Meredith Beyers - The Black Mask Magazine (Vol. 4, No. 3 — December 1921)

Two days later I was again walking the brink of the Fraser River Canyon. I was waiting for Cryder — reported somewhere in the neighborhood — and for a train. A hundred feet below me the same river boiled and swirled. It might have been the same water I had first seen, turning a corner and returning, so eternal was the tumult. It seemed as though the Fraser were composed of liquid hills and valleys, so firmly did the currents force the water into fantastic moulds.

Turning a bend in the stream in a longer cast for views, I finally came upon a spectacle that was strangely familiar. Far down below me was a tiny platform made of driftwood on driftwood piles, and upon it perched an Indian with a long spear. His lance darted once into the tumbling water and was withdrawn with a huge fish squirming on its point. A salmon, I knew, and with the knowledge came recollection. This was a. picture almost the same as the painting over Cryder’s desk. I had wronged the man from the start. Not suckers but game fish; that was his ideal.

Even as I looked, another figure clambered to the little platform — Cryder himself. I could see the Indian shake his head and motion him back with his hand, but Cryder climbed on and strode out upon the platform. It showed he was new to the country. The little perch was safe enough for the Indian, but under the second man’s two hundred pounds it buckled, swayed, collapsed, and both were thrown into the torrent, fifty yards above me.

I have said that I knew at the start that Cryder was no ordinary crook. I have told about the strange sentimentality of Garrity and McGuire. I have said nothing about my own feelings. I doubt if I had analyzed them myself. But I held my breath as I saw him fall and, almost before I knew it, had peeled my coat and plunged into the Fraser after him. I am a rather strong swimmer or I would not be alive to tell this today. The Indian helped me a little at first but Cryder had got a bump on the head and was a drag on both of us. Next minute the Indian was crashed against a rock and only managed to struggle ashore. I finally landed Cryder a mile down the canyon where the current, rather than I, washed us on a sandbar where a Chinaman was stolidly panning out gold.

From some place the Chink produced a bottle of alcohol, or gin, I don’t know which, and finally Cryder opened his eyes. He did not remember ever having seen me before and was a little “woozy,” I suppose.

“How do you feel, Cryder?” I asked.

“You know my name?” he asked. “Who are you?”

“Guernsey’s my name,” I said. “United States Post Office Inspector.”

“What are you doing way up here?”

“I’ve been following you for a month or so.”

Cryder sighed and closed his eyes again.

“Oh, hell,” he said, finally. “All that fuss. I’ll pay out all right. There’s two hundred thousand in the bank. I’m not broke. I made a fortune in that stock deal and told everybody I was broke. Please let me go on with it. I must get back with these pictures of the mine and drive old Jedidiah out of his club again. It’ll only cost me about twenty thousand more and it’s well worth it. I’ve spent so much time on it and it’s such a grand yarn.”

I shook him by the shoulder.

“But it’s not like you to deceive people in this manner,” I shouted in his ear.

“Don’t you worry about that,” he answered. “Jedidiah is only waiting to steal the pennies off Uncle Zeke’s eyes. I just wanted to get that old double-crosser so good he wouldn’t dare hold his head up. I wanted to show everybody who was the better business man — me or him. I guess I’ve done it. I’ve done something nobody ever did before. I’ve sold stock in a mine that never existed, paid dividends on it, made them want to emigrate out here, and now I’ve provided them with a spot to emigrate to. The big joke will come when Jedidiah gets out here and tries to find the gold.”

I thought he had fainted in earnest, when his voice trailed off in a whisper at the close. But he rallied again and opened his eyes with a faint but whimsical smile.

“Cryder,” I shouted. “There is gold in the Hectopus. McGuire has found a pocket that is worth a quarter of a million dollars if it is worth a cent. Do you hear me?”

The smile on his face broadened, then was replaced by a frown.

“Hell,” he muttered. “All that time wasted. And it was such a perfectly beautiful lie.”

For Moriarity it had been almost as hard to walk from the condemned cell to freedom by way of the main entrance as it would have been to take that other walk through the little door that leads to the electric chair. He had suffered all that a man can suffer who faces a horrid death. The last of a once iron nerve had been put into the task of dressing himself in his execution garments and when the order for a new trial had been read to him, the once powerful gang leader had silently crumpled in a heap on the floor.

He was all in — through — done for as surely as the electric chair could have finished him. Never again would he be able to hold a gun in his hand to take his place as the undisputed king of his world. They would not let him. He might try it but he knew they would find him out.

No man could hold his position, he told himself time after time, who had been through what he had endured. Try as he did to hide it, he knew that his old slaves and subjects had seen him tremble during the ridiculously easy second trial of his case. Even the assurances of his lawyers that it was “all fixed,” that his acquittal was a “sure thing,” could not sustain him. He could not keep his hands from shaking and the muscles of his face from working. The brazen effrontery of his stare, the menace of his squared shoulders, was gone. He had stammered as he told his prepared lie on the witness stand and he knew that his old henchmen were shaking their heads behind his back as they accompanied him in a sort of damp jubilation from the courtroom and back to the old rendezvous.

What a farce it had been when, after the first rounds of drinks had been drunk to his return, Jeff Hardy had in formal argot surrendered his place as regent and formally handed him his old pistol as a token of renewed leadership of the gang. Leader? Why, he knew and they knew and he knew they knew he knew that he was not fit to be even an apprentice in that company of blood and steel. Every night for a week after that he could see in the darkness above his bed the sneer in the smile on Hardy’s face as he “surrendered” the leadership which he had already found so sweet. Surrendered it? No wonder Jeff had sneered at the very idea.

Moriarity had been a real leader of men. Guided into the realms of some great manufacturing enterprise, politics or finance he would have been as great as he had become in the world of violence and crime. Instead of the master of the men who work in steel or coal or gold, Fate had decreed that he should become the master of men who deal in crime. And just as disaster overtakes great leaders in great industry, so had disaster overtaken him on the night when “Sailor” Bradley had dared dispute his pre-eminence and met the death the code demanded.

No one in the underworld doubted who had killed Bradley. Moriarity was alive the next morning and Bradley was dead. That was evidence enough. But there was considerable surprise when the leader of the “Woodchucks” was sentenced to death for murder. Every resource was assembled to prevent his execution and obtain his freedom and these weapons had triumphed. They had brought back their leader but found they had only a weakling in his stead.