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Title: Justly Due
Date of first publication: 1930
Author: Jeffery Farnol (1878-1952)
Date first posted: Oct. 23, 2019
Date last updated: Oct. 23, 2019
Faded Page eBook #20191050

This eBook was produced by: Al Haines

This file was produced from images generously made available by www.unz.com/print/Colliers-1930may24-00023




[Source: Collier's, May 24, 1930]




Justly Due


By Jeffery Farnol



Fate, being not quite so blind as Justice, her sister goddess,
sometimes borrows the sword and scales and, while patient Justice
fumbles with facts and pores over proofs, metes out swift and sudden
retribution with such extreme neatness and dispatch as may pass with
the busy world as mere accident, fortuitous happening, or strange
coincidence.

All of which may serve as introduction to Mr. Arthur Farrant, whose
uncanny skill in the opening of burglar-proof safes and guaranteed
thief-defying locks had won for him, in the higher walks of his
one-time profession, such enviable titles as Slick Arthur the Yegg,
Artful Art, and Gentleman Farrant.

It was, then, upon a certain balmy summer's eve that Mr. Farrant
glanced up from the careful planting of an Emperor daffodil to see a
man upon his newly-trimmed lawn, a thin, narrow-shouldered,
sharp-eyed man who nodded his sleek head and smiled, though his eyes
seemed sharper than ever.

"Howdy, Slick!" he murmured.  "Quite a little Eden you got here, eh?
And some li'l Eve back in the house yonder--oh, boy!"

Mr. Farrant rose and turned upon his visitor with a certain lithe and
cat-like celerity.

"Ah, Burrin," said he, softly, "get this right now--whatever you want
there's nothing doing, and--good-by!"  Mr. Burrin merely smiled.

"And such lov-ely roses too!" he sighed.  "My, my!  But, coming to
cases, Art, old sport, all I want is them real magical hands o' yours
... tonight ... for half an hour ... say fifteen minutes ... and
there's five thou for you, my lad, five thousand dollars for, say,
ten minutes' work--"

"Now see here, Burrin," said Mr. Farrant, soft of voice but
grim-lipped, "I'm through with you and all you mean, so get that
right and hike!"

"Aw, say now, Slick--Art, old sport, we was friends once, real pals
and--"

"No!  We worked one or two jobs together, that's all.  Now, do you go
or must I--chuck you through the hedge?"

"Neither, Art--nix to both!" said Mr. Burrin, shaking his sleek,
vulpine head.  "No guy lays a hand on me, no, sir!  And here's
why--see?"  Now, glancing down, Mr. Farrant saw how the speaker's
hidden left hand was swaying the skirt of his light overcoat gently
to and fro....  "The old gat, Arty boy, me li'l old gun!  I'm always
heeled, you'll remember....  So, say now you're going to stand in
with me tonight, eh, old-timer?"

"No!" answered Mr. Farrant, unflinching.  "Shoot and be damned!"  Mr.
Burrin sighed wearily and jerked his head toward the distant, pretty
house.

"Talking o' jobs, Slick," he murmured, "how if I step indoors and put
your li'l Eve wise about some o' them jobs we pulled off in N'York
... or Paris ... or that dago that got bumped off at Monte Carlo?"
Farrant turned slowly and stood gazing toward his home for some while
and so still that he scarcely seemed to breathe; then, as slowly, he
faced his visitor again, teeth bared and gnashing:

"Ah ... damn you!" he murmured in soft voice, dreadfully at odds with
his distorted face.  Mr. Burrin smiled and nodded brightly:

"Art, old sport," said he, "I knowed you would.  I banked you'd trail
along."



The mighty safe door, obedient to Slick Farrant's master touch,
moved, swung slowly, smoothly open and Burrin, who crouched behind,
holding the pocket torch, uttered a joyful gasp and leaned eagerly
forward....  A sudden glare ... a hoarse voice whose challenge was
cut short by three rapid detonations; then they were afoot and,
leaping the watchman's huddled body, ran for their lives....

"Hey--Sullivan--easy!" gasped Sergeant O'Brien, a few minutes later.
"Easy wid that noight shtick, me bhoy ... don't kill 'em entoirely!"

Followed in due course the trial for murder but with only one
prisoner at the bar, for Mr. Burrin had turned state's evidence and
proved witness so damning that Arthur Farrant, alias this, that, and
the other, known also as Gentleman Farrant, Artful Art, and Slick
Arthur the Yegg was duly doomed to die.  Now as they led him from the
dock he turned for a last look:

"Your account will be paid!" said he, glaring malevolently; "you'll
get your just dues," whereat Mr. Burrin cowered instinctively in his
seat.

And now, though a free man with the whole earth before him, Mr.
Burrin was possessed of a strange whim that lured and held him in the
vicinity of this great, grim place wherein so many malefactors had
been shocked from life by that dreadful engine--the electric chair.

So Mr. Burrin stayed in the neighborhood, waiting very patiently
though troubled now and then, not by remorse, but by this new, sharp
pain that stabbed him ever and anon.  By good fortune he secured a
room in a small hotel whence by merely sitting at the window he could
glimpse the distant loom of that same grim building above swaying
green of trees.  And he was sitting at his window this evening, for
tonight Arthur Farrant was to die.  But even now--oh, cursed
fortune--his pain was back again, a pain so sharp that he writhed in
his chair, an agony that grew with every dragging minute until at
last he was forced to summon aid.

It was a breezy young medico who examined him with a jocosity that
languished to somber gravity:

"Appendicitis--must operate at once."

"A ... hospital, Doctor?"

"Here!  Now!  At once!  No time to lose!"

"Is it ... serious, Doctor?"

"Lord, no more than having a tooth out.  But we must jump to
it--right now!  I'll ring up Dr. Pratt; he specializes in
appendixes--loves 'em!  Hello, ten o'clock--I'll just about catch
him."

"Ten!" groaned the sufferer, "and in an hour ... only an hour ...
they're going to electro--  Oh, Doctor, d'ye think you'll be through
with me in an hour?"

"Sure!" nodded young Æsculapius cheerily.  "Don't you worry anyway!"

And so, after some while, in that small, very inadequate hotel room,
the doctors got to their work, knives and sponges and forceps.



"Now!" said Dr.  Pratt, bending close, "we must work fast.  Be ready
with--  Ha, what the--" for in this most critical moment the lights
had failed, dimmed to a glow--vanished.  A tense moment and then all
was confusion, blundering steps, crash of falling glass, uproar of
urgent cries:

"Lights--lights for God's sake!  Candles--a lamp ... anything...."

And then while feet ran stumbling to and fro the electrics glared
again, a dazzling brilliance ... there was a gasp of horrified dismay:

"Good Lord--Pratt! ... Something's wrong.  Look!..."

"God, man ... why ... he's gone ... he's dead!  Ah, these damned
electric lights!  Landlord, what in hell's wrong with your service?"

"Why, nothing, Doctor," answered the peering landlord.  "Ye see, they
often dim on us so when they're on the job--up yonder ... ye see,
they've just been busy up at the jail electrocuting that guy
Farrant...."

"Well," answered Dr. Pratt, covering what lay on the bed, "I guess
they've executed two men tonight."

For, as hath been said, Fate, not so blind as her sister Justice,
works sometimes more speedily and as surely.


[The end of _Justly Due_ by Jeffery Farnol]