Flynn’s Weekly Detective Fiction. Vol. 27, No. 1, September 17, 1927
- Автор: Valentine, Corley H. W.
- Год: 1927
- Язык: английский
- Год: The Red Star News Company
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Flynn’s Weekly Detective Fiction. Vol. 27, No. 1, September 17, 1927». Краткое содержание книги:
As Baron Franz von Veltheim he made an undeniable impression upon the best people of Melbourne, Australia. His manners were perfect and he was modest in his references to the vast estates of which he was the heir. But he did mention them occasionally in the presence of one of the financial leaders of the city.
The latter was somewhat hard-headed and dubious, but his daughter bad no such questionings. She fell thoroughly in love with the handsome adventurer. But the father remained hesitant and von Veltheim swept the girl into a hasty marriage. This was the first wedding ceremony in which he participated, and it was the only legal one.
Love for another had no part in his make-up, and when his wife’s father failed to provide in the manner fitting a baronial son-in-law, the latter found himself handicapped by a poor investment, a wife who could not support him.
Never again did he make that mistake. Every woman he married thereafter, and there were many, came to him with a carefully investigated financial statement. But how well he convinced them that it was love only that drew him, that money meant nothing to him!
With the utmost nonchalance he told his wife that she was to sail for London and wait there for him while he went to South Africa to settle one of his “estates.”
In response to her natural curiosity as to the reason why she could not accompany him, he pleaded diplomatic intrigues, political dangers in which he did not wish to involve her. And she believed him.
South Africa was later the scene of von Veltheim’s most notorious exploits, but on this occasion he found Capetown an unfruitful field. His criminal efforts for the moment were confined to the types of thieving with which he was familiar, and though his harvest was poor, his elusive skill kept him from trouble with the police.
He left behind him an impression of his personality which was to return both to plague and to help him in the future.
Back in London again he found his wife living on an allowance from her father. That was sufficient to insure his companionship for a time, a doubtful blessing which brought the poor disillusioned woman little besides sorrow. She referred casually to the kindness offered her by an elderly English general who had taken pity on her loneliness during the long trip from Australia.
Immediately the spark of an idea flashed illumination into the man’s fertile mind. It awakened a sympathetic reflex in his character. Blackmail! Here was the keynote of a profitable future. Conscience, decency, scruples, these were but empty words to him.
The well-meaning general received the impressive-looking visitor with cordiality.
“Baron von Veltheim? Happy to know you, sir. I met your charming wife en route to England.”
“Indeed you have!” thundered the apparently furious baron. “And I have come, sir, to demand satisfaction!”
“But — but — but—” stuttered the bewildered officer.
“Your actions in respect to my wife made her the gossip of the ship. I repeat, sir, I demand satisfaction — either on the field or in court.”
But the poor officer could not afford to meet the baron either in field or court. He had entered politics and though he was perfectly innocent in mind and deed, the resultant publicity would have been fatal to him.
He soon perceived the nature of this man’s indignation, and the upshot was that for the consideration of the sum of five hundred pounds the baron declared that the afront to his honor was satisfied.
Delighted with the success of his first effort in a new criminal field von Veltheim discarded all pretense with his wife and proposed to her a career of blackmail with herself as decoy.
But he encountered an absolute negation. She loved her husband and her love survived disillusionment and mistreatment, but it was not proof against her conscience. The result was that he deserted her shortly after.
Von Veltheim was a nomad, a true internationalist. Europe, Asia, Africa, America, all were one to him. He was at home in the mines of the Transvaal and the boudoirs of Austria. For several years he flashed through the continents, leaving everywhere a trail of broken-hearted, impoverished women. He was not a Don Juan.
It was not for love or passion that he sought and drew this feminine army to him. It was purely a business proposition. They had money; he wanted it. But he did this sordid phase behind such a romantic, dashing personality, such a verisimilitude of ardor, an enchantment of tongue, a fascination of physique, that most of his victims loved and remembered him long after he had forgotten their existence.
He was no philanderer; he married with bell, book and candle every one of these women whose money and jewels he coveted. If the lady already possessed a husband his liaison with her ended as soon she ceased to be a source of financial profit to him. He was never prosecuted, because he always chose his prey from among the families that he knew would shun a scandal.
His aliases were many, but he always returning to the one he had come to believe his real name. And it was as Franz von Veltheim that the police systems of various countries knew him.
For it was not only women whom he victimized. His talents were varied. Hard-headed business men succumbed to the spell of his fluent tongue and convincing manner. The truth of the matter was that he possessed a great deal of practical ability and more than one of them sought to employ him.
As a matter of novelty he worked hard and honestly for a time. Advancement was rapid and the prospects before him were excellent. But the incubus of his criminal nature bore down upon him and he disappeared, taking with him his prospects and his employers’ money.
Warrants had been issued for him in many cities for crimes of larceny, blackmail, bigamy and Heaven knows what else; but to serve them was a task almost beyond police powers. He appeared here, there, as himself, under an alias or disguise, chose a victim, struck, vanished.
He was as evanescent as a shadow, as intangible as a breeze. Scotland Yard would hear of him in London. A heart-broken wife would sob out the tragedy of her honeymoon. “My husband — newly married — is missing — find him.” A few questions. Her money? Gone. “No, no, don’t accuse him. He was too wonderful. He couldn’t do such a thing to me.”
Hot on a new trail the man-hunters would strain to the utmost. Another day, another hour and he would be in their hands. Then would come a report from Vienna. Von Veltheim has just paid his respects to this city. He has appropriated a noble lady’s jewels. But he cannot be found. Will Scotland Yard be so kind as to watch out for him?
The vigor of the chase is redoubled. The jumpy nerves of the police causes the arrest of many innocents.
It was a foggy morning in January, 1896. A London Bobby was patrolling his beat, which included the shorefront of the Thames below London Bridge. He was vigorously swinging his arms against the raw chill of the day and humming “God Save the Queen” to warm his loyal soul.
Suddenly both the swinging and the humming stopped short, and he sprawled forward on his face. He had stumbled over a large object which the fog had kept from his view. He righted himself with an exclamation, which turned to a whistle of surprise when he saw what had tripped him. It was the body of an enormous, powerfully built man tightly bound up with a length of heavy rope.
The forehead and part of the face had been shattered by a terrible blow, but the policeman was able to distinguish that he had been a German.
He blew his whistle until some longshoremen ran up; whereupon he dispatched one of them to fetch the police sergeant and a wagon. Meanwhile he searched the man’s clothes, but found absolutely nothing in them to indicate who he was or to furnish a clew.