THE MAN FROM BOSTON
On their way to the police headquarters the two girls gossiped
pleasantly concerning the events that had happened since they last
saw each other, for there are other things in the world besides lost
automobiles and strange young men. There are even winter coats, and
how much fur it is good taste to trim them with this year. There
were, also, round hats, three-cornered hats and four-cornered hats
to discuss, as well as the broad-brimmed hats and matinee, church or
street hats. And by the time they reached the police station they had
scarcely touched upon shoes and stockings--never mentioned gowns at all!
They found Mr. Charles Lonsdale, Chief of Police, at his desk.
“Oh, here you are,” said Josie. “Good morning, Chief.”
“Good morning, I’ve been waiting for you for over an hour,” was his
response.
“Yes,” said Josie, “I knew you’d wait, knowing I’d arrived on the
morning train. You see, Chief, this is one of those peculiar cases that
can begin or stop at any moment, as we may decide. I don’t know what
the ‘dear little thing’--eh--eh--‘Queenie,’ I believe, is her proper
name--is worth, but--”
“Without a ‘trade,’ and with the accessories we loaded it with, our
poor little Queenie is worth thirty-two hundred dollars,” confessed
Mary Louise.
The Chief looked astonished; Josie regarded her friend with amazement.
“Whatever its cost,” commented Lonsdale, “the thing has been stolen,
and it’s my duty to try and find it. As for you, Josephine, you may
tackle it or not, as it pleases you. Thirty-two hundred dollars is a
good bit of money for a little automobile.”
“It isn’t entirely the money that bothers me or Gran’pa Jim,” remarked
Mary Louise, with another deep sigh. “We’d have paid a thousand more,
gladly, if necessary. It’s the thought that Danny would betray the
confidence we held in him.”
There was a brief silence, during which Josie took out her memorandum
book.
“What’s the record, so far?” she asked carelessly. “Well, I’ll answer
myself: not much, although the whole town knows that Mary Louise’s new
auto has been stolen and Danny Dexter has disappeared at the same time.
Meantime certain details have reached my ears that lead me to believe
that Danny Dexter is but one of half a dozen assumed names used by
this ex-soldier. The fellow accepted his position with the Colonel as
half-chauffeur and half-gardener so that, at the slightest warning, he
could use the little auto in making a getaway. In other words, he’s
playing a bigger game than we’ve given him credit for.”
“Who told you all this?” inquired Mary Louise, in amazement.
Josie O’Gorman laughed, but before she could answer, there burst into
the room from a side closet a big man with the marks of smallpox
scattered about his face, a broad, sensitive nose, and shrewd eyes. It
was evident at once that he was interested in their discussion.
“Anyone could see that with half an eye,” he made answer. “I’ll buy
you half a dozen better automobiles than ‘Queenie’ if you’ll find its
driver for me.”
“What about him?” asked Josie staring at him.
“Well, one name’s as good as another, just now, so we’ll still call him
Danny Dexter,” responded the detective, leaning back in the chair so as
to rest his feet against the wall. “For instance, I’m from Boston, and
my name’s Crocker. Understand?”
Josie shook her head. She’d met a lot of detectives at one time or
another, and this one seemed familiar, in a way.
“Then it’s a Boston case, after all,” she said in a disappointed voice.
“No, it’s just a Danny Dexter case, let us say,” responded the big man,
also in a disappointed voice. “They gave him up in Boston as a bigger
crook than they had time to handle, and the Bank was unwilling to spend
more money on so elusive an individual. But I had some information of
a floating character that came back to me time after time from the war
zone that justified me in resigning from the government deal and taking
up the case personally. So I’ve been in Dorfield ever since its famous
regiment arrived--for the truth is that the Dorfield boys put up as
game a fight as any Americans in the Expeditionary Force. Your boys
had no press agent, nor any motion picture concern to back them up, so
the truth will never be heralded broadcast in newspaper headlines, but
take it from me, Dorfield comes under the A-No. 1 class.”
They regarded him a time in silence.
“How did you make your way here?” asked Josie.
“I saw you arrive in town and recognized you as John O’Gorman’s
daughter. Was on old John’s force at one time. Josie O’Gorman is a
friend of Mary Louise Burrows, whose auto was stolen by the man I’m
hunting. That’s simple enough.”
“Have you been searching for him long in this locality?” asked Chief
Lonsdale, handing him a business card.
“Oh, you’re not unknown to me, Charles Lonsdale,” he said; “I’ve hung
around here for two days or more, and that’s long enough to tag any
man.”
“What’s the name of your Boston fugitive?”
“Here they call him Danny Dexter--his war name. In Boston he was best
known as Jim O’Hara.”
“Oh!” exclaimed Josie O’Gorman, in a low tone of surprise. “Then he’s
well worth finding. Forger?”
“Yes--and more,” replied the big man, gravely.
Chief Lonsdale was staring at both of them.
“What is your real name?” he asked the man. “A business card doesn’t
amount to much in our profession,” and he spun the proffered card
across the table.
“Well, where I live we don’t often resort to aliases. They just call me
Bill Crocker.”
“Oh!” again said John O’Gorman’s daughter, both surprised and
interested in the turn events had taken. “I’ll go bond for him, Chief,”
she continued. “It’ll do us both good to know Bill Crocker.”
The man with the pock-marks, who leaned back against the wall in
careless attitude, his clothing wrinkled and unpressed, his whole
appearance unkempt and unattractive, returned their looks with a mild
smile.
“Reputation is a vague thing,” said he, “and often undeserved or
exaggerated. To-day Bill Crocker of Boston might be called the John
O’Gorman of his city, but what will he be to-morrow? A few failures
and he is totally forgotten.”
Josie gave one of her sympathetic nods.
“That’s true,” she affirmed. “If you’re pretty big you’re given a
headline; perhaps your picture is printed, but in a few days no one
remembers who you were. That’s a good idea, for otherwise the Book of
Fate would be packed with nonsense. An author, painter or sculptor
stands a chance of living in name, but no one else has a ghost of a
chance.”
“Are you prepared to spend some money on this game?” asked Bill
Crocker. “The Bank offers a big reward for the man, with all expenses.
I’m going to try and get him.”
“Try for it,” repeated the Chief of Police. “We’re prepared to do
all the Bank would--and then some,” added Lonsdale calmly. “Eh, Miss
Burrows? But we want the auto more than the man.”
“That is true,” agreed Mary Louise, “and yet I will leave the whole
matter in your hands. With Charlie Lonsdale, who is regarded as an
especially clever Chief, and Josie O’Gorman, whom I have evidence to
prove is the brightest girl detective in America, and Bill Crocker of
Boston, who is regarded with such awe by his confreres, we certainly
ought to win against one common soldier who has turned criminal because
he likes a pretty automobile and thinks it safe to steal it from a
country town.”
“You forget yourself and your own talents, my dear,” said Josie.
“Why, I seem to have a real talent for stirring up criminal cases,”
Mary Louise admitted, “but not for unraveling mysteries.”
“The reason we’re not all better detectives,” commented Bill Crocker,
“is that we lose too much valuable time. Let us get busy on the case
before us. First, I want to see the old stables--lately used as the
garage.”
“This seems like doubling on our tracks,” retorted Josie; “we all know
this place so well. But as you insist on crowding yourself into this
gang of investigators, we’ll make a brief survey of the premises so you
may know the exact situation as well as the rest of us.”