Chapter III: Part 3

“Here, Jack; why should they bring that blackjack here? They could bring a dozen with them and nobody be any the wiser.”

But all the satisfaction I got out of that inscrutable, irritating man was: “How bright the understudy is becoming! You’ll be tackling high C yourself next!”

“However,” he went on, “I’m not going to permit you to remain here. Firstly and mainly, because I am confident nothing will happen until after dark, although for a moment I thought my theory had gone wrong, and in the second place, because you might scramble the whole platter on me and get to shooting recklessly.”

We slipped out of the alley after Lanagan had reconnoitred long. He had good reason for not wishing to appear at police headquarters. It was generally known that he was off on some sort of a still hunt. He had been seen occasionally by some of the boys, and it was known, too, that he was not drinking. His appearance at headquarters in conference with Leslie therefore might bring a corps of sharp-eyed newspaper men on our trail.

He got Leslie on the wire, and within thirty minutes was in deep conversation with that astute thief-taker in the rear room at Allenberg’s. There were few sections of the city where Lanagan was not on intimate terms with saloonmen. There are many times when they can be valuable to the police reporter, particularly in the Tenderloin and down town. The two did not take me into their confidence, but once I heard Leslie say, explosively:

“Jack, you’re as daffy as a horned toad.”

I caught only part of Lanagan’s answer. He was talking earnestly.

“I tell you, Chief, my information is correct. I’ve got the only leak in San Francisco into the Camorra and neither you nor the secret service have a man who can tap it. It’s worth a chance, I tell you. We’ll want Brady, Wilson and Maloney. We’ve got to cover every point, take no chances of a murder getting by on us, and smash this thing right on the nose.”

Leslie studied Lanagan long and carefully. He had never been wrong yet.

“Not drinking, Jack?” he asked at last.

“Not a smell in three months,” said Lanagan.

“You’re on,” the chief finally said, decisively.

I grew restive at not being taken “in,” but Lanagan said I was becoming so very bright that a little discipline would do me good; harkening back, I suppose, to that remark about the blackjack. I said no more. They outlined their plan. Maloney was to hide in the yard of the house directly across from the alley gate--in that old-fashioned neighbourhood, tight board fences and hedgerows are common--and Wilson across the street where he could command the window to the room where the blackjack hung. We three, with Brady, were to take our position inside the house. The moment anybody entered the alley gate, or by the front door--Lanagan considered it likely that that approach might be taken under cover of darkness--Maloney was to lift himself to the fence top and strike a match. Wilson, in turn, as though lighting a cigar, would strike a match, and one or the other of us, watching back from the room window of the house, would know that the trap was set. In addition to watching for Maloney’s signal, Wilson’s position enabled him easily to cover the front door. Lanagan, it appeared, had planned the coup hours before and had his coverts already selected.

Their vigil ended on the outside, Maloney and Wilson were then to jump and cover the front and rear doors, respectively, in case of any miscue inside that might permit of an escape. “Miscue” was Lanagan’s word: and I reflected with some apprehension, that any “miscue” with such nervy officers as Leslie and Brady that would permit an escape out of that house would mean that probably all of us would be candidates for morgue slabs.

Dusk found us all drifting one by one to our stations. When I finally entered through the alley door, I could see neither Maloney nor Wilson, and yet I knew they had both gone before me and were in position. I was the last one in and Lanagan was waiting there to lock the kitchen door after me. We trooped silently upstairs, shoes off and in hand.

It was an unreal situation, waiting there as the deeper blackness of night settled down and the night sounds of an empty house assailed us magnified. Brady was standing the watch at the window for the signal. The rest of us were lined up in the broad hall. It was so dark you couldn’t see a man a foot in front of you. Hours it seemed to me must have passed, with no conversation save a scattered whisper or so. We had tried the hall and room floors and the door to the hall closet and they gave out no squeaks.

“Psst!”

Softly, sibilantly, came Brady’s signal. We backed into the closet. Brady in a second was with us. The door was opened six inches with Lanagan and Leslie ready for a spring. I was in some fashion away back in the rear of the closet.

A key grated in the kitchen lock, and it sounded through the vast empty house with a peculiarly sinister harshness. It was a situation certainly unique in crime! The stairs creaked--there was the sound of heavy, laboured breathing. But there was but one set of footfalls! We heard the door open to the room where the ugly blackjack hung, and as it did Leslie swung our door out and, silently as so many black ghosts, we moved to the other door.

Against the window we could see a man’s form dimly outlined. And then--

There was a flash of blinding brilliance, a report that crashed in the empty stillness of the abandoned mansion with the reverberation of a twelve-pound gun, and under the arcs of the swiftly flashing pocket lights of Brady and Leslie, we beheld, stretched almost at our feet as the form toppled backward and stiffened out--

_Waters!_

There was a gushing wound in the temple. Death had been instantaneous. With an eagerness that was more animal than human, Lanagan tore back Waters’ coat, ran his hands swiftly through his every pocket, and finally, with a “_Ha!_” of satisfaction like a snarl, pulled out from an unsealed envelope in an inside pocket a page of writing:

“Daffy, chief: Daffy, as a horned toad? Well, here’s the proof!”

Written in the hand and phraseology of a fairly intelligent man, it was as follows:

“_I killed Ratto. I guess I have been crazy. I went crazy looking for murdered people in vacant houses from telegraph poles. I couldn’t find any more, and then I thought I would kill somebody. I told Ratto on the street that I had seen a man’s body in that house and he went in with me. I had never seen him before. I had left the door open as I ran out to him, but he didn’t suspect anything. I killed him with a blackjack and then found the body in three days, from the telegraph pole. I had picked out the place several days ahead. I got everything ready and came up several times and it was funny no one saw me. I thought Ratto would say get the police but he was nervy all right and jumped right in after me._

”_The room in this house I discovered in the same way. It was even better than the flat where Ratto was killed because the neighbourhood didn’t have so many people. The blackjack is on the door knob. I put it there so as I went into the room first to light a match I could take it off the inside door knob and hit my man as he followed me in._

“_That reporter Lanagan and another man were hanging around this neighbourhood to-day. He has been talking to me kind of suspicious lately and I guess the jig is up. It’s funny the police never suspected me._

”_I guess I have been crazy all right. I would hang anyhow. But I am all right now and I will kill myself in the room. It’s all the return I can make for Ratto. If nobody hears the shot I hope somebody finds me from a telegraph pole. It will give the newspapers lots to write about. That’s what made me crazy. I got too much fame, I guess._

“_William Waters_”

There was a prolonged pause. Then:

“Humph,” growled Leslie savagely. “The ‘fame’ you got isn’t a marker to the fame that reporter Lanagan has heaped on me. For the original ass I’m it. I took that fellow for a loon. Jack, shake.”

Lanagan could not forbear a soft sarcasm. That “daffy as a horned toad” rankled:

“Give your men a little class in Kraft-Ebing, Lombroso, Nordau or some of those specialists and you will get a better understanding of the pulling power of crime,” he said, dryly. “I hadn’t figured quite this kind of a finish,” he went on. “But the minute he blazed that shot into his brain I was sure he had left a confession. If he couldn’t get notoriety in life he would in death.”

Quickly Lanagan told of his suspicions settling on Waters after Bina, his “leak” to the Camorra, had told him that the death of Ratto was as much of a mystery to the Camorrists as it was to the police. With Bresci a Camorra leader, the wise-eyed and wise-eared little Bina heard and saw much that Lanagan in turn was told. On her say-so, he had absolutely dismissed the Camorra. He set himself to watch Waters and for three days and nights scarcely ever let the lineman out of his sight. From safe vantage points he had watched Waters at his grisly work of climbing innumerable telegraph poles. At times he had casually picked him up and talked with him. It was evident that he had also aroused Waters’ suspicions. He noticed him lingering in the neighbourhood of the house where we now were and finally sneak in by the alley door. After he left the house Lanagan had hunted up a locksmith, secured a set of skeleton keys himself, and let himself into the house, not knowing exactly what to expect.

He found the blackjack on the door knob, saw the telegraph pole out of the window and in a flash had realised the entire plan of the crazed lineman.

Lanagan assumed that Waters would not attempt to lure his victim in daylight. He had come back to the house while we were there merely moved by some insane morbidity to visit again the scene selected for the crime; picture possibly the slain man on the floor, himself peering in from the telegraph pole; and then the columns of newspaper space. That the room was commanded by a telegraph pole I had not noticed during the day or even my sluggish wits might have given me a hint of the truth.

“The shot seems to have raised no stir outside, Chief,” said Lanagan, briskly, when the recital was done. “Call in Wilson and Maloney and stick around and give us two hours lee-way before you get the morgue. It’s twelve-thirty.

“_Now, son, you hit the pike with me for the Enquirer!_”

IV

WHOM THE GODS DESTROY

IV

WHOM THE GODS DESTROY

At Riordan’s, much frequented by policemen and reporters, Jack Lanagan sat with Leslie, that greatest chief of his time, discussing one of Dan’s delectable Bismarck herrings and a “steam.” It was not above the very human Leslie to mingle in the free democracy of Dan’s back room, where the gentlemen of the Fourth Estate foregathered to settle in seasoned nonchalance the problems of the world.

Leslie was speaking.

“You haven’t lost out, Jack,” he was saying. “But if that narrow-gauge Sampson elects to fire you--which I know he won’t--I’ll give you work if I’ve got to pay you out of my contingent fund. Get off that suisses diet and report. The _Enquirer_ can’t afford to lose you.”

Lanagan, unshaven for a week, looked otherwise disreputable.

“The _Enquirer_,” he reported judicially, “can afford to lose anybody. It’s a sweat-shop life, reporting; and they fill your place just as easily as Schwartz, down there on Stevenson Street, fills a place at one of his shirt machines. Nothing is as dead as a yesterday’s paper--excepting it has a libel in it; and nothing is so perishable as a reporter’s reputation. The slate is swabbed clean once every twenty-four hours. Your job is precisely that long.”

“Rats. You’re in a beautiful humour. They can’t forget that Iowa Slim exclusive very soon.”

“No; but only because of the fact that I haven’t shown up for work since. They had given me warning before then. I’m through unless they send for me, and they don’t seem to be doing that. As a matter of cold-blooded fact, the _Enquirer_ likes my work but not my weakness. My type don’t get much sympathy these times. I belong to the generation of the tramp printer; the days of a real ethical code in the profession. We old-timers are taking the gad--what few of us there are left--three times over for an even break with these peg-topped trouser boys at ten a week who once wrote a class farce.

“No, chief,” concluded Lanagan dispassionately and deliberately, “I guess I’ve shot my bolt in San Francisco. I’ll ship on a banana boat and flag it on to Panama. Maybe when I get there I will tangle up in some big complication and another Davis will come along to chronicle me with that other Derelict; a grand story, by the way, chief--a newspaper epic. You should read it.”

Leslie ignored the morose mood of the reporter. “Shot nothing,” he said in disgust. “Take a Turkish bath and sweat that grouch out of your system. Here, take this ten. I want you to get back to your paper. You’re too valuable a man to be out of work in this town.”

Lanagan rejected the proffered money, and Leslie was attempting to force it on him--there was a warm bond of friendship between the two men and a mutual admiration for the abilities of each other--when when Brady from the upper office stuck his head through the door. He saluted.

“Captain Cook sent me over to say that it looks now like that Hemingway case was not a suicide after all. There are no powder burns on the face. The revolver must have been put in her hand after she was shot.”

Cook was night captain of detectives. Leslie jumped to his feet and swung Lanagan to his.

“Here! This will put you on your mettle. I didn’t like the looks of that case from the start. I am going out and take hold of it personally. Come along. Maybe you can turn up something that the _Enquirer_ will be glad to hear from you on. Come along, Brady.”

They jumped into the police machine and were whirled out to a fashionable home on Pacific Avenue. It was 9:30 o’clock. Less than an hour before a report had been received of the suicide of the daughter of the house, a débutante whose coming-out party had been an event of the spring before and whose engagement to a broker, Oliver Macondray, had just been announced.

Wilson, accounted one of Leslie’s shrewdest upper office men, was already in the room when Leslie, Lanagan, and Brady arrived. There were there also a shoal of newspaper men and photographers, and the smell of flash powders was heavy on the air. On the first report from police headquarters I had been sent out by Sampson and had already been in the house for half an hour. But I was glad to surrender the story promptly to Lanagan when he entered, although he did not then say that he intended going to work.

It was Wilson, as I recall it, who had raised a doubt of the suicide theory by pointing out the absence of powder burns, although the bullet wound was in the right temple and the revolver clasped tightly in the right hand. A girl with her frail wrist must have pressed the revolver close before firing. It was clear the revolver had been placed in her hand after the shooting. It was an English bulldog of old pattern, one of those “family” pistols found in most homes.

“If you can’t be first on the ground, be last,” was an axiom of the newspaper business that Lanagan often tried to impress upon me. He proceeded to act upon his theory now by rolling and lighting a cigarette to give all in the room ample time to finish their investigation. Finally the room was cleared of all save, Leslie, Lanagan, Brady, Wilson, and myself.

The room had one set of French windows giving out upon a wide porch and a heavily matted lawn. It would be next to impossible to say whether a person had escaped over the lawn by way of the veranda. The bedroom door was open when a maid, attracted by the shot, had overcome her terror and run to the room.

At the time of death the only persons in the house were the mother, daughter, and the maid, Marie. The maid was in a state bordering on collapse after the first siege with the detectives and newspaper men, and Leslie ordered her kept quiet for an hour. The occasional hysterical cries of the mother, prostrated in her own room, could be heard.

Leslie examined the body with minute care. The rest of us had completed our investigations. Then Lanagan took his leisurely turn, drawing up an easy chair. Leslie, Brady, and Wilson had stepped through the window and were examining the porch and the lawn carefully with their pocket lights. Lanagan had taken one of the girl’s hands up in his. He was examining an old-fashioned bracelet critically, very critically, it seemed to me. He flashed a sudden quick glance toward the window; the chief and the detectives were still busy outside.

“Stand at the door, Norrie!” he shot at me electrically.

I sprang to put my back to it, to give him a moment’s delay in case any of the other newspaper men should drift back to the room. I had not the slightest idea what he was after, but I caught a glitter of fierce interest in his eyes, and I knew him better than to disobey. I did not see what he did then, save that he quickly placed something within his pocketbook, something that didn’t have much substance, for he had to rub his thumb and forefinger to drop it into a piece of paper. Some of the newspaper men trooped back into the room; Leslie entered again, frowning in perplexity.

“Singular, Jack,” he said. “What’s your idea?”

“I think,” drawled Lanagan, “I’ll save my ideas for the _Enquirer_, Chief. I’ve concluded to go back to work.”

Leslie stared. “You’ve got something,” he finally said testily. “What is it?”

“Something that may save me being driven from town like a beaten dog, Chief, that’s all. You didn’t want that, you said.”

“Confound you anyhow. You’re too infernally clever. Go in and win,” said the grizzled chief, but his tone was nettled and there was a natural trace, possibly, of professional jealousy that he could not conceal. It had never before happened that he and Lanagan had started off on an absolutely even break where it was a straight open-and-shut proposition of the best detective winning; and he felt that Lanagan had found a clue in that room that he had overlooked. He was a hard loser. He went over the room again; he examined the body; he used his magnifying glass and he scanned the walls, the carpet, the clothing, inch by inch.

He was still reluctant to give up when the coroner’s deputies finally arrived to discharge their melancholy functions. The mother was still in hysteria. The maid had calmed somewhat, and Leslie went to examine her with Wilson and Brady. Lanagan had drifted out and was sitting on the moonlit porch, to which the electroliers gave added brightness.

“When all those blunderbusses get through with their heavy work, Norrie, we’ll have a run in with the maid,” said he. “I seem to be the last man on the job. Meantime find out for me how many red-haired people there are about this house or among the immediate circle of the girl’s friends. It is a matter of some importance, because--” he carefully opened the pocketbook, extracted the folded piece of note paper, and, first assuring himself that no one was about, pointed--“because here are two broken, half-inch bits of red hair that I take it are going to play an important part in this case. Remember the Deveraux case? These were wedged back of the cameo on her bracelet, and they got there in her last struggle with whoever shot her. For the time being at least, then, we will eliminate all but red-haired people.”

“Maybe it’s a dog’s hair,” I suggested hopefully.

Lanagan was on the point of retorting with his finished sarcasm when the Hemingway limousine, evidently bringing other members of the family or relations summoned by word of the mournful occurrence, rolled up to the brilliantly lighted porte-cochère. Lanagan’s eye had travelled swiftly and fixed upon some object of interest. I followed his intense gaze.

The chauffeur’s hair was as flaming as a firebrand.

Lanagan’s eyes seemed to be boring straight through the man as the machine came to a stop almost where we sat. The chauffeur’s face was pale, extraordinarily pale, it appeared to me; as he stopped his machine and shut down the gears, there was a perceptible evidence of nervousness in his manner that was possibly entirely natural in view of the shocking happening of a few hours before that had taken the life of his young mistress.

The first to leave the motor was a trim, well-groomed young man, whom we at once recognised, from the descriptions we had heard, as Macondray. As he held the door open for the other two persons to leave the machine, he removed his hat, holding it in his hand.

Simultaneously our eyes rested on his uncovered hair.

His hair, if anything, was a shade more auburn than that of the chauffeur! His swollen eyes and pale face were natural under the circumstances, with his marriage hopes thus painfully blasted. They walked within, and Lanagan said:

“Come on. We’ll get first crack at this fellow anyhow. Let’s meet him back at the garage in the rear.”

We had started to walk back to the garage as the chauffeur cranked his machine when from the same low window Leslie and Brady stepped alertly. Leslie held up his hand to the chauffeur. The two officers were beside him in a moment. I knew what was coming even before they laid a hand on him. I had seen too many arrests made not to know what was meant by that brusque, cool manner, that quick step, that wary eye even before there came that familiar terse, short snap of the professional thief-taker:

“_We want you!_”

“The maid has spilled!” was Lanagan’s ejaculation as we stepped up to the trio. Leslie could not forbear a pleased lighting of the eyes as he glanced at Lanagan.

“What have you got, Chief?” asked Lanagan easily.

“The maid, Marie, broke down and admitted that she let this man Martin into the house and into the girl’s room at the girl’s orders at 8.30 o’clock. Possibly ten minutes later, she says, she heard the shot. When she could summon courage to go to her mistress’s room she found her lying on the floor dead, the revolver in her hand. What have you to say, Martin?”

“Nothing, sir,” said Martin levelly. “I have nothing at all to say, sir.”

He was a man of about thirty. Lanagan’s subsequent investigations disclosed that he had been with the Hemingways for many years, formerly working as a stable boy. When automobiles came into vogue, he had taken a place as chauffeur. He was a probation court boy when the Hemingways took him into their employ and “made a man of him,” as he used to express it.

“Nothing?” snapped Leslie. “Well, we’ll see. I guess we’ll take him in, Brady, and give him the dark cell.”

Leslie swung on his heel, and Brady, giving the chauffeur only time enough to run his machine to the garage, took him to the city prison and locked him up. But first I had noticed Lanagan pick up Martin’s cap from the seat of the machine while the brief conference was going on and deftly extract something from it. The “something” proved later to be one or two of Martin’s red hairs.

Other newspaper men emerging from the house had been informed by Leslie of the arrest. It was 11.30 o’clock by that time, and, with the arrest of Martin as their sensation, the morning paper men of one accord shoaled back to their offices. Leslie turned whatever ends might come up over to Wilson, with instructions to keep an eye on the maid, Marie, and went back to headquarters satisfied that if Martin was not the murderer he at least could clear up the mystery. Lanagan started back with the rest, but dropped off the car unobserved and returned to the house. He was not yet satisfied that all that the inmates knew there had been told.

“You go in and write the story,” he had told me. “That chauffeur isn’t the type who is rendezvousing with the daughter of the house; and she isn’t the type to engage in an alliance with a chauffeur. There is a nigger in this woodpile some place--and a red-headed nigger at that. Go off with your story if you don’t hear from me by press time, but keep my red hairs out of your story unless you hear from me further.”

I had gathered in my camera man and artist and hurried back to the office to write a story that I knew would be exactly similar in its facts with those in the other morning papers, leading off naturally with the arrest of the chauffeur.

There were still quite a number of relatives and family friends at the house when Lanagan returned. The reception hall was brilliantly lighted, and he hung up his hat. As he did so he examined Macondray’s topcoat carefully and quickly. On the collar was one hair. It was tucked away, labeled, in a separate package in the pocketbook.

He went to the room of the murder to find Wilson there “sweating” Macondray. The broker was bent over a table, sobbing. The intermittent, hysterical cries of the mother, hoarser and fainter as exhaustion came upon her, still punctuated the air. Wilson was reading a letter. He passed it to Lanagan.

Lanagan read, then, a startling few lines written by Miss Hemingway the day before to Macondray, breaking their engagement with the single explanation: _I love another. You surely could not want to marry a woman who had discovered she loved another._

Lanagan passed the letter back. He was anxious to make a microscopic examination of the hair, but he wanted also to put Macondray through a mill. He signalled Wilson to “jam,” and the detective touched Macondray on the shoulder.

“Get together,” he said brusquely. “We want you to answer a few questions.”

“We aren’t getting any place in this fashion,” added Lanagan curtly.

“Tell me, Macondray, when did you get that letter?”

Macondray straightened up, wiping his eyes.

“This afternoon at 5 o’clock,” he said.

“When did you see Miss Hemingway last?”

There was a long pause while Macondray gazed fixedly first at Lanagan and then at Wilson, as though trying to read their minds to learn what they knew.

“Because you did see her after the letter, you know,” said Lanagan quietly. It was entirely a random shot, but it went home. Macondray studied the matter over again for some moments.

“Well,” he said at last slowly, “I suppose it is best that I tell all I know. I saw her last--at half-past eight o’clock to-night.”

His head dropped to his breast and dry sobs shook him again for a minute.

“But as to her death I can offer no explanation. Only--you have Martin in custody, and I saw Martin in her room at that time. My God!” he burst out, “that Elvira could have sunk so low! A menial, a lackey--a chauffeur!”

“We don’t want a dissertation on caste,” said Lanagan with cold brutality. “What we want of you, Macondray, either here or at the city prison--” Macondray started, realising for the first time that suspicion was pointing his way--“is a simple statement of how you happened to see Miss Hemingway in this room with Martin and what happened after that?”

“I received her note by messenger at five o’clock. At half-past seven I called, but she was not in. I wanted a personal explanation. I called again in an hour. She was home, Marie said, and had gone to her room for the night and under no circumstances was to be disturbed. I determined to see her at any cost. I knew the position of her room here, fronting on the veranda. I went from the house by the front door and walked around here to the lawn. I intended only to attract her attention by throwing a pebble against the window and compelling her to speak with me. But while I stood there on the lawn, searching for a pebble, an automobile drove slowly down Buchanan Street and stopped just beyond the Hemingway drive behind the pepper tree. There were two men in it. One remained while the other, whom I recognised as Martin, came to the house, entering by the kitchen door. Of course, then I would not risk attracting Elvira’s attention.

“While I was just turning to go, Elvira’s curtain suddenly was raised, and I saw her peering out down Buchanan Street toward the place where the motor car was. Just when that tableau was being presented her chamber door opened quickly, and Martin entered. She seemed to be glad to see him, and extended both her hands to him.

“I could witness no more. It broke my heart. Sick and miserable that I had discovered so fine a girl, the girl whom I loved sincerely, in a meeting with her chauffeur, I turned and came away. That is all I know. Later I received a telephone message of the tragedy. They sent the car for me. I could not understand it then; I cannot now.”

He was sobbing again with his arms on the table.

Wilson stepped over to him.

“Brace up,” he said shortly, “I want you to come with me. The chief will want to keep you where he can see you for a day or two.” His heavy hand descended professionally upon Macondray’s shoulder. But Lanagan interrupted.

“Not a chance, Jim,” he said, shaking his head. “I don’t want to interfere with your duty, but I believe that chap is telling the truth absolutely. What we want to do now is to clear up the mystery of the man in the automobile. Martin must be made to talk. And, by the way, have you come across any red-haired people in this case outside Martin and Macondray? It struck me as a good little feature story. Here’s a red-haired chauffeur and a red-haired fiancée. It’s a combination that don’t often occur.”

“Humph,” replied Wilson. “That’s curious. The chief and I only saw Mrs. Hemingway for a moment, she was so unstrung, but she most certainly has the finest head of red hair for a woman of forty-four or five you want to see. Seems to be her own, too. Funny proposition, the three of them at that.”

Lanagan was staring, for once taken completely by surprise, so pat did the circumstance fit his theories. He glanced at his watch. His eyes were dancing with excitement. “That will be all, Mr. Macondray, unless Wilson wants you for anything,” he said. Wilson said he was through, and Macondray left the room. “Now, Jim, let’s see Marie again. I’m collecting red hair; it’s a fad I have acquired, and I want one or two of Mrs. Hemingway’s.”

“I was never more serious in my life,” said Wilson, summoning the maid. He sent her for a brush containing combings of her mistress’s hair. She asked no questions, but did as ordered. The maid acted like a person in a trance.

“Holding up to a certain point, and then she will drop like a plummet,” thought Lanagan, then aloud: “I guess we are all through here, Jim, except one last fling with the mother.”

But there was no “last fling” with the mother. She had been given a hypodermic, the nurse said, and was sleeping.

From a neighbourhood bar Wilson telephoned to Leslie, still waiting at police headquarters to get a last word from his men. The detective was still half decided to lock up both Marie and Macondray, but Leslie said no. Lanagan had borrowed Wilson’s magnifying glass and had spread out upon the bar the different pieces of red hair. He was so deeply engrossed in making comparisons that he failed to follow the startling one-sided conversation going on between Wilson and the chief. Wilson whirled around from the receiver as Lanagan, profoundly stirred, carefully tucked away his collection.

“A child could see it,” he muttered to himself as Wilson called out:

“Martin has spilled! Says he tricked the maid, who, by the way, is in love with him, into letting him into Elvira’s room. There he declared his love for her, demanded that she fly with him, and when she refused seized up the family revolver and shot her down, maddened by her command that he realise his place and return to the stables where he belonged. He escaped through the window after placing the revolver in her hand. They are going to book him now for murder.”

Lanagan took a long time to digest this bit of surprising information. He made no comment other than to say:

“You’re through for the night now, aren’t you, Jim? With Leslie vouching for Martin as the man?”

“Yes,” replied Jim, “and now I’m off.”

A moment after he had been left alone Lanagan had Leslie on the telephone.

“Chief? Lanagan. Hop into your car and meet me at Farrelly’s. Bring Martin along. It’s quarter to one. Make time. And this is something absolutely between you and me; me and the _Enquirer_. Scoot now, Chief. I’ve something to interest you.”

Since the incident in the room earlier in the evening Leslie had been restless about Lanagan. Within ten minutes the police automobile stopped at Farrelly’s. Leslie and Brady, with Martin walking between them, entered.

Lanagan quickly led the way to the side room.

One grimed incandescent lit the room pallidly. Around a beer-stained table the four men sat, Martin farthest from the door. Lanagan’s eyes were fairly snapping as he opened his pocketbook and spread it out upon the table. From it he extracted his little papers, each containing a piece or two of red hair. He laid each separate hair slowly, deliberately, before them all upon the table. Martin was watching the performance with eyes that glistened in the intensity of his interest. Equally absorbed were Leslie and Brady. Deliberately, precisely, Lanagan laid out the hairs--two from the brush of Mrs. Hemingway, one from the coat collar of Macondray, two from Martin’s cap, and the two short bits from the bracelet of Elvira.

Leslie had understood the pantomime the moment Lanagan opened his pocketbook and disclosed the collection of hair. He knew what it was now that he had overlooked; and, chagrined but alert, he watched each move that Lanagan made, for the solution had not yet come. Was it to be Martin? Leslie hoped professionally, for the sake of his reputation, that it would be.

“Martin,” said Lanagan, flashing the word out like a dirk might flash in the sun, “what did Mrs. Hemingway ever do to earn your loyalty--even to death?”

Martin paled, visibly, even beneath the sick light of the weak incandescent.

“She has been very good to me, sir. She took me out of the court’s custody and gave me a good home and a good salary. She made a man of me when I might have become a jailbird. She has been a good mistress, sir.”

“Yes, a good mistress,” came through Lanagan’s teeth. “You’re loyal. The type of loyal retainer. You’re not the type that falls in love with the daughter of the house. You never loved Elvira; you never murdered Elvira; and you are concealing now the name of the murderer, telling a poor weak lie that could not have stood at the outside for twenty-four hours! _Who killed Elvira?_”

Lanagan had arisen and glowered above the ashen Martin. Leslie was leaning forward, his eyes, gimletlike, boring into Martin’s. Brady swung around, too, to face him, caught as well under the spell of fierce magnetism of the newspaper man.

“_Tell me_,” Lanagan snarled, “_who was in that automobile with you last night_?”

Martin’s heavy lips dropped apart while he continued to stare affrightedly upon the newspaper man.

“_The mother of that girl found you in Elvira’s room with her, making preparations for flight with whoever was in that machine!_

“I will tell you,” continued Lanagan, hammering each word home; “I will tell you who killed Elvira Hemingway!” He leaned swiftly across the table, bending down and breathing a word into the ear of Martin. The effect was electrical.

“No! No! No--no--no! It was I, I tell you; I and no other! I shot her in my fit of madness!”

He collapsed suddenly, his head sinking on his breast, still gasping huskily forth his protestations.

“Look here, then,” said Lanagan. He held Brady’s magnifying glass over the hair--over the two hairs from the bracelet and then over the other specimens. The difference in the texture of the hair and a difference in colour were apparent under the microscope even in the ill-lighted room. That one of the three specimens was similar hair to that from the bracelet was apparent almost to the naked eye. Leslie’s face grew grave. Brady had absolute unbelief written in his eyes. Martin took one peering look furtively.

“That hair,” said Lanagan, indicating, “came from Elvira Hemingway’s bracelet. It lodged there in her last struggle with whoever killed her. This is your hair, Martin; compare it. This is Macondray’s; compare it. This is from the mother’s head; compare it. A red-haired person killed Elvira. It was not you--it was not--”

But Martin had sunk his head into his arms on the table with a groan. Lanagan waited; Leslie waited; Brady waited--experts all at the third degree. Mind was mauling matter--and mind was winning.

“It was not you,” continued Lanagan pitilessly as Martin lifted his haggard face with the look of pleading of an animal in his eyes. “It was not you--”

“_But it was not she--not my mistress! It was me! Me!_” The last words were a shriek; but the tax on his self-control had been too great. He fainted.

They threw water on Martin then and forced whiskey down his throat. He came to, staring in confusion from one face to the other.

“You have admitted the mother shot her own child,” said Lanagan rapidly, giving Martin no opportunity to recover his composure. “Now tell us the circumstances of this unnatural crime.”

Martin’s breakdown was complete.

Elvira Hemingway, practically forced into an engagement with Macondray largely through propinquity--he was her brother’s partner and a regular family guest--and through the wishes of her mother, inordinately ambitious socially to ally her daughter with the Macondrays, had finally jilted Macondray for a struggling young doctor, Stanton, a classmate at college. They were to have eloped, so greatly did the girl dread the scene that she knew would follow when her mother learned of her dismissal of Macondray. Martin, loyal, as he had said, to his mistress, but still more so to the daughter of the house, was party to the elopement. He had come to her room by prearrangement to help her out with a grip or two in order that no suspicion would attach should she be discovered in the room, on the porch, or crossing the lawn. The machine--the same that Macondray saw--was waiting at the pepper tree. But while Martin was in the room the mother, on some slight errand, had unexpectedly gone to her daughter’s room.

There she found her daughter fully attired, the French window wide open, and caught a flashing glimpse of a figure disappearing through the French window, that she recognised as Martin. At first flush she accepted the incident as an interrupted rendezvous of some sort between her daughter and her chauffeur, and one hot word of charge had brought a swift retort from the daughter, and a quarrel had arisen.

Martin, sneaking back to report progress in the room to Stanton, heard the rising voices in anger, and learned enough to know that the girl, under stress of her excitement, had revealed the plan for the elopement. He counselled with Stanton, and both agreed that Stanton had best retire and await developments, Martin to keep Stanton posted by telephone. In the grief and excitement of the final tragedy he did not do so, and the lover, worn by a sleepless night, received his great blow when he opened his morning paper. But this is not a tale of love or lovers, except insofar as they concern the solution of a crime, and Stanton therefore, with his blighted life, passes out of the story.

Martin, determined to intercede in hope of softening the lot of the daughter, taking all blame to himself as the messenger of the secret lovers, hurried then, back to the house.

Some primal strain of vulgarity, some poignant pang of disappointed motherly ambitions, or possibly some pang of personal ambitions thwarted, led to the utterance of one malediction sharper than all the others by the mother. In a moment of sudden hysteria the old-fashioned revolver that had been on her mantelpiece for years had been seized by the daughter in a wild threat of suicide.

The mother seized her wrist. A violent physical struggle for the weapon followed. This was occurring just as Martin was making his way back through the house to the room, taking along with him the maid, Marie, huddled, frightened, against the hall wall at sound of the unseemly family quarrel.

There was a flash and a report in his very eyes as Martin opened the door. The revolver, he said, was unmistakably in the mother’s hands; but whether the discharge was accidental or intentional in heat of passion, Martin could not say.

And that angle of the story never was cleared up.

The mother had swooned. When it was clear to the frightened servants that the girl was dead, they had carried the mother to her room.

The plan of the two was quickly formed. In their clumsy way they concluded it would be best for all concerned if the revolver should be placed in the girl’s hand to indicate suicide. Martin placed it there, while Marie laboured with the hysterical mother, trying to instil in her mind, in which the entire terrible scene was a whirl, the idea that Elvira had, in fact, committed suicide.

As for the confession:

“I feel I was to blame in a way, sir,” concluded Martin, wiping his eyes. “After all I would have been a jailbird anyway if she hadn’t saved me, most like. I thought I could protect her, too, sir, by confessing. I supposed if I said I committed the murder that would settle it.”

Lanagan glanced at his watch. It was half-past one.

“There’s one more move yet, Chief,” he said, “and I go to press in thirty minutes.”

In a moment or two they had all reached the Hemingway home again, surprised to find it brilliantly lighted. Servants were running about frantically. An excited voice was at the telephone as the quartet walked through the door. It was the butler.

“Hurry! Hurry!” he was crying. “Hemingway’s! Pacific Avenue! For God’s sake hurry!”

“What is it?” demanded Lanagan.

“Carbolic, I think,” replied the butler. “She escaped from the nurse and got to the bathroom. She had been raving for an hour entirely out of her head crying to Elvira to forgive her--that she--” he stopped suddenly, his lips coming together in a taut line. “Another loyal family retainer,” thought Lanagan as he and the chief exchanged quick glances. “Only this one can keep his secret for all of me.”

They hurried to render first aid, but one look convinced the reporter and the policeman, used to deaths in violent form, that the troubled and frightfully burdened mother’s soul had gone to a higher court for judgment.

Lanagan raced back downstairs for the telephone. It was five minutes to two. By the accident of being on the ground he would have at least that tremendous exclusive of the mother’s suicide.

And that--good story as it was--was all the _Enquirer_ printed, for it was all that I finally got from Lanagan just before the clock struck two.

Leslie, standing by the telephone, said, tentatively and curiously, when the receiver was hung up:

“What about the real story? Saving that for to-morrow?”

“No, Chief,” drawled Lanagan, full brother in the Fourth Estate. “No, Chief, that’s _all_ the story. She’s dead, isn’t she? They have had about enough trouble, this family.”

V

THE AMBASSADOR’S STICK-PIN

V

THE AMBASSADOR’S STICK-PIN

The manner of Lanagan’s acquiring the Ambassador’s stick-pin is nearly, if not quite, as interesting as the matter of his losing it. His possession of the pin was simple enough when one understands the chromatic ways of a police reporter’s daily routine: and Jack Lanagan was the “star” police reporter of the city. The surrender of the pin is as easily understood, when one comes to learn something of the devious paths the police reporter is sometimes called on to follow, and the curious and startling situations into which they sometimes lead.

Thus, when Lanagan, drifting indolently with the matinée throngs down Powell street, stopped to hold confab with “Kid” Monahan, that now retired King of the pickpockets, it was natural enough that he should remark on a stick-pin of odd design that replaced the accustomed three-carat in the “King’s” silk cravat. Gentry who lived by their wits and other people’s wealth, affect stones of much size. Some policemen wear them, too.

It was natural enough, that the “King,” proverbially generous, noticing the glance of interest, should say, “Here, wear it,” and with a motion as quick and as deft as a hummingbird’s flit, transfer the pin from his tie to that of the newspaper man.

It was then for Lanagan to observe, dryly:

“Your title is certainly earned,” as he extracted the pin and offered it back. “But this being a pin of very unusual design, I am afraid I might not be able to wear it as gracefully while awaiting the possible appearance of its owner, as can you. Further, that little exhibition of refined ‘touch’ you just gave, excites some grave suspicions that you are back at your old tricks.”

The one-time King knew Lanagan’s outspoken ways. Further he knew perfectly that, while the police accepted his declaration, since his last time out, of fealty to the law, he was a two-timer. The police were using him, or thought they were, as a “stool;” Lanagan did not think so.

“If it hadn’t been for what Lombroso classified as the ‘criminal lobe,’ I might really believe you had reformed,” Lanagan had told him once. “But in view of the lynx-like quality of your ears to be all top and no bottom, I am afraid the stamp of an extremely low moral resistance is indelibly upon you.”

And Monahan had only grinned then as now, in his ingenuous way, uncomprehending, and exalted Lanagan a notch or two. For some minor favour in times gone past, Lanagan had earned and held steadfastly the King’s unswerving loyalty; not an insignificant asset for a police reporter.

“Jack,” said the King in pained sincerity, “I’m not passing you no chance. Got it down at Small’s. Was shoved for a finner and I took it out of curiosity. Funny sticker, ain’t it? If anybody does make you though, why of course, hand it over. I like my old spark better anyhow.”

Small, be it said, was probably the thriftiest and crookedest fence inside the county, with the headquarters men on the pawnbroker detail taking orders--and percentages--from him, as faithfully as they reported to their captain of detectives. With another of those flits, the King placed back in his own necktie his customary brilliant, taken from his vest pocket. Before Lanagan could offer the other pin back the second time, his companion had left. Lanagan examined the pin critically.

It was a “funny sticker,” round, of gold and the size and thickness of a quarter. The back was plain, fitted with a patent clasp. On the face was a delicate relief of two eagles, heads out. An eye, a ruby for an iris, was in the exact centre. Below the eye were two clasped hands and above, two crossed swords. Woven around the entire design was what he at first took to be a snake, but discovered, on closer scrutiny, to be a rope. It was a delicate and unusual product of the goldsmith’s art.

Lanagan puzzled over it for an hour and then concluded:

“Russian, from the eagles; emblem of a secret order, evidently, from the eye; the clasped hands to signify that an oath has been taken and the axe or the rope is the headsman, or the hangman, for a breach of faith. That sounds plausible. But what particular society does it represent?”

He placed it in his tie and was recalling what he had read about Russian secret societies, when he was bumped violently by a short, swarthy individual who had, unknown to him, been following. As Lanagan straightened up he caught a quick flash, as of a message of tacit understanding, in the other’s eyes, as he gazed straight at the pin. In another moment a black flat wallet, thin and oblong, had been slipped adroitly into his inside coat pocket; a word which sounded like “scoraya” had been whispered in his ear, and the singular stranger had departed to the street to jump aboard a passing car, and disappear toward the ferry.

Lanagan made it a rule to be surprised at nothing, to accept nothing as coincidence not proved so, and to ignore no trifles. He was interested; highly interested, and he wanted to know what “scoraya” meant. That there was a connection between the pin and the wallet was, to him, clear. Possibly “scoraya” might help him.

In Fogarty’s back room, hard by police headquarters, he found Petroff, Russian interpreter in the police courts.

“What does a word that sounds like ‘scoraya’ mean?” he asked.

“It means ‘hurry,’ ‘at once,’ or any such meaning. It is what you Americans say, ‘get a move on,’” said Petroff.

Sitting apart Lanagan unfastened the black sealskin wallet and drew out a single sheet of paper, encased in a protection of oiled skin. There were written on the paper in a bold, strong hand, an even dozen words; words that sent his breath whistling through his teeth. It was in English, plain, clear, and signed by a name that gave even the imperturbable Lanagan a mighty start.

“Undoubtedly,” mused Lanagan, “they either have a system believed infallible, or they are mighty reckless of State secrets--and they are not reckless. Therefore the system has slipped a cog, and I am the anointed bearer of the message of His Serene Majesty, Nicholas. I appear to be on the knees of the gods,” he went on, as he wandered the streets, perplexed. “It’s possible, barely possible, that I am tangled in some monumental hoax. But I don’t believe it. If I don’t miss my guess I will be giving the austere Mr. Sampson, damned of all men of my tribe, the biggest exclusive his sweat-shop paper has turned out in this generation. But--I need more coincidences. I am plainly stumped.”

He had stopped by Lotta’s Fountain where the traffic patrolman was endeavouring to untangle a jam of trucks and automobiles.

Out of the very air, as though in wierd solution to his perplexity, it came again:

“Scoraya!”

Lanagan wheeled to find the voice. He had thought he must turn directly upon the man. There was no one near him save the occupant of a limousine, two feet away. The passenger was apparently engrossed in the evening paper. The window, though, was open. Lanagan watched him covertly from the corner of his eye.