afternoon I was waited on by Chin Jung, you remember?—one of the
leading merchants down there. Of course you know that Chinatown doesn’t
believe in hurting business and it seems that he and some of the others
like him are afraid that if the tong war is not hushed up pretty soon
it will cost a lot—in money. They are going to have an anniversary of
the founding of the Chinese republic soon and of the Chinese New Year
and they are afraid that if the war doesn’t stop they’ll be ruined.”
“Which tong does he belong to?” asked Kennedy, still scrutinising a
photograph through his lens.
“Neither,” replied O’Connor. “With his aid and that of a Judge of one
of our courts who knows the Chinaman like a book we have had a
conference this afternoon between the two tongs and the truce is
restored again for two weeks.”
“Very good,” answered Kennedy, “but it doesn’t catch the murderer of
Bertha Curtis and the Jap. Where is Clendenin, do you suppose?”
“I don’t know, but it at least leaves me free to carry on that case.
What are all these pictures?”
“Well,” began Kennedy, taking his glass from his eye and wiping it
carefully, “a Paris crime specialist has formulated a system for
identifying revolver bullets which is very like that of Dr. Bertillon
for identifying human beings.”
He picked up a handful of the greatly enlarged photographs. “These are
photographs of bullets which he has sent me. The barrel of every gun
leaves marks on the bullet that are always the same for the same barrel
but never identical for two different barrels. In these big negatives
every detail appears very distinctly and it can be decided with
absolute certainty whether a given bullet was fired from a given
revolver. Now, using this same method, I have made similar greatly
enlarged photographs of the two bullets that have figured so far in
this case. The bullet that killed Miss Curtis shows the same marks as
that which killed Nichi.”
He picked up another bunch of prints. “Now,” he continued, “taking up
the firing pin of a rifle or the hammer of a revolver, you may not know
it but they are different in every case. Even among the same makes they
are different, and can be detected.
“The cartridge in either a gun or revolver is struck at a point which
is never in the exact centre or edge, as the case may be, but is always
the same for the same weapon. Now the end of the hammer when examined
with the microscope bears certain irregularities of marking different
from those of every other gun and the shell fired in it is impressed
with the particular markings of that hammer, just as paper is by type.
On making microphotographs of firing pins or hammers, with special
reference to the rounded ends and also photographs of the corresponding
rounded depressions in the primers fired by them it is forced on any
one that cartridges fired by each individual rifle or pistol can
positively be identified.
“You will see on the edge of the photographs I have made a rough sketch
calling attention to the ‘L’-shaped mark which is the chief
characteristic of this hammer, although there are other detailed
markings which show well under the microscope but not well in a
photograph. You will notice that the characters on the firing hammer
are reversed on the cartridge in the same way that a metal type and the
character printed by it are reversed as regards one another. Again,
depressions on the end of the hammer become raised characters on the
cartridge, and raised characters on the hammer become depressions on
the cartridge.
“Look at some of these old photographs and you will see that they
differ from this. They lack the ‘L’ mark. Some have circles, others a
very different series of pits and elevations, a set of characters when
examined and measured under the microscope utterly different from those
in every other case. Each is unique, in its pits, lines, circles and
irregularities. The laws of chance are as much against two of them
having the same markings as they are against the thumb prints of two
human subjects being identical. The firing-pin theory, which was used
in a famous case in Maine, is just as infallible as the finger-print
theory. In this case when we find the owner of the gun making an ‘L’
mark we shall have the murderer.”
Something, I could see, was working on O’Connor’s mind. “That’s all
right,” he interjected, “but you know in neither case was the victim
shot to death. They were asphyxiated.”
“I was coming to that,” rejoined Craig. “You recall the peculiar
marking on the nose of those bullets? They were what is known as
narcotic bullets, an invention of a Pittsburg scientist. They have the
property of lulling their victims to almost instant slumber. A slight
scratch from these sleep-producing bullets is all that is necessary, as
it was in the case of the man who spied on the queer doings on Staten
Island. The drug, usually morphia, is carried in tiny wells on the cap
of the bullet, is absorbed by the system and acts almost instantly.”
The door burst open and Walker Curtis strode in excitedly. He seemed
surprised to see us all there, hesitated, then motioned to Kennedy that
he wished to see him. For a few moments they talked and finally I
caught the remark from Kennedy, “But, Mr. Curtis, I must do it. It is
the only way.”
Curtis gave a resigned nod and Kennedy turned to us. “Gentlemen,” he
said, “Mr. Curtis in going over the effects of his sister has found a
note from Clendenin which mentions another opium joint down in
Chinatown. He wished me to investigate privately, but I have told him
it would be impossible.”
At the mention of a den in the district he was cleaning up O’Connor had
pricked up his ears. “Where is it?” he demanded.
Curtis mentioned a number on Dover Street.
“The Amoy restaurant,” ejaculated O’Connor, seizing the telephone. A
moment later he was arranging with the captain at the Elizabeth Street
station for the warrants for an instant raid.
XII
THE “DOPE TRUST”
As we hurried into Chinatown from Chatham Square we could see that the
district was celebrating its holidays with long ropes of firecrackers,
and was feasting to reed discords from the pipes of its most famous
musicians, and was gay with the hanging out of many sunflags, red with
an eighteen-rayed white sun in the blue union. Both the new tong truce
and the anniversary were more than cause for rejoicing.
Hurried though it was, the raid on the Hep Sing joint had been
carefully prepared by O’Connor. The house we were after was one of the
oldest of the rookeries, with a gaudy restaurant on the second floor, a
curio shop on the street level, while in the basement all that was
visible was a view of a huge and orderly pile of tea chests. A moment
before the windows of the dwellings above the restaurant had been full
of people. All had faded away even before the axes began to swing on
the basement door which had the appearance of a storeroom for the shop
above.
The flimsy outside door went down quickly. But it was only a blind.
Another door greeted the raiders. The axes swung noisily and the
crowbars tore at the fortified, iron-clad, “ice box” door inside. After
breaking it down they had to claw their way through another just like
it. The thick doors and tea chests piled up showed why no sounds of
gambling and other practices ever were heard outside.
Pushing aside a curtain we were in the main room. The scene was one of
confusion showing the hasty departure of the occupants.
Kennedy did not stop here. Within was still another room, for smokers,
anything but like the fashionable place we had seen uptown. It was low,
common, disgusting. The odour everywhere was offensive; everywhere was
filth that should naturally breed disease. It was an inferno reeking
with unwholesome sweat and still obscured with dense fumes of smoke.
Three tiers of bunks of hardwood were built along the walls. There was
no glamour here; all was sordid. Several Chinamen in various stages of
dazed indolence were jabbering in incoherent oblivion, a state I
suppose of “Oriental calm.”
There, in a bunk, lay Clendenin. His slow and uncertain breathing told
of his being under the influence of the drug, and he lay on his back
beside a “layout” with a half-cooked pill still in the bowl of his pipe.
The question was to wake him up. Craig began slapping him with a wet
towel, directing us how to keep him roused. We walked him about, up and
down, dazed, less than half sensible, dreaming, muttering, raving.
A hasty exclamation from O’Connor followed as he drew from the scant
cushions of the bunk a long-barreled pistol, a .44 such as the tong
leaders used, the same make as had shot Bertha Curtis and Nichi. Craig
seized it and stuck it into his pocket.
All the gamblers had fled, all except those too drugged to escape.
Where they had gone was indicated by a door leading up to the kitchen
of the restaurant. Craig did not stop but leaped upstairs and then down
again into a little back court by means of a fire-escape. Through a
sort of short alley we groped our way, or rather through an intricate
maze of alleys and a labyrinth of blind recesses. We were apparently
back of a store on Pell Street.
It was the work of only a moment to go through another door and into
another room, filled with smoky, dirty, unpleasant, fetid air. This
room, too, seemed to be piled with tea chests. Craig opened one. There
lay piles and piles of opium tins, a veritable fortune in the drug.
Mysterious pots and pans, strainers, wooden vessels, and testing
instruments were about. The odour of opium in the manufacture was
unmistakable, for smoking opium is different from the medicinal drug.
There it appeared the supplies of thousands of smokers all over the
country were stored and prepared. In a corner a mass of the finished
product lay weltering in a basin like treacle. In another corner was
the apparatus for remaking yen-shee or once-smoked opium. This I felt
was at last the home of the “dope trust,” as O’Connor had once called
it, the secret realm of a real opium king, the American end of the rich
Shanghai syndicate.
A door opened and there stood a Chinaman, stoical, secretive,
indifferent, with all the Oriental cunning and cruelty hall-marked on
his face. Yet there was a fascination and air of Eastern culture about
him in spite of that strange and typical Oriental depth of intrigue and
cunning that shone through, great characteristics of the East.
No one said a word as Kennedy continued to ransack the place. At last
under a rubbish heap he found a revolver wrapped up loosely in an old
sweater. Quickly, under the bright light, Craig drew Clendenin’s
pistol, fitted a cartridge into it and fired at the wall. Again into
the second gun he fitted another and a second shot rang out.
Out of his pocket came next the small magnifying glass and two
unmounted microphotographs. He bent down over the exploded shells.
“There it is,” cried Craig scarcely able to restrain himself with the
keenness of his chase, “there it is—the mark like an ‘L.’ This
cartridge bears the one mark, distinct, not possible to have been made
by any other pistol in the world. None of the Hep Sings, all with the
same make of weapons, none of the gunmen in their employ, could
duplicate that mark.”
“Some bullets,” reported a policeman who had been rummaging further in
the rubbish.
“Be careful, man,” cautioned Craig. “They are doped. Lay them down.
Yes, this is the same gun that fired the shot at Bertha Curtis and
Nichi Moto—fired narcotic bullets in order to stop any one who
interfered with the opium smuggling, without killing the victim.”
“What’s the matter?” asked O’Connor, arriving breathless from the
gambling room after hearing the shots. The Chinaman stood, still
silent, impassive. At sight of him O’Connor gasped out, “Chin Jung!”
“Real tong leader,” added Craig, “and the murderer of the white girl to
whom he was engaged. This is the goggled chauffeur of the red car that
met the smuggling boat, and in which Bertha Curtis rode, unsuspecting,
to her death.”
“And Clendenin?” asked Walker Curtis, not comprehending.
“A tool—poor wretch. So keen had the hunt for him become that he had
to hide in the only safe place, with the coolies of his employer. He
must have been in such abject terror that he has almost smoked himself
to death.”
“But why should the Chinaman shoot my sister?” asked Walker Curtis
amazed at the turn of events.
“Your sister,” replied Craig, almost reverently, “wrecked though she
was by the drug, was at last conscience stricken when she saw the vast
plot to debauch thousands of others. It was from her that the Japanese
detective in the revenue service got his information—and both of them
have paid the price. But they have smashed the new opium ring—we have
captured the ring-leaders of the gang.”
Out of the maze of streets, on Chatham Square again, we lost no time in
mounting to the safety of the elevated station before some murderous
tong member might seek revenge on us.
The celebration in Chinatown was stilled. It was as though the nerves
of the place had been paralysed by our sudden, sharp blow.
A downtown train took me to the office to write a “beat,” for the Star
always made a special feature of the picturesque in Chinatown news.
Kennedy went uptown.
Except for a few moments in the morning, I did not see Kennedy again
until the following afternoon, for the tong war proved to be such an
interesting feature that I had to help lay out and direct the
assignments covering its various details.
I managed to get away again as soon as possible, however, for I knew
that it would not be long before some one else in trouble would
commandeer Kennedy to untangle a mystery, and I wanted to be on the
spot when it started.
Sure enough, it turned out that I was right. Seated with him in our
living room, when I came in from my hasty journey uptown in the subway,
was a man, tall, thick-set, with a crop of closely curling dark hair, a
sharp, pointed nose, ferret eyes, and a reddish moustache, curled at
the ends. I had no difficulty in deciding what he was, if not who he
was. He was the typical detective who, for the very reason that he
looked the part, destroyed much of his own usefulness.
“We have lost so much lately at Trimble’s,” he was saying, “that it is
long past the stage of being merely interesting. It is downright
serious—for me, at least. I’ve got to make good or lose my job. And
I’m up against one of the cleverest shoplifters that ever entered a
department-store, apparently. Only Heaven knows how much she has got
away with in various departments so far, but when it comes to lifting
valuable things like pieces of jewelry which run into the thousands,
that is too much.”
At the mention of the name of the big Trimble store I had recognised at
once what the man was, and it did not need Kennedy’s rapid-fire
introduction of Michael Donnelly to tell me that he was a department
store detective.
“Have you no clue, no suspicions?” inquired Kennedy.
“Well, yes, suspicions,” measured Donnelly slowly. “For instance, one
day not long ago a beautifully dressed and refined-looking woman called
at the jewellery department and asked to see a diamond necklace which
we had just imported from Paris. She seemed to admire it very much,
studied it, tried it on, but finally went away without making up her
mind. A couple of days later she returned and asked to see it again.
This time there happened to be another woman beside her who was looking
at some pendants. The two fell to talking about the necklace, according
to the best recollection of the clerk, and the second woman began to
examine it critically. Again the prospective buyer went away. But this
time after she had gone, and when he was putting the things back into
the safe, the clerk examined the necklace, thinking that perhaps a flaw
had been discovered in it which had decided the woman against it. It
was a replica in paste; probably substituted by one of these clever and
smartly dressed women for the real necklace.”
Before Craig had a chance to put another question, the buzzer on our
door sounded, and I admitted a dapper, soft-spoken man of middle size,
who might have been a travelling salesman or a bookkeeper. He pulled a
card from his case and stood facing us, evidently in doubt how to
proceed.
“Professor Kennedy?” he asked at length, balancing the pasteboard
between his fingers.
“Yes,” answered Craig. “What can I do for you?”
“I am from Shorham, the Fifth Avenue jeweller, you know,” he began
brusquely, as he handed the card to Kennedy. “I thought I’d drop in to
consult you about a peculiar thing that happened at the store recently,
but if you are engaged, I can wait. You see, we had on exhibition a
very handsome pearl dogcollar, and a few days ago two women came to—”
“Say,” interrupted Kennedy, glancing from the card to the face of
Joseph Bentley, and then at Donnelly. “What is this—a gathering of the
clans? There seems to be an epidemic of shoplifting. How much were you
stung for?”
“About twenty thousand altogether,” replied Bentley with rueful
frankness. “Why? Has some one else been victimised, too?”
XIII
THE KLEPTOMANIAC
Quickly Kennedy outlined, with Donnelly’s permission, the story we had
just heard. The two store detectives saw the humour of the situation,
as well as the seriousness of it, and fell to comparing notes.
“The professional as well as the amateur shop-lifter has always
presented to me an interesting phase of criminality,” remarked Kennedy
tentatively, during a lull in their mutual commiseration. “With
thousands of dollars’ worth of goods lying unprotected on the counters,
it is really no wonder that some are tempted to reach out and take what
they want.”
“Yes,” explained Donnelly, “the shop-lifter is the department-store’s
greatest unsolved problem. Why, sir, she gets more plunder in a year
than the burglar. She’s costing the stores over two million dollars.
And she is at her busiest just now with the season’s shopping in full
swing. It’s the price the stores have to pay for displaying their
goods, but we have to do it, and we are at the mercy of the thieves. I
don’t mean by that the occasional shoplifter who, when she gets caught,
confesses, cries, pleads, and begs to return the stolen article. They
often get off. It is the regulars who get the two million, those known
to the police, whose pictures are, many of them, in the Rogues’
Gallery, whose careers and haunts are known to every probation officer.
They are getting away with loot that means for them a sumptuous living.”
“Of course we are not up against the same sort of swindlers that you
are,” put in Bentley, “but let me tell you that when the big jewelers
do get up against anything of the sort they are up against it hard.”
“Have you any idea who it could be?” asked Kennedy, who had been
following the discussion keenly.
“Well, some idea,” spoke up Donnelly. “From what Bentley says I
wouldn’t be surprised to find that it was the same person in both
cases. Of course you know how rushed all the stores are just now. It is
much easier for these light-fingered individuals to operate during the
rush than at any other time. In the summer, for instance, there is
almost no shop-lifting at all. I thought that perhaps we could discover
this particular shoplifter by ordinary means, that perhaps some of the
clerks in the jewellery department might be able to identify her. We
found one who said that he thought he might recognise one of the women
if he saw her again. Perhaps you did not know that we have our own
little rogues’ gallery in most of the big department-stores. But there
didn’t happen to be anything there that he recognised. So I took him
down to Police Headquarters. Through plate after plate of pictures
among the shoplifters in the regular Rogues’ Gallery the clerk went. At
last he came to one picture that caused him to stop. ‘That is one of
the women I saw in the store that day,’ he said. ‘I’m sure of it.’”
Donnelly produced a copy of the Bertillon picture.
“What?” exclaimed Bentley, as he glanced at it and then at the name and
history on the back. “Annie Grayson? Why, she is known as the queen of
shoplifters. She has operated from Christie’s in London to the little
curio-shops of San Francisco. She has worked under a dozen aliases and
has the art of alibi down to perfection. Oh, I’ve heard of her many
times before. I wonder if she really is the person we’re looking for.
They say that Annie Grayson has forgotten more about shoplifting than
the others will ever know.”
“Yes,” continued Donnelly, “and here’s the queer part of it. The clerk
was ready to swear that he had seen the woman in the store at some time
or other, but whether she had been near the counter where the necklace
was displayed was another matter. He wasn’t so sure about that.”
“Then how did she get it?” I asked, much interested.
“I don’t say that she did get it,” cautioned Donnelly. “I don’t know
anything about it. That is why I am here consulting Professor Kennedy.”
“Then who did get it, do you think?” I demanded.
“We have a great deal of very conflicting testimony from the various
clerks,” Donnelly continued. “Among those who are known to have visited
the department and to have seen the necklace is another woman, of an
entirely different character, well known in the city.” He glanced
sharply at us, as if to impress us with what he was about to say, then
he leaned over and almost whispered the name. “As nearly as I can
gather out of the mass of evidence, Mrs. William Willoughby, the wife
of the broker down in Wall Street, was the last person who was seen
looking at the diamonds.”
The mere breath of such a suspicion would have been enough, without his
stage-whisper method of imparting the information. I felt that it was
no wonder that, having even a suspicion of this sort, he should be in
doubt how to go ahead and should wish Kennedy’s advice. Ella
Willoughby, besides being the wife of one of the best known operators
in high-class stocks and bonds, was well known in the society columns
of the newspapers. She lived in Glenclair, where she was a leader of
the smarter set at both the church and the country club. The group who
preserved this neat balance between higher things and the world, the
flesh and the devil, I knew to be a very exclusive group, which, under
the calm suburban surface, led a sufficiently rapid life. Mrs.
Willoughby, in addition to being a leader, was a very striking woman
and a beautiful dresser, who set a fast pace for the semi-millionaires
who composed the group.
Here indeed was a puzzle at the very start of the case. It was in all
probability Mrs. Willoughby who had looked at the jewels in both cases.
On the other hand, it was Annie Grayson who had been seen on at least
one occasion, yet apparently had had nothing whatever to do with the
missing jewels, at least not so far as any tangible evidence yet
showed. More than that, Donnelly vouchsafed the information that he had
gone further and that some of the men work-ing under him had
endeavoured to follow the movements of the two women and had found what
looked to be a curious crossing of trails. Both of them, he had found,
had been in the habit of visiting, while shopping, the same little
tea-room on Thirty-third Street, though no one had ever seen them
together there, and the coincidence might be accounted for by the fact
that many Glenclair ladies on shopping expeditions made this tea-room a
sort of rendezvous. By inquiring about among his own fraternity
Donnelly had found that other stores also had reported losses recently,
mostly of diamonds and pearls, both black and white.
Kennedy had been pondering the situation for some time, scarcely
uttering a word. Both detectives were now growing restless, waiting for
him to say something. As for me, I knew that if anything were said or
done it would be in Kennedy’s own good time. I had learned to have
implicit faith and confidence in him, for I doubt if Craig could have
been placed in a situation where he would not know just what to do
after he had looked over the ground.
At length he leisurely reached across the table for the suburban
telephone book, turned the pages quickly, snapped it shut, and observed
wearily and, as it seemed, irrelevantly: “The same old trouble again
about accurate testimony. I doubt whether if I should suddenly pull a
revolver and shoot Jameson, either of you two men could give a strictly
accurate account of just what happened.”