The Victorian Villains Megapack (62 page)

At this point the keeper moved uneasily, and I pushed him another cigar.

“Well,” continued Riggs, “I just walked on air that afte
rnoon after leaving the Custom-house, and went around blabbing like a poor fool about my good luck. On the way home I stopped in to take a drink. There were a lot of my acquaintances there, and I had something with most of them, and then the first thing I knew everything swam before my eyes. I groped my way into the street and started toward home, but I had only taken a few steps when a gang of strong-arm men attacked me, knocked me down, and robbed me. I struggled to my feet and followed them. They turned and attacked me again. I drew my knife, and then everything got dark, and the next thing I knew I was in the police-station.

“I’ll admit that this part of it does seem a little queer.” Riggs dropped his voice mysteriously and leaned toward me. “But I have no doubt that I was drugged and beaten for the purpose of getting me locked up in the Tombs as part of a well-planned scheme. You will see for yourself later on.

“Next morning, while I was waiting examination in the prison pen, a man came along who said he was a lawyer and would take my case. I said, All right, but that he would have to wait for his pay. He laughed, and said he guessed there would be no trouble about that; and the next thing I knew I was up before the Judge. My lawyer went up and whispered
something to him, and the magistrate said:

“‘Five hundred dollars bail for trial.’

“‘Look here,’ I spoke up, ‘ain’t I going to have a chance to tell my story?’

“‘Keep quiet,’ said the lawyer from behind his hand; ‘this is just a form. You won’t never have to be tried. It’s just to get you out.’

“So I said nothing, and went back to the pen and waited; and the next thing I knew the hurry-up wagon had taken me to the Tombs. I tell you it was pretty tough bein’ chucked in with a lot of thieves and burglars. The bill of fare ain’t above par, you know, and the company’s worse. I sat in my cell and waited and waited for my lawyer to show up, for he had said he’d be right over. But he didn’t come, and I had to spend the night there. Next morning the keeper told me that my lawyer was in the counsel-room. So down I went with two niggers, who also had an appointment with their lawyers. It’s a nasty, unventilated hole, and they lock you and the attorneys all in together. Ever been there?”

I shook my head.

“‘Well,’ says he, ‘now have you got a bondsman?’

“‘A what?’ says I.

“‘A bondsman—someone to go bail for you.’

“‘No,’ I answer
ed, for I knew nothing about such things.

“‘What! I thought you told me you had a lot of friends who had money! You haven’t been trifling with me, have you?’

“I knew I hadn’t told him anything of the sort, but I thought that maybe he had forgotten; so I said I hadn’t any friends who had any money, and knew no one to go bail for me.

“‘Bad! Very bad!’ said he. ‘You’ve got to have money to get out. Isn’t there anyone who owes you money, or haven’t you got some
claim
or something?’

“Then all of a sudden it flashed over me about the diamond and my fifty percent of the reward, and then something in his eye made me think again. It seemed to me that I had seen him before somewhere. I couldn’t remember just where, but the more I hesitated the surer I was. Then it came over me that a few days in jail, more or less, made mighty little difference when I was going to be a rich man so soon, and I decided I had better hang on to what I’d got.

“‘No,’ said I, ‘I ain’t got nothin’.’

“‘You lie!’ says he, growing very red. ‘You lie! You’ve got a claim against the United States Government.’

“Then he saw he’d made a break.

“‘Why, they all
told me you caught a smuggler, or something, and had a claim against the Government for a hundred dollars.’

“‘A hundred!’ I yelled. ‘Twenty thousand!’

“‘Oh!’ said he, ‘as much as that? Why, I’ll get you out this afternoon.’

“‘How?’ said I.

“‘Well, you will have to assign your claim so I can raise the money on it. It’s a mere form.’

“But the thought came into my mind, Better stay there ten years than let him have the claim; so I said that I didn’t understand such things, and I’d just wait until I could be tried.

“‘Tried?’ said he. ‘Why, you won’t be tried for months.’

“My heart sank right down into my boots.

“‘Don’t be a fool!’ he went on. ‘Here you are, sick and in prison, and if you don’t raise money to get a bondsman you’ll stay here a long time. You might die. And if you assign that claim to me, I have a pull with the Judge and I’ll have you out by supper-time.’

“‘I guess I’ll wait awhile,’ said I.

“‘Think it over, anyway. Now I tell you what I’ll do. Tomorrow you go up for pleading. You have to say whether you are guilty or not guilty. I’ll act as your lawyer and see you through that part of it for nothing, and then if you still don’t want to
assign the claim, why, you can do as you choose.’

“That seemed fair enough, so I agreed. I spent another night in the cells, and next day about thirty of us were taken across the bridge into the court-room. One by one we were led up to the bar, and the clerk asked us were we guilty or not guilty. The ones that said they were guilty went off to Sing Sing or Blackwell’s Island. It scared the life out of me. I was afraid that I might not be able to say ‘not,’ and so get sent off too, but pretty soon I saw my lawyer.

“‘P. Llewellyn Riggs!’

“Up jumped Mr. Lawyer and says, ‘Not guilty.’

“‘What day?’ asked the clerk.

“‘The 21st,’ says Mr. Lawyer.

“I was dumb for a minute.

“‘Look here,’ I whispered. ‘Today’s only the first—that’s three weeks.’

“‘Keep quiet,’ shouted an officer, and gave me a punch in the back.

“‘It’s all right,’ whispered Mr. Lawyer. ‘It’s only a form.’ And they hustled me out back to the Tombs.

“I didn’t hear anything all that day or the next. It seemed as if I should go mad. But at last I was notified that my lawyer was there again, and down I went glad eno
ugh for the change. By that time I was feeling pretty seedy.

“‘Well, young man,’ said he, ‘can we do business?’

“‘That depends,’ I answered.

“‘Come, no fooling, now; if you want to get out, give me an assignment of your claim.’

“‘Never,’ I replied.

“‘Then to hell with you!’ he shouted; ‘you can rot here alone and try your case by yourself, and I hope you’ll get twenty years.’

“I almost sank through the floor. Twenty years!”

Riggs had become quite dramatic, and was again leaning forward looking me straight in the eyes.

“Well, I stood fast, and he cursed me out and left me, and I began to feel that after all maybe I was a fool. I hadn’t let my wife know where I was, but now I wrote to her, and she came right down and comforted me. A brave little woman she is, too. And what was more, she said that a nice young lawyer had just moved into our house and had the flat below, and she would go and get him.

“So next morning—I had been in there a week—the young lawyer came. I liked him from the start. When I told him my first lawyer’s name he just leaned back and laughed.

“‘Old Todd?’ he says
; ‘why, he’s the worst robber in the outfit. If he had gotten that assignment he’d have let you lie here forever and been in Paris by this time. You’re a lucky man,’ says he.

“Well, I thought so too, and laughed with him.

“‘But,’ he continued, ‘you’re in an embarrassing position. You can’t get out without money, and you can’t collect your claim. You’ll have to assign it to someone. You can’t assign it to your wife. That wouldn’t be valid. Haven’t you got some friend?’

“‘I’m afraid not,’ said I.

“‘That’s unfortunate,’ he remarked, looking out where the window ought to be. ‘Very unfortunate. I might lend you a couple of hundred myself,’ he added. ‘I will, too!’

“The blood jumped right up in my throat.

“‘God bless you!’ said I, ‘you’re a true friend!’

“He laid his hand on my shoulder.

“‘You’re in hard luck, old man, but you’re going to win out. I’ll stand by you. Here’s a five. I’ll go out and get the rest right off.’

“Then all of a sudden I began to feel like a king. I could see myself in a new suit, having a bottle up at the Haymarket. I realized that I was a twenty-thousand-dollar millionaire. And just to show my chest, I said:

“‘Why, you’re an hon
est man and a true friend. You take my claim and go and collect it this afternoon,’ says I.

“‘No,’ he hesitated, ‘it’s too much responsibility. I’ll trust you for the money and you can pay me afterward.’

“But with that, ass that I was, I fell to begging him to take the claim, and saying he must take it, just to show he believed I trusted him; and so after a while he reluctantly yielded and filled out a paper, and I signed it and got in the warden as a witness, and he rose to go.

“‘Well, till this afternoon,’ says he.

“‘
Au revoir
,’ I laughed, ‘get yourself a bottle of wine for me,’ says I. And off he goes.

“As I passed back to the cells, who should I see beside the door but my old lawyer.

“I shook my fist in his face.

“‘You old robber,’ I says, ‘we’ll see if I can’t get along without you!’

“He sneered in my face.

“‘Oh, you —— fool!’ says he, ‘you poor, poor, ——, —— fool!’

“Then he was gone. So I went back to the cell, and sang and whistled and figured on where I should take my little Flossie for dinner. I waited and waited. Six o’clock, and no word. Then I began to get nervous.

“‘You poor, poor, ——, —— f
ool!’

“The words rang around in my cell. Then something sort of gave inside. I knew I’d been robbed, and I yelled and shook the bars of the door and tried to get out. I cried for Flossie. The keepers came and told me to keep still; but I was plump crazy, and kept on yelling until everything got black and I fainted.”

“And your lawyer never came back?”

“He never came back!” Riggs exclaimed. “He never came back! I’ve been robbed! I’m a poor —— fool, just as Todd said I was.” Riggs burst into maudlin tears.

I gave him what consolation I could, and promised thoroughly to investigate his story.

The keeper and Riggs arose in unison, the same urbane smile that had previously illuminated the countenance of the latter restored.

“You couldn’t manage to let me have a handful of cigars, could you?” he whispered. I gave him all I had. His cheek was irresistible. I would have given him my watch had he intimated a desire for it.

Then I called up the Custom-house.

“Paid?” came back the voice of the United States District Attorney. “Of course not. The claim is worthless until the diamond is sold; and, anyway, such an assignment as you describe is invalid under our statutes. You ha
d better execute a revocation, however, and place it on file here. Yes, I’ll look out for the matter.”

One day, about a week later, I was informed that Riggs had been convicted of assault, and sentenced to a year’s imprisonment on Blackwell’s Island. A jury of his peers had apparently proved less credulous than myself.

Many strange epistles from his place of confinement now reached me, hinting of terrible abuses, starvation, oppression, extortion. He was still the victim of a conspiracy—this time of prison guards and fellow convicts. He prayed for an opportunity to lay the facts before the authorities. I threw the letters aside. It was clear he possessed a powerful imagination, and yet his tale of the discovery of the diamond had been absolutely true. Well, let the law take its course.

* * * *

A year later a jovial-looking person called at my office, and I recognized my old friend Riggs in a new brown derby hat and checked suit.

After shaking hands warmly, he presented me with a card reading:

P. Llewellyn Riggs,

Private Detective,

— Broadway.

“Yes,” he explained in answer to m
y surprised expression, “I’ve gone into the detective business. My unfortunate conviction is only a sort of advertisement, you know, and then I was the victim of an outrageous conspiracy!”

“But,” said I, “I thought you were going to retire on the proceeds of the diamond.”

“Why, haven’t you heard?” he replied. “I gave my wife an assignment of the claim with a power of attorney, and when the diamond was sold she ran away.”

“Ran away?”

“Yes; she took a friend of mine with her. But I shall find her—just as I did the diamond!” He struck a Sherlock Holmes attitude. “By the way, if you should ever want any detective work done you’ll remember——”

“I am not likely to forget,” I answered, “the victim of one of the most remarkable conspiracies in history.”

* * * *

Meantime the Mexicans were tried, convicted, and sent to prison. The jewels themselves were duly made the subject of condemnation proceedings, and whoso peruseth The Federal Reporter for the year 1901 may read thereof under the title “The United States
vs.
One Diamond Pendant and Two Ear-rings.” They were, so to speak, tried, properly convicted, and sold
to the highest bidder. The Mexicans are still serving out their time. One turned state’s evidence, stating that he was a musician and had won the love of a beautiful señorita in the city of Mexico who had given him the gems to sell in order that they might have money upon which to marry. He also protested that his sweetheart had inherited them from her mother.

Inside the cover of the old red case is printed in gold letters:

La Esmeralda.

F. Causer Zihy & Co., Mexico and Paris.

And a faintly scented piece of violet note-paper lies beneath the double lining, containing, in a woman’s hand, this:

The diamond necklace is from Maximilian’s crown, the Emperor of Mexico. The centre stone has thirty-three and seven-tenths carats, and the eighteen surrounding it no less than one each. The diamond ring, the stone thereof, was in Maximilian’s ring at the time he was shot.

But that is all; there is nothing to tell what hand snatched the jewels from the lifeless fingers of the dead Emperor, or who purloined the necklace from the royal household.

In a dusty compartment on my desk ther
e lies a brown manila envelope, and sometimes, when the day’s work is over and I have glanced for the last time across the court-yard of the Tombs at the clock tower on the New York Life Building, I take it out and idly read the press story of the famous diamond. And there rises dimly before me the pathetic scene at Queretaro where a brave and good man met his death, and I wonder if perchance there is any truth in the superstition that some stones carry ill-luck with them. But it is a far cry from the Emperor of Mexico to a New York bill-poster.