exclaimed Kennedy, who had been turning something over in his mind.
He reached for the telephone and called the Montmartre.
"Julius, please," he said when they answered; then, placing his hand
over the transmitter, he turned to Clare. "That was your friend the
Titian, Miss Kendall."
"No friend of mine if she happens to remember seeing me in Dr. Harris's
office the other day. Still, I doubt if she would."
"Hello--Julius? Good morning. How about a private dining-room for
three, Julius?"
We could not hear the reply, but Craig added quickly, "I thought there
were two?"
Evidently the answer was in the affirmative, for Craig asked next,
"Well, can't we have the small one?"
He hung up the receiver with a satisfied smile after closing with
"That's the way to talk. Thank you, Julius. Good-bye."
"What was the difficulty?" I asked.
"Why, I thought I'd take a chance--and it took. Now figure it out for
yourself. Carton says it's dough day, so to speak, up there. What is
more natural than that the money for all those places leased to various
people should be passed over in a place that is public and yet is not
public? For instance, there is the Montmartre itself. Now think it out.
Where would that be done in the Montmartre? Why, in one of the private
dining-rooms, of course."
"That seems reasonable," agreed Carton.
"That was the way I doped it," pursued Craig. "I thought I'd confirm it
if I could. You remember they told us to call up always if I wanted a
private dining-room and it would be reserved for me. So it was the most
natural thing in the world for me to call up. If they had said yes, I
should have been disappointed. But they said no, and straightway I
wanted one of those rooms the worst way. One seems to be engaged--the
large one. He said nothing about the other, so I asked him. Since I
knew about it, he could hardly say no. Well, I have engaged it for
lunch--an early luncheon, too."
"It sounds all right, as though you were on the right trail," remarked
Carton. "But, remember, only the best sort of evidence will go against
those people. They can afford to hire the best lawyers that money can
retain. And be careful not to let them get anything on you, for they
are fearful liars, and they'll go the limit to discredit you."
"Trust us," assured Craig. "Now, Miss Kendall, if you will give us the
pleasure of lunching with you at the Montmartre again, I think we may
be able to get the Judge just the sort of open and shut evidence he is
after."
"I shall be glad to do it. I'm ready now."
Kennedy glanced at his watch. "It's a little early yet. If we take a
taxicab we shall have plenty of time to stop at the laboratory on our
way."
Arriving at the laboratory, he went to a drawer, from which he took a
little box which contained a long tube, and carefully placed it in the
breast pocket of his coat. Then from a chest of tools he drew several
steel sections that apparently fitted together, and began stuffing the
parts into various pockets.
"Here, Walter," he said, "these make me bulge like a yeggman with his
outfit under his coat. Can't you help me with some of these parts?"
I jammed several into various pockets--heavy pieces of metal--and we
were ready.
Our previous visits to the Montmartre seemed to have given us the
entree and the precaution of telephoning made it even easier. Indeed,
it appeared that about all that was necessary there was to be known and
to be thought "right." We carefully avoided the office, where the
stenographer might possibly have recognized Clare, and entered the
elevator.
"Is Dr. Harris in?" asked Craig, both by way of getting information and
showing that he was no stranger.
The black elevator boy gave an ivory grin. "No, sah. He done gone on
one o' them things."
Another question developed the fact that whenever Harris was away it
was generally assumed that he was tinting the metropolis vermilion from
the Battery to the Bronx.
We passed down the hall to the smaller of the two dining-rooms, and as
we went by the larger we could see the door open and that no one was
there.
We had ordered and the waiter had scarcely shut the door before Kennedy
had divested himself of the heavy steel sections which he had hidden in
his pockets. I did the same.
With a quick glance he seemed to be observing just how the furniture
was placed. The smaller dining-room was quite as elaborately furnished
as the larger, though of course the furniture was more crowded.
He moved the settee and was on his knees in a corner. "Let me see," he
considered. "There was nothing on this side of the larger room except
the divan in the centre."
As nearly as he could judge he was measuring off just where the divan
stood on the opposite side of the wall, and its height. Then he began
fitting together the pieces of steel. As he added one to another, I saw
that they made a sectional brace and bit of his own design, a long,
vicious-looking affair such as a burglar might have been glad to own.
Carefully he started to bore through the plaster and lath back of the
settee and to one side of where the divan must have been. He was making
just as small a hole as possible, now and then stopping to listen.
There was no noise from the next room, but a tap on the door announced
the waiter with luncheon. He shoved the settee back and joined us. The
discreet waiter placed the food on the table and departed without a
word or look. Kennedy resumed his work and we left the luncheon still
untasted.
The bit seemed to have gone through as Kennedy, turning it carefully,
withdrew it now and then to make sure. At last he seemed to be
satisfied with the opening he had made.
From the package in his breast pocket he drew a long brass tube which
looked as if it might be a putty-blower. Slowly he inserted it into the
hole he had bored.
"What is it?" I asked, unable to restrain my curiosity longer.
"I felt sure that there would be no talking done in that room,
especially as we are in this one and anyone knows that even if you
can't put a detectaphone in a room, it will often work if merely placed
against a wall or door, on the other side, in the next room. So I
thought I'd use this instead. Put your eye down here."
I did so and was amazed to find that through a hole less than a quarter
of an inch in diameter the brass tube enabled me to see the entire room
next to us.
I looked up at Kennedy in surprise. "What do you think of this, Miss
Kendall?" I asked, moving the settee out of her way. "What do you call
it?"
"That is a detectascope," he replied, "a little contrivance which makes
use of the fish-eye lens.
"Yes. The detectascope enables you to see what is going on in another
room. The focus may be altered in range so that the faces of those in
the room may be recognized and the act of passing money or signing
cheques, for instance, may be detected. The instrument is fashioned
somewhat after the cytoscope of the doctors, with which the human
interior may be seen."
"Very remarkable," exclaimed Clare. "But I can't understand how it is
possible to see so much through such a little tube. Why, I almost fancy
I can see more in that room than I could with my own eyes if I were
placed so that I could not move my head."
Kennedy laughed.
"That's the secret," he went on. "For instance, take a drop of water.
Professor Wood of Johns Hopkins has demonstrated recently the
remarkable refracting power of a drop of water, using the camera and
the drop of water as a lens. It is especially interesting to scientists
because it illustrates the range of vision of some fishes. They have
eyes that see over half a circle. Hence the lens gets its name--'the
fish-eye lens.' A globe refracts the light that reaches it from all
directions, and if it is placed as the lens is in the detectascope so
that one half of it catches the light, all this light will be refracted
through it. Ordinary lenses, because of their flatness, have a range of
only a few degrees, the widest in use, I believe, taking in only
ninety-six degrees, or a little over a quarter of a circle. So you see
my detectascope has a range almost twice as wide as that of any other
lens."
The little tube was fascinating, and although there was no one in the
next room yet, I could not resist the desire to keep on looking through
it.
"Since you are so interested, Walter," laughed Craig, "we'll appoint
you to take the first shift at watching. Meanwhile we may as well eat
since we shall certainly have to pay. When you are tired or hungry I'll
take a turn."
Kennedy and I had been taking turns at watching through the
detectascope while Miss Kendall told us more about how she had come to
be associated with the organization to clean up New York.
"We have struck some delicate situations before," she was saying,
"times when it meant either that we must surrender and compromise the
work of the investigation or offend an interest that might turn out to
be more powerful than we realized. Our rule from the start was, 'No
Compromise.' You know the moment you compromise with one, all the
others hear it and it weakens your position. We've made some powerful
enemies, but our idea is that as long as we keep perfectly straight and
honest they will never be able to beat us. We shall win in the end,
because so far it has never come to a show-down, when we appealed to
the public itself, that the public had not risen and backed us
strongly."
I had come to have the utmost confidence in Clare Kendall and her frank
way of handling a ticklish yet most important subject without fear or
prudishness. There was a refreshing newness about her method. It was
neither the holier-than-thou attitude of many religionists, nor the
smug monopoly of all knowledge of the social worker, nor the brutal
wantonness of the man or woman of the world who excuses everything
"because it is human nature, always has been and always will be."
"We have no illusions on the subject," she pursued. "We don't expect to
change human nature until the individual standard changes. But we are
convinced of this--and it is as far as we go and is what we are out to
accomplish--and that is that we can, and are going to, smash protected,
commercialized vice as one of the big businesses of New York."
"Sh-h," cautioned Kennedy, whose turn it happened to be just then to
watch. "Someone has just entered the room."
"Who is it?" I whispered eagerly.
"A man. I can't see his face. His back is toward me, but there is
something familiar about him. There--he is turning around. For Heaven's
sake--it's Ike the Dropper!"
We had already recounted to Miss Kendall our experiences in following
Dr. Harris to the black and tan joint and the meeting with Ike the
Dropper.
"Then Ike the Dropper is the collector for the police or the
politicians higher up," she exclaimed under her breath. "If we learned
nothing more, that would be enough. It would tell us whom to watch."
Hastily we took turns at getting a good look at Ike through the
wonderful little detectascope. Then Kennedy resumed his watch,
whispering now and then what he saw. Apparently Ike had proceeded to
make himself comfortable in the luxurious surroundings of the private
dining-room, against the arrival of the graft payers.
"I wonder who the man higher up is," whispered Miss Kendall.
"Someone is coming in," reported Kennedy. "By George, it is that
stenographer from the office downstairs. She is handing him an
envelope. Good for her! He tried to kiss her and she backed away in
disgust. The scoundrel!
"Isn't it clever, though? Not a word is said by anyone. I don't suppose
she could swear to knowing anything about what is in the envelope.
There she goes out. He is opening the envelope and counting out the
money--ten one-hundred-dollar bills. There they go into the fob pocket
of his trousers. I imagined he learned something from my pick-pocket.
That is the safest pocket a man has. That little contribution, I take
it, was from the Montmartre itself."
Then followed an interval in which Ike puffed away on his cigar in
silent state.
"Here's another now," announced Craig. "Another woman. I never saw her
before."
Both Miss Kendall and I looked and neither of us recognized her. She
was slim and would have been young-looking if she had not made such
obvious efforts to imitate the healthy colour of the cheeks which she
probably would have had if she had lived sensibly and left cosmetics
alone.
Kennedy was hastily jotting down some notes on the back of an envelope.
"They are going through the same proceedings again. I guess Ike doesn't
like her. There she goes. Only two hundred this time."
Another wait followed, during which Ike smoked down his cigar and
lighted another from the stub. Then the door opened again.
Kennedy motioned quickly to Clare to look through the detectascope.
Meanwhile he pulled from his pocket the piece of paper he had written
on and torn from the back of the menu at the Futurist.
"Marie!" exclaimed Clare under her breath.
"The same," whispered Kennedy. "Miss Kendall, you have the true 'camera
eye' of the born detective. Now--please--let me see if I can get what
occurs."
She yielded her place to him.
"Three hundred more," he murmured. "Marie must be in the game, though.
He didn't wait for her to leave before he tore open the envelope. Now
they are burning the envelopes in the ash tray. And still not a word.
This is clever, clever. Think of it--fifteen hundred dollars of easy
money like that! I wonder how much of it sticks to Ike's hands on the
way up. He must have a capacious fob pocket for that. Say, he's a
regular fellow with the ladies, Ike is. Only this one doesn't seem to
resent it. By George, I wonder if this fellow Ike isn't giving the
police or the politicians the double-cross. He couldn't be on such
intimate terms with one who was paying graft to him as collector
otherwise; do you think so?"
Craig looked up without waiting for an answer. "You will excuse any
levity, but that was some kiss she just gave him."
Kennedy resumed his position for looking through the detectascope,
occasionally glancing down at the notes he had made the day before and
now and then making a slight alteration.
"There. She is going away now. Well, I guess the collection is all
over. He has his hat on and a third cigar, ready to go as soon as
somebody signals that the coast is clear. That was a good day's work
for Ike and the man higher up, whoever he is. Ah--there he goes. It was
a signal from the waiter he was after. Now we may as well finish this
luncheon. It cost enough."
For several minutes we ate in silence.
"I wish I could have followed Ike," observed Craig. "But of course it
would have been of no use. To go out right after him would have given
the whole thing away."
"Who is that dark-haired, dark-skinned woman, Marie, do you suppose?"
asked Clare. "Sometimes I almost think she is part negro."
"I don't know. I wouldn't be surprised, though, if you were right. If
you have any investigators to spare, they might try to find out who she
is and something of her history. I will give them a copy of these notes
which I intend to turn over to the Department of Justice men who have
been making the white slave investigation for the Federal Government."
Kennedy had laid the notes which he had made on the menu before us and
was copying them. Both Clare and I leaned over to read them. It was
Greek to me:
Nose--straight, base elevated, nostrils thick, slightly flaring.
Ears--lobe descending oval, traversed by a hollow, antitragus concave;
lobe separated from cheek.
Lips--large.
Mouth--large.
Chin--receding.
There was much more that he had jotted down and added to the
description.
"Oh," exclaimed Clare, as she ran through the writing, "that is this
new portrait parle, the spoken picture, isn't it?"
"Yes," replied Kennedy. "You may know that the Government has been
using it in its white slave inquiry and has several thousands of such
descriptions. Under the circumstances, I understand that the Government
agents find it superior to finger-prints. Finger-prints are all right
for identification, as we have found right here, for instance, in the
Night Court. But Bertillon's new portrait parle is the thing for
apprehension."
"What is it?" I asked.
"Well, take the case before us. We have had no chance to finger-print
that woman and what good would it do if we had? No one could recognize
her that way until she was arrested or some means had been taken to get
the prints again.
"But the portrait parle is scientific apprehension, the step that comes
before scientific identification by finger-prints. It means giving the
detective an actual portrait of the person he is sent after without
burdening him with a photograph. As descriptions are now given,
together with a photograph, a person is described as of such a weight,
height, general appearance, and so on. A clever crook knows that. He
knows how to change his appearance so that there are few even of the
best detectives who can recognize him. This new system describes the
features so that a man can carry them in his mind systematically,
features that cannot be changed.
"Take the nose, for example," explained Kennedy. "There are only three
kinds, as Bertillon calls them--convex, straight, and concave. A
detective, we will say, is sent out after a man with a concave nose or,
as in this case a woman with a straight nose. Thus he is freed from the
necessity of taking a second glance at two-thirds of the women,
roughly, that he meets--that is, theoretically. He passes by all with
convex and concave noses.
"There are four classes of ears--triangular, square, oval, and round,
as they may be called. Having narrowed his search to women with
straight noses, the detective needs to concern himself with only
one-fourth of the women with straight noses. Having come down to women
with straight noses and, say, oval ears, he will eliminate all those
that do not have the mouth, lips, chin, eyes, forehead, and so on that
have been given him. Besides that, there are other striking differences
in noses and ears that make his work much easier than you would
imagine, once he has been trained to observe such things quickly."
"It sounds all right," I agreed haltingly.
"It is all right, too," he argued warmly. "The proof of it is its use
in Paris and other cities abroad and the fact that it has been imported
here to New York in the Police Department and has been used by the
Government. I could tell you many interesting stories about how it has
succeeded where photographs would have failed."
I had been reading over the description again and trying to apply it.
"For instance," Craig resumed thoughtfully. "I believe that this woman
is a mulatto, but that is a long way from proving it. Still, I hope
that by using the portrait parle and other things we may be able to
draw the loose threads together into a net that will catch
her--providing, of course, that she ought to be caught."
He had finished making copies of the portrait parle and had called for
a cheque for the lunch.
"So you see," he concluded, "this is without any doubt the woman we saw
at the Futurist, whom Miss Kendall followed to Madame Margot's Beauty
Shop, two doors down."
Kennedy handed a copy to Miss Kendall.
"Using that and whatever other means you may have, Miss Kendall," he
said, "I wish that you would try to find this woman and all you can
about her. Walter, take this other copy and see Carton. I think he has
a county detective who knows the system. I shall spend the rest of the
day getting in touch with the Federal authorities in this city and in
Washington trying to find out whether they know anything about her."
We left the Montmartre with as much care as we had entered and
seemingly without having yet aroused any suspicion. The rest of the day
was spent in setting to work those whom we felt we could trust to use
the portrait parle to locate the mysterious dark-haired Marie who
seemed to cross our trail at every turn, yet who proved so elusive.
XIII
THE CONVICTION
Meanwhile, the organization was using every effort to get possession of
the Black Book, as Kennedy had suspected.
Miss Ashton had been busy on the case of the missing Betty Blackwell,
but as yet there was no report from any of the agencies which she had
set in motion to locate the girl. She had seen Langhorne, and, although
she did not say much about the result of the interview, I felt sure
that it had resulted in a further estrangement between them, perhaps a
suspicion on the part of Langhorne that Carton had been responsible for
it.
In as tactful a way as possible, Miss Ashton had also warned Mrs.
Ogleby of the danger she ran, but, as I had already supposed, the
warning had been unnecessary. The rumours about the detectaphone record
of the dinner had been quite enough. As for the dinner itself, what
happened, and who were present, it remained still a mystery, perhaps
only to be explained when at last we managed to locate the book.
Since the visit of Kahn, we had had no direct or indirect
communications with either Dorgan or Murtha. They were, however, far
from inactive, and I felt that their very secrecy, which had always
been the strong card of the organization, boded no good. Although both
Carton and Kennedy were straining every nerve to make progress in the
case, there was indeed very little to report, either the next day or
for some time after the episode which had placed Kahn in our power.
Carton was careful not to say anything about the graphic record we had
taken of Kahn's attempt to throw the case. It was better so, he felt.
The jury fixing evidence would keep and it would prove all the stronger
trump to play when the right occasion arose. That time rapidly
approached, now, with the day set for the trial of Dopey Jack.
The morning of the trial found both Kennedy and myself in the part of
General Sessions to which the case had been assigned to be tried under
Justice Pomeroy.
To one who would watch the sieve through which justice vigorously tries
to separate the wheat from the chaff, the innocent from the guilty, a
visit to General Sessions is the best means. For it is fed through the
channels that lead through the police courts, the Grand Jury chambers,
and the District Attorney's office. There one can study the largest
assortment of criminals outside of a penal institution, from the Artful
Dodger and Bill Sykes, Fagin and Jim the Penman, to the most modern of
noted crooks of fact or fiction, all done here in real flesh and blood.
It is the busiest of criminal courts. More serious offenders against
the law are sentenced here than in any other court in New York. The
final chapter in nearly every big crime is written there, sooner or
later.
As we crowded in, thanks to the courtesy of Carton, we found a roomy
chamber, with high ceiling, and grey, impressive walls in the southeast
corner of the second floor of the Criminal Courts Building. Heavy
carved oaken doors afforded entrance and exit for the hundreds of
lawyers, witnesses, friends, and relatives of defendants and
complainants who flocked thither.
Rows upon rows of dark-brown stained chairs filled the west half of the
courtroom, facing a three-foot railing that enclosed a jury box and
space reserved for counsel tables, the clerk and the District Attorney
representing the people.
At the extreme east rose in severe dignity the dais or bench above
which ascended a draped canopy of rich brown plush. Here Justice
Pomeroy presided, in his robes of silk, a striking, white-haired figure
of a man, whose face was seamed and whose eyes were keen with thought
and observation.
Across the street, reached by the famous Bridge of Sighs, loomed the
great grey hulk of stone and steel bars, the city prison, usually
referred to as "The Tombs." As if there had been some cunning design in
the juxtaposition, the massive jail reared itself outside the windows
as an object lesson. It was a perpetual warning to the lawbreaker. Its
towers and projections jutted out as so many rocks on a dangerous shore
where had been wrecked thousands of promising careers just embarked on
the troublesome seas of life.
Skirting the line of southern windows through which The Tombs was
visible, ran a steel wire screen, eight feet high, marking off a narrow
chute that hugged the walls to a door at the rear of the courtroom
leading to the detention pen. Ordinarily prisoners were brought over
the Bridge of Sighs in small droves and herded in the detention pens
just outside the courtroom until their cases were called.