VIII
“I Hope You Swing!”
We worked upon Dexter for nearly ten minutes before he opened his eyes.
As soon as he sat up we began to shoot questions and accusations at him, hoping to get a confession out of him before he recovered from his shakiness—but he wasn’t that shaky.
All we could get out of him was:
“Take me in if you want to. If I’ve got anything to say I’ll say it to my lawyer, and to nobody else.”
Creda Dexter, who had stepped back after her brother came to, and was standing a little way off, watching us, suddenly came forward and caught me by the arm.
“What have you got on him?” she demanded, imperatively.
“I wouldn’t want to say,” I countered, “but I don’t mind telling you this much. We’re going to give him a chance in a nice modern courtroom to prove that he didn’t kill Leopold Gantvoort.”
“He was in New York!”
“He was not! He had a friend who went to New York as Madden Dexter and looked after Gantvoort’s business under that name. But if this is the real Madden Dexter then the closest he got to New York was when he met his friend on the ferry to get from him the papers connected with the B.F. & F. Iron Corporation transaction; and learned that I had stumbled upon the truth about his alibi—even if I didn’t know it myself at the time.”
She jerked around to face her brother.
“Is that on the level?” she asked him.
He sneered at her, and went on feeling with the fingers of one hand the spot on his jaw where my fist had landed.
“I’ll say all I’ve got to say to my lawyer,” he repeated.
“You will?” she shot back at him. “Well, I’ll say what I’ve got to say right now!”
She flung around to face me again.
“Madden is not my brother at all! My name is Ives. Madden and I met in St. Louis about four years ago, drifted around together for a year or so, and then came to Frisco. He was a con man—still is. He made Mr. Gantvoort’s acquaintance six or seven months ago, and was getting him all ribbed up to unload a fake invention on him. He brought him here a couple of times, and introduced me to him as his sister. We usually posed as brother and sister.
“Then, after Mr. Gantvoort had been here a couple times, Madden decided to change his game. He thought Mr. Gantvoort liked me, and that we could get more money out of him by working a fancy sort of badger-game on him. I was to lead the old man on until I had him wrapped around my finger—until we had him tied up so tight he couldn’t get away—had something on him—something good and strong. Then we were going to shake him down for plenty of money.
“Everything went along fine for a while. He fell for me—fell hard. And finally he asked me to marry him. We had never figured on that. Blackmail was our game. But when he asked me to marry him I tried to call Madden off. I admit the old man’s money had something to do with it—it influenced me—but I had come to like him a little for himself. He was mighty fine in lots of ways—nicer than anybody I had ever known.
“So I told Madden all about it, and suggested that we drop the other plan, and that I marry Gantvoort. I promised to see that Madden was kept supplied with money—I knew I could get whatever I wanted from Mr. Gantvoort. And I was on the level with Madden. I liked Mr. Gantvoort, but Madden had found him and brought him around to me; and so I wasn’t going to run out on Madden. I was willing to do all I could for him.
“But Madden wouldn’t hear of it. He’d have got more money in the long run by doing as I suggested—but he wanted his little handful right away. And to make him more unreasonable he got one of his jealous streaks. He beat me one night!
“That settled it. I made up my mind to ditch him. I told Mr. Gantvoort that my brother was bitterly opposed to our marrying, and he could see that Madden was carrying a grouch. So he arranged to send Madden East on that steel business, to get him out of the way until we were off on our wedding trip. And we thought Madden was completely deceived—but I should have known that he would see through our scheme. We planned to be gone about a year, and by that time I thought Madden would have forgotten me—or I’d be fixed to handle him if he tried to make any trouble.
“As soon as I heard that Mr. Gantvoort had been killed I had a hunch that Madden had done it. But then it seemed like a certainty that he was in New York the next day, and I thought I had done him an injustice. And I was glad he was out of it. But now—”
She whirled around to her erstwhile confederate.
“Now I hope you swing, you big sap!”
She spun around to me again. No sleek kitten, this, but a furious, spitting cat, with claws and teeth bared.
“What kind of looking fellow was the one who went to New York for him?”
I described the man I had talked to on the train.
“Evan Felter,” she said, after a moment of thought. “He used to work with Madden. You’ll probably find him hiding in Los Angeles. Put the screws on him and he’ll spill all he knows—he’s a weak sister! The chances are he didn’t know what Madden’s game was until it was all over.”
“How do you like that?” she spat at Madden Dexter. “How do you like that for a starter? You messed up my little party, did you? Well, I’m going to spend every minute of my time from now until they pop you off helping them pop you!”
And she did, too—with her assistance it was no trick at all to gather up the rest of the evidence we needed to hang him. And I don’t believe her enjoyment of her three-quarters of a million dollars is spoiled a bit by any qualms over what she did to Madden. She’s a very respectable woman now, and glad to be free of the con-man.