Detective Fiction Weekly. Vol. 36, No. 4, October 20, 1928

To Whom It May Concern:

Cletus Santelle is about to engineer his most stupendous fraud, and I am betraying him because he has wilely betrayed me. Cato Santelle, is in reality George Pierce, an Australian confidence man. All of the servants at Willow Bend are foreign crooks, recruited by Cletus Santelle during a recent trip abroad. This information can be verified, of course. Ask Australia about George Pierce. Check up on Cletus Santelle’s quiet sojourn abroad last year. It should be easy.

As for myself, I shall not be here when this letter is read — if it ever is. I am Cletus Santelle’s wife in all except name. No other woman shall ever bear that name. He has put me off with promises to make me his wife just as soon as he is sufficiently established in the confidence of the people he now intends to plunder, and I have been patient. But I read the papers, and it has come to my knowledge that he is going after bigger game. The Bailey millions. He shall not have them.

Ayra Banking.

“Well, what of it?” I asked myself, after finishing the letter. “It confirms what I already believed, and that’s about all. But confirmation is worth a lot — come to think of it.”

I reached for the phone, having it in mind to call Chief Enger and arrange for a little conference. But I sat back without touching the instrument.

What, after all, could that letter accomplish? Was it not merely a firecracker, instead of the bombshell which I had hoped it would be? What would it mean to the police? Flash Santelle? Exposure of Santelle. That was all.

“No law against Cletus and Cato masquerading as nephew and uncle,” I told myself. “No law against them buying Willow Bend, and hiring servants from whatever source they chose. In short, Flash Santelle has not, so far as is known, broken the law in this instance, any more than it can be proved he has broken it in other of his enterprises. And that’s that.”

Why expose Santelle? Society wanted more than that. It wanted Flash Santelle put away where he would cease to be a menace. That letter, and the inevitable exposure it would accomplish, would merely interrupt Flash for the present, leaving him free to try something else.

And he had had the nerve to use me to further his scheme!

Right then and there I began to get hot under the collar.

Chapter XVII Flash’s Big Stunt

I cooled off quickly, however, and began to do some thinking. Surely there was some way in which I could trap Flash Santelle — and trap him right.

What was this big scheme of his, anyhow? Little by little I pieced it out — to my satisfaction at least.

It was a good scheme, to my way of thinking. The police of the nation had long been making it too hot for Santelle’s comfort. Something had to be done.

His best chance would be to establish himself somewhere under a cloak of respectability. The police had not a thing on him, and by a bold stroke it might be possible to convince them that he was going straight.

Flash took a trip abroad, according to Ayra Banning’s letter. There he hooked up with George Pierce, the confidence man. Very carefully they recruited a small but efficient gang of expert thieves, then all drifted into America quietly and at different times.

That much I could piece together without any trouble, having the letter to guide me. Finally the old think-tank evolved the following:

Flash selected Kansas City as a field for future operations. There the fake uncle stunt was pulled — and a most convincing and successful stunt it proved to be. By means of forged letters, and a big bank account, the latter the proceeds of Flash’s prowess, the thing had been feasible. The very boldness of it assured its success. It was something entirely new.

So far, so good. What next? Guess work, and I kept on guessing — though confessedly not so sure of my ground.

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