THE LUCK PIECE
Until now Trencher--to give him the name by which of all the names he
used he best was known--had kept his temper in hobbles, no matter what
or how great the provocation. As one whose mode of livelihood was trick
and device outside the law it had behooved him ever to restrain himself
from violent outbreaks, to school and curb and tame his natural
tendencies as a horsebreaker might gentle a spirited colt. A man who
held his disposition always under control could think faster than any
man who permitted his passions to jangle his nerves. Besides, he had the
class contempt of the high-grade confidence man--the same being the
aristocrat of the underworld--for the crude and violent and therefore
doubly dangerous codes of the stick-up, who is a highwayman; and the
prowler, who is a burglar; and the yegg, who is a safe blower of sorts.
Until now Trencher had held fast by the self-imposed rules of his
self-imposed discipline, and so doing had lived well and lived safe. It
was an unfortunate thing all round that this little rat of a Sonntag had
crossed him at an hour when he was profoundly irritated by the collapse
of their elaborately planned and expensive scheme to divest that
Cheyenne cattleman of his bank roll at the wire game. And it was a
doubly unfortunate thing for Sonntag seeing that Sonntag had just been
shot three times with his own automatic and was now dead or should be.
It was like Sonntag--and most utterly unlike Trencher--to whine over
spilt milk and seek to shift the blame for the failure of their plot to
any pair of shoulders rather than his own thin pair. And to the very
life it was like Sonntag that at the climax of the quarrel he should
have made a gun play. As Trencher now realised, it had been his mistake
in the first place that he took Sonntag on for a partner in the thwarted
operation; but it had been Sonntag's great, fatal mistake that he had
drawn a weapon against a man who could think faster and act faster in
emergencies than Sonntag ever had been able to do. Having drawn it
Sonntag should have used it. But having drawn it he had hesitated for a
space not to be measured in computable time--and that delay had been his
undoing.
The gun-pulling episode had taken place in Thirty-ninth Street, between
Sixth Avenue and Broadway, but nearer Broadway than Sixth Avenue, at a
moment when that block of Thirty-ninth Street was as near empty as ever
it gets to be. The meeting in the darkened place, just where the portico
at the side entrance of the old Jollity Theatre, extending out across
the sidewalk, made a patch of obscurity in the half-lit street, had been
a meeting by chance so far as Trencher was concerned. He had not been
looking for Sonntag; hadn't wanted to see Sonntag. Whether Sonntag had
been seeking him was something which nobody probably would ever know
this side the hereafter.
To the best of Trencher's belief there had been but one possible
eyewitness to the actual shooting. Out of the tail of his eye, just
before he and Sonntag came to grips, he had caught a glimpse of this
surmisable third party. He had sensed rather than seen that an elderly
bearded man, perhaps the watchman of the closed theatre, passed along
the sidewalk, going east. It was Trencher's impression that the man had
gone on by without halting. However, on that point he could not be sure.
What the onlooker had seen--if indeed there were an onlooker--could have
been only this: Two men, one fairly tall and dressed in a sprightly
fashion, one short and dark, engaged in a vehement but whispered quarrel
there in the cloaking shadow close up to the locked double doors of the
Jollity; a sudden hostile move on the part of the slighter man, backing
away and reaching for his flank; a quick forward jump by the taller man
to close with the other; a short sharp struggle as the pair of them
fought for possession of the revolver which the dark man had jerked from
his flank pocket; then the tall man, victorious, shoving his antagonist
clear of him and stepping back a pace; and on top of this the three
sharp reports and the three little spurts of fire bridging the short gap
between the sundered enemies like darting red hyphens to punctuate the
enacted tragedy.
Now the tall man, the one conspicuously dressed, had been Trencher. The
shooting accomplished he stood where he was only long enough to see
Sonntag fold up and sink down in a slumped shape in the doorway. He had
seen men, mortally stricken, who folded up in that very same way;
therefore he appraised Sonntag as one already dead, or at least as one
who would die very speedily.
As he stepped out across the sidewalk into the roadway he let the
automatic fall alongside the curb. The instant he had done this the heat
of his hate departed from him leaving him cool and clear-minded and
alert. It was as though the hot fumes of rage had all evaporated from
his brain in the same twentieth part of a second that he had spent in
discarding the weapon. For the reason that he was again entirely
himself, resourceful and steady, he did not fall into the error of
running away. To run away in this instant was to invite pursuit.
Instead he walked to the middle of the street, halted and looked about
him--the picture of a citizen who had been startled by the sound of
shots. This artifice, he felt sure, served to disarm possible suspicion
on the part of any one of the persons who came hurrying up from east and
west and from the north, across the street. Two or three of these first
arrivals almost brushed him as they lunged past, drawing in toward the
spot where Sonntag's doubled-up body made a darker blot in the darkened
parallelogram beneath the portico.
Trencher had been in close places before now--close places when
something smacking of violence had occurred--and he knew or felt he knew
what next would happen to give him the precious grace of seconds and
perhaps of minutes. Those who came foremost upon the scene would,
through caution, hesitate for a brief space of time before venturing
close up to where the hunched shape lay. Then having circled and drawn
in about the victim of the shooting they would for another brief period
huddle together, asking excited and pointless questions of one another,
some of them perhaps bending down and touching the victim to see whether
he lived, some of them looking round for a policeman, some of them doing
nothing at all--except confusedly to get in the way of everybody else.
This would be true of ninety-nine average individuals out of an average
hundred of city population. But the hundredth man would keep his wits
about him, seeking for the cause of the thing rather than concerning
himself with the accomplished effect. For the moment it was this
hundredth man Trencher would have to fear. Nevertheless, it would never
do for him to show undue haste. Bearing himself in the matter of a
disinterested citizen who had business that was not to be interfered
with by street brawls, he turned away from the south, toward which he
had been looking, shrugged his shoulders, and moving briskly, but
without any seeming great haste, he made for the revolving door at the
Thirty-ninth Street entrance to Wallinger's Hotel, diagonally across
from the Jollity. With one hand on a panel of the door he stopped again
and looked back.
Already, so soon, a crowd was gathering over the way--a little
crowd--which at once inevitably would become a dense jostling crowd. A
policeman, not to be mistaken even at a distance of seventy feet or more
for anyone but a policeman, had turned the corner out of Broadway and
was running down the opposite pavement. The policeman's arrival was to
be expected; it would be his business to arrive at the earliest possible
moment, and having arrived to lead the man hunt that would follow. What
Trencher, peering over his shoulder, sought for, was the hundredth
man--the man who, ignoring the lesser fact of a dead body, would strive
first off to catch up the trail of whosoever had done this thing.
Trencher thought he made him out. There was to be seen an elderly man,
roughly dressed, possibly the same man whose proximity Trencher had felt
rather than observed just before Sonntag made the gun play, and this man
was half-squatted out on the asphalt with his back to where the rest
circled and swirled about the body. Moreover, this person was staring
directly in Trencher's direction. As Trencher passed within the
revolving door he saw the man pivot on his heels and start at an angle
toward the policeman just as the policeman was swallowed up in the rings
of figures converging into the theatre doorway.
If the policeman were of a common-enough type of policeman--that is to
say, if he were the sort of policeman who would waste time examining
Sonntag's body for signs of life and then waste more time asking
questions of those who had preceded him to the place, and yet more time
peering about for the weapon that had been used; or if, in the
excitement with everybody shouting together, the one man who possibly
had a real notion concerning the proper description of the vanished
slayer found difficulty in securing the policeman's attention--why then,
in any one of these cases, or better still, in all of them, Trencher had
a chance. With a definite and intelligently guided pursuit starting
forthwith he would be lost. But with three minutes, or two even, of
delay vouchsafed him before the alarm took shape and purpose he might
make it.
Accepting the latter contingency as the assured one he formed a plan
instantaneously. Indeed, it sprang full-formed into his mind as the door
swung round behind him. It added to the immediate difficulties of his
present situation that he was most notably marked--by his garb. He had
the dramatic sense well developed, as any man must have who succeeds at
his calling. When Trencher played a part he dressed the part. In the
staging of the plot for the undoing of the Cheyenne cattleman his had
been the role of the sporting ex-telegraph operator, who could get
"flashes" on the result of horse races before the names of the winners
came over an imaginary tapped wire to the make-believe pool room where
the gull was stripped; and he had been at some pains and expense to
procure a wardrobe befitting the character.
The worst of it was that he now wore the make-up--the short
fawn-coloured overcoat with its big showy buttons of smoked pearl, the
brown derby hat with its striking black band, and the pair of light-tan
spats. Stripped of these things he would be merely a person in a costume
in nowise to be distinguished from the costumes of any number of other
men in the Broadway district. But for the moment there was neither
opportunity nor time to get rid of all of them without attracting the
attention that would be fatal to his prospects. Men who have nothing to
hide do not remove spats in a hotel lobby, nor do they go about public
places bareheaded in the nighttime. Now he could do but one thing to
alter his appearance.
Midway of the cross hall which he had entered and which opened into the
main lobby he slowed his gait long enough to undo the overcoat and slip
out of it. The top button caught fast in its buttonhole, the coat being
new and its buttonholes being stiff. He gave a sharp tug at the
rebellious cloth, and the button, which probably had been insecurely
sewed on in the first place, came away from its thread fastenings and
lodged in the fingers of his right hand. Mechanically he dropped it into
a side pocket of the overcoat and a moment later, with the garment
turned inside out so that only its silk lining showed, and held under
his arm, he had come out of the sideway and was in the lobby proper.
He was prepared mentally to find signs of an alarm here--to encounter
persons hurrying toward the Thirty-ninth Street side of the building.
But nothing of the sort was afoot. A darky orchestra was playing a jazz
tune very loudly in the cafe at the left of the Broadway entrance, so it
was not only possible but very likely that the sounds of the shots had
not been heard inside the hotel at all. Certainly his eye, sweeping the
place, discovered no evidences of any unusual stir. Perhaps half a
dozen individuals were traversing the tiled floor, but none of them in
any seeming hurry.
With no suggestion of agitation about him anywhere and with nothing
furtive or stealthy in his movements, Trencher boldly passed the corner
of the desk, crossed the lobby, went along the front of the news stand,
where a young woman stood among her wares, and through another set of
revolving doors came out upon Broadway. It was that one hour of the
night--a quarter of eleven o'clock, while the last acts are still going
on and before the theatres give up their audiences--when Broadway's
sidewalks are not absolutely overflowing with jostling, pouring currents
of people. Numbers were abroad, for numbers always are abroad in this
part of the town, be the time of day or of night what it may, but there
was no congestion. This was as it should be; it suited this man's
purposes exactly.
He issued forth, and a few rods north of the corner saw the person for
whom he was seeking; at least he saw a most likely candidate--a ragged
darky, in a district where ragged darkies unless they be beggars are not
often seen, who with his hands in his pockets and his coat collar turned
up was staring into the window of a small clothing shop two doors above
the narrow-fronted hotel. Trencher made for him. Remember, all
this--from the moment of the shooting until now--had taken much less
time than has been required for me to describe it in sequence or for
you to read about it.
He tapped the darky on the arm.
"Boy," he said sharply, "want to pick up some easy money quick?"
"Yas, suh, I does!" The negro's eyes shone.
"Listen then: I've got to catch a train--sooner than I expected. My
bag's packed and waiting for me up here at my boarding house in West
Forty-fifth Street--Number 374 is the address--just west of
Broadway--tall brownstone house with a high stoop. Get me? The bag's
downstairs in the hall. The hall boy--a coloured fellow named Fred--is
watching it for me. If I go in a cab I may not get to the station in
time. If you go after it for me at a run I may catch my train. See?
Here's a dollar down in advance. Tell Fred Mr. Thompson sent you--that's
me, Thompson. He'll give it to you--I told him I'd send for it. I'll be
waiting right here. If you get back with it in seven minutes I'll give
you another dollar--and if you get back inside of seven minutes I'll
make it two dollars more. Got the number in your mind?"
"Yas, suh--three seventy-fo' Wes' Forty-fift', you said."
"Correct. Now run like the very devil up Broadway to Forty-fifth and
turn west!"
"Boss," cried the darky, "Ise gone!"
He was, too. His splay feet in their broken shoes fairly spurned the
sidewalk as he darted northward, boring his way through the lanes of
pedestrians, knocking people aside out of their stride and followed as
he went by a wake of curses and grunts and curious glances. On a street
where nearly everyone trots but few gallop, the sight of a running man
catches the popular interest instantly, the common theory being that the
runner has done something wrong and is trying to get away, else he would
not run.
The instant the negro turned his back on him, Trencher slid inside the
recessed entrance of the clothing store and flattened himself against
its door. If chance had timed the occurrence just right he would win the
reprieve that he required for what he meant next to undertake. And sure
enough, as it turned out, chance had so timed it.
* * * * *
For just as he pressed his bulk into the recess the man hunt manifested
itself. Bursting headlong out of the front of Wallinger's Hotel came a
policeman--doubtlessly the one already seen by Trencher--and just behind
the policeman a roughly dressed bearded man, and with these two, at
their heels, a jostling impetuous swarm of other men, to be joined
instantly by yet more men, who had run round the corner of the hotel
from Thirty-ninth Street, instead of passing through its lobby. For the
veriest fraction of time they all slowed down, casting about them with
their eyes for a trail to follow.
Trencher, looking slantwise to the south, could see them plainly. The
foremost members of the hesitating and uncertain group were not sixty
feet from him. He forgot to breathe.
Then, all together, half a dozen pointing arms were flung out to the
north.
"There he goes, officer, runnin'! See 'im yonder? See 'im?"
With a forward surge and a great clatter of feet the hunt was renewed.
Past Trencher's refuge, with never a look this way or that, the
policeman, the bearded man, all the rest of them, went pelting along the
sidewalk, giving tongue like beagles. He could have put forth his hand
and touched some of them as they sped by him. Numbers of foot travellers
joined in the tail of the chase. Those who did not join it faced about
to watch. Knowing that for a bit he would practically be free of the
danger of close scrutiny, Trencher stepped out upon the sidewalk and
looking north caught a glimpse of a bent fleeing figure scuttling up
Broadway a block and a half beyond.
By this trick he had broken the trail and sent the pack off on a wrong
scent. So far so good. He figured the outlook after this fashion: Set
upon earning the double fee promised him the deluded darky, as he could
tell, was still going at top speed, unconscious of any pursuit. If he
continued to maintain his gait, if none tripped him, the probabilities
were he would be round the corner in Forty-fifth Street, trying to find
a mythical boarding house and a mythical hall boy named Fred, before the
foremost of the runners behind overtook and seized him. Then would
follow shouts, yells, a babble of accusations, denials of all wrongful
intent by the frightened captive and explanations by him to the
policeman of his reason for running so hard.
Following on this the chase would double back on its tracks, and at once
policemen in numbers, along with volunteers, would be combing the
district for the real fugitive. Still, barring the unforeseen, a few
minutes must intervene before this neighbourhood search would be getting
under way; and meanwhile the real fugitive, calmly enough, was moving
along in the rear of the rearmost of those who ran without knowing why
they ran. He did not go far though--he dared not go far. Any second the
darky might be tackled and thrown by someone on ahead, and besides there
might be individuals close at hand who had not joined in the hue and
cry, but who in some way had learned that the man so badly wanted wore
such-and-such distinguishing garments.
It was because of this latter contingency that Trencher had not tried to
slip back into Thirty-ninth Street. That had been his first impulse, but
he discarded the thought as it came to him. His mind peopled the
vicinity immediately south and east of him with potential enemies. To
the north alone, in the wake of the chase, could he count upon a hope of
transient security, and that would last only for so long as the negro
kept going. He could not get away from the spot--yet. And still it would
be the height of recklessness for him, dressed as he was, to linger
there. Temporarily he must bide where he was, and in this swarming,
bright-as-day place he must find a hiding place from which he could see
without being seen, spy without being spied upon or suspected for what
he was. Even as he calculated these obstacles he figured a possible way
out of the double-ended dilemma, or at any rate he figured his next step
toward safety from detection for the moment, and, with continued luck,
toward ultimate escape from a perilous spot where now no measure of
immunity could be either long-lived or dependable.
I have said he did not go far to reach sanctuary. To be exact he did not
go the length of the block between Thirty-ninth and Fortieth. He went
only as far as the Clarenden, newest and smartest, and, for the time
being, most popular of typical Broadway cafes, standing three buildings
north of the clothing shop, or a total distance from it, let us say, of
ninety feet. It was while he traversed those ninety feet that Trencher
summed up the contingencies that hedged him in and reached his
conclusion.
In front of the Clarenden against the curbing stood a short line of
waiting motor vehicles. With one exception they were taxicabs. At the
lower end of the queue, though, was a vast gaudy limousine, a bright
blue in body colour, with heavy trimmings of brass--and it was empty.
The chauffeur, muffled in furs, sat in his place under the overhang of
the peaked roof, with the glass slide at his right hand lowered and his
head poked out as he peered up Broadway; but the car itself, Trencher
saw, contained no occupant.
Trencher, drawing up alongside the limousine, was searching vainly for a
monogram, a crest or a name on its varnished flank while he spoke.
"Driver," he said sharply, "whose car is this?"
"Mr. O'Gavin's," the chauffeur answered without turning to look at the
person asking the question.
Trencher played a blind lead and yet not such a very blind lead either.
Big as New York was there was likely to be but one O'Gavin in it who
would have a car such as this one anchored in front of the
Clarenden--and that would be the noted bookmaker. Trencher played his
card.
"Jerome O'Gavin's, eh?" he inquired casually as though stating a
foregone conclusion.
"Yes, sir; it's his car." And now the driver twisted his body and
half-faced Trencher. "Say, boss, what's all the row about yonder?"
"Crowd chasing a pickpocket, I imagine," said Trencher indifferently.
Then putting a touch of impatience in his voice: "Where is
O'Gavin--inside?"
"Yes, sir! Said he'd be ready to go uptown at eleven. Must be near that
now."
"Pretty near it. I was to meet him here at eleven myself and I thought I
recognised his car."
"You'll find him in the grill, I guess, sir," said the driver, putting
into the remark the tone of deference due to someone who was a friend of
his employer's. "I understood him to say he had an appointment with some
gentleman there. Was it you?"
"No, but I know who the gentleman is," said Trencher. "The other man's
not such a very good friend of mine--that's why I'd rather wait outside
for Jerome than to go in there." He made a feint at looking at his
watch. "Hum, ten minutes more. Tell you what I think I'll do, driver: I
think I'll just hop inside the car until O'Gavin comes out--better than
loafing on the sidewalk, eh?"
"Just as you say. Make yourself comfortable, sir. Shall I switch on the
lights?"
"No, never mind the lights, thank you." Trencher was already taking
shelter within the limousine, making himself small on the wide back seat
and hauling a thick rug up over his lap. Under the rug one knee was bent
upward and the fingers of one hand were swiftly undoing the buttons of
one fawn-coloured spat. If the chauffeur had chanced to glance back he
would have seen nothing unusual going on. The chauffeur, though, never
glanced back. He was staring dead ahead again.
"Say, boss, they've caught the pickpocket--if that's what he was," he
cried out excitedly. "They're bringing him back."
"Glad they nailed him," answered Trencher through the glass that was
between them. He had one spat off and was now unfastening its mate.
"It looks like a nigger," added the chauffeur, supplying a fresh
bulletin as the captive was dragged nearer. "It is a nigger! Had his
nerve with him, trying to pull off a trick in this part of town."
Through the right-hand side window Trencher peered out as the mass moved
by--in front a panting policeman with his one hand gripped fast in the
collar of Trencher's late messenger, and all about the pair and behind
them a jostling, curious crowd of men and women.
"De gen'l'man dat sent me fur his bag is right down yere, I keeps
tellin' you," Trencher heard the scared darky babbling as he was yanked
past Trencher's refuge.
"All right then, show him to me, that's all," the officer was saying
impatiently.
The chauffeur twisted about in his place, following the spectacle with
his eyes. But Trencher had quit looking that way and was looking another
way. The centre of excitement had been moved again--instead of being
north of him it was now approximately ninety feet south, and he, thanks
to the shift, was once more behind it. Peering through the glass he
watched the entrance to the Clarenden.
There he saw what he wanted to see--a tall man in a wide-brimmed soft
dark hat and a long dark topcoat going up the short flight of steps that
led from the pavement into the building. Trencher wadded the spats
together and rammed them down out of sight between the back cushion and
the under cushion of the car seat, and with his overcoat inside out on
his left arm he opened the door and stepped out of the car. This retreat
had served his purpose admirably; it was time to abandon it.
"Changed my mind," he said, in explanation. "If O'Gavin doesn't hurry up
we'll be late for an engagement we've got uptown. I'm going in after
him."
"Yes; all right, sir," assented the chauffeur with his attention very
much elsewhere.
In long steps Trencher crossed the sidewalk and ran up the steps so
briskly that he passed through the door at the top of the short flight
directly behind and almost touching the tall man in the dark hat and
black coat. His heart beat fast; he was risking everything practically
on the possibilities of what this other man meant to do.
The other man did exactly what Trencher was hoping he would do. He
turned left and made for the Clarenden's famous Chinese lounging room,
which in turn opened into the main restaurant. Trencher slipped nimbly
by his quarry and so beat him to where two young women in glorified
uniforms of serving maids were stationed to receive wraps outside the
checking booth; a third girl was inside the booth, her job being to take
over checked articles from her sister helpers.
It befell therefore that Trencher surrendered his brown derby and his
short tan coat, received a pasteboard check in exchange for them and saw
them passed in over a flat shelf to be put on a hook, before the other
man had been similarly served. When the other, now revealed as wearing a
dinner jacket, came through the Orientalised passageway into the lounge,
Trencher was quite ready for him. In his life Trencher had never picked
a pocket, but as one thoroughly versed in the professionalism of the
crime world, in which he was a distinguished figure, he knew how the
trick, which is the highest phase of the art of the pickpocket, is
achieved.
The thing was most neatly and most naturally accomplished. As the man in
the dinner coat came just opposite him Trencher, swinging inward as
though to avoid collision with the end of an upholstered couch, bumped
into him, breast to breast.
"I beg your pardon," he said in contrite tones for his seeming
awkwardness, and as he said it two darting fingers and the thumb of his
right hand found and invaded the little slit of the stranger's waistcoat
pocket, whisking out the check which the stranger had but a moment
before, with Trencher watching, deposited there.
"Granted--no harm done," said the man who had been jostled, and passed
on leaving Trencher still uttering apologetic sounds. Palming the
precious pasteboard, which meant so much to him, Trencher stood where he
was until he saw the unsuspecting victim pass on through into the cafe
and join two other men, who got up from a table in the far corner near
one of the front windows to greet him.
Trencher followed leisurely to where a captain of waiters stood guard at
the opening in the dividing partition between the lounge and the
restaurant. Before him at his approach this functionary bowed.
"Alone, sir?" he inquired obsequiously.
"Yes and no," replied Trencher; "I'm alone now but I'll be back in half
an hour with three others. I want to engage a table for four--not too
close to the orchestra." He slipped a dollar bill into the captain's
hand.
"Very good, sir. What name, sir?"
"Tracy is the name," said Trencher.
"Quite so, sir."
The captain turned to serve a party of men and women, and Trencher fell
back. He idled back through the Chinese room, vigilant to note whether
any of the persons scattered about it were regarding him with more than
a casual interest or, more important still, whether any there present
knew him personally.
Reassured on this point he stepped out of the room and along with a
quarter for a tip tendered to one of the maids the check he had just
pilfered, meanwhile studying her face closely for any signs that she
recalled him as one who had dealt with her within the space of a minute
or so. But nothing in her looks betrayed recognition or curiosity as she
bestirred herself to reclaim the articles for which the check was a
voucher of ownership, and to help him into them.
Ten seconds later Trencher, a personality transformed, stood quite at
his ease on the top step of the flight outside the entrance to the
Clarenden looking into Broadway. The long dark overcoat which he now
wore, a commonplace roomy garment, fitted him as though it had been his
own. With its collar turned up about his cheeks it helped admirably to
disguise him. The soft black hat was a trifle large for his head. So
much the better--it came well down over his face.
The huge illuminated hands of a clock set in the middle of a winking,
blinking electric sign a few blocks north, at the triangular gore where
Seventh Avenue crosses Broadway, told him the time--six minutes of
eleven. To Trencher it seemed almost that hours must have passed since
he shot down Sonntag, and yet here was proof that not more than ten
minutes--or at the most, twelve--had elapsed. Well, he had worked fast
and with results gratifying. The spats that might have betrayed him
were safely hidden in one place--yonder between the seat cushions of
O'Gavin's car, which stood where he had left it, not thirty feet
distant. His telltale overcoat and his derby hat were safely bestowed in
the cafe check room behind him awaiting a claimant who meant never to
return. Even if they should be found and identified as having been worn
by the slayer of Sonntag, their presence there, he figured, would but
serve to confuse the man hunt. Broadway's living tides flowed by, its
component atoms seemingly ignorant of the fact that just round the
corner below a man had been done to death. Only at the intersection of
Thirty-ninth Street was there evidence, in the quick movement of
pedestrians out of Broadway into the cross street, that something
unusual served to draw foot passengers off their course.
In front of the clothing shop three doors south of him no special
congestion of traffic revealed itself; no scrouging knot of citizens was
to be seen, and by that Trencher reasoned that the negro had been taken
elsewhere by his captors--very probably to where the body would still be
lying, hunched up in the shadow before the Jollity's side doors. From
the original starting point the hunt doubtlessly was now reorganising.
One thing was certain--it had not eddied back this far. The men of the
law would be working on a confused basis yet awhile, anyhow. And
Trencher meant to twistify the clews still further, for all that he
felt safe enough already. For the first time a sense of security
exhilarated him. Almost it was a sense of exultation.
He descended the steps and went straight to the nearest of the rank of
parked taxicabs. Its driver was nowhere in sight. A carriage starter for
the cafe, in gorgeous livery, understood without being told what the
tall muffled-up gentleman desired and blew a shrill blast on a whistle.
At that the truant driver appeared, coming at a trot from down the
street.
"'Scuse me, mister," he said as he mounted to his seat at the wheel.
"Been a shootin' down the street. Guy got croaked, they say, and they
can't find the guy that croaked um."
"Never mind the shooting," said Trencher as he climbed into the cab,
whose door the starter had opened for him.
"Where to, gent?"
"Harty's Palm Garden," said Trencher, naming a restaurant a mile and a
half away, straight up Broadway. His main thought now was to get
entirely out of this part of town.
Riding along uptown Trencher explored the pockets of the pilfered
overcoat. The search produced a pair of heavy gloves, a wadded
handkerchief, two cigars, a box of matches, and, last of all, a
triangular brass token inscribed with a number and a firm name. Without
the imprint of the name Trencher would have recognised it, from its
shape alone. It had come from the check room in the upper-tier waiting
room of the Grand Central Station. Discovery of it gave him a new
idea--an idea involving no added risk but having in it added
possibilities for insuring the ultimate success of his get-away. In any
event there could be neither harm nor enhanced danger in putting it into
execution.
Therefore, when he had emerged from the cab at Harty's and had paid the
fare and had seen the driver swing his vehicle about and start off back
downtown, he walked across Columbus Circle to the west curve of it,
climbed into another taxicab and was driven by way of Fifty-ninth Street
and Fifth Avenue to the Grand Central. Here at the establishment of the
luggage-checking concessionaire on the upper level of the big terminal
he tendered the brass token to a drowsy-eyed attendant, receiving in
exchange a brown-leather suit case with letters stenciled on one end of
it, like this:
M. K. P.
STAMFORD, CONN.
Waving aside a red-capped negro porter, Trencher, carrying the spoil of
his latest coup, departed via one of the Vanderbilt Avenue exits.
Diagonally across the avenue was a small drug store still open for
business at this hour, as the bright lights within proved. Above its
door showed the small blue sign that marked it as containing a
telephone pay booth. For Trencher's purposes a closed booth in a small
mercantile establishment was infinitely to be preferred to the public
exchange in the terminal--less chance that the call could be traced back
to its source, less chance, too, that some inquisitive operator, trying
to kill time during a dull hour, might listen in on the wire, and so
doing overhear things not meant for her ears. He crossed over and
entered the drug store.
Except for a sleepy clerk at the rear there was no one visible within
the place. Trencher crowded his bulk into the booth, dropped the
requisite coin in the slot and very promptly got back the answering hail
from a certain number that he had called--a number at a place in the
lower fringe of the old Tenderloin.
"Is that the Three Deuces?" asked Trencher. Then: "Who's speaking--you,
Monty? . . . Know who this is, at this end? . . . Yes, that's right.
Say, is the Kid there--Kid Dineen? . . . Good! Call him to the phone,
will you, Monty? And tell him to hurry--it's devilish important."
A short pause followed and when Trencher spoke again he had dropped his
voice to a cautious half-whisper, vibrant and tense with urgency. Also
now he employed some of the argot of the underworld:
"Hello, Kid, hello! Recognise my voice, don't you? . . . Good! Now listen:
I'm in a jam. . . . What? . . . Never mind what it is; you'll know when you
see the papers in the morning if you don't know sooner. I've got to lam,
and lam quick. Right now I've got the bulls stalled off good and proper,
but I can't tell how long they'll stay stalled off. Get me? So I don't
want to be showing my map round any ticket windows. So here's what I
want you to do. Get some coin off of Monty, if you haven't got enough on
you. Then you beat it over to the Pennsylvania Station and buy me a
ticket for Pittsburgh and a section in the sleeper on the train that
leaves round one-twenty-five to-night. Then go over on Ninth Avenue to
Silver's place----What? . . . Yes; sure, that's the place. Wait for me
there in the little room upstairs over the bar, on the second floor.
They've got to make a bluff of closing up at one, but you know how to
get up into the room, don't you? . . . Good! Wait for me till I show up, or
if I get there first I'll wait for you. I ought to show inside of an
hour from now--maybe in less time than that if things keep on breaking
right. Then I'll get the ducats off of you and beat it across through
the Hudson Tube to the Manhattan Transfer and grab the rattler over
there in Jersey when she comes along from this side. That'll be all. Now
hustle!"
From the drug store he went, carrying the brown suit case with
him, round into Forty-second Street. He had taken a mental note
of the initials on the bag, but to make sure he was right he looked
at them again before he entered the big Bellhaven Hotel by its
Forty-second-Street door. At sight of him a bell boy ran across the
lobby and took from him his burden. The boy followed him, a pace in
the rear, to the desk, where a spruce young gentleman awaited their
coming. "Can I get a room with bath for the night--a quiet inside
room where I'll be able to sleep as late as I please in the morning?"
inquired Trencher.
"Certainly, sir." The room clerk appraised Trencher with a practiced
eye. "Something for about four dollars?"
"That'll do very well," agreed Trencher, taking the pen which the clerk
had dipped in ink and handed over to him.
Bearing in mind the letters and the address on the suit case, Trencher
registered as M. K. Potter, Stamford, Conn. Meanwhile the clerk had
taken a key from a rack containing a vast number of similar keys.
"I won't leave a call--and I don't want to be disturbed," warned
Trencher.
"Very well, sir. Front! Show the gentleman to 1734." Five minutes later
Trencher, in an inner room on the seventeenth floor, with the door
locked on the inside, had sprung the catch of the brown suit case and
was spreading its contents out upon the bed, smiling his satisfaction as
he did so. Plainly fortune was favouring him at each new turning.
For here was a somewhat rumpled black suit and along with it a
blue-striped shirt, showing slight signs of recent wear, a turndown
collar that was barely soiled, and a plain black four-in-hand tie.
Trencher went through the pockets of the suit, finding several letters
addressed to Marcus K. Parker at an address in Broad Street, down in the
financial district. Sewn in the lining of the inner breast pocket of the
coat was a tailor's label also bearing the same name. At the sight
Trencher grinned. He had not missed it very far. He had registered as
Potter, whereas now he knew that the proper owner of the suit case must
be named Parker.
Parker, he figured, belonged to the race of commuters; evidently he
lived in Stamford and did business in New York. Accepting this as the
correct hypothesis the rest of the riddle was easy to read. Mr. Parker,
coming to town that morning, had brought with him his dinner rig in a
suit case.
Somewhere, probably at his office, he had changed from his everyday garb
to the clothes he brought with him, then he had packed his street
clothes into the bag and brought it uptown with him and checked it at
the Grand Central, intending after keeping his evening engagements to
reclaim the baggage before catching a late train for Stamford.
Fine! Results from Trencher's standpoint could hardly have been more
pleasing. Exulting inwardly over the present development and working
fast, he stripped off his clothing down to his shoes and his
undergarments--first, though, emptying his own pockets of the money they
contained, both bills and silver, and of sundry personal belongings,
such as a small pocketknife, a fountain pen, a condensed railway guide
and the slip of pasteboard that represented the hat and coat left behind
at the Clarenden. Then he put on the things that had come out of the
Stamford man's bag--the shirt, the collar and the tie, and finally the
outer garments, incidentally taking care to restore to Parker's coat
pocket all of Parker's letters.
This done he studied himself in the glass of the chiffonier and was
deeply pleased. Mirrored there he saw a different man from the one who
had rented the room. When he quit this hotel, as presently he meant to
do, he would not be Trencher, the notorious confidence man who had shot
a fellow crook, nor yet would he be the Thompson who had sent a darky
for a bag, nor the Tracy who had picked a guest's pocket at a
fashionable restaurant, nor yet the Potter who had engaged a room with
bath for a night. From overcoat and hat to shoes and undergarments he
would be Mr. Marcus K. Parker, a thoroughly respectable gentleman,
residing in the godly town of Stamford and engaged in reputable
mercantile pursuits in Broad Street--with opened mail in his pocket to
prove it.
The rest would be simplicity. He had merely to slip out of the hotel,
carrying the key to 1734 with him. Certainly it would be as late as noon
the following day before chambermaid or clerk tried to rouse the
supposed occupant of the empty room. In all likelihood it would be later
than noon. He would have at least twelve hours' start, even though the
authorities were nimble-witted enough to join up the smaller mystery of
an abandoned suit case belonging to one man and an abandoned outfit of
clothing belonging to another, with the greater and seemingly
unconnected mystery of the vanishment of the suspect in the Sonntag
homicide case. Long before this potential eventuality could by any
chance develop, he meant, under another name and in another disguise, to
be hidden away at a quiet boarding house that he knew of in a certain
obscure factory town on a certain trolley line leading out from
Pittsburgh.
Now to clear out. He bestowed in various pockets his money, his knife,
his pen and his railway guide, not one of these having upon it any
identifying marks; he pouched his small change and his roll of bills.
Nothing remained to be disposed of or accounted for save the pasteboard
square that represented the coat and hat left behind at the Clarenden.
When this had been torn into fine and indistinguishable bits and when as
a final precaution the fragments had been tossed out of the window, the
last possible evidence to link the pseudo Parker with the real Trencher
in this night's transactions would be gone.
He had the slip in his hands and his fingers were in the act of twisting
it in halves when the thought that something had been overlooked--something
vitally important--came to him; and he paused to cogitate. What had been
forgotten? What had he overlooked? What had he left undone that should
have been done? Then suddenly appreciation of the thing missing came to
him and in a quick panic of apprehension he felt through all the pockets
of Parker's suit and through the pockets of his own garments, where he
had flung them down on the bed, alongside the rifled suit case.
His luck piece was gone--that was it! The old silver trade dollar, worn
thin and smooth by years of handling and with the hole drilled through
the centre of it--that was what was gone--his token, his talisman, his
charm against evil fortune. He had carried it for years, ever since he
had turned crook, and for nothing in this world would he have parted
from it.
In a mounting flurry of superstitious terror he searched the pockets
again, with fingers that shook--this man who had lost faith in human
beings, who had no hope and no fear for the hereafter, who had felt no
stabs of regret or repentance for having killed a man, whose thoughts
had never known remorse for any misdeed of his. The second hunt and the
third and the fourth were fruitless as his first one had been;
Trencher's luck piece was gone.
Those wise men, the alienists, say that all of us are insane on certain
subjects, however sane we may be upon other subjects. Certainly in the
mental composition of every one of us is some quirk, some vagary, some
dear senseless delusion, avowed or private. As for Trencher, the one
crotchet in his cool brain centred about that worthless trade dollar.
With it in his possession he had counted himself a winner, always.
Without it he felt himself to be a creature predestined and foreordained
to disaster.
To it he gave all the credit for the fact that he had never served a
prison sentence. But once, and once only, had he parted company with it,
even temporarily. That was the time when Murtha, that crafty old
Central-Office hand, had picked him up on general principles, had taken
him to headquarters, and first stripping him of all the belongings on
his person, had carried him to the Bertillon Bureau, and then and there,
without shadow of legal right, since Trencher was neither formally
accused of nor formally indicted for any offence and had no previous
record of convictions, had forced him to undergo the ordeals, ethically
so repugnant to the instincts of the professional thief, of being
measured and finger-printed and photographed, side face and full face.
He had cursed and protested and pleaded when Murtha confiscated the
luck piece; he had rejoiced when Murtha, seeing no harm in the thing,
had restored it to him before lodging him in a cell under the
all-embracing technical charge of being a suspicious person. Because he
had so speedily got it back, Trencher had gone free again with the loss
of but two days of liberty--or anyway, so Trencher firmly believed. But
because it had left his custody for no more than an hour his pictures
were now in the Gallery, and Murtha had learned the secret of Trencher's
one temperamental weakness, one fetish.
And now--at this time, of all times--it was gone again. But where had it
gone? Where could it have gone? Mentally he reconstructed all his acts,
all his movements since he had risen that morning and dressed--and then
the solution came to him, and with the solution complete remembrance. He
had slipped it into the right-hand pocket of the new tan-coloured
topcoat--to impregnate the garment with good luck and to enhance the
prospects for a successful working-out of the scheme to despoil the
Wyoming cattleman; and he had left it there. And now here he was up on
the seventeenth floor of the Bellhaven Hotel and the fawn-coloured coat
with the luck piece in one of its pockets dangled on a hook in the cloak
booth of the Clarenden cafe, less than a block away from the spot where
he had shot Sonntag.
He marvelled that without his talisman he had escaped arrest up to now;
it was inconceivable that he had won his way thus far. But then the
answer to that was, of course, that he had retained the pasteboard
square that stood for possession of the coat itself. He gave thanks to
the unclean spirits of his superstition that apprehension of his loss
had come to him before he destroyed the slip. Had he gone ahead and torn
it up he would now count himself as doomed. But he hadn't torn it up.
There it lay on the white coverlet of the bed.
He must make a try to recover his luck piece; no other course occurred
to him. Trying would be beset with hazards, accumulated and thickening.
He must venture back into the dangerous territory; must dare deadfalls
and pitfalls; must run the chance of possible traps and probable nets.
By now the police might have definitely ascertained who it was that
killed Sonntag; or lacking the name of the slayer they might have
secured a reasonably complete description of him; might have spread the
general alarm for a man of such and such a height and such and such a
weight, with such a nose and such eyes and such hair and all the rest of
it. It might be that the Clarenden was being watched, along with the
other public resorts in the immediate vicinity of where the homicide had
been committed. It might even be that back in the Clarenden he would
encounter the real Parker face to face. Suppose Parker had finished his
supper and had discovered his loss--losses rather--and had made a
complaint to the management; and suppose as a result of Parker's
indignation that members of the uniformed force had been called in to
adjudicate the wrangle; suppose through sheer coincidence Parker should
see Trencher and should recognise the garments that Trencher wore as his
own. Suppose any one of a half dozen things. Nevertheless, he meant to
go back. He would take certain precautions--for all the need of haste,
he must take them--but he would go back.
He put the pink check into his waistcoat pocket, switched out the room
light, locked the door of the room on the outside, took the key with him
and went down in an elevator, taking care to avoid using the same
elevator that shortly before brought him up to this floor level.
Presently he was outside the hotel, hurrying afoot on his return to
Broadway. On the way he pitched the key into an areaway.
Turning out of Forty-second Street into Broadway and thence going south
to a point just below the intersection with Fortieth Street, he
approached the Clarenden from the opposite side of Broadway. There was
motive in this. One coming across from the opposite side and looking
upward at a diagonal slant could see through the windows along the front
side of the Clarenden with some prospect of making out the faces of such
diners as sat at tables near the windows. Straining his eyes as he
crossed over, Trencher thought he recognised his man. He was almost
sure he made out the outlined head and shoulders of Parker sitting at a
corner table alongside the last window in the row. He trusted he was
right and trusted still more fervently that Parker would bide where he
was for three or four minutes longer.
Tucking his head well down inside his upturned collar and giving the
brim of his hat a tug to bring it still farther forward over his eyes,
he took a long breath, like a man preparing for a dive in cold water,
and went up the flight of stairs from the sidewalk into the building. No
one inside made as if to halt him; no one so far as he could tell gave
him in passing even an impersonal look. There was a wash room, as
Trencher knew, at the back end of the ornate hall which separated the
Chinese lounge and the main cafe on one side, from the private dining
rooms and tea rooms on the other. That wash room was his present
destination.
He reached it without mishap, to find it deserted except for a boy in
buttons. To the boy he surrendered hat and overcoat, and then in the
midst of a feint at hitching up his shirt cuffs, as though meaning to
wash his hands, he snapped his fingers impatiently.
"I forgot something," he said for the boy's benefit; "left it in the
cafe. Say, kid, watch my hat and coat, will you? I'll be back in a
minute."
"Yes, sir," promised the youth. "I'll take good care of 'em."
Bareheaded as he now was and lacking the overcoat, Trencher realised the
chief elements of his disguise were missing; still there had been for
him no other course to follow than this risky one. He could not claim
ownership of one coat and one hat while wearing another coat and another
hat--that was certain. As he neared his goal he noted that both the
maids on the outside of the booth were for the instant engaged in
helping the members of a group of men and women on with their outdoor
wraps. So much the better for him. He headed straight for the third girl
of the force, the one whose station was within the open-fronted booth.
In front of her on the flat shelf intervening between them he laid down
the numbered pink slip, which in the scheme of his hopes and fears stood
for so much.
"Never mind my hat, miss," he said, making his tone casual; "I'm not
through with my supper yet. But just let me have my coat for one minute,
will you, please? I want to get something out of one of the pockets to
show to a friend."
There was nothing unusual, nothing unconventional about the request. The
girl glanced at the figures on the check, then stepped back into her
cuddy, seeking among rows of burdened hooks for whatsoever articles
would be on the hook bearing corresponding figures. To Trencher,
dreading the advent of the Stamford man out of the Chinese room
alongside him and yet not daring to turn his head to look, it seemed she
was a very long time finding the hook. In reality the time she took was
to be gauged by seconds rather than by minutes.
"Is this the garment you desired, sir?" Speaking with an affected
English drawl and with neither curiosity nor interest in her face, the
girl laid across her counter the tan-coloured overcoat, one of its big
smoked-pearl buttons glinting dimly iridescent in the light as she
spread it out.
"That's it, thank you. Just one moment and I'll give it back to you."
Trencher strove to throttle and succeeded fairly well in throttling the
eager note in his voice as he took up the coat by its collar in his left
hand.
The fingers trembled in spite of him as he thrust his right hand into
the right-hand pocket. Twitching and groping they closed on what was
hidden there--a slick, cool, round, flat, thin object, trade-dollar
size. At the touch of the thing he sought and for all, too, that he
stood in such perilous case, Trencher's heart jumped with relief and
gratification. No need for him to look to make sure that he had his luck
piece. He knew it by its feel and its heft and its size; besides the tip
of one finger, sliding over its smooth rimless surface, had found in the
centre of it the depression of the worn hole, and the sensitive nerves
had flashed the news to his brain. He slid it into a trousers pocket and
passed the coat back to the girl; and almost before she had restored it
to its appointed hook, Trencher had regained the shelter of the wash
room and was repossessing himself of the slouch hat and the long black
overcoat.
Back once more to the street he made the journey safely, nothing
happening on the way out into the November night to alarm him. The
winking, blinking electrically jewelled clock in the sign up the street
told him it was just five minutes past midnight. He headed north, but
for a few rods only. At Fortieth Street he turned west for a short block
and at Seventh Avenue he hailed a south-bound trolley car. But before
boarding the car he cast a quick backward scrutiny along the route he
had come. Cabs moved to and fro, shuttle fashion, but seemingly no
pedestrians were following behind him.
He was not particularly fearful of being pursued. Since he had cleared
out from the Clarenden without mishap it was scarcely to be figured that
anyone would or could now be shadowing him. He felt quite secure
again--as secure as he had felt while in the locked room in the
Bellhaven, because now he had in his custody that which gave him, in
double and triple measure, the sense of assurance. One hand was thrust
deep into his trousers pocket, where it caressed and fondled the flat
perforated disk that was there. It pleased him to feel the thing grow
warmer under his fingers, guaranteeing him against mischance. He did not
so much as twist his head to glance out of the car window as the car
passed Thirty-ninth Street.
At Thirtieth Street he got off the car and walked west to Silver's
place. Ninth Avenue was almost empty and, as compared with Broadway, lay
in deep shadows. The lights of the bar, filtering through the filmed
glass in one window of Silver's, made a yellowish blur in what was
otherwise a row of blank, dead house fronts. Above the saloon the
squatty three-story building was all dark, and from this circumstance
Trencher felt sure he had come to the rendezvous before the Kid arrived.
Alongside the saloon door he felt his way into a narrow entryway that
was as black as a coal bunker and went up a flight of wooden steps to
the second floor. At the head of the steps he fumbled with his hand
until he found a doorknob. As he knew, this door would not be locked
except from the inside; unless it contained occupants it was never
locked. He knew, too, what furniture it contained--one table and three
or four chairs. Steering a careful course to avoid bumping into the
table, which, as he recalled, should be in the middle of the floor, he
found the opposite wall and, after a moment's search with his hands, a
single electric bulb set in a wall bracket. He flipped on the light.
"That's right," said a voice behind him. "Now that you've got your mitts
up, keep 'em up!"
As regards the position of his hands Trencher obeyed. He turned his head
though, and over his shoulder he looked into the middle-aged face of
Murtha, of the Central Office. Murtha's right hand was in his coat
pocket and Trencher knew that Murtha had him covered--through the cloth
of the coat.
"Hello, Murtha," said Trencher steadily enough, "what's the idea?"
"The idea is for you to stand right where you are without making any
breaks until I get through frisking you," said Murtha.
On noiseless feet he stepped across the floor, Trencher's back being
still to him, and one of his hands, the left one, with deft movements
shifted about over Trencher's trunk, searching for a weapon.
"Got no gat on you, eh?" said Murtha. "Well, that's good. Now then,
bring your hands down slow, and keep 'em close together. That's
it--slow. I'm taking no chances, understand, and you'd better not take
any either."
Again Trencher obeyed. Still standing behind him Murtha slipped his arms
about Trencher's middle and found first one of Trencher's wrists and
then the other. There was a subdued clicking of steel mechanisms.
"Now then," said Murtha, falling back a pace or two, "I guess you can
turn round if you want to."
Trencher turned round. He glanced at his hands, held in enforced
companionship by the short chain of the handcuffs, and then steadily at
his captor.
"Why so fussy, Murtha?" he asked in a slightly contemptuous tone. "You
never heard of me starting any rough stuff when there was a pinch coming
off, did you?"
"That's true," said the detective; "but when a gun's just bumped off one
guy he's liable to get the habit of bumping off other guys. Even a swell
gun like you is. So that's why I've been just a trifle particular."
"You're crazy, man! Who says I bumped anybody off?"
"I do, for one," replied Murtha cheerfully. "Still that's neither here
nor there, unless you feel like telling me all about what came off over
in Thirty-ninth Street to-night.
"You've always been a safety player so far as I know--and I'm curious to
know what made you start in using a cannon on folks all of a sudden. At
that, I might guess--knowing Sonntag like I did."
"I don't know what you're talking about," parried Trencher. "I tell you
you've got me wrong. You can't frame me for something I didn't do. If
somebody fixed Sonntag it wasn't me. I haven't seen him since
yesterday. I'm giving it to you straight."
"Oh well, we won't argue that now," said Murtha affably. In his manner
was something suggestive of the cat that has caught the king of the
rats. A tremendous satisfaction radiated from him. "You can stall some
people, son, but you can't stall me. I've got you and I've got the goods
on you--that's sufficient. But before you and me glide down out of here
together and start for the front office I'd like to talk a little with
you. Set down, why don't you, and make yourself comfortable?" He
indicated a chair.
Trencher took the chair and Murtha, after springing a catch which he
found on the inner side of the door, sat down in another.
"I've got to hand it to you, Trencher," went on the detective
admiringly. "You sure do work swift. You didn't lose much time climbing
into that outfit you're wearing. How did you get into it so quick? And,
putting one thing with another, I judge you made a good fast get-away
too. Say, listen, Trencher, you might as well come clean with me. I'll
say this for Sonntag--he's been overdue for a croaking this long time.
If I've got to spare anybody out of my life I guess it might as well be
him--that's how I stand. He belonged to the Better-Dead Club to start
with, Sonntag did. If it was self-defence and you can prove it, I've got
no kick coming. All I want is the credit for nailing you all by my
lonesome. Why not slip me the whole tale now, and get it off your chest?
You don't crave for any of this here third-degree stuff down at
headquarters, and neither do I. Why not spill it to me now and save
trouble all round?"
His tone was persuasive, wheedling, half friendly. Trencher merely shook
his head, forcing a derisive grin to his lips.
"Can the bull, Murtha," he said. "You haven't got a thing on me and you
know it."
"Is that so? Well, just to play the game fair, suppose I tell you some
of the things I've got on you--some of them. But before I start I'm
going to tell you that your big mistake was in coming back to where
you'd left that nice new yellow overcoat of yours. Interested, eh?" he
said, reading the expression that came into Trencher's face in spite of
Trencher's efforts. "All right then, I'll go on. You had a good prospect
of getting out of town before daylight, but you chucked your chance when
you came back to the Clarenden a little while ago. But at that I was
expecting you; in fact, I don't mind telling you that I was standing
behind some curtains not fifteen feet from that check room when you
showed up. I could have grabbed you then, of course, but just between
you and me I didn't want to run the risk of having to split the credit
fifty-fifty with any bull, in harness or out of it, that might come
butting in. The neighbourhood was lousy with cops and plain-clothes men
hunting for whoever it was that bumped off Sonntag; they're still there,
I guess, hunting without knowing who it is they're looking for, and
without having a very good description of you, either. I was the only
fellow that had the right dope, and that came about more by accident
than anything else. So I took a chance, myself. I let you get away and
then I trailed you--in a taxi.
"All the time you was on that street car I was riding along right behind
you, and I came up these steps here not ten feet behind you. I wanted
you all for myself and I've got you all by myself."
"You don't hate yourself, exactly, do you?" said Trencher. "Well,
without admitting anything--because there's nothing to admit--I'd like
to know, if you don't mind, how you dope it out that I had anything to
do with Sonntag's being killed--that is if you're not lying about him
being killed?"
"I don't mind," said Murtha blithely. "It makes quite a tale, but I can
boil it down. I wasn't on duty to-night--by rights this was a night off
for me. I had a date at the Clarenden at eleven-thirty to eat a bite
with a brother-in-law of mine and a couple of friends of his--a fellow
named Simons and a fellow named Parker, from Stamford.
"I judge it's Parker's benny and dicer you're wearing now.
"Well, anyhow, on my way to the Clarenden about an hour or so ago I butt
right into the middle of all the hell that's being raised over this
shooting in Thirty-ninth Street. One of the precinct plain-clothes men
that's working on the case tells me a tall guy in a brown derby hat and
a short yellow overcoat is supposed to have pulled off the job. That
didn't mean anything to me, and even if it had I wouldn't have figured
you out as having been mixed up in it. Anyway, it's no lookout of mine.
So I goes into the Clarenden and has a rarebit and a bottle of beer with
my brother-in-law and the others.
"About half-past eleven we all start to go, and then this party, Parker,
can't find his coat check. He's sure he stuck it in his vest pocket when
he blew in, but it ain't there. We look for it on the floor but it's not
there, either. Then all of a sudden Parker remembers that a man in a
brown derby, with a coat turned inside out over his arm, who seemed to
be in a hurry about something, came into the Clarenden along with him,
and that a minute later in that Chinese room the same fellow butts into
him. That gives me an idea, but I don't tell Parker what's on my mind. I
sends the head waiter for the house detective, and when the house
detective comes I show him my badge, and on the strength of that he lets
me and Parker go into the cloak room. Parker's hoping to find his own
coat and I'm pretending to help him look for it, but what I'm really
looking for is a brown derby hat and a short yellow coat--and sure
enough I find 'em. But Parker can't find his duds at all; and so in
putting two and two together it's easy for me to figure how the switch
was made. I dope it out that the fellow who lifted Parker's check and
traded his duds for Parker's is the same fellow who fixed Sonntag's
clock. Also I've got a pretty good line on who that party is; in fact I
practically as good as know who it is.
"So I sends Parker and the others back to the table to smoke a cigar and
stick round awhile, and I hang round the door keeping out of sight
behind them draperies where I can watch the check room. Because, you
see, Trencher, I knew you were the guy and I knew you'd come back--if
you could get back."
He paused as though expecting a question, but Trencher stayed silent and
Murtha kept on.
"And now I'm going to tell you how I come to know you was the right
party. You remember that time about two years ago when I ran you in as a
suspect and down at headquarters you bellyached so loud because I took a
bum old coin off of you? Well, when I went through that yellow overcoat
and found your luck piece, as you call it, in the right-hand pocket, I
felt morally sure, knowing you like I did, that as soon as you missed it
you'd be coming back to try to find it. And sure enough you did come
back. Simple, ain't it?
"The only miscalculation I made was in figuring that when you found it
gone from the pocket you'd hang round making a hunt for it on the floor
or something. You didn't though. I guess maybe you lost your nerve when
you found it wasn't in that coat pocket. Is that right?"
"But I did find it!" exclaimed Trencher, fairly jostled out of his pose
by these last words from his gloating captor. "I've got it now!"
Murtha's hand stole into his trousers pocket and fondled something
there.
"What'll you bet you've got it now?" he demanded gleefully. "What'll you
bet?"
"I'll bet my life--that's all," answered Trencher. "Here, I'll show
you!"
He stood up. Because his wrists were chained he had to twist his body
sidewise before he could slip one hand into his own trousers pocket.
He groped in its depths and then brought forth something and held it out
in his palm.
The poor light of the single electric bulb glinted upon an object which
threw off dulled translucent tints of bluish-green--not a trade dollar,
but a big overcoat button the size of a trade dollar--a flat, smooth,
rimless disk of smoked pearl with a tiny depression in the middle where
the thread holes went through. For a little space of time both of them
with their heads bent forward contemplated it.
Then with a flirt of his manacled hands Trencher flung it away from
him, and with a sickly pallor of fright and surrender stealing up under
the skin of his cheeks he stared at the detective.
"You win, Murtha," he said dully. "What's the use bucking the game after
your luck is gone? Come on, let's go down-town. Yes, I bumped off
Sonntag."