Part 12

At the rear of the room was another door, likewise barred in triplicate. Here another lookout grinned friendly at Lanagan and pressed on an innocent-appearing nail head in the wainscoting and the bars dropped and the door opened to a steep ladder. We went down about ten feet into a blind areaway between two buildings.

It was as black as your derby hat. But Lanagan, the marvellous, stepped ahead with assurance and I followed him gropingly. In another moment he rapped faintly on what I took to be a section of the brick base of the building, a click sounded, he took me by the arm, pulled me after him, another click, and the next moment a blaze of electric light discovered us to be in a small lounging room elaborately appointed in Oriental furnishings.

“Hullo, Mist’ Lamagum!”

The voice came from a corpulent, twinkling-eyed, richly garbed Chinaman just arisen from a massive chair of ebony and mother-of-pearl.

“Hello, Fu,” said Lanagan, sinking into another massive chair and motioning me to do likewise.

“My friend Norton, Fu. Norton, Mr. Fu Wong, otherwise known to me as Why Because. You will understand ‘why because’ presently.”

“Why? Becaus’? I tell you,” said Fu Wong, chuckling. “Him funny boy, Mist’ Lamagum. He, whatyoucalem, jolly me. You likem smoke?” He pressed a button on the arm of his chair and a flowing-garbed Chinese boy appeared with rich Havanas on a tray, together with individual teacups and two-piece teapots for three.

“Did you find See Wong?” Lanagan asked abruptly, while I studied Fu, whom I knew by reputation as one of the Chinese merchant princes. “I am in a hurry, Fu.”

“I catchem. He say Charley drive aut-o-mob-_eel_. Charley live there three, fo’ wicks. She cry one time See bringem tea: ‘Oh, Charley! Charley! Why fo’ you do him? What’s mala you, Charley?’ She stop quick see See. Why? Becaus’? See, he donno. He say Charley he usem, what you call ’em? Hop.”

For the first time since this story broke, that singular flashing, almost like a cat’s eyes, flamed into Lanagan’s dark eyes and they shot a responsive shiver of high tension interest through me, because I knew that at last he had struck the trail.

“You have done more for me than I can ever repay,” said Lanagan at parting. “You are a remarkable man, Fu Wong.”

Fu laughed boyishly.

“Why? Becaus’? You save my sto’ good name? I help you.”

As we went back out the way we came in, Lanagan enlightened me.

“Fu is president of the Suey Sing Tong. There is a Chinaman, Swanson’s cook, See Wong, whom I have been hammering on for two days. Of all the household servants, I have a vague suspicion of him. I couldn’t land him. Finally I looked up his affiliation, found he was a Suey Sing man, and then I enlisted the services of Fu Wong. See Wong would have to talk to his tong leader where the police or the reporters couldn’t drag information out of him with a team of mules. He purely and simply wouldn’t ‘sabe,’ and that’s all the satisfaction you could get.

“‘Why Because’ is not only proprietor of one of the biggest bazaars here and a director of the Chinese Bank, but he is also proprietor--I am telling you Chinatown secrets and not to be repeated--of of the gambling house we came through and several others. He is one of the powers of the quarter.

“There was an English tourist robbed in his bazaar once of a couple of hundred dollars and I was sent up here. Fu laboured under the impression that the entire sixteen pages of the _Enquirer_ were going to be turned over to that particular robbery. He felt the disgrace of the thing keenly, as any high-class Chinaman would, and personally offered the Englishman back the money. That was a good story. For some reason Fu, not understanding the American newspaper idea of ‘human interest,’ elected to think I had written a eulogy of him deliberately. I could have had half his store at that time, I guess, if I had wanted it. But I took a cigar and a cup of tea, and ever since that time I have been taken inside the inner circle up here. The room we were in is a runway through the basement of the bazaar next door in case of a raid.

“‘Charley’ was a chauffeur named Thorne, employed by Mrs. Swanson about three months ago for several weeks. He was one of the numerous wastrels that that woman of unostentatious but magnificent charities had under her protection. There are scores in and about the city, men and women, boys and girls, that she had taken from the under side of life and put on top. I didn’t see him, but some of Leslie’s men did and found nothing suspicious. Had they known he was a ‘hop,’ however, they might have thought differently. It establishes a very clear apparent connection between Swanson and the Palace Hotel and the only definite clue that has been turned up. We will save a lot of time by getting his address from Leslie.”

Lanagan was through with Leslie in a few moments.

“He is going home, but will be on tap with Brady and Wilson if we need him later,” he said. “He got curious when I mentioned Thorne, but promised to lay off until he heard from me. Thorne lives at Lombard and Larkin, where, in view of Mrs. Swanson’s undoubted suspicion that he committed the crime, coupled with See Wong’s charge that he is a ‘hop,’ we will now proceed to call on him.”

We were there in a few moments. It was a squalid lodging house, in charge of a slatternly beldam. She didn’t know whether Thorne was in or not. He was kind of loony, lately, she thought.

“Too bad,” said Lanagan, genially. “Has Charley been so that he couldn’t be out the last week? He wasn’t feeling well last time I saw him.”

“Ain’t seen much of him this week,” she replied. “I didn’t know about it, but I am beginnin’ to think he is one of them there fiends. He is actin’ something awful sometimes lately, what with his skippin’s and hoppin’s. You can go on up.”

The door was locked, but it was a rickety affair and the lock yielded to the pressure of our shoulders. A man who might have been any age from twenty to forty swung himself to a sitting position on a disordered bed and glared at us with eyes that were wide open but only half seeing.

“Full of hop; and I might as well jam him on a gamble,” said Lanagan, in an aside to me as he stepped quickly over and pulled Thorne to his feet, slapped him across the face, and sat him down in a chair. A high-pitched, querulous protest was voiced at the treatment, and then Thorne whimpered:

“Oh, you are so cruel! What have I ever done to be treated so cruelly?” He began to cry.

“Done? You snivelling viper, put on your shoes and come with me to jail. You murdered Robert Swanson and you are going to hang for it. Get up and come along.” Again Lanagan caught him a sharp slap across the face. This time Thorne did not whimper. A look of cunning came into his eyes.

“Getting your wits back pretty quick, now, eh?” sneered Lanagan.

Thorne stared. It seemed for a moment his clouded eyes entirely cleared; and then the film of the drug-sodden brain fell over his eyes again, and he relapsed to his hunched position. He was shivering and rocking himself, his angular knees drawn up to his chin, clasped around with his arms.

“Oh, dear! Oh, dear!” His voice was pitched high again like a woman’s. “Why is everyone so cruel to me? I am very nervous, as you can see, gentlemen. I really need something to quiet my nerves. It is the doctor’s orders, really. Would it be asking too much, now, to ask for the loan of ten cents? Oh, dear--”

“_Thorne!_” Lanagan, his aspect actually ferocious, leaped before the half-arisen suppliant. I shrank back myself, his acting was so consummately done.

“I’ll give you ten cents, you viper! You murdering, crawling, poisonous viper! I’ll give you the condemned cell at San Quentin and the death watch and the black cap, and the quick drop, until they crack that snake’s neck of yours into a dozen pieces! That’s what I’ll give you!”

Chattering, jabbering incoherently, his long, lean, sharp-nailed, claw-like hands working spasmodically before his face and toward Lanagan, the fiend huddled back. He glanced from side to side, his head lolling, as though seeking some avenue of escape by a desperate leap.

Lanagan’s eyes were within a foot of his face. Thorne began to foam at the mouth. I thought he was going into a fit as I watched, fascinated, the horrible scene. Bearing down upon the wretch with savagery in his voice and manner, Lanagan hammered on:

“Give you ten cents! What do you want with ten cents? You’ll never get another shot of coke as long as you live, Thorne! Never in this world! You are coming with me now, coming where you will never need coke again! Coming to your death by hanging for murder! _Not another shot in all this world will you ever get!_”

With a shriek that was more animal’s than man’s, Thorne suddenly lunged forward. Quicker than the dart of a snake’s head, those hands, with their long, lean, writhing fingers, had twisted around Lanagan’s neck. With a strength that was the strength of temporary insanity, he flung Lanagan from him and fell with him. Then, like a lean gorilla, he shook Lanagan’s head from side to side while he screeched fearful imprecations.

“_You lie! You lie! I’ll get all I want! That’s what he said, and I killed him, and I’ll kill you, too! Yah! Yeeah!_” He trailed away into a maniacal scream.

I hurled myself at him, but the fiend, for the moment at least, had the strength of three men. I finally managed to get in a blow that settled him.

Lanagan, rubbing his bruised neck ruefully, rose slowly. He was panting a little but chuckling.

“Score one for mental suggestion on a weak subject,” he laughed. “But I didn’t figure those scrawny hands had quite that much strength. This murder is clearer than print. We all but re-enacted the scene.

“Now, my boy, to establish the connection that would bring a man of Swanson’s position to a rendezvous at the Palace, to arouse the slumbering demon in this human orang-utang. It’s rather a commentary on that hoary police doctrine that a dope fiend never commits murder. I was right.”

Within thirty minutes Chief Leslie and Brady, and Wilson, his right-hand men, were in the room, and Lanagan swiftly detailed the circumstances. Thorne had come to and was shaking and shivering as the drug wore out of his system, leaving him nerve-racked. He did not attempt to repudiate his utterance, but sullenly admitted the murder.

In view of the words overheard by See Wong, there was but one person to clear up the mystery. Leslie, Lanagan and I hurried in the chief’s machine to the Swanson home, nearly midnight as it was. That they had had Thorne once under examination and had permitted him to go was a source of bitter chagrin to the chief. Thorne showed none of the ravages of the habit that men of weaker physique exhibited; the day the police picked him up he had happened to be comparatively normal, and consequently he had passed safely through the quiz.

Mrs. Swanson had not yet retired, and, upon learning that the chief was one of her late callers, summoned us at once to the drawing-room. She had one of those splendid faces seen occasionally in the aged, where strength of mind or religious fervour has brought endurance of lifelong secret pain of body or soul. The calmness of a noble resignation looked forth in a slight clouding of her clear eyes and expressed itself in the faint traces of suppression about her mobile lips. The gleaming, snow-white hair, combed straight back from a forehead of a remarkable breadth in a woman, invested her like an aureole.

She was a woman probably of sixty years.

“You will appreciate, gentlemen, I trust,” she said in a low voice of refined modulation, “that I have endured much and am still suffering.”

“It is a very painful errand we are on, Mrs. Swanson, and we will endeavour to be brief,” said Lanagan in a voice that a Chesterfield might have envied for courteous inflection and gentleness of expression, “but nevertheless it is an errand that must be performed.” He glanced at the chief, who nodded.

“Speaking as a newspaper man,” continued Lanagan, “it is my wish at all times to spare the feelings of those, particularly women, with whom I am brought into relation. But the true newspaper man is a seeker after truth, and he must follow as definite a path as the police follow.”

There was an eloquent pause. She gazed from one to the other during the interim, as though striving to read their thoughts. It was evident that the undercurrent that these skilled cross-examiners intended to convey had carried home.

“Well?” finally. Neither Lanagan nor Leslie spoke. There was another pause. She said at last: “You have some information to impart to me? Or some information to seek?”

“We desire to inform you,” said Leslie slowly, and with just a shade more of hardness in his tone as the detective began to work in him, “that we have under arrest the confessed murderer of your husband.”

She leaned involuntarily forward in her chair and grasped the arms so hard that her knuckles showed white through the fair skin of her hands.

“And we desire to inform you,” added Lanagan quickly, “that the name of your husband’s murderer is Charles Thorne; and we desire to ask you what the motive was for the murder of your husband by Charles Thorne; _and why, when you suspected that Charles Thorne was the murderer, you did not immediately notify the police?_”

Her hands slowly relaxed their grip on the chair arms as she sank back into its depths. Curiously, in the way the light struck down at her hair and her face, it seemed that the beautiful halo of white that had invested her, and the delicate, well-preserved whiteness of her skin, turned suddenly to dirty grey. If ever the blight of age settled visibly in fact or in fiction, it settled upon her then.

“You--have--Charles--Thorne--under--arrest?” she said, and her very tone was grey. She did not deny the truth of the charge; she did not express satisfaction that the murderer was found; she merely asked whether they had Charles Thorne under arrest.

“Yes.”

Her eyes closed and her head dropped suddenly back against the chair. We stepped swiftly forward, but before we could take any measures to revive her, her eyes had opened again. The lips moved. She was speaking, but so gaspingly that we bent to hear.

“It is the end of the long night,” she said with many halts; “the end of the long night. A life’s nightmare is done. God have mercy on me--”

She stopped completely. Then:

“God pity all mothers who bear as I bore--”

Another long pause. She was by strong effort retaining the clarity of her faculties under some heavy shock. She repeated:

“Who bear as I bore!”

The silence became acutely poignant.

“It must be told,” she breathed finally. “You have asked me why I did not tell you my suspicions. I will tell you now. Charles Thorne--”

Her next words came so low that had it not been for the pregnant silence of the great drawing-room they could not have been heard.

“_Is my son._”

I found I had been holding my breath; and I glanced quickly at Lanagan, to see his breast falling with a deep exhalation.

“My husband did not know,” she continued, colourlessly. “Charles Thorne does not know I am his mother. I have tried to live a full Christian life. I have given by tens of thousands to aid the erring. I have thought to make all atonement....

“And yet the blood of my blood slew the heart of my heart, my dear husband, one of God’s noble men....”

After that wrenching confession her normal poise began by degrees to return as the strength of an extraordinary mind began to assert itself. The story was soon told: of an alliance before her marriage to Swanson, of the boy, taken by the father, to be sent back to her after fifteen years. The dissolute father, on his deathbed, sent Charles back to the mother.

For fifteen years since that day she had steadily stood sponsor for the boy. To her husband he was but one of the many others of her objects of charity. It may be said the boy inherited the dissolute traits of his father. Finally, her own children by Swanson all marrying, that profound mysterious quality of motherhood prompted her to make one last effort to redeem the boy under her own eyes, and she adopted the dangerous course, for her, of bringing him to the house as a chauffeur.

That he was given to drugs she did not know. Thorne had been caught in a series of petty thefts. Swanson had finally been compelled to discharge him. He had left the house with maledictions upon Swanson. Instinctively she had felt he was the author of the crime.

Considering all of these circumstances, and understanding the character of the fiend and his paternity, it is evident that in his brain, constantly weakening under drugs, became fixed a sinister purpose to work out some scheme of revenge on Swanson for driving him from a rich home and a cozy living, with ample funds and opportunity for a secret indulgence in his weakness.

As it subsequently appeared, Thorne did not originally plan murder. Some abortive scheme of blackmail had but half formed in his crazy brain. He lured Swanson with a cunning letter, full of explicit directions, to the Palace Hotel by writing that he was seriously ill there. He begged that Mrs. Swanson be not informed until after Swanson had seen him. He wanted an opportunity to redeem himself, he wrote; and Swanson, as warm-hearted as his wife, and not caring evidently to worry her needlessly about the condition of one of her charges until he had made an investigation, set out on his errand of humanity, never to return.

He wore his ulster, obviously so that he would not be recognised going alone into the Palace Hotel. In the subcellar he had met Thorne. There was a prolonged talk, and Swanson made the mistake of chiding the fiend on his habits. Desire coming upon him strongly, Thorne finally exhibited himself in all his ugly weakness, and the spectacle was too much for the eyes of Swanson, unaccustomed to such sights. He was stooping his way out of the little room after sternly refusing Thorne’s appeal for money, when the long, lean fingers of the half-insane man, with some congenital strain outcropping perhaps of that vagabond, dissolute father, found an easy goal in a man already half-suffocated in the thick air of the place.

Alarmed, when his fit had passed, at what he had done, and fearing to rob the body, Thorne had quakingly slipped into Swanson’s ulster and made his way in terror to his own room. First he had journeyed to the foot of Powell Street, weighted the coat with a rock, and cast it into the water of the bay. It was subsequently recovered and served as the single bit of incriminating evidence to substantiate his confession. His letter to Swanson, in Swanson’s pocket, he had taken with him to destroy by tearing into fine bits.

Such were the salient features of a most extraordinary crime as ultimately established.

But to return to Mrs. Swanson’s drawing-room, where Lanagan is speaking:

“Charles Thorne does not know, then, that you are his mother?”

“He does not know.”

“Who does know?”

“No living person save myself and you gentlemen.”

“In that case, then, Mrs. Swanson,” said Lanagan simply, “your secret will die with us.”

She choked in attempting to speak, and, tears streaming from her eyes, bade us each adieu. For my part I confess I was blinking like a boy. The outer doors closed behind us. Then:

“Back to the room for you, chief,” snapped Lanagan laconically. “Throw Thorne in at 2:15. Charles Thorne, a former chauffeur, murdered Swanson after attempted blackmail failed. You stand, of course, chief?”

“Stand, Jack?” replied that sterling officer, “it’s in so deep it can only come out when the last drop leaves my veins.”

“I knew that,” said Lanagan. “Now, Norrie,” sharply, “get together! We have exactly _fifty-five minutes to press time_!”

IX

THE DOMINANT STRAIN

IX

THE DOMINANT STRAIN

“Sampson,” said Lanagan, “there’s something queer about that Robbins case. Professional second story men aren’t returning to the scene of a $10,000 burglary and sending by messenger a written proposition to return the property for a cash settlement. They know how and where to negotiate the stuff and they take no chances; particularly not with one of their number under arrest--assuming the Ward boy is one of them. And that is another queer angle: seasoned crooks don’t operate with sixteen-year-old boys.”

“How do you account for the ring found on him?”

“I don’t--yet.”

“What’s your theory?”

“Haven’t any. But ten ‘second-story’ cases in three months in one district winding up with a $10,000 job is against all form.”

“Dig into it then. Here, see who this is as you go out. May be about the suspect. Same name.”

He handed Lanagan a visitor’s card. Scrawled across it in a nervous hand was: “Jennie Ward. Important.”

In the ante-room a girl with a crutch arose to meet him, but he motioned her back to her seat. She had the pinched face and the wistful sadness of those condemned to life but half-whole. It was evident before she spoke a dozen words that she came as so many others come to the newspaper ante-room: in futile, uncomprehending protest at the entire system of News.

It was her brother, Jimmy, who was under arrest, and she said he was innocent. Jimmy told her he found the ring, therefore he did find it, because Jimmy never told her a lie. She did not see why papers should print such things, even if he had been arrested, and why they did not try to prove a boy innocent rather than aid the police in trying to prove him guilty.

Lanagan listened patiently at first, with an occasional question; and then he listened with a deepening interest as the girl’s fervour grew.

“It is only the rich whose wrongs you right!” she exclaimed at last passionately. “What rights have we poor? I cannot afford even a lawyer. Mamma does washing. She is old and timid, and she was afraid to come to the papers. I mostly educated myself, sir; I had to. I have learned the piano at the Sunday school. I have a little class of pupils there. The teacher helps me get them. I just teach the first lessons, you know. I make $4.25 a week. Mamma makes about $7 when she is not sick. Jimmy has been making $8, with a raise to $9.50 coming the first. So you see we manage to make out, all of us together, and send my three little brothers to school.

“And now--now--all the people on the street are talking about us and my little brothers won’t go to school--the others call them names--everyone saw Jimmy’s picture in your paper to-day--

“Won’t you please help us? We haven’t any men folks to fight for us now with Jimmy locked up. Please, sir, help us get Jimmy out!

“I went to police headquarters and waited hours and hours to see Jimmy--and then--and then finally the detectives--they took me and said I would see Jimmy--but they took me to a room and shut the door--and they swore at me--

“They said I--better tell everything or go to--jail--why--why they talked like _I_--knew about the robbery and they were--going--to arrest--me--”

She fainted; just drooped quietly back into the chair, wearily, hopelessly, woefully, without so much as a sigh. Lanagan breathed quickly as he ministered to her.

“Poor little sis!” he said, softly. “Plucky little mother of the tenements! Taking a full-grown man’s place! But what a handicap!”

Her eyes opened. “Oh,” she fluttered, her thin, sensitive lips quivering in apology, “I fainted, didn’t I? How queer. I never fainted before. I cannot afford to give way like that. Sometimes, though! Oh, sometimes I wish I could! I wanted to in front of the detectives--my brain whirled and whirled and whirled with fire like pinwheels but I wouldn’t--I wouldn’t give them the satisfaction!” Her slight hands with their long fingers clenched; her eyes sparkled. “Harrigan. That is his name. He was the worst. The brute! oh, if I were a man! I would kill him for what he said to me!”