jack lanagan had a sunday off, the first in weeks. a man of whim and caprice in his leisure moments, he had made no plans. this sunday morning, after idly reading the morning papers, rolling and consuming innumerable brown paper cigarettes meanwhile, he finally sallied forth in his ill-fitting clothes toward the palace grill and breakfast. and this being luxuriously ended, he was laved and shaved to his heart’s content. then, perfumed like a boulevardier, he issued forth into market street to join that morning throng drifting down toward the ferry building for the institutional sunday outing across the bay. he permitted himself to drift with the current, perfectly and vastly at ease with all the world. he had switched from cigarettes to an evil manila, poisoning the air cheerfully for yards around him. lanagan rather enjoyed the exclusiveness given him by his noisome cigars.
rourke, fleming, and little johnny o’grady of the herald, with a camera man, whirled out of market street in an automobile, and lanagan jerked alertly round to watch them out of sight, speculating[pg 32] as to what the story might be. he had half determined to drift over to the office, when truck one swung into market street from o’farrell. other fire apparatus was swinging into and out of market street, clanging stridently, and lanagan turned again to the ferry. fires interested him but little. always the chance, he remarked once to me fastidiously, of some chump of a fireman squirting water all over you, which spoiled your clothes. i never knew whether lanagan was having a quiet joke in that or not. his entire wardrobe would have been scorned by a rag picker.
he had been puffing his oakum industriously, and now was attracted by the spectacle of a man beside him nearly doubled over with a fit of coughing. he was shaking and beating at his breast with large, bony hands, and lanagan noted professionally the rheumatic knuckles and the nails like claws, yellow and dirty. his breath came in sharp whistles, short and staccato, and he was taking possibly a third of a normal respiration at a time.
a particularly violent paroxysm, followed by all evidences of entire suspension of breath, brought lanagan to the man’s side with a leap. he swung the huddled form against a hydrant.
“here you!” he called, to a passer-by, “call douglas 20 and tell them to shoot the harbour ambulance up here.” to himself he said: “this man is sick. he needs attention and needs it quick.”
but at the words the hunched, choking figure[pg 33] straightened spasmodically, flashing a look upon lanagan that lanagan, used to malevolence in all its forms expressed upon features the most evil, had not seen quite equalled. accustomed to the ill-featured and repulsive as they strain through the bars at the city prison, yet even lanagan started back momentarily in revulsion.
“i have seen misers,” thought lanagan, “but this is the real miser of all fact and all fiction. i would know him in a million. fellow i used to see in my dreams when i was a youngster. pneumonia sure. about six hours for him and then six feet.”
thus lightly diagnosing and disposing of the man and his case, lanagan motioned the citizen, who had meantime stopped, to go on with the call. but the strange, gnomelike figure, flashing another look, a singular blend of loathing, hate, fear, and timidity, upon the newspaper man, started to hobble away. lanagan dropped his hand on the man’s shoulder to restrain him. but the harsh features turned a look so glowering and repellent upon him that he withdrew the restraining hand. the coughing had ceased. the little old man was still breathing sibilantly and swiftly, rather like a panting dog or cat, which he suggested, but by extraordinary effort of will had fought away the more violent exhibition of his seizure. he commenced to shuffle down the street, with one furtive, fearful, backward look that went on past lanagan and up market street.
“you need a hospital, man,” said lanagan[pg 34] curtly, “and i’m going to take you there. wait.” he placed his hand again on the man’s shoulder. but the manikin-like creature flung the hand viciously from him and again flashed that strange look of blended hate, fear, and timidity upon the newspaper man.
“let be!” he grated. “let be!”
a car clanged to the safety station. the grotesque figure, still half-hunched over at the paroxysm from lanagan’s manila, started for it and lanagan made no further effort at detention. he climbed laboriously to the platform, and lanagan shrugged his shoulders.
“i certainly am not going to dry-nurse you, old man, but i ought to at that. if i ever saw a man marked for death, you’re that man.”
despite a long afternoon idled away beneath mine host pastori’s shade trees and the somnolent influence of cobwebbed chianti, lanagan found his miser’s features constantly before him.
“he’s my miser, too,” he mused, in the vernacular of childhood. “i shouldn’t have let him escape me after finding him.”
returning late, lanagan for once in his life went to his room without his inevitable last call at police headquarters. consequently he was several hours late in the morning on the news of a very fine police story when he awakened to find his miser—thaddeus miller of oakland—pictured on the front pages of all the morning papers. there was no[pg 35] mistaking that face. it was his miser. he had been murdered in his cabin, a clumsy attempt having been made to fire the cabin to destroy the crime and its evidence.
a young clerk, a neighbour to the miser, was under arrest. it appeared that the clerk, james watson, was found named in the will as sole legatee to an estate valued at close to a quarter of a million dollars. upon the watson porch had been found a hammer, freshly washed, the handle not yet dry. but clinging to the claws, unobserved by whoever had washed the blood from the hammer, were two strands of white hair that brought the hammer home to the crime in the cabin. watson, the stories related, had only known miller for a few months. he had been seen leaving the cottage shortly before eight o’clock. the fire was discovered smouldering at nine-thirty o’clock, extinguished, and miller found with his skull crushed, lying on a kerosene-soaked bunk, to which, fortunately, the clumsily started fire had not yet communicated.
watson had made a bad case out for himself initially by denying that he had seen miller at all that day or knowing that he was named in the will. when confronted by neighbours who had seen him leaving the cottage and one neighbour who had heard his wife speak of the will, he took refuge in protestations that he had denied everything through fear and terror. he then admitted owning the hammer, but professed himself at a loss to account[pg 36] for the fact of its having been freshly washed and of the strands of gray hair.
raving his innocence, he had come to the verge of physical collapse. he repeated constantly the name of his wife and begged the police to bring her to him. but he was being held in strict “detinue,” the papers said, until the third degree was given him. at the time of going to press confession was expected momentarily.
mrs. watson, after a police examination, had been permitted to return to her home. her story was that both she and her husband had befriended miller on different occasions, out of pity for his forlorn and miserable condition. she admitted that on one occasion he had jocularly remarked that he would not forget her husband in his will, but had attached no importance to his remark. she had never heard him speak of any person that he feared. she admitted that her husband had visited watson at his cabin in the evening, but that the circumstance was not unusual. he had remained but a moment, miller being in an unusually morose mood—had been so, in fact, for three or four days. she was at a loss to account for the condition of the hammer.
“and yet,” growled lanagan, “i’m eternally doomed if i think either of them did it. that fellow gave me a look that spelled fear; abject, abnormal fear; it was the concentration of the fear of a lifetime of a hare who runs with the dogs always[pg 37] at his heels. and it was not fear of the watsons either.”
lanagan, stopping at the office only long enough to receive instructions, made the narrow-gauge ferry by bowling over an obstreperous ticket-taker who tried to shut the gate in his face. not that there was any particular need for such spectacular haste; it was merely lanagan’s way; lanagan “showing off,” as some of his professional brothers would invidiously have it. but i, who knew him better than any news writer in the business, say not. lanagan was a genuine eccentric. and in this particular case he was fighting for time. bitter experience had taught him the value of minutes. indeed, a cardinal rule of his business that lanagan sought to drive into my slower newspaper intelligence was to get on the ground first.
lanagan knew of old that every city editor in town would be accepting the very plausible police version, and would be awaiting the expected confession from watson. watson might confess, but, lanagan had a sullen “hunch” that he wouldn’t.
lanagan moved most of the time by “hunches,” as many successful newspaper men—to say nothing of detectives—do. hunches and luck may be called by such fancy brands as inductive or deductive, intensive or extensive analytical capacity; but in the long run most crimes are solved on luck, hunches, and through the invaluable aid of police “stool pigeons,” more politely known as “sources.”[pg 38] an intuitive judgment of men is about as good an asset as a reporter or detective can have, coupled with a faculty for quick decision and personal bravery.
more than any one thing, it was possibly this faculty for swift intuitive analysis that carried lanagan to his high degree of success. however, man and man’s judgments are fallible; it was so ordered in the original scheme of things, for very obvious reasons.
lanagan went directly to the watson cottage. the brilliant american police system had permitted some scores of curious and morbid persons to trample over every inch of ground within a hundred yards of the miller hut. privileged friends of the patrolman on guard there, after the traditional american custom also, had been permitted to slip inside and paw over the belongings and stare to their hearts’ content. lanagan knew of old what the situation there would be. that could wait. he was more concerned with having the first meeting of the day with mrs. watson.
it was a modest little “bungalow style” of home that he approached, much like that of any one of thousands of small-salaried men in the transbay suburban sections. an air of good taste, neatness, and care in the trim little lawn, the cleanliness of the walks, stairs and porch, and the precision with which all of the shades were drawn against the morning sun, marked it possibly a bit more individual[pg 39] than many of its kind. mrs. watson herself opened the door to his ring. she bore the outward evidence of grief. her eyes were red and swollen, her cheeks hectic, her hair disheveled. she was blond, with large blue eyes, set possibly a line too closely together, chiseled nose, delicate, shapely ears, saving the lobe was not quite as free as an exact taste would require, and a well-moulded chin.
“i am mr. lanagan of the enquirer,” he said, adding some words of apology. he had a way with women—and with men as well—when he so desired, that was singularly ingratiating; a soft trick of speech, an ingenuousness of manner, a certain dignity that seemed to lift him from the mean atmosphere of his ill-fitting clothes and marked him with personality.
“you may come in,” said mrs. watson.
as he followed her to the parlour and she lifted the shades, he noticed that she was of good figure, rather lithe in her movements, laced well in for a housewife unappareled for the street, not more than three-and-twenty, and that she walked with that scarcely perceptible lift of the shoulders and swing of the hips that denotes a woman not entirely unconscious, even in the stress of melancholy circumstances, of the gaze of a man; a suggestion of affectation, the unmistakable mark of a woman inclined by temperament to be naturally frivolous; or even, upon occasion, reckless. he noticed, too, that she wore french heels.
[pg 40]“curious type certainly,” commented lanagan mentally. “sort of a domesticated coryphée; with the homing instinct implanted where the wanderlust was planted in her sisters. one who has settled into marriage where her like settle, with as little concern, into the round circle of the night lights. everything different except that generic vanity. rather an odd mating for a clerk, and a plodder at that, to judge from his picture,” thought lanagan.
lanagan sat with his back to the window, putting mrs. watson in the full light.
“is there anything you can say, mrs. watson, that could throw any light upon this affair? any enemies that miller ever spoke about? any visitors that he has had of late? any letters or other messages that he received? any threats?”
she threw both hands forth with a despairing gesture.
“nothing, nothing!” she moaned, as tears came. “it is terrible, terrible! he is innocent, innocent i say! i know he is innocent! i know it!”
she sobbed for a moment, and then, with a sudden gesture of determination, straightened up, dried her eyes, and composed herself.
lanagan had been watching her with eyes that seemed to narrow and lessen to little black beads. his ears, gifted with abnormal power for receiving and disintegrating into each component shade of meaning or emotion the tones of the human voice,[pg 41] drank in every word that she uttered, marked each sob that shook her form.
“you do not believe your husband guilty, do you?”
her lips parted in an exclamation of protest, and lanagan for the first time caught the upper lip; a lip as thin as a paper cutter, that drew tautly and white across the perfect teeth. it suggested a knife to lanagan.
“she holds true to the type,” he commented to himself grimly. “a curious type, surely, for a prosaic clerk!”
lanagan’s brain was churning. his beady eyes gleamed as though touched with phosphorescence. under the concentration of his gaze, the woman unconsciously shrank. rising from his chair with a movement almost tigerish, he strode before her, upturned her face so that her eyes looked straight up into his, and then, his voice terrific in its tension, and yet scarcely louder than a whisper, said:
“did you wheedle thaddeus miller into making a will in your favour and then murder him?”
so quickly that her act seemed rather involuntary than by any conscious impulse, she leaped to her feet, her breast rising and falling tumultuously. she struggled inarticulately for speech, raised her hand as though to strike him in the face, and collapsed in a swoon at his feet.
lanagan gazed coldly down upon her without qualm. he was impersonal now; the incarnation[pg 42] of newspaper truth. he only regretted that she had balked him by swooning. swiftly he straightened her out, loosed her collar, and was busily engaged chafing her hands when heavy footfalls sounded from the porch, and the bell rang loudly.
“by the brogans and the ring, our friends of the upper office,” commented lanagan cynically as he opened the door. quinlan and pryor from the oakland department entered, viewing lanagan suspiciously as they beheld the still form upon the floor.
“she’s in better shape for the hospital than your third degree in the detinue cells,” remarked lanagan, vouchsafing no explanations. “went out just this minute as i was interviewing her.”
quinlan and pryor settled themselves heavily, lit fresh cigars, made laboured notes of the circumstances, and, when lanagan finally restored the woman, gave her some breathing space and then informed her that she was to be taken to see her husband. to lanagan she directed no look—addressed no word. she moved as one in a trance.
the detectives and their prisoner departed and lanagan turned for the miller cottage.
“that was a pure soul’s denial or it was a guilty soul’s defiance,” thought lanagan. “but which?”
long he turned that over.
“frankly, on type i mistrust her; but what about that look in miller’s eyes?”
lanagan seldom went back on a “hunch.” at[pg 43] first flash he had declared the watsons innocent. he was not yet ready to abandon that; and yet the circumstances were certainly trending toward them.
“but,” he concluded, “there’s a nigger in this woodpile somewhere that i haven’t located.”
the cottage had nothing to offer. police, curio hunters, and shoals of newspaper men had combed it lanagan hurried to the oakland police headquarters and cocked his feet on inspector henley’s desk while that astute individual detailed to him the various steps taken by the police in fixing the crime on watson. lanagan was nettled. it sounded highly convincing.
“you’re sure of watson?” he finally asked, quizzically, helping himself to a fist-full of henley’s cigars.
“clearest case i have ever handled,” said henley, moving the cigar box out of reach. “every link is complete. further: the woman is in on it and we’ll have her within twenty-four hours. we’ll get the case before baxter and they’ll swing inside of three months.”
“well,” drawled lanagan, “you’re wrong again, henley.”
the inspector flushed. he had a lively recollection of how lanagan had “trimmed” him on the stockslager murder and he didn’t take kindly to the “again.”
“we’ve got the motive, the property; and the means, the hammer. what more do you want?”
[pg 44]“well, to complete the alliteration, i suppose you want the murderer,” said lanagan with a faint laugh. “and you haven’t got him. pretty good smokes. just slip back that box. i don’t get over your way very often. you act as though you had paid for those cigars yourself. can i see watson?”
“no,” said henley, surlily. he never cared to argue the little matters such as lanagan was fond of nagging him with; some way he had a feeling that lanagan always knew just a trifle more than he told. he passed back the box. “but it’s an even break. nobody’s seen him. here’s his picture.”
lanagan studied the front and profile of a young man of twenty-six, a face of surprising frankness and honesty. every line held to lanagan’s critical eye the lie to the number striped across his breast; another feature of our brilliant american police system that puts the rogue’s gallery blazon on a man before he is tried.
as lanagan passed out, his eye fell on the bulletin board in the detectives’ room. the last discharge slip from san quentin was pasted upon it, the slip by which all police stations are supposed to keep in touch with prisoners discharged during the past month. but through long familiarity few of the detectives stop to read carefully. more from habit than anything else, lanagan read those sheets as a preacher reads the book—he scanned it.
[pg 45]the fifth name on the list caught his eye: ephraim miller, alias thad miller, alias thornton miles, alias iowa slim; assault to murder; twenty-five years. the slip was dated the first—five days back. there was little chance of its being read now. swift as a lightning flash lanagan had formed his theory. his mind leaped back to the meeting with miller in front of the palace. ephraim and thaddeus; they were old-fashioned names. then there was the “thad.”
miller had been from san quentin but four days: miser miller’s fear had been on him but a few days. possibly this was a wayward son, some unrecognised offspring, some family skeleton recrudescent; perhaps it was this convict who had brought that fear into the eyes of thaddeus miller!
it was a long, fine chance; but the most brilliant of newspaper successes are scored on long, fine chances. lanagan determined to take it. he “rapped” to the hunch, as he used to style it; under the impulse of his new idea he was a human dynamo.
he was back in san francisco within an hour, and headed straight for billy connors’ buckets of blood, that famed rendezvous within a stone’s throw of the hall of justice, where the leaders of the thieves’ clans foregathered. there he waited an hour until “kid” monahan, popularly designated as king of the pick-pockets, came in. the kid was now a fence. he had retired from the[pg 46] active practice of his profession after doing time twice. “ain’t there with the touch any more,” he remarked sadly to lanagan one day. he was, moreover, credited with being the man for an outsider to “see” who wanted to operate locally.
“kid,” said lanagan, “i want you to find me ephraim miller, alias thad mills, alias thornton miles, alias iowa slim. just out of san quentin where he did twenty-five years for assault to murder.”
“we don’t keep no line on these old ones,” retorted the “king” professionally. “but if he’s goin’ to report here he reports to me. it’s pretty hard on us native sons with that reform bunch on the police commission and the sky pilots stuffing you guys on the papers full of knocks. there ain’t no touch-off work bein’ done around here by any travellers that we can help. when do you want him?”
“meet me here to-night at ten. i must have him located by then.”
lanagan had befriended the “king” once, and he held that illustrious gentleman’s absolute loyalty. he knew the “king” would have a dozen men out in as many minutes.
lanagan headed back for oakland to round up the loose ends of the story. he found police headquarters jammed with newspaper men and the smell of many flash powders heavy on the air.
[pg 47]“all right, mr. lanagan of the enquirer,” quoth henley. “you can talk to watson now.” his tone was triumph.
watson had confessed. he was sitting in a chair in the inspector’s room, a huddled figure of misery. the mantle of age seemed to have settled on him overnight.
lanagan was a hard loser. he stepped over to the huddled man.
“do you mean to tell me, watson,” he said so low that no one but watson heard him; “do you mean to tell me that you are not lying, putting your neck in the noose—to save your wife?”
“no! no!” the denial was a shriek. “i killed him! i killed him for his money, i tell you!” he fell back, shivering.
lanagan drove in on him. “you lie, i tell you,” he hissed. “you lie! you fool! it’s bound to come out! tell the truth!”
“no, no,” moaned watson. “i did it alone. god! i can feel his skull crunching yet!”
“you’ve got more imagination than i credited you with,” sneered lanagan savagely. “that last was a good touch.”
there was a hustle as quinlan and pryor came through the prison gates from the detinue cells surrounded by an eager coterie of newspaper men.
“we’ve got her, inspector!” cried quinlan with unprofessional feeling. “she’s ‘spilled.’ killed him herself, and says her husband is lying if he says[pg 48] he did it. they’re both in it. we will have the whole thing now.”
the woman was then brought out after her official statement had been taken. nothing that the newspaper men could do could shake her story. in substance she said that she had worked on the old man for months to have the will made out in her husband’s favour. knowing her husband was above such a deed, she planned and executed it alone. she had not had an opportunity to wash the hammer after she returned home, and only did so when the furor commenced. that was why it was still damp and why she had overlooked the two strands of incriminating gray hair.
the newspaper camera men snapped and exploded flashes; the inquisitorial circle broke up, and watson having been removed, the room was cleared of all save henley, mrs. watson, and lanagan.
“through?” asked henley sarcastically.
“no,” snapped lanagan. “you say you killed this man. i say, mrs. watson, you’re a liar. you no more killed that man than i did. you are lying to save your husband!”
his voice had risen; his aspect was fairly ferocious; his sallow face flushed to an unwholesome grey-blue; his eyes glowing again with that catlike phosphorescence that she had seen and quailed at once before.
but again he was doomed to disappointment at a breakdown, for again under the shock she collapsed[pg 49] after half rising to her feet with evident purpose to give him the lie as violently as he gave it to her.
women, lanagan reflected, are like electric wires. they are drawn to carry just so much voltage. a little overplus and they burn out. each time he had bullied the woman just as her nerves were at the breaking point.
the matron bustled in with a side compliment on lanagan for his brutality, and lifted the limp form. lanagan, bitterly chagrined at the events of the day, turned on his heel to return to san francisco. on the ferry he broke a vow of six months and fell back on absinthe. he reached the office at seven o’clock, wrote steadily for two hours a story identical as he knew it would be with all the morning papers, and then went out.
the word was passed swiftly that lanagan was drinking again, and i was released for the night to round him up and get him home—my usual assignment under the circumstances.
on the chance that some of the choice spirits that foregather at connors’ dive might have crossed his path, i dropped in there, and, to my unbounded relief, saw lanagan himself at a table in deep conversation with “kid” monahan. i went over to his table, the “king” slipping out the side door. i had not lanagan’s penchant for camaraderie with that breed, and took little pains not to let him know it.
the old wild, reckless light shone from lanagan’s[pg 50] eyes, and i knew there was no measuring his stride that night, making pace or keeping it.
he laughed aloud. “art there, old truepenny?” and slapped my shoulder. he was in high feather with himself, that was clear. “come. have you got your gun?” i nodded.
“that’s fine. now for the grand ‘feenale,’ as c?sar says about his ponce à la toscana. and success to all hunches!” there was something besides absinthe burning back in those eyes.
questions were useless, so i trailed along. at macnamara’s corner we picked up brady and wilson, two of chief leslie’s trustiest men.
“did the chief instruct you?” asked lanagan.
“he said to report to you and keep our heads shut or tend daisies,” replied brady, the senior of the pair, and a cool and heady thief-taker; also the champion pistol shot of the department.
“my man is iowa slim, wanted for murder. is heavily armed and desperate. he’s in the tokio—jap lodging house at dupont and clay. it looks like break the door and rush. wilson, norton, and i will take the door, and you, brady, stand free of the rush and be ready to drop him if he shows fight. that is, norton will—” turning to me in his quizzical, bantering way, “—if he relishes the job!”
i didn’t relish the job. but, as usual, when he spoke to me in that superior, teasing way i blundered in valiantly where my native caution would have feared to tread. i am free to admit that i am[pg 51] of that branch of the profession that believes a reporter full of lead in peace or war is of very little use on earth, and certainly not elsewhere, to the paper that employs him.
in the shadows the detectives nonchalantly slipped their revolvers into their side coat pockets. neither was cumbered by an overcoat; double-line your sack coat, the old-timers will tell you, but keep away from excess encumbrances where possible. one gallant officer in my time lost his life because he was two seconds delayed unbuttoning an overcoat for his gun.
fifteen minutes later we assembled, one by one, at convenient corners to the tokio, a foul-smelling, ramshackle affair. one by one we drifted in, slipped off our shoes and tiptoed up the stairs, lanagan in the lead, norton bringing up the rear.
lanagan paused before a corner door. he and wilson braced against it. my bulk backed wilson. brady towered above us, standing free to have a clear sweep with both guns. he turned the light on full, taking every chance of making targets of us all for the one chance of getting a drop on slim without bloodshed.
from an adjacent room a clock ticked loudly; somebody rolled over in bed, and the sounds came so clearly that it seemed my heart must have beat as loudly as a trip hammer. yet it was not exactly fear, as i recall it; it was a sort of nervous tension to have it over with if it had to come.
[pg 52]“slim! slim!” it was a soft, sibilant whisper, and i could scarcely believe my ears. it was lanagan at the keyhole. then he rapped four times in quick, soft staccato, and then four times more. it was some code he had learned, possibly from monahan.
there was a prolonged pause, and the sound of someone from within turning in bed, and another long pause. the strain on me was terrific. from the corner of my eye i caught the black muzzle of brady’s left-hand gun. it was as steady as though held in a vise, and i had time to marvel.
“slim! slim! they’re after me! it’s larry bowman’s pal, shorty!”
another nerve-racking pause, and then at the very keyhole came through a soft, throaty whisper:
“who?”
“shorty davis. larry said you’d take me in. quick, slim, they’re after me!”
a key grated, the knob turned.
“now!” hissed lanagan, and with one mighty lurch we burst pell-mell into the room. i caught a flashing look at a slender, flannel-shirted figure with a week’s growth of beard as slim whirled a foot ahead of us and with one leap cleared the room and swung with a murderous long-barrelled colt in his hand.
his leap was quicker than the spring of a cat. he shot from the hip, but brady, posted to do just the trick he did, spoiled the shot. slim’s bullet[pg 53] ripped a two-inch hole through the floor as he crumpled down in a heap.
we stretched him upon the bed. he had got it in the lungs. wilson started for the doctor.
“remember,” said lanagan, “the chief’s orders. you are not to talk. if it gets out, tell all reporters it’s a detinue case. i’ll answer for the rest.”
a few gnomelike, corpselike, yellow faces peered from doors, but a flash from brady’s star sent them scurrying back. the shot was apparently not heard in the street, for no one came.
lanagan turned to slim, who was choking.
“you know what you were wanted for, slim?” he asked in as cool a voice as a surgeon might ask for your pulse.
“that oakland job, i suppose,” he gasped. “well, boys, you did me a good turn croaking me. i never wanted to go back to that hell hole again. i did what i came out to do, what i’ve waited twenty-five years to do, and i’m ready to take my judgment. he sent me up there twenty-five years ago, and he murdered my father as surely as there is a god, who will some day dope it all out right according to a different scheme than they do here.”
gasping, with many halts, he told his story. the surgeon came, shook his head, and devoted himself to keeping life until the story was taken down.
his father, a wealthy iowan, had come to thaddeus miller’s ranch thirty years ago, bringing with him his entire fortune for investment. the son[pg 54] ephraim remained at school back home. at miller’s ranch the boy’s father had been found in the well one day, drowned. a whiskey bottle floated on the water beside him. his entire estate had been willed to thaddeus miller. in a sparsely settled community thaddeus miller’s story had been accepted—that the brother, in drink, had stumbled into the well. the son had journeyed across the continent to find himself disinherited. he had always been told he was to be his father’s heir. his father in iowa had been a strict abstainer. so far as the son knew, he had never touched liquor. but his charge, that thaddeus had in some fashion gotten his father intoxicated, forced him to sign a will, and then pitched him into the well with the bottle, while it created some natural excitement, could never be proved, and in the course of time became forgotten. in spite of a contest, the will stood.
ephraim took to drink and fell in with evil companions. for petty offences he was sentenced and earned his name of iowa slim. one night in liquor, fired with his wrongs, he determined to ransack miller’s house. he knew the old man kept a large amount of money concealed there. it was his, he believed, and he determined to have it. miller had caught him. in the scuffle he beat his uncle and left him for dead, and in the stovepipe he had found a bag of gold. but as he was leaving the grounds, neighbours, driving along on the lonely country road, who had heard the first screams of the[pg 55] old man, surrounded him. the uncle prosecuted him with all the wealth and influence at his command, and the son, at the age of eighteen years, was sentenced to san quentin for twenty-five years for assault to murder.
as sentence was pronounced he had turned on his uncle and warned him that the day he was freed from prison he would come back and kill him. from time to time he had managed to send threats by discharged convicts, who carried the word with the unfailing obligation of the convict brotherhood. he had driven the old man from place to place.
he had lost track of him for an entire year, and was planning how best to locate him again when he unexpectedly met him face to face on the streets of san francisco, followed him to his home, waited until the neighbourhood was quiet, and then had stolen in, wakened the old man from sleep, and asked about his father’s property.
under the fear of death miller had made a promise of restitution, but in an unguarded moment he said he “would make a new will.” slim demanded what he meant by a new will, and the uncle had confessed the will to the watsons merely to cheat the nephew in case he had come back and fulfilled his courtroom threat. the uncle had kept count and knew to a day when slim was to be released. enraged beyond endurance at that, slim had seized up the hammer and crushed the old man’s head.
[pg 56]“but as i live,” he breathed hoarsely, “the man was as good as dead before i hit him.”
“yes,” lanagan interrupted, “i know that, slim.”
slim looked at lanagan with dull curiosity, but was too far gone to ask explanations, and he continued with his story, telling of sprinkling kerosene and touching it with a match. he then had gone to the watson cottage, carrying the hammer, intending if the couple were not in to locate and destroy the will; and if they were to do double murder if necessary to get it. miller had said they had it, an untruth, told evidently in the childish hope that slim might leave him and search for it. while still waiting for an opportunity of entering the house, the smouldering fire had been discovered at the miller cottage, and he had fled, the thought coming to him to leave the hammer on the watson porch, not knowing the hammer belonged to them and had been borrowed by miller. the arrest of the two for murder might pave the way for him to have his property restored as the next of kin to miller.
he signed the confession laboriously, and the story was done.
“it’s all right, cull,” he said to brady, dropping back to the vernacular. “you did me a good trick not sending me back. there ain’t no hard feelings on my part.”
he raised himself by a sudden effort, his eyes[pg 57] peering far, far away and beyond the sordid scene of his dissolution.
“i squared—all—accounts—dad—i squ’—”
he dropped back on the pillow. the surgeon bent his head to slim’s breast, then slowly straightened up and drew the sheet over his face.
“poor lad!” said lanagan softly. “they will judge you differently there!”
then again the newspaper mind curtly:
“brady, you and wilson stay here until i come back. nobody gets in. nobody, understand? doc, we’ll have to impound you, too, until three. understand, brady?” brady nodded.
“now, norrie,” snapped lanagan incisively, “beat it, boy, beat it!”
for two hours lanagan and i fed paper into our typewriters, with sampson himself whisking the sheets away as they came from the platens. the m. e. even came in once or twice and tried to preserve his dignity while he scanned the copy hot from the typewriter.
the thrill of lanagan’s great exclusive was throughout the entire plant. not a half-dozen people in the office knew just what the story was, but each knew by the subtle instinct of communication that the big scoop of the year was shooting down the pneumatic to the composing room.
not until we had the first papers, sticky and inky and fragrant, in our eager fingers, did we stir from[pg 58] our desks. then followed the usual jubilation as the scouts ran in with the times and the herald with the “watsons confess” scareheads.
ah, that is life, that exaltation of the “exclusive”!
we wandered leisurely down to the tokio. the story was wide open now. we were through. the morgue notified, brady and wilson stayed to attend to the routine, and lanagan announced that he was going to oakland.
we caught the paper boat, riding luxuriously on heaps of enquirers. thus it happened that we were at police headquarters there with the copies of our own paper before the route carriers had made their deliveries. lanagan stepped to the ’phone and rang up henley.
“feel like buying a drink?” asked lanagan.
over the wire came back some hearty and measured compliments. “you’re sure in an amiable humour. well, come down. you’ve got two prisoners to free. if conditions at your jail weren’t so rotten i wouldn’t say anything till morning. but i need a drink, which is on you, and the watsons need a breath of fresh air.” in fifteen minutes henley was with us.
he was a gallant officer, that henley. when he had finished he wrung lanagan’s hand until i thought he never would let go.
“bring in the watsons,” he ordered.
[pg 59]in a moment they came in, a weary, worn, misery-marked couple. it was their first meeting since their imprisonment. with a sob, asking no why or wherefore, mrs. watson fell into her husband’s arms and mingled her tears with his. her sobs—weary, worn, tired little sobs—echoed softly under the vaulted ceiling.
“i am pleased to inform you,” henley said grandly, “that through the efforts of our brilliant young friend of the enquirer, the murderer of miller has been located. you are free.”
then followed such a scene of hysterical gladness and tearful, joyous explanations as henley’s room, that had beheld many strange and unusual scenes, had never witnessed.
of course watson, when arrested, confronted with the hammer and told that his wife had confessed, had yielded to the third degree and, unable to accept the full horror of it, yet had swiftly formed his plan to confess to save the woman he loved, even though she might have done the deed.
she, on her part, told a similar story, had formed her plan, for it appeared that when the furor was raised after the murder was discovered she had found the hammer on her porch with fresh blood stains; knew it had been in miller’s cottage, and had washed it hurriedly, not knowing in her excitement just what to do, her husband even then having been taken to the scene of the crime by the police.
[pg 60]in face of his confession and her own hammer found stained in such manner, she had actually believed that he had committed the crime.
the police automobile drove up and the watsons were escorted to it.
for the twentieth time, her eyes still tear-filled, mrs. watson said: “what can we ever do to thank you, mr. lanagan?”
“forgive me certain brutal conduct,” laughed that individual. “as i hope the lord will forgive me,” he added sotto voce, “for misjudging you.”
as the automobile sped away to return a very happy couple to their home, lanagan, hat doffed and in hand, bowed profoundly after the retreating machine, and remarked with veneration to the world at large:
“the tenth woman, gentlemen, the tenth woman.”
then to henley: “inspector, i believe you said something about buying?”