John Baer - The Black Mask Magazine (Vol. 5, No. 5 — August 1922)

The reader will recall the sensation in financial circles caused by the appearance of Alonzo Bixby, the South African magnate. For two short years he was one of the king pins of The Exchange.

Then came the battle between Bixby and Peck. It was short, but memorable. Peck, backed by his years of experience, crushed his enemy beneath his heel as a farmer scotches a harmless worm.

Bixby, cornered, his fangs bared, showed his makeup by turning crook. Timothy Owen, Peck’s right-hand man, was killed. Over the body of his friend Morgan Peck swore vengeance. One of Bixby’s retainers, arrested by the police, admitted the murder, charging Bixby with having instigated the crime. All of Peck’s gigantic fortune was placed at the disposal of the prosecution. The trial lasted for weeks, an army of lawyers battling for every point.

In the end the jury sent Bixby to the penitentiary for life.

The day that sentence was pronounced is one that will long be remembered in newspaper and legal circles. Bixby, surrounded by his lawyers, his beautiful young wife at his side, listened impassively to the judge’s voice. It was not until the officers seized him to part him forever from the woman he loved that he gave way to his emotions.

Leaping to his feet, his rough-hewn face quivering with diabolical rage, he shook his huge fist at Morgan Peck!

“Damn you! In prison or out, I’ll get you!” he shouted. “I’ll make you suffer as you’re making me! An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth!”

Raving like a madman, they dragged him away.

Remember, Bixby was still a wealthy man and money will buy almost anything — even liberty. There were those among us who predicted that Bixby would not remain long behind prison walls. We were correct in our surmises.

In just eleven months and three days he was at liberty. With him disappeared half a dozen guards. How much he paid them for his liberty no one will probably ever know for none of them were ever captured. Some of us hold to the theory that after helping Bixby make his escape, they were killed at his orders. But that is another story.

Three weeks after Bixby made his break from prison an effort was made to blow up Peck’s office with a bomb. Fortunately the financier was absent when the package was received. The secretary who opened it lost his life.

A week later someone fired a shot at Peck in the dark. Only the fact that the old man moved slightly at that instant prevented the assassin’s bullet from finding its mark. As it was, only a slight flesh wound rewarded the attempt.

Then Peck’s colleagues took a hand. He was the center around which one of the biggest financial deals ever pulled off was being engineered — a deal that involved governments. His death would have meant a world panic. In spite of his sneers at their fears — for Peck was a battler who fought for the sheer love of the sport — they finally induced him to obey their commands.

He was locked in his own house, surrounded by guards as I have stated. The best detective bureau in the city was engaged to look after his safety. Half a hundred operatives were put to work combing the country for his enemies.

I — and I trust that the reader will pardon the seeming egotism displayed — as the best man available among all of the detectives in the city, was placed in charge of the guards surrounding Morgan Peck.

Two hours after we had taken our precautions a special delivery letter mailed from a downtown station was received. It read as follows:

Peck: I swore that I’d get you and I meant it. By cooping yourself up like a sick chicken you have opened the way for my vengeance. Inside of forty-eight hours I’ll strike! God help you from now on.

Morgan Peck was said by his enemies to be a man without feeling, nerves or love. A widower, his only daughter dying in childhood, having few near relatives, he had schooled himself against emotion. Yet that afternoon after the body of poor Lannagan had been removed from the house and we sat together in the big library discussing the affair, two things took place which threw a different light on the old man’s character.

Gladys Peck, his niece — an orphan and his nearest relative — a girl whom he had raised from childhood, passed through the room. The old face lighted up and, as she passed out of hearing, he turned savagely to me.

“I don’t give a damn about myself,” he growled. “I’m old enough to cash in — time’s coming sooner or later anyway. But God help Bixby if he harms that girl! And God help you if you let him!”

That was all. Yet in his face was an odd light that betrayed the gruffness of his voice. I wondered if his enemies knew of his love for this orphan girl. I shuddered as I thought of what might happen if they chanced to learn — and struck him through her.

The other incident I mention was when a cat — an ordinary, common variety of feline — entered the room and, with back arched, rubbed purringly against the millionaire’s leg.

“Funny little devil!” he grumbled. “Picked him up five years ago when he was a kitten. Somebody’d turned him out to die — freeze to death. Damn such people! Stuck him in my overcoat pocket and brought him home. Never cared for cats — Angoras, Persians and the blue-blooded aristocracy of catdom — but this little cuss made a hit with me. Scrapper! See that spot of red hair on his head? That shows it. He’d fight the Old Nick! Intelligent, too. Makes the servants all stand around. Got a habit of biting ’em on their ankles. They all like him, though. Funny, ain’t it? Got a lot of human traits in him. Reminds me a little bit of myself,” he added with a smile, reaching down and rubbing the cat’s head affectionately.

And this was the man whose enemies claimed him to be without a heart!

That same afternoon the coffin came!

An undertaker’s wagon stopped at the front door and two solemn-faced men brought the casket up the steps.

In accordance with his orders, the detective on duty refused to admit them, but called me. Cross-questioned, they knew nothing. The coffin had been ordered from the Morgenstein Casket Company and they were here to deliver it. The address was plainly marked.

Detaining them after ordering the unsightly reminder of the death, that was constantly in our midst, replaced in the wagon, I hurried Holdridge, one of the brightest operatives under my direction, over to the offices of the casket company. He returned inside of thirty minutes.

The casket had been ordered by mail. A bank draft for four hundred dollars drawn by the First National Trust and Savings Bank — one of Peck’s own institutions — had accompanied the letter.

The letter merely stated that a death would shortly occur at the Peck home and asked that the coffin be delivered immediately.

A telephone call to the bank proved fruitless. The draft clerk remembered drawing the draft, which was paid for in cash, but, owing to the large number of similar papers which passed through his hands daily, had no recollection as to who his customer had been. In fact, only the number on the draft recalled the incident to mind at all.

I released the two men from the factory. In my own mind I was convinced that the affair had been pulled off by Bixby merely in an effort to break down Peck’s morale.

But they failed to reckon with the old man’s fighting spirit.

The remainder of the afternoon and the night passed uneventfully, everyone, warned by what had happened the night before, doubling his vigilance.

I spent the following morning in going over the reports of the fifty-odd operatives scattered about the city in quest of Bixby. Despite the fact that the former haunts of the big South African had been combed by our men not only could no trace be found of the financier himself, but several of his closest friends — men who at the trial were proved to have done his bidding without question — had also disappeared.