape which came out of the box on his desk. He reached suddenly. He tore off this tape, pulled down the cover of his desk, sprang from his swivel-chair and went to a window which opened into the compartment occupied by a score of stenographers.

“Petroleum, preferred,” he snarled as a timid girl took the tape. “Send them Red Letter No 10. Follow up, one day week. Quote 6574 asked. Get me?”

The girl whispered her answer. She disappeared beyond Fay’s range of vision. He waited and watched “The Black Cougar” unwind the wire, tuck the spool under his thick arm and hurry into the vault. An inner door slammed. The bucket-shop operator came out, closed the outer door, twirled the combinations and started pacing the thick Turkish rug.

“That’s a new one,” said Fay to Saidee Isaacs. “We’ll have to open that vault to find out what that spool of wire is for!”

“Could it have been an electrical connection to the little box on his desk?”

“No! It was not insulated wire. It looked to me like fine steel or iron wire—perhaps finer than the wire used in the smallest size hairpin.”

“The spool was big enough.”

“There was all of a thousand feet of wire on it, Saidee.”

“It’s some trick.”

Fay nodded. He got down on his knees and watched “The Black Cougar.” He rose and covered up the hole in the floor. Before going out he said to the girl:

“I’m going to have some things sent up. Tonight I start work over the safe. We shall enter the vault by Sunday, when no one is in Pope’s office.”

“How are you going to cut that vanadium steel? Father told me once it was the hardest kind of metal.”

Fay glanced at the skylight which had been changed to a new position. “I told you,” he smiled, “that I had an idea. It’s so far out of my line that the police wont suspect me. I’ve been accused of using thermite, the oxy-acetylene blow-pipe, the electric-arc, with a water-rheostat, and other devices. This time I’ll go everybody one better. The material will be up by special messenger.”

Fay left the studio. His thoughts were not on the method he intended using to open “The Black Cougar’s” strong box. They drifted between two mysteries—the matter-of-factness of Saidee Isaacs, who was certainly unemotional, and the spool of wire which Pope had locked in the vault.

The shop Fay visited that afternoon, and where he waited while a glazier finished the last of his order, was far enough from the center of the city to admit of no danger from the police.

“You see,” Fay told the proprietor, “I am making some experiments at an ostrich farm near Pasadena. Be careful when you pack the mirrors. I’ll have to carry them on a trolley-car.”

He took a huge, well-wrapped package after paying the man the price demanded, and rounded the block. He found a messenger standing in front of a telegraph-office.

“For Miss Saidee Sorjoni, photographer,” he told the boy. “She’s located in the Bradock Building. Here’s a four-bit piece. Don’t break anything.”

Fay watched the boy until he had disappeared. He went through narrow streets to a second glazier’s. This man had constructed two halves of a hollow lens. This lens was about three feet in diameter. It was far from being accurate.

“A burning-glass,” said Fay, “does not necessarily need to be solid. I intend to paste the edges together with plaster of Paris and fill the whole thing with clear water.”

“Going to make a sun-motor?” asked the artisan.

“Something like that. Wrap it in tissue paper. I don’t want to break it on my way to Pasadena.”

Having thus thrown off all clues, Fay carried the hollow lens to the studio. Saidee Isaacs had received the package, left it unopened on the dark-room floor and pinned a brief note to the table in the reception-room.

“Gone for the day. Have a headache. Will be at my hotel if you want to call me up.”

Fay destroyed the note, took off his coat, tie and collar and started to work rigging the mirrors and the hollow lens upon a scaffolding beneath the skylight.