Chapter V: Part 5

So we drifted into the Continental and caught part of the performance. There were trained birds of more than ordinary sagacity; the stereotyped and fearful cornet soloist; the girl singer, La Pattini, with a wonderful mezzo, remarkable beauty, an undoubted future, and an ability to sing the “Rosary” in a manner to bring tears. Then came a slap-stick tumbling act that was impossible, and we left.

Lanagan had suddenly become thoughtful. “Do you know what I think?” he said. “I think the world would actually do better to sweep away every vestige of law and ordinance and make a clean start again. Our system of punishment is all wrong. Take one heinous class of crimes; we punish the individual who takes upon herself to punish. We say the State has the power of punishment and the prerogative; and yet in the very crimes that are the most damnable, the State can never interfere because the injured party must suffer in silence. You might as well expect children to learn English through hieroglyphics as to make applicable to present-day conditions the antiquated penal code to which society is harnessed. That’s about enough of the sermon stuff. It’s not in my line.”

Lanagan was taking the lead, but I was not altogether surprised when we finally found ourselves in the neighbourhood of the Northrup home. Nor was I altogether surprised when Chief Leslie, that shrewd and veteran thief-taker, suddenly stepped from a doorway. My mind shot ahead to the Northrup home, a few doors away, and I could not bring myself to believe it could be possible that she was a principal.

“Brady is above,” said Leslie. “He says she came in about twenty minutes ago. We had better move on her.”

“Immediately,” said Lanagan, and in a moment more we were all three before the door to a lower flat of the old-fashioned sort, with a bell jangling noisily as Lanagan pulled out the handle.

It was Miss Northrup who answered the ring. She had on a dressing gown, and her hair, I could see, had been taken down for retiring and then gathered in a loose coil on her head, probably when the bell rang. She opened the door but a few inches.

“We would like to speak with you a moment, Miss Northrup,” said Lanagan. He indicated the chief. “This is Chief Leslie.”

“Kindly permit us to enter,” said the chief. There was a shadow of authority in his tone, and I knew that Lanagan and the chief were planning a drive on the girl and that something would be stirring in this old-fashioned flat before long. She hesitated a moment and then threw the door wide open and motioned us into the parlour. In the hall a gas jet burned dimly, as though for some member of the family who was not yet home.

She reached up and turned on the parlour light, and as she did so her loosely coiled hair tumbled about her shoulders. As the light struck down upon her features they had an appearance almost tragic.

“Be seated,” she said; it needed no expert eye to detect in her drawn lips the evidence of nervous tension.

“Madam,” said Leslie abruptly, snapping his jaws like a trap--and I knew this twenty-year-old girl was in for the third degree--“unless you at this time make a clean breast of all that you know concerning the murder of your employer, Ralph Monteagle, it will be necessary for me to book you for murder as an accessory before the fact.”

She started violently; her bosom began to rise and fall quickly; it was evident a breakdown was imminent, but she managed to say with considerable smoothness:

“I know nothing more than I have already told the police and the reporters.”

Lanagan, fierce eagerness glittering in his eyes, stepped before her.

“Nevertheless, possibly you know,” he said, biting each word off short, “how many persons beside yourself and Bartlett, Monteagle’s former chauffeur, who bought it, knew of the rope in his closet; knew that Monteagle had a morbid fear of being trapped in that building at night by fire; that he had had that fear since his friend Mervin was burned to death in the Baldwin Hotel fire; that he let no one know about the rope for fear of being ridiculed? How many persons, I say, besides yourself and Bartlett, knew the rope was there? _And when you knew that that rope had disappeared, as you must have known it, why didn’t you tell the police? Why did you permit a man to lie in prison whom you in your heart feel is innocent?_”

She sprang to her feet and threw both hands towards him as though warding off physical blows. She was trembling in intense agitation.

“Don’t! Don’t! for God’s sake, don’t!”

She sank back again into her chair, her face buried in her hands, rocking and moaning, with Lanagan standing over her, inexorable as Nemesis.

There was the sound of quick, light running up the front stairs, a key was turned in the lock, the front door swung open, and the girl in the chair, startled from her huddled misery, sprang to her feet and fairly leaped to meet the newcomer. She cried out, but whether in warning or in the joy of greeting could not be said, for her voice was half-smothered in a sob.

“Sister!” she said at last falteringly. “Sister, please go to your room. It is only some more policemen about Mr. Monteagle!” The words came chokingly. The other had not as yet come into our sight, but now she stepped into the light that streamed from the parlour into the hall--and I heard Lanagan’s swift, involuntary ejaculation:

“_La Pattini! Her sister!_”

Leslie, swift as thought, was half-across the parlour floor to the hall, yielding to a natural police impulse, but the newcomer, the other girl clinging to her, stepped fully into the doorway to the parlour.

“Yes,” she said in a voice that had no tremour of emotion, “La Pattini. Her sister. Why?”

“Why?” said Leslie, grimly. “Because we were just going to book her for murder as an accessory before the fact. We will switch the cut now and book you as the principal.”

At the feet of the queenly Pattini the harassed sister swooned. Lanagan pulled shut the door leading to the hall so that no one might by any mischance disturb us, and I fell to chafing the wrists of the senseless girl.

La Pattini sank wearily to a chair, stooping so that she could stroke her sister’s temples.

“I am glad it is over,” she said, apathetically. “I have only wondered that it did not come sooner. I have expected it hourly.”

The story was soon told: simple, age-old, but ever new, sordid possibly to a slight degree, but profoundly sad. She who was now known as La Pattini met Monteagle while visiting her sister at his office. He had found means to extend the acquaintance, had aided her in a secret way in her ambitions for the stage, securing the engagement at the Continental for her, and as a result of the clandestine relation there had been a promise of marriage. Then had come the engagement announcement of the Dennison-Monteagle marriage and the awakening of the dupe. But this was not the dupe of Monteagle’s many experiences. The picture of Miss Dennison, staring at her from the society columns, had fired a sinister jealousy.

A confession had been made to the younger sister when La Pattini sought an opportunity of pleading once again alone with Monteagle, who had finally repudiated her. The sister had admitted her to the office after Monteagle left for the afternoon, knowing he was to return in the evening. She concealed herself in the closet.

Before she entered the office her plan had been formed. Either Monteagle would marry her or he should die. At that time she had no thought of escaping. She had heard the telephone ringing repeatedly; heard the elevator boy enter the room just too late to get the party calling.

Finally Monteagle had arrived and she had discovered herself. What happened was quickly over. The quarrel was of few words, and he had struck her with his fist. She stabbed him to the heart, and then with a vindictiveness that she could not now understand and shuddered at recalling had marred his features with the knife. Her first thought had been to give herself up. Then she wondered why she should do that. The brief words of their quarrel had not been heard; the janitor she could hear on the floor above. After all, she had done no more than kill a snake.

The thought of the rope came to her. She knew about it, because once when she was in the office as Monteagle worked late she had expressed anxiety at being seen coming from the building with him, and he had showed her the rope and jokingly offered to let her down from the window, which opened upon a divisional alley in the rear of the Sutton building.

The rope was of great length. Seeking for a place to tie it, she naturally turned to the radiator. The thought occurred to her with a flash her means of escape from the room might never be known if the rope was long enough to run under the radiator, letting both ends to the ground. She could then draw it down after she reached the ground by pulling on one end and letting it run under the radiator like a pulley. She tried the length, the light from the windows of the elevator shaft, opening into the areaway, giving sufficient brightness.

“As part of the preparation for the future on the stage that Mr. Monteagle was to help me get,” she said, dispassionately, “I have taken gymnasium work to build up my system. You can see it was no extraordinary thing for me to let myself down by the double rope, pulling the window shut after I climbed out. I left it open enough so that the rope could run free when I pulled it after me. I threw the rope in a street garbage tin. I was at the theatre, remarkable as it may seem, in time for my act at ten o’clock, although I missed the first show. I have been in a daze since; I was in a trance after I did the stabbing. I have known I must be found out. I am glad that it is all over. I have made no attempt to escape. I am absolutely indifferent to my fate.”

The sister, recovered from her swoon, was weeping softly, her head bowed in the other’s lap.

“Tell me,” said Lanagan curiously to her, “why did you telephone to Monteagle?”

She gasped, and it appeared for the moment that she was about to swoon again. Finally she faltered, while her own sister looked at her strangely:

“I--was afraid sister meant him harm--I didn’t think of it until I got home--and then something about her face came back to me--I wanted to warn Mr. Monteagle not to arouse her--I finally succeeded in getting him at his club before he left for his office and--he only laughed--”

“Yes,” said La Pattini bitterly, “he told me so--and laughed--and snapped his fingers when he spoke about you--that was just before he struck me ... and then I killed him.”

The sudden fresh sobs of the younger girl, smothered as they were in her sister’s lap, seemed to wrench her very being. Lanagan glanced at Leslie; Leslie averted his eyes. There was a prolonged pause, broken only by the agonised, stifled sobbing, while she of crime threw her arms shelteringly around the weaker vessel. But her own deathly calm she preserved.

Finally Leslie arose slowly and said simply:

“I am sorry. I have no recourse. My duty is clear.”

“So is mine,” said Lanagan quickly, “and it is this: I will guarantee you, Miss Northrup, the support of the _Enquirer_, and I will secure for you as counsel my personal friend, Mr. William Hadden, the ablest man in the West, to present your case to a jury in the proper manner to secure the acquittal that you are entitled to.”

It was then after one o’clock. We left Leslie at the house to bring the girl to the city prison after she had an opportunity of parting from her family. Leslie was to contrive not to book her before half-past two to save our “exclusive.” By that time the _Times_ and the _Herald_ would be gone to press.

On our hurried trip to the office--where I took vast delight marching in on Sampson with a grin--Lanagan supplied me with the missing links. He spoke of finding a few strands from a manila rope sticking beneath the radiator and of his instant surmise as to the precise way in which the escape had been made. Monahan located Bartlett, Monteagle’s former chauffeur, who had taken a public stand, and from him learned of the rope that Monteagle had in his closet which Bartlett had bought. Lanagan knew from his careful search that the rope was not in the closet when he made his examination, and he promptly concluded that Miss Grace Northrup must have known who committed the crime. She knew the rope was there, according to Bartlett, and Lanagan rightly surmised that she must have known of its disappearance.

Robbery not having been the motive, Lanagan had “rapped” to the theory of a jealous or vengeful woman who had deliberately marred the features after death. His police experience had included a case or two where somewhat similar conditions had been present.

It was from Bartlett that the first tip came on La Pattini, although he did not know, and neither did Lanagan at that time, that she was the sister of Monteagle’s stenographer. All he knew was that until he left Monteagle’s employ she seemed to be the favoured of the alliances that the broker secretly maintained.

Lanagan had discovered that La Pattini had missed her first show on Monday night, and the circumstance was sufficient to stir his suspicions, although it must be confessed that until the development at the home, where her relationship to Miss Northrup was disclosed, nothing positive had been secured against her. The moment the relationship was made clear, both Lanagan and the chief had instantly reached the same conclusion. The “drive” had been made and the confession followed.

“Great, Jack, great,” said Sampson with as much enthusiasm as his thin blood could support. “Gad! What a whaling we gave them! What a whaling!”

The _Enquirer_ had smeared the story over three pages, breaking all make-up rules on type display. It was a clean exclusive in every detail.

“Well, Sampson,” replied Lanagan, “it isn’t much to be proud of at that. Only it’s all in our game. But I’ve given my promise and we’ve got to get that girl acquitted.”

“That’s up to you,” said Sampson. “The paper’s yours.”

VII

THE PENDELTON LEGACY

VII

THE PENDELTON LEGACY

“I have always considered Bannerman,” said Jack Lanagan, deliberately, “the crookedest judge that ever sat on the bench in San Francisco.”

Attorney Haddon, distinguished in criminal practice, thumped his office table.

“Exactly,” he said. “Have felt that way about it myself. But he seems to have a hold on the people. And he makes capital out of the fact that he ever permits a ‘shyster’ lawyer to practise in his court.”

“Simple,” replied Lanagan. “He doesn’t have to. He does business with Fogarty direct. They take dinner two or three times a week at the St. Germain. Other times they use the telephone. Those are things people don’t know. There aren’t many who do outside of myself. But at that I suppose he might get by with the long-eared public with the explanation that ‘Billy’ Fogarty, bail-bond grafter and chief of the ‘shysters,’ was a schoolmate of his, raised on the same street, and a member of one or two fraternal organisations with him. All of which is true.

“Bannerman,” he continued, “doesn’t bother with small cases. He’s after the big stuff. And I have a hunch that somewhere back of this case there is big graft. He has been against us from the start. And by the Lord Harry,” Lanagan had arisen, his black eyes snapping, “I’ve put several men in jail, but here’s one that I’m going to get out. Peters no more murdered that little child of his than I did. It’s an absolute obsession with me that there is some colossal mystery back of the whole thing; some gigantic conspiracy; and Bannerman’s attitude to-day gives me the first direct line to work on I have had. I am going to work on it again at once.”

Charley Peters, a machinist, twenty-five years of age, had been held to answer by Bannerman that day to the higher court on a charge of murder for slaying his week old son. It was a case that had attracted wide attention when several organisations of women’s clubs took a stand against Peters.

He had married, as was brought out at the preliminary hearing, a woman of the night life, who had made him, to all report, a capable wife. Originally from Oakland, after the marriage he had moved to an isolated little home in the outskirts of the Potrero, where neither he nor his wife were known. Before their child was born they had been overheard by a passing neighbour in a violent quarrel. Peters freely admitted the quarrel, but explained that, on the particular night in question, he had been over-wrought with a particularly hard day’s labour, returned home wearied and worried to find a statement from the doctor for a large amount, and for a moment had become resentful at having another mouth to feed with nothing but debt before him. The quarrel, he said, was quickly made up and the relations of the two were happy up to and after the child was born.

But the prosecuting attorney had made great use of the evidence, Bannerman ruling consistently against the objections of Haddon.

The dead child had been found by a crone, who was ministering to Mrs. Peters. She had placed it in a cot in a room adjacent to the mother’s room, and had left both mother and child asleep at about six-thirty o’clock while she went out to attend to some small purchases. She returned at about a quarter to seven to find Peters just home from his work and sitting by his wife’s bed. She was asleep. It was not for some little time later that the beldame, going to the child’s cot, discovered that it was dead. Her first suppressed cry had been heard by the acute ears of the mother, even in sleep, and she awakened from slumber to call for her babe. In the excitement that followed with the husband and the beldame she became alarmed and, arising, made her way to the adjoining room to discover the dreadful truth. She sank rapidly after the shock and died within a few days.

It was not until the doctor, coming on a call to attend the mother, examined the child, that the marks of strangulation were discovered on its little throat. The police were promptly notified. After one night’s detention the old woman was freed of suspicion and the police hand fell on Peters.

He protested that he had entered the house not fifteen minutes before the old woman, had found both mother and babe asleep, as he supposed, and had sat down by his wife’s side to watch, until the nurse returned.

Such were the principal facts.

Lanagan, working from a stubborn conviction of Peters’ innocence, had devoted much attention to the case. Finally, when the police brought Peters to trial, Lanagan had enlisted the services of Haddon to defend him. Lanagan had known Haddon for a good many years; known him when he was a young prosecutor in the police courts. He had given him many friendly “boosts” in those days. Haddon had never forgotten. He was frank to admit that it was the newspaper men at police headquarters, constantly “featuring” him in the police news, who gave him his real start.

After Bannerman had ruled as a committing magistrate, binding Peters over to trial for murder, Lanagan had walked to Haddon’s office, reviewing the events of the day.

It was his own conviction, as well as that of Haddon, that in all fairness, from the evidence presented, Bannerman should have dismissed the charge. That he should have held Peters as guilty gave Lanagan a freshened enthusiasm in Peters’ behalf; because it appeared to Lanagan that Bannerman was acting under powerful pressure in finding such a holding, even with the sentiment created by neurotic women in favour of a conviction.

“I’ll keep you posted on developments,” said Lanagan, as he left Haddon’s office, cheerfully helping himself to a fist-full of the cigars which that discriminating smoker imported for his own use. “I may need your service later.

“Sampson,” he said to his city editor a few moments later, “there’s something funny about that Peters case, in spite of their holding him to answer. Haddon thinks as I do. I’m going to tackle it again.”

“Tear into it, Jack,” said Sampson. “You haven’t turned much up lately, anyhow. Think you are going stale.”

“We’ll see,” said Lanagan briefly.

The St. Germain, in the days before the fire, had a public entrance on Stockton street and a private entrance on O’Farrell. Directly across from the private entrance was a cigar stand, and there Lanagan loitered for an hour or more.

“If I’m right in this thing,” he said, “Bannerman and Fogarty will be getting together to talk over the situation. And if they do I’ll let them know pretty pronto that we suspect a nigger in the woodpile somewhere and see if I can’t start them to covering up in a fashion that I can follow.”

It was about dusk when he suddenly crossed the street and went in at the private door. Fogarty had entered a few minutes before. Lanagan did not worry about Bannerman. He would take the front door, with his high silk hat and his frock coat and his exaggerated impeccability. That old French restaurant had turned up more than one good story in its day, and the upper floor steward was one of Lanagan’s numerous “leaks” in the night life district.

A dollar to the steward and he had been told the number of the room where Bannerman was dining. He knocked at the door, as the waiter might, gently. It was Fogarty who half-opened it. Lanagan caught a glimpse of Bannerman, who passed the plate in the church on Sundays, with a dry Martini nicely poised at his lips. A champagne cooler stood comfortably by. Fogarty for a moment seemed about to close the door, but was quick-witted enough not to do so.

“Want me, Jack?” he asked, suavely. He was of the full-fed type of saloon man, a sort of a near-broker in appearance. “Come on in and join us.”

“Thanks,” said Lanagan, shortly. “Just ate. I was curious to see who Bannerman was dining with. That’s all.”

The dry Martini struck the table suddenly and slopped over. “What a miserable, weak sister of a crook!” thought Lanagan. “I can admire a big crook, but this breed!”

“Why, my dear Mr. Lanagan!” exclaimed Bannerman, coming forward so hastily his napkin trailed behind him from his collar, where it had been tucked. “I just met my old friend William quite accidentally. We went to school together, you know. I seldom see him nowadays.”

To hear the notorious “Billy” Fogarty called William made Lanagan smile. Fogarty himself had difficulty repressing his grin.

“Judge,” said Lanagan, smoothly, “you lie. Don’t try to peddle any of that stuff on me. You see him about three times a week right here in this room, and you regulate your court calendar by what he tells you. I had very particular reasons for wondering whether you were here to-night. I see you are. So-long, Billy. Enjoy that wine, Judge. But you better order another Martini.”

Before either could make reply he backed away from the door and left the café.

“Pretty fair start,” he muttered to himself, grimly. “A judge with Bannerman’s appreciation of newspapers will have a lively understanding of the mess I caught him in. If there is anything wrong here, there will be a get-together of some sort quick.”

His thoughts swung back to the case in hand.

“The man who was big enough to take that woman away from the night life and make her his wife, was not the man who was killing their child,” he repeated to himself, with stubborn reiteration. And yet there could not be found hitherto the slightest sherd of motive on the part of anyone else to account for the killing.

And yet, so far as Lanagan’s investigations had gone on the case, Peters’ record was found to be ordinary enough, and neither in his life nor that of his family was there anything irregular to be discovered that would create the barest suspicion of any person seeking to strike at him through the child. There could be found not the slightest sherd of motive on the part of anyone else to account for the killing.

The life of the wife began with the meeting with Peters. What her heritage was or her history before that time, proved a problem absolutely insoluble to Lanagan and the police: although the police, for their part, did little save work to fasten the crime on the husband, even the brilliant Leslie, greatest chief of his time, taking that line.

The records of the night life are unwritten, save where the requiescat is inscribed when a callous deputy coroner blots the entry at the morgue. Who she was before she came into the brooding shadow of the night lights was a secret that, if any of the wastrels there knew, they guarded. It is more than likely that they did not know. It is a great, wide way, the entrance there. She had come by that way one of a multitude; into the shadows and out. Whether she went out for happiness or ill, whether to a free life or a sombre death, few there cared to ask, even if they recalled her at all.

Ceaselessly Lanagan had searched that district. He could trace her back to the time when Peters met her and no further. That incident had made some trifling stir merely because the “guy who got ‘copped’ on Gracie” had taken her away and really married her; or so they had heard.

Otherwise she had come into that Tenderloin district as many of her transitory sisters, with a suit case; but whether from far or near no one could say.

The influences that were eager to land Peters in the penitentiary were unquestionably the same that murdered the child; so Lanagan argued under the spell of his new theory. They had not slain the mother, directly; but they may have shrewdly calculated the effect upon her, in her precarious condition, of the death of the child: knowledge of which could scarcely be kept from her.

“Let us suppose, then,” mused Lanagan, “let us suppose that someone wanted the child out of the way and now wants the husband out of the way. It would be possible to hang him for that crime. In the present state of the public mind, and with Bannerman holding him to answer for murder, life is the least he will get. What happens? The child of ‘Gracie Dubois’ is dead. The husband is, or soon will be, civilly dead. She is dead: but that does not appear to have a moving cause. Why the child’s death and the father’s imprisonment? Undoubtedly so that someone may profit. But who? Who, concealed back of the shadows of the night lights, kept grim watch on ‘Gracie Dubois’? Who was concerned with the fate of that poor wretched girl anxious only for redemption, for a decent life? What ‘dead hand’ is it that has slain her issue and blighted her poor hopes for happiness and her passionate ambition for motherhood?”

And Bannerman, with his high silk hat and his frock coat and his impeccable respectability, came before him insistently; Bannerman, with his dry Martini and his quart of wine and his vis-a-vis dinner with “William” Fogarty.

Many thoughts that apparently flash into the mind spontaneously are but the products of a chain of thought carried consistently over a period of time.

It was so with Lanagan and his sudden theory of the “dead hand”; of a case that in some manner reverted back to a will or to an inheritance. He was rather surprised that the thought had not occurred sooner; but he had been busied with other thoughts and theories, and it was not until the way had been cleared that, in its logical time, that theory had suddenly struck him with conviction. And obviously it was the only theory that had not as yet been exploited by him; that some place back in the earlier life of that poor waif of the night life there might lie the solution of the crime--financial reasons for desiring to be rid of her progeny and her natural legatee, her husband.

The question intruded: why was not the husband murdered as well? There might be many reasons, but one would answer: his imprisonment would suffice even if he were not executed; and if he managed to avoid any penalty, there would be time enough to see him.

And leading back to that “dead hand” theory of his, Lanagan could see but two links: Bannerman and Fogarty.

From the neighbourhood of the St. Germain he got me on the wire.

“Cover Fogarty’s,” he said. “Pick up some of the bunch and drop in casually. Keep your eye on him if he’s there, and who he talks to. Spend money and get soberly drunk, if necessary to allay any suspicion that he is being watched. Get Sampson on the ’phone by ten o’clock. There may be a message for you.”

I hadn’t the faintest idea what it was all about, but Lanagan’s voice was as snappy as a drill master. I went to the reporter’s room at police headquarters and led a bunch to Fogarty’s to rattle the dice for a round or two. It was pay night and money was free. If Fogarty, after he came in, had any suspicions of me--he knew that Lanagan and I always worked together--they were soon allayed. The dice rolled blithely for an hour or two with one of the boys dropping out occasionally to “cover” the police beat for the others while the play went on.

But nothing happened and I slipped away to get Sampson on the ’phone. It was ten o’clock. He was didactic as usual, and as irritatingly brief: “Report to Lanagan. Room 802 Fairmont. Take the back stairs and make the room above all things without being seen.”

That same old tingle that always shot up my spine when Lanagan was calling me in on the smash of one of his grand climaxes, shivered up to my hair roots. In a general way I knew the quest he was on, but that his search should have led him to the Fairmont hotel, on the very crest of aristocratic Nob Hill, was sufficient without further information to set my imagination humming.

The door was open and I entered, noiselessly. Lanagan was lying on the bed, smoking. He jumped up.

“Here,” he said quickly, indicating a chair drawn up before the door leading to the adjoining room--they were suite rooms but used separately. “Sit there until I get back and take notes on what you hear. Keep your ear glued to that hole.”

He had cut with his pocket knife an inch hole in the panelling of the door. He had whittled it so nicely that it was not quite cut entirely through. “You will find you can hear everything that is said in an ordinary tone of voice. There’s no one in there now. An Englishman named Holmes has the room. Pretty soon I expect him and Larry Leighton in there with a girl. I am going out and get hold of Leslie. Lock the door after me and keep your ears open for us when we get back. I won’t knock, but will turn the handle once or twice.”

“What’s the lay?” I asked.

“No time to talk now,” he flung back over his shoulder, and was gone.

It was probably twenty minutes later when the occupants of the adjoining room entered. There were two men and a woman. I could distinguish perfectly Leighton’s sonorous voice. He had been a lawyer of standing in years gone by, but lately had been involved in one or two transactions a trifle “shady” in character, chiefly pertaining to the administration of estates; but nothing had ever been proved against him nor had the matter ever got into such shape that the papers could use it. So far as the general public was concerned, he stood well enough.

“I felt I could not be wrong,” Leighton was saying. “And I am glad that you are satisfied. It must be a source of great satisfaction to you, Miss Pendelton, to be restored to your name and inheritance.”

“I am only sorry now it did not happen before poor father went,” the girl replied, with a tremble in her voice, and I fancied she was crying.

“Personally,” it was the Englishman’s voice, “I am satisfied of the identity. But of course my principals in London will also have to be satisfied. It would be best to leave at once, I think, for England. For the sake of the Pendelton name we must work secretly and quietly. I would not want the matter in the public prints for the world.”

I was listening with such intentness that it was some time before the soft and insistent grating of the doorknob caught my attention. I tiptoed to the door. Lanagan entered. In another moment Leslie came in and after a few moments of interval, Brady and Wilson, two of Leslie’s steadiest thief-takers, stepped in softly. There was big game afoot of some sort!

Leslie had his ear to the door. He remained there for some time, and then motioned Brady, who took his turn, followed by Wilson.

Lanagan was sitting on a corner of the little table, swinging his feet lazily, but following every move made by the officers, and watching every shade of expression in their faces. Leslie took another turn and a half smile played over Lanagan’s face as that veteran Chief finally stepped over to him and put out his hand. Lanagan gripped it. Not a word was spoken. Motioning to Brady and Wilson, Leslie stepped out and we followed.

He rapped on the door to the adjoining room. Leighton opened it, a look of enquiry on his rotund features. As swiftly as though a swab had been rubbed over it, his look of enquiry shaded into one of alarm, as he recognised Leslie. We filed in and Wilson snapped the lock behind him and stood at the door, Brady walking quickly to the window and taking his position there. Not a word had as yet been spoken. Leighton stood as though stupefied. The Englishman, a dapper, well-dressed man of probably forty, smoking a cigarette at ease, raised his brows as we entered, but said nothing.

On the edge of the bed the girl was sitting, her wide eyes following Leslie. It was evident that she knew him by sight. Her resemblance to Mrs. Peters was striking. Both were women of that blonde, doll-faced type so frequently found in the night life.

“Leighton,” said Leslie, “the jig is up.”

Leighton sank into a chair. The Chief went to the connecting door, tapped for a moment, and then jabbed his knife through Lanagan’s ear hole.

“See?” he said, laconically. “We’ve been listening there for thirty minutes. Gertrude Pendelton is dead; you know she is dead and her child with her. And this woman here,” turning sharply to the girl, “knows that she is not Gertrude Pendelton. She knows perfectly well that she is playing a crooked ‘lost heir’ case for you, Leighton.”

As though he had been a jack in the box, Holmes jumped to his feet.

“Heavens, Sir!” he cried, “why, what are you saying! Who are you?”

Leslie threw back his coat, displaying his diamond-studded shield.

“Chief of Police Leslie of San Francisco,” He said, shortly.

With a swift movement the girl’s hand went to her corsage and in a flash Lanagan had hurtled across the room and a tiny dagger spun to the floor. She threw herself back upon the bed, crying in sudden hysteria:

“You might have let me done it! You might have let me done it!” she wailed bitterly. Lanagan was wrapping up his hand. He had got the point of the dagger through the ball of his thumb in the rush. She jumped up again and threw herself at the feet of Leslie.

“It’s my first crooked trick, so help me, Chief! He dragged me into it! What was I to do? It looked easy and it was a way out of the Tenderloin!”

Leighton was glancing heavily, his lips apart, from the door to the window as though planning an attempt to escape by either means.

“You’ve been shading pretty close on one or two things lately, Leighton,” said the Chief grimly. “But I didn’t think you had it in you to take a chance at the scaffold.”

“What do you mean by that, Chief?” gasped Leighton, with a sickly attempt at composure.

“He means,” thundered Lanagan, “that you are the man back of the murder of the real Gertrude Pendelton’s child, and the indirect killing of Gertrude Pendelton, who was Mrs. Peters! He means that you are the man back of Fogarty, who is the man who secured the conviction, in Bannerman’s court, of Peters. That’s what he means!”

Lanagan wheeled on the Englishman.

“How much money have you already paid Leighton?”

“One thousand pounds for producing this girl. He was to get four thousand more when final proof of identity was accepted by my principals in London.”

Leslie and Lanagan exchanged glances. It was big pickings for Larry Leighton. Twenty-five thousand dollars in all; properly handled by Fogarty, it would go a long way to grease the wheels of justice in the police court.

Leighton arose, shaking like a palsied man, and tottered, rather than walked, to the Chief. He extended his wrists.

“Put on the bracelets, Chief,” he said, in a voice that was but a shadow of his rich voice. “I took my chances, I’ll take my medicine. The girl hasn’t done anything yet you can hold her on. She knows nothing about the other thing. The doctors had given me two years to live--kidneys gone--and I saw a chance for a big clean-up and the German springs. It might have saved me.”

“Big!” interrupted the Englishman, awed, “one hundred and fifty thousand pounds!”

“That’s all, Chief,” resumed Leighton. “I did the trick with the child myself, I wouldn’t trust anybody else. The night was pitch black and there are no houses right near there, you know. I waited till the old lady went out. After I finished the child, I was going to get the mother, but the front gate slammed. It was Peters coming home. I slipped out the back door again. I wanted the husband out of the way, on general principles. I did not know what his wife might have told him and he was better off, in case any publicity attended the restoration of the girl here, where he couldn’t squeak, in case his wife had ever told him her real name and story.

“This girl here, a Tenderloiner, that I picked up because she looks a good bit like Mrs. Peters, seemed to have nerve enough for the deal, and she was to collect the estate and give me half. It was a big gamble. You’re right about the scaffold, Chief. I never took any such chance before, but this was a ‘get-away’ stake for life for me, and I took it.

“I had no direct dealings with Bannerman. There’s nothing on him. I had talks with Fogarty but paid no money. In a general way he gathered I wanted the man across, and I guess he gathered, too, that there would be a big clean-up all around at the end of it. There’s no case on anybody except myself.”

“Nothing on Bannerman or Fogarty that would make a case in court, possibly,” said Lanagan, curtly, “but plenty that the _Enquirer_ can print. You’re loyal to your pals, Leighton.”

It appeared that Leighton, through a newspaper advertisement, got into communication with the London firm of lawyers of which Holmes was the confidential representative. They had a theory that the girl they sought had gone to San Francisco. A runaway at the age of fifteen, Gertrude Pendelton had been estranged from her father. She had taken the downward path, but the father, relenting on his death bed, willed his estate to her, and his executors had for months been endeavouring to locate her.

Leighton immediately began his plotting to foist an impostor upon the executors and their lawyers. It must be remembered that they had accepted him as a reputable lawyer. He had made a secret trip to England and had secured a fairly complete record of the places the Pendeltons had lived in while the daughter was still with them. Originally residents of various parts of the British possessions, the family had settled at Applegate, where the mother died, the father following her some months later. At Applegate there were none who had ever known the daughter. Leighton’s investigations in England failed to reveal anyone who had in fact ever known her, the Pendeltons only coming to England to settle down there a few years before.

To Leighton’s scheming brain, the thing looked perfectly simple.

The murder plot was secondary. It had been his original plan to find the real Gertrude Pendelton and if possible strike some bargain with her. Equipped with a picture of her taken at the age of fifteen, he had finally traced her, to find her respectably married. Consequently, it was hardly likely that he could strike any combination with her that would give him the “haul” that he sought to make. Then, with her alive, there was always danger that she would disclose her identity to her husband. When the child came along, Leighton, keeping close tab on the Peters, concluded that inevitably motherly pride in the redeemed woman would bring about an attempt at a family reconciliation. Then would come to her the knowledge of her father’s death and of her own inheritance.

He determined on one bold stroke: kill mother and child on the gamble that what did happen, would happen: that the husband would be accused.

With the husband safely imprisoned, or possibly executed, his path with the impostor would be unimpeded. He had coached his impostor well on the information gained on his English trip.

So much for Leighton’s story. Lanagan’s story was startlingly simple. After telephoning for me to cover Fogarty’s, he had returned to watch the St. Germain. Fogarty finally came out and Lanagan shadowed him to the Mills building. He came from there shortly, in company with Leighton, and Lanagan, still in the grasp of his “dead hand” theory, and knowing Leighton by sight, and his reputation in the inner circles for tangling up in estate cases, dropped Fogarty and followed Leighton. He went directly to the Fairmont. When he went to the desk to call for Holmes, Lanagan was close at his side. Leighton did not know him by sight. Learning which room Holmes had, Lanagan was fortunate in securing an unoccupied room adjoining, and he was in his room ten minutes after Leighton had entered Holmes’. Being fortunate enough to get the room merely hastened the climax, because the case was already clearing in Lanagan’s mind.

His ear to the keyhole of the door connecting the two rooms--many of the rooms in that hotel are so joined, to permit of them being thrown into suites--he had heard a fragment of conversation here and there, and knew that Leighton was bringing a girl for the Englishman’s examination who was being sought as a missing English heir. Finally the Englishman, shortly after eight o’clock, had concluded to go with Leighton to bring her, desirous evidently of satisfying himself that she was in the Tenderloin, which seemed to be a point in their argument.

With Holmes and Leighton out of their room, Lanagan had set to work to whittle a hole in the door for better hearing facilities, and then had sent the message to Sampson that brought me to his room.

To Lanagan’s ranging mind, the thing was as clear as print. He had traced his connection past Fogarty down to the last figure in the combination. It was a “long shot,” perhaps, that Leighton had put the real heir out of the way in order to impose an imposture on the estate and thus divide probably a full half; but it was on “long shots” that Lanagan’s extraordinary brain usually won out.

The narratives were ended. Lanagan turned to Leslie:

“I want Peters here, Chief, to give the last note to my story. To prevent any ‘leak’ from the county jail, I will have Haddon get Superior Judge Dunlevy to telephone a verbal order of release to the jail for Peters to be brought to the city to see his council. It’s rather unusual, but has been done before, and Dunlevy will do it. I think I’ll get Haddon in for the finals, too. He’s been in the case pretty deep.”

It was probably an hour later before Haddon dropped into the room. He had sent a machine for Peters, Dunlevy telephoning the order. A few moments later Peters, in charge of a deputy sheriff, entered and in brief and business-like fashion the facts were laid before him. It was a little too much for him to grasp all at once.

When he finally did, it was the Englishman who brought matters to a business basis by remarking:

“Leighton certainly seems to have been extremely positive about the identity of Mrs. Peters. Did you know that she was Gertrude Pendelton?”

“Sir,” said Peters, “I married my wife as I found her, and I asked no questions. She made me a good wife. She never talked about herself or her people.”

“Did she have any keepsakes, any old trinkets, any pictures?”

Peters unbuttoned his shirt. “Only this,” he said, producing a locket attached to a fine gold chain. “She asked me to wear it when she was taken to bed, and if anything happened, to give it to the babe. The police missed it in searching me. It’s her father and mother, I think, although she never said.”

With eager fingers Holmes opened the old-fashioned locket.

“It is Captain and Mrs. Pendelton,” he said, simply. “He looks as he looked the day before his death.” A silence fell upon the room, as he snapped the locket and, bowing profoundly, passed it back to Peters. He then continued:

“My mission here has certainly had a curious termination. I will remain until the court matters against you are all disposed of. I would suggest then that you return with me to London, so that you can be on the ground in the arrangements for transferring the estate to you.”

“There will be no arrangements,” said Peters. “I don’t want the money.”

The Englishman stared incredulously.

“Don’t want it! Don’t want one hundred and fifty thousand pounds, three quarters of a million dollars? It will escheat to the Crown if you refuse it.”

“Let it then,” said Peters, stubbornly. “I don’t want it. Why should I take something my wife didn’t want? There must be something wrong about it somewhere. Why should I make money by the death of my wife and child? If she were here to share it--if only my boy were here--”

He broke down for the first time since his arrest, and sobbed, throwing his arms over his head in a wild burst of grief. Finally he composed himself.

“I’ll go back to my trade,” he said, simply. “Hard work is the best thing for me now.”

He turned to Lanagan and their hands met in a long, hard clasp.

“If it can be done, I’ll turn the money over to you, Mr. Lanagan.”

“Thanks, Peters, no. I’ve only done a newspaperman’s work; what the _Enquirer_ pays me to do. You’re all man; and it’s been a pleasure to clear you.”

To Leslie, again the master newspaper mind, calculating the minutes swiftly slipping around after midnight, he snapped:

“It’s in your hands now, Chief. Keep everybody here and stall around for an hour or so, while Norton and I give the town a story that, if it doesn’t make a case in court against Fogarty and Bannerman, will at least chase Fogarty out of town till it blows over and beat Bannerman out of the nomination for Superior Judge. His name comes before the convention to-morrow night. We’re off.”

Then to me as we swiftly pelted out of the room:

“Key up to it, Norrie; this is some stem-winder!”

VIII

AT THE END OF THE LONG NIGHT

VIII

AT THE END OF THE LONG NIGHT

“Extra! Extra!” in shrill diminuendo awakened Jack Lanagan from the very heart of his morning slumber. The morning paper man sleeps late and nothing short of cataclysm or the cry of an extra is likely to awaken him. Lanagan was from his bed to the window in a lanky leap hailing the newsboy.

It was the _Evening Record_ with a “screamer” head and two hundred words of black-face type. Lanagan swept through it in a comprehensive flash. With more speed than was his custom he thereupon dressed.

“_Swanson!_” he said. “Gad, what a story!”

He sat on the edge of the bed, more leisurely to roll a brown-paper cigarette and read the story more carefully. Stripped of flaring headlines, it was as follows:

“All hope for the safety of Captain Robert Swanson, the retired millionaire shipping man who disappeared on Wednesday evening, was dissipated this morning, shortly after 9.30 o’clock, when the body of the well-known philanthropist was found in a subcellar room in the notorious Palace Hotel in Chinatown.

“Death was due to strangulation.

“Life had probably been extinct three days, and it is the police theory that Captain Swanson went directly to the hotel or was lured there on the evening of his disappearance.

“His watch and valuables were found on his person.

“So far as a hasty examination could discover no one saw him enter the hotel, which bears an evil reputation and is occupied by the lowest type of denizen of Chinatown and the Barbary Coast.

“The room where the body was found is one of several that have been dug out beneath the basement and is used entirely by opium smokers.

“Chief of Police Leslie has ordered all available detectives on the case and arrests are expected at any moment.”

“Which means,” finally grumbled Lanagan, “that I get no day off to-morrow to split a quart of Chianti with mine host Pastori.

“Swanson,” he ran quickly back in his mind, “is president of the Seamen’s Bank; director of the Cosmos Club; director of a dozen corporations; trustee of his church; sound as a nut at sixty-five; solidly established in the old conservative families of Nob Hill, with a family of married children likewise solidly established in the solidest kind of respectability and a wife who is a silvery-haired saint if there ever was one.

“Yet he, a man who probably didn’t know such a place as Chinatown’s Palace Hotel existed until that night, is found dead in the lowest sink of that hole. The extremes of the social system met in his end and the place of it.”

The Chinatown Palace Hotel of the days just before the fire gave that quarter of San Francisco obliteration, the one thing that could cleanse it, was a sorry second to the pretentious hostelry on Market Street. A ramshackle structure, illy lit through its crooked corridors and musty rooms with ancient gas jets, it looked more, in its complete dirt and dinginess, like an exaggerated rabbit warren. Three stories above ground and one or two below, cut up into rooms, the largest not more than eight by ten, the smallest just large enough for a bunk and an opium layout, it had survived by some miracle the health authorities to hive in musty murk the off-scourings of a city. Once, when Portsmouth Square was the civic centre, it had harboured the kings of the early gold days.

The rooms were larger in those days; the front suites that gave ease to the idling, new-made Croesus had long since been cut up into five, six, seven, or eight, as the increasing congestion of the quarter threw an increasing swarm of vermin to its recesses.

Save for white “dope fiends,” known in the vernacular of the police as “hops,” “cokes,” or “morphs,” users of opium, cocaine, or morphine, it was inhabited solely by Chinese, some of them coolie labourers, but the most of them likewise “fiends.”