two sorting out papers, found time each moment to flash a quick glance
at Lanagan. Whether it was merely active feminine curiosity I could
not determine. As for me, I had been over the room half a dozen times
already. It held nothing further for me; but I never could even guess
at the clues Lanagan might turn up on a trail that a dozen men had
tramped over, so I remained to see him work with keen interest. When
Lanagan had finished we left.
“Now, Norrie, my boy, to the Bush Street office of the telephone
company,” he said with as much enthusiasm as I ever saw him exhibit.
“You are a fine old blunderbuss for fair! But the others aren’t any
better. Plain as the nose on your face! Lord, Lord!” He stopped and
looked at me, laughing immoderately. I was inclined to be a trifle
sulky; he made me feel like a six-dollar cub.
“Only,” he continued, “it’s a three days’ trail that I have taken
up, and that dirk wielder has got just that much of a start--always
assuming, for the sake of the argument, that it was not Stromberg.”
I didn’t ask him what he was going to the telephone office for; it came
to me with a sting that I had heard that same bit of information about
the telephoning dropped during the last two or three days, and, in the
press of clues that I considered more important, had dismissed it.
Which was the difference between Jack Lanagan and the rest of us; he
had that intuitive faculty of eliminating the superfluous and driving
at the main fact. It is, after all, a faculty found in all successful
men of whatever occupation.
We both knew Lamb, traffic manager of the ’phone company. Lanagan asked
for permission to talk with the girl who on Monday night handled the
board having Bush 1243--Monteagle’s number. Lamb was a substantial
chap, and promised to keep our visit in confidence. It was just before
4 o’clock, and the 4 to 10 shift of girls was coming on. In a few
moments a young girl of sensible, pleasant demeanour was shown to
the room, and Lamb retired after requesting that she give us all the
information she might have on whatever subjects we discussed.
“You will be performing a service that will be appreciated,” said
Lanagan, “if you could recall whether on Monday evening, along about 8
o’clock, you had several calls for Bush 1243?”
“Yes, sir, I do,” she instantly answered. “It was not a busy night and
I was handling three positions. The call came from the east office. We
do not talk to the party direct on an outside call, and east supervisor
came on the line several times to instruct me to try and raise the
number. That is how I recall it so distinctly.”
“I may tell you that that is the telephone number of the office of
Mr. Monteagle, who was murdered,” said Lanagan. “I don’t suppose you
ever got a line on whom his telephone calls might be from as a general
thing, did you?”
“No, sir,” she answered primly. “I pay no attention to whom is on a
line.”
“Thank you,” said Lanagan. “I think you can be trusted not to say
anything about our visit or questions?”
“Yes, sir,” she said.
We got a card of introduction from Lamb to Adams, manager of east
office, and hurried there.
“Wasn’t that rather an indiscreet thing to do, tell her Monteagle’s
number?” I suggested. Lanagan laughed and slapped me on the back. It
was evident he was in high feather with himself. I was trundling along,
absolutely in the dark.
“My dear Norrie, when you meet a girl like that take her into your
confidence. Did you get that ‘to whom’? She smelt a rat and would have
looked the number up and blown the glad tidings all over the office
that a couple of detectives or newspaper men had been interviewing her
on the murder. Recollect, too, that the telephone from the reporters’
room at police headquarters comes in on this exchange. It’s just
possible that some of those gay young blades on night police have
affiliations with some of these gay young blondes. I have got many a
story through ’phone girls--and have occasionally lost a story through
the same medium. Get me? As it stands, she is all puffed up with her
own importance and pat with us. There are times when you have got to
take a chance at spilling your hand. This was one of them.” I subsided,
humbled.
Not to occupy too much space with the merely routine details of working
out the clue, we met Adams, another substantial chap. The chief
operator recalled distinctly the number, more particularly because the
woman calling it had been nervous and irritable. The call came, she
said, from the public booth at Shumate’s pharmacy. It was only a couple
of blocks away, and we went there.
It was a large establishment with half a dozen clerks. We worked down
the list. The fourth man had been on duty Monday night and recalled a
young woman who had entered the booth repeatedly on that evening. She
lived some place in the vicinity, he said, and usually got off the
Sutter Street car shortly after 5.30 o’clock. The car stopped directly
in front of the door, and if we would wait he would point her out to us
if she came that way this evening.
I took a position outside to signal in when a car approached and
Lanagan remained inside. It was then just after five.
Among the passengers from one car I noticed Miss Northrup, and was
about to step forward and speak to her on a chance of her dropping
something additional when I caught a glimpse out of the tail of my
eye of Lanagan signaling me with a swift gesture. I dodged around the
corner before she saw me. She passed on up Sutter Street, and in a few
moments Lanagan picked me up, his sallow face taking on a tinge of
colour and his dark eyes sparkling.
“Pretty near scrambled the eggs that time, didn’t you?” he chuckled.
“_That’s the woman who did the telephoning._”
I stared.
“Do you recall that furtive look with which she followed me at the
office? She lives just up there, where we will let her rest for a
time with her troubles. And I fancy she has them. Let us go back to
Connors’. I am to meet Monahan there.”
The King was waiting for us. He took Lanagan to one side. All I could
hear was Lanagan’s “Good!” once, and then the King had slipped out the
side door.
“Best single asset the police have is Monahan,” said Lanagan, apropos
of nothing in particular. “Knows more about the night life of this city
than any four men in it. But he tips nothing that might hurt his own
game or his own people. In a way he preserves a certain code even while
acting as a police ‘stool.’ In this matter, however, the invaluable Mr.
Monahan is working for Jack Lanagan; and the police are consequently
about three laps behind.
“I see nothing in sight for some hours. We will eat our dinner and take
in a show for a few moments. I rather anticipate a climax later and
some rapid-fire work for us both on the typewriter. I need a little
stimulus--that hasn’t got wormwood in it.”
He would give me absolutely not a line on his “lay.” He could be a
baffling, enigmatic, impersonal proposition when he took the humour.
We headed for the Oyster Loaf, and I groaned for the four and a half
that was between me and pay day as Lanagan methodically disposed of
an onion soup, special; French mushrooms on toast, a New York cut,
Gorgonzola, and a two-bit cigar. He drank three glasses of ice water,
but that didn’t cost anything.
“A man’s meal,” he said with vast creature content. “Now give me that
other half you have left. I want a shave. You go up and touch Dan for a
five-spot. We may need expenses later. I’ll meet you at Dan’s at nine
o’clock. I want to pick Monahan up again before I see you, and also see
Leslie.”
At the time appointed we met. “Let’s take a ten-twenty-thirty,”
suggested Lanagan. “By half-past ten we will have to get busy. There’s
a singer over at the Continental that some of the dramatic critics say
has real fire. La Pattini, I think she is called.”
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.